City Council - Regular Meeting

All right.

Good afternoon. Today is Wednesday, February February 18, 2026. This is a regular meeting of the city of Marina City Council. Anita, can we please get a roll call? Council member McCarthy here. Council member McAdams here. Council member Biala here. Mayor Pat Viser here. Mayor Delgato. Thank you. We have a quorum. City attorney, are there any changes to the close session agenda? Uh, there are no changes.

Thank you. We will go into close session and we will reconvene here at 6:30 Good afternoon. We'll open this up for public comments. Anybody in the room who would like to speak or on Zoom? Seeing none, we'll close public comments and we'll go into close session. We'll reconvene 6:30 p.m. here in the chambers. Thank

Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started. Um, at 5:00 PM we started our close session and our practice is to have our city attorney Renee Ortega summarize for all of us what we did in close session.

Thank you, mayor. So, um, council took provided direction to staff but took no reportable action. And that is my summary. All right. We do have a special guest in our midst tonight. Uh, Eric Morgan is here. He's the general manager for the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District. And Eric, I was wondering if you'd be willing to volunteer to lead us in the pledge of allegiance after a moment of silence. So, we can all stand for a moment of silence and then we'll have the pledge of allegiance. All right. Thank you, Eric, for being a good sport. And I see we have another elected official in the audience. Jeff Markham is the marina representative on the same Monterey Pins Regional Park District for Ward One, which is Marina. Thank you for being here, Jeff. Where's Marshall Fulbright?

So, hiding in the corner is our illustrious Monterey Pensa College President and Superintendent, Marshall Fulbright. Very nice to have you, Marshall. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Kathy, for pointing that out. Okay, we have a Black History Month presentation and um Jenny McAdams, Council Member McAdams wrote it, thought about it, made sure that it happened. So, thank you, Council Member McAdams, for doing that. Her voice and my voice are not the strongest voices tonight. Um I'm getting over a cold about a couple months ago, but the cough remains. Kathy, would you council member Viel, would you mind reading the Black History Month proclamation?

No, I'm good. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. And if we can have uh representatives of the village project uh come on up once, Kathy. Yeah, come on up now and you can stand there in the podium and Kathy will read the proclamation. And if I may, mayor, these are the Emenyata warriors of the um it's a um a Saturday and after school program that the village project uh has. And so we're very grateful to have you here this evening.

Raise your hand if you went out of country to visit the warriors in Africa. Three of you. That's great. Maybe you might say a couple words about that when we're done. Thank you, Kathy.

This is a proclamation from the city of Marina Black History Month. celebrating Black History Month and honoring the contributions, legacy, and continuing impact of black Americans in Marina, including the historic role of Fort. Whereas Black History Month is observed annually in February to recognize and celebrate the history, culture, achievements, and contributions of black Americans whose leadership, labor, creativity, and resilience have profound profoundly shaped the United States. And whereas the city of Marina's history is deeply entwined with Fort Orard, a former US Army installation that served as a major training base for millions of soldiers from 1917 to 1994, including generations of black service members who served their country with honor, courage, and distinction. And whereas Fort or was one of the early military installments installations to reflect broader national changes related to dis desegregation and civil rights. And for many black soldiers and their families, it represented both opportunity and challenge, offering pathways to service, leadership, education, and community while also reflecting the inequities of the era. And whereas black residents of Marina have enriched the community through service in education, public sea safety, healthcare, business, faith communities, the arts, local government, and community advocacy, helping to shape Marina into a resilient, inclusive, and forwardlooking city. And whereas Black History Month provides an opportunity not only to celebrate achievements, but also to reflect honestly on our shared history, acknowledge past and present injustices, and recommmit to equity,

dignity, and opportunity for all residents. And now therefore, be it resolved that the city of Marina uh I'm sorry, the city council of the city of Marina hereby proclaims February 2026 as Black History Month in the city of Marina. Be it further resolved that the city council honors the enduring legacy and contributions of black Americans, including the black service members and families connected to Fort or whose service and sacrifice help shape Marina's identity and community fabric. And be it further resolved that the city council encourages residences uh residents, businesses, schools, and community organizations to observe Black History Month through education, reflection, celebration, and dialogue that uplift black voices and experiences. and be it further resolved that the city of Marina reaffirms its commitment to foster fostering equity, inclusion and mutual respect and to working collaboratively with the community. Insure Marina remains a place where all people feel seen, valued and supported. In witness therefore aware of, I have here unto set my hand and caused the seal of the of the city of Marina to be affixed. this 18th day of the fee of February 2026 and it's signed by Bruce Delgado, our mayor.

All right. Thank you very much, Kathy. Um, let's hear from some of our representative guests and then the five council people will be welcome to take a picture with them. So, if any of you have anything you'd like to say to commemorate commemorate Black History Month or related topics, please feel free. Um, good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Djon Ross. Hi, my name is Nathan and I'm with the project emulator. Nathan Zaven. Zaven. Thank you. Zen. I'm Quincy Kash. I'm Zuriel Alexander.

I'm Quante Stein. And on behalf of the village project and imminiata warriors, it is a true honor to accept this black history month's proclamation. We extend our sincere gratitude to the city of Marina for this meaningful recognition. The IMAT program teaches us leadership, discipline, cultural pride, and the importance of giving back to our community. Black history month reminds us of strength, resilience, and achievements of those who came before us. And it challenges us to continue building a positive future. We are proud to represent our families, our program, and our communities. Thank you for your support.

All right. Um, thank you, Dejan. So, the other two of you who went to Ghana, do you want to say what was that like? Give us a a few sentences about your experience.

All right. So, one of the first thing I noticed, I'm Jamaican. My dad's from Jamaica, so I've been there plenty of times. Uh, it really reminded me of Jamaica, like everything, the surroundings, the sounds, all of that definitely felt a little similar and familiar, you know? So, it kind of shows how even though Jamaica is like across the planet, it's still very similar. Like, it's the same people and everything. And we got to see like lots of places like the last bath, the slave dungeons and it was a really good overall experience and it definitely helped like reaffirm what we learned in E and what they taught us. All right. Thank you. And you're you Quincy? Yeah.

Thanks, Quincy. How about you? Would you like to say a little bit about Ghana? Your visit there? Thanks, Martin. It was pretty good. We went to a place where we crossed a few bridges. I think they were called and seen lots of nature. And what kind of nature did you see? Not really any animals. I think they only came out at night.

All right. Thanks, Vante. And thank you also Zuriel and Sin for being with us tonight. We really appreciate it. Okay. So, if you come on up a little closer, we'll come down to you. Want to take a photo of you. That was bad. just speak to what Black History Month means to you and a little bit about what it means to uh what it means to you and

what it means to Monterey Pla College.

Something light and easy like that. Um, one, yes, my name is Marshall Fulbr. I get to be the superintendent president at Monterey Peninsula College. And to answer your question, um, it's representation is everything. History and knowledge is is enormous. You know, far too often as an educator, you know, I get to we have books and curricula and curriculum that are set. Um, we often forget that not everyone is represented in that curriculum and curriculum. And when they are, they're not represented at the same level as others are. And you go back to for me being in education, who writes the curriculum, when they write it, and what is the intent? And the intent is sometimes to erase other contributions and to and or make superior others. And so a Black History Month is not just about black history. It is about um all history. It just so happens that we are going to look at this for this period of time. And for me that's a little awkward because there's history is so intertwined in everything that is what built the country that we are in today. So, um, that's my impromptu as to what this means to me because it is it is important for our students to see themselves in the lives and the in the communities that they live in and in the representation of the folks of that helped uh serve them as well. So that being said, I also want to one of the

things I was going to also talk about was MPC is deeply committed to the community and deeply committed to this region. Uh I want to invite all of you here in this room and on online to next Thursday we are having a little um press ceremony for to announce the expansion further expansion of our Marina campus um which is I have to say is uh over hund00 million dollars being invested in Marina in this region. Um that is our commitment to this area and to the northern region and to those who may not always make it down to the peninsula. Uh so that is really really important for us. Um so that is happening next Thursday 11:30 a.m. Again everyone is invited. Uh I want to thank you for making this pro for making this proclamation. I think it's important again because especially in the society that we're living in today, silence is complicity and not taking a stance is taking a stance. So the mere fact that we get to live in a community where you have the courage to take a stance and to make that proclamation. I'm very grateful for that and thank you for doing so. So all right,

thank you for having me. Thank you, Marshall. Can I ask you do us a favor and ask the folks back in because uh Kathy Be would like to say something and maybe uh maybe Jenny would too. The the village project folks if you could try to corral them back in.

Who could say no to Marshall, right? Yeah. Oh, all right. So, whoever's left at Dejon and uh Zan, Quincy, Zuriel, and Conte, we had a a request from Council Member Biala. She'd like to say something about the Village Project and Black History Month.

Black History. Thank you. Thank you for coming back, two of you back there. Um, and I wanted to share some personal thoughts as I thought about Black History Month. So, during this special month, we pause to honor the leaders who shape the ongoing struggle for justice and equality in this country. The recent passing of Jesse Jackson marks the loss of a legacy figure in the American civil rights movement. From his work with Martin Luther King Jr. to founding the Rainbow Bush Coalition. Reverend Jackson dedicated his life to expanding opportunity, political representation, and economic justice for marginalized communities. His name now is added to our history books of great men of the civil rights era. For me, the passing of Reverend Jackson calls to mind the recent passing of John Lewis, who also made me feel I'm witness to great men of history leaving us. I am old enough to feel I grew up seeing them make history. So, as we reflect this month on Black History, we will remember Reverend Jackson's call to keep hope alive. And in these trying times, we must hold his memory dear and recommmit ourselves to the work of building a more inclusive and equitable nation. I shall try my best to do so here in our little city. Even however inconsequential I might may be, I tried to keep hope alive. Thank you all for coming. All right. Thanks again to the representatives of village project. We hope to see you in the future. Thanks for being here tonight. Good night, Bridget. Okay, our next presentation is a uh demonstration tutorial of our new Marina Connect app.

And of course, our finance director, Corey, is going to give that.

Good evening. um wait just a couple minutes for it to queue up. But uh a lot of the city staff have been working hard to to implement Marina Connect. It's also um a big effort, big lift on public works. They're one of the primary users who's who's done an integration with the system. And Marina Connect is uh a tool to report non-emergency service requests. So, if you see a pothole in the road, um sidewalk damage, graffiti, you can go ahead and log it into Marina Connect and uh that will go immediately to the appropriate department. And if you sign up with a um user account, then you can get updates on how your request moves through the process. And with that, we're just waiting for uh the app to launch. But something else you can do with the app is also considered a gateway to the city because you can also um make reservations for um recreational classes on the on the app as well as visit other city websites and resources.

Ready? Marina Connect is the city of Marina's new online tool to report non-emergency service requests and serves as a gateway to city services, resources, and programming. Download the mobile app or visit city ofina.org/marina connect. Easily submit issues such as potholes, graffiti, sidewalk damage, and more. Using the mobile or desktop app, you can make a report or request by submitting a photo, choosing a location, and describing the issue. Once your service request is submitted, you will have the opportunity to log in or create an account to receive updates on the status of your request. Simply provide your name and email and create a secure password to register. Registering ensures that you're kept in the loop on service requests, Marina Connect updates and resources. Visit city ofina.org/marina connect or download the app to connect with Marina Connect today.

Okay. Request of Marina Connect is to make our city council chambers louder. Would that go to public works? Who would that go? They're going to try it again.

Marina Connect is the city of Marina's new online tool to report non-emergency service requests and serves as a gateway to city services resources. So maybe Tori will just have you talk us through it mobile app or visit city of.org/marina connectnect. easily submit issues such as potholes, graffiti, sidewalk damage, and more using the mobile or desktop app.

So, basically, just looking at the screen, um you can download the app from the Google store or the Apple Store. And um what it's showing is really just the the process for for logging in a request. And this information is also on the city website. So, when you go to the city's main homepage, you'll see um an area where you can just click on Marina Connect and it will take you to this section where you can watch the tutorial as well as get some additional information on it. Visit city of.org/marina. Council member McCarthy has worked hard in this direction. Uh Brian, you want to say anything about it?

Uh sure, Mayor. I mean, both you and I sat on a subcommittee to look at technology options and make a recommendation to city staff in terms of providing a system that allowed the public to um really easily report issues. I I call it problem management, right? There's or issue management. There's something that you see that you don't think is right. You want to make sure it's documented. It doesn't mean the city's going to necessarily act on it. Doesn't mean it's going to be fixed overnight. Um but it's it's a way to document and have your concern um recorded into a database. So, I'm just really appreciative of all the hard work staff has done on this. I think you, you know, knocked it out of the park in terms of providing what we were looking for. And, um, I just thank you, mayor, as well for working on that subcommittee together.

Thanks, Brian. I think the best news is that you put on what bothers you and then you can track it. Everybody can see it. Everybody can see how long it's taking for a response for for resolution or not. And it's never lost because it's always there. Whereas right now, you know, you call in or you email in and you know, it might seem like a black hole sometimes even if someone's working on addressing it. You may not know what's going on. Uh, Council Member Bala or I'm sorry, Mayor Ruchan Viser.

Thank you, s mayor. And thank you, Tori. Um, yes, I've been trying it out. It's so much fun. And, um, but just one tip. Um, if your locator doesn't work, if if it doesn't show you where you are in the city, I have to manually scroll, you need to click on the little locator item on the right lower corner of the map and then it gives you the option to allow your phone to be tracked where you are. So, just a tip from a guinea pig here. Thank you. Yeah, just like recording a GPS point, right, Fred? All right. Thank you very much, Tori. Next, we're going to have a presentation on uh Arena on the move newsletter.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Um to add to that, great segue about the Marina Connect app. I also wanted to announce a new uh communication tool that is going to bridge the lines between city staff and our residents and that is our Marina on the move e newswsletter which the inaugural issue was just launched earlier this month. Um and as you are aware there's a lot going on in Marina right there's a lot of development projects there's a lot of infrastructure improvements a lot of things being built a lot of things being rehabbed um a lot of community events and celebrations and a lot of meetings. So, what better way to keep the residents informed than with this newsletter. Um, the purpose and intent of this newsletter is really just to have a central and consistent place for residents to see what's going on, um, what's happening across all the departments, uh, to stay informed and ultimately feel a lot more connected and engaged with, um, what's going on with their city. Um, I do want to emphasize accessibility. Um, so let me pull up the newsletter here. Yes, it is in PDF form here, but um it is accessible. It's very readable through your mobile device or through your email inbox. Um so I wanted to share that with you as well. Um and it's easy to subscribe and to share with others who may not be subscribed to the newsletter at this point. You'll see as we go through the newsletter, there's a lot of different department updates. Um you'll see some months there will be more department updates than others. Um, and you'll typically see as a feature, Lane or the city manager will have their opening remarks or their messages. Um, as this is still fluid, obviously we do want to feature a lot of our other departments and directors. So, you'll see remarks from them as well as we go on. But if you have any suggestions or feedback, we welcome them. Feel free to send them my way. Um, in terms of metrics, I did want to share with council that prior to the inaugural issue that went out a few weeks ago, we did have a social media ad campaign that

went out. We did increase our subscribers um significantly in the last 30 days thanks to that ad campaigning um that Trapey Smith, our communications firm, um helped us with. And I did also want to share that our click rate is 69% as of this afternoon, which is double the industry standard for newsletters such as this. So, I just wanted to share that piece of good news, which is really, really great. It just shows that our community is engaged and they really want to see what's going on u with the city. Um, so in conclusion, I do want to encourage those present and watching online uh to subscribe to our newsletter. You can find this and archives at cityofmarina.orgnewsletter.

Fantastic. Thank you very much, S. And to everyone that had a hand in this, thank you. Uh, council member McAd, you want to write some input?

Sure. I just I wanted to thank staff for this. I know this was really one of my first asks when I joined the council and I am so pleased. Um, you know, we're all so busy and going a million miles and just it's nice to have something that we can that's tangible where we can celebrate the work that staff is doing and and something to refer and be able to share with community. And so, thank you very much um for this. I'm I'm so ecstatic. Yeah, there's about 10 different issues uh items here, 10 different updates and and a lot of us might not know, you know, a half of those. So, it's really good to get the information out. Like you say, there's so much going on, but how does anybody know? This is going to help. All right. Uh next, we're going to talk about money and uh $30 million of regard for Good evening. Um, we wanted to give an update on the bond closing. Uh, this was a really quick turnaround and we were very thankful to have such a dedicated team to help us tonight to give us an overview. I have Ben Lazald from uh, Steeple who is our underwriting firm who also helped us in so many different analysis. So, with that, I'll turn it over to him.

Thank you, Lori. Good to see you all. Good evening, mayor and members of city council. As Tori mentioned, my name is Vince Ozaldi. I'm a man managing director in Stifold, the city's bond underwriter. I've worked with the city for almost a decade now. So, this was a one of the harder projects we worked on, but we got it done on time, which is very important. So, I just want to share a couple of um key terms the city was able to achieve, but the punch line here is that it was a big win for the city. So, as a reminder, the purpose of the bond issuance was to refinance the 2015 loan that was originally issued to acquire Preston Park Apartments back in 2015. That loan was structured with interestonly payments and the balloon payment that was due on February 1st of $36 million, just about $36 million. So, we did have to issue those bonds to to take that payment out. We had a couple of goals. number one accessing the lowest interest rate possible and number two securing other favorable terms. So specifically we did this by shaping the 2026 bonds with the following features. I think I can advance this way. Number one reducing the size of the new bond issue by allocating $6.5 million of reserves to pay down the cost the size of the loan. Number two, replacing the existing higher taxable rates with new tax exempt bond rates that were lower. Number three, generating demand from investors through via a public sale. Number four, securing a high-grade rating of double A1 provided via Fanny May guarantee. Uh, number five on my list, and I think I'm mining a couple there on the slide, making sure the new payments not only contain an interest component, but also start to pay down principle over a 30-year term. So, that was important. And also a new regulatory agreement with affirm the affordability requirements for the park moving forward. So, what does that all mean in terms of uh nuts and bolts and what the actual

numbers uh that we achieved are? So in terms of actual results, the 2026 bonds achieved an overall interest rate of 4.1%. So in an overall high interest rate environment that's achieved in the past couple years, that's a really remarkable achievement at that level. It is also lower than the existing loan rate on the prior 2018 loan. So we thought that was a really good win. In terms of payments, the new payments on the loan will be about $1.77 million a year. That's about $100,000 better than what we projected when we came to see you back in December. and just nominally higher than the interestonly payments on the 2015 loan that were about a million and a half dollars. So again, we're starting to pay that principle down and that's why we have a higher uh slightly higher payment moving forward. We were able to do this by reaching out to a broad array of investors. The city, a lot of the investors are very interested in the city's bonds. We got to talk to a lot of investors. We received over $146 million in orders for the $30 million of bonds that we had available. So that's what allowed us to generate the demand, reduce the industry, and really create this win for the city and for park. So on behalf of the whole finance team who are not here, but um I want to thank you for the opportunity to work again with the city. I love coming to Marina. I love working with you guys and your staff. Um and I'm happy to take any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much, Lance. Vince, questions, anyone? Council Member McAdams, I don't have questions, but I am um just very grateful that the timing of this and the amount and I know that it's not easy to get financed with interest rates, but I mean just so many variables. So, thank you so much. And Miss Hannah, thank you for your work. I know this was not an easy task with the with this, you know, strict deadline. You're very welcome. It all came together very well. Anything else? and Tori and your whole team have had anything to do with this. It was a great success. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Okay. Mayor, if I may just highlight a couple things.

Um if Vince talked about um we had a $30 million and we got $146 million of orders. It it shows how valuable that property is. And he talked about we had a double A1 rating. uh 3CE just bragged about they had a single A rating and and they're really happy at that AAA is your high we're just one below a AAA rating which your highest your most sound um institutions get with huge uh tax bases and and so it re reflects um on how solid Preston Park is and how valuable Preston Park is and how well that project has been managed, how well the revenue structure is for that project, how well the condition of the project is. There is so much that went into um evaluating the project going through Fanny May through all these different things, but that is all reflected in in the rating and just the fact that all the borrowers out there, there's a huge interest in that that property. So I think it goes back and kudos to the city council way back on making the decision to purchase that property and then the leadership of this council going down the path that we did. It took a lot of extra steps to make it a tax exempt bond to in involve Fanny May all these different things that made it more complex and the actual interest rate was was uh 3.39. It goes up to 4.1 with Fanny May and all the other institutions. Um, our timing was impeccable. What we put together was impeccable and and so I think a lot of kudos really needs to go back to council and the vision and how the council has managed these properties and how we put the money into the properties and really those properties are going to be hugely um a huge asset value to the value to the community in the future. And Vince

was just part of the team. Karen Tedman, uh, our attorney was part of the team. We had, um, uh, Jim Fabian was our financial adviser on the team, and we had our bond council. Um, and so there's a huge team here. Uh, Vince represented our um, our underwriters, Stifl, and and they did a fantastic job. They're the ones that actually go out there and line up all the investors and and structure the deal. So, I just want to um put out there that everyone did just a fantastic job. We couldn't have had a a better result for this project.

And although it's a it's a financial transaction that's $30 million, it's most important that it provides 350 families with reasonable housing that's owned by the city. Most cities don't own that kind of property. And the two goals we've always had, A, that we keep affordable units, uh, good value units for our local folks to live in, and B, that it generates, uh, revenue to our general funds portfolio that the state has no attachment to. So, the state can't tell can't take that money. The state has a lot of volatility. And so you want to have a portfolio that's less volatile and more in your own control. And Preston Park has been um resulting in about a $2 million annual profit to our city's general fund since late 1990s. And it used to be owned 50% uh by another entity who threatened they might sell it on Craigslist on a given Friday if they wanted to. And so the city was felt threatened and very concerned that this could be kind of pulled out from under us. So the city uh did what they could to come up with a uh $37 million bond, $36 million for the actual purchase of property and there was some money there for for ser for um you know service fees. But anyway, now we're down to 30 million, but we've had that generation of families living there, turnover, more families. So, it's 350 families living at Preston Park at any one time. But over the last 29 years, there's been a lot more than 350 families taking advantage of, you know, a good place to live where they're treated with respect and they have a very reasonable rent set by the city. It's under rent control. Uh 3% no more uh raise every year. So, it's been a good deal all around and we're happy

that we can blend financial prudence with uh the goals of affordable housing because we all know how important that is in our very expensive area. So, thanks to everyone involved with this and keeping a good thing going and thanks to the people that manage the property and the people that live there um and to our staff that oversee all of that, you know, on a on a monthly basis. Very much appreciated. Okay. So, now we go to council and staff announcements. Let's start with Let's start with staff. Okay. Any staff announcements? We have one. Um, anytime you see my my wife in the audience, you know that something is going on. Maggie is back here and um uh Maggie and I have been planning for the last year. Um um what are you planning, Lane?

Um it's time to um bring an end to my 13 years here in Marina. Um it has been um an honor and a privilege to work with this community. in progress,

our city council and um and my wife is my biggest supporter, my biggest champion. Um but I will be uh officially resigning July 17th of this year. I've talked with the city council. I've been working with them on on a date that that works for all of us and I've notified my department heads and so this is officially letting the public know that um I'll be retiring on July 17th. the council is actively working on with a recruitment firm or getting a recruitment firm on board and we'll be conducting a uh a nationwide recruitment and u blinda and the council uh and others are working closely on that and I just want to express my um love and appreciation and deep gratitude um to this council. Um you've meant so much to me, my wife and and our family and and especially this community. Uh, I couldn't um picked a better community to to serve in and work with and and so um I'm sad to leave and retire, but I'm looking forward to spending much more time with my wife and my kids and my grandkids and and um it's just the right time to do that.

Thank you,

Lane. And Lane's not going anywhere this week. He'll be here into July. We'll have another chance or two to say goodbye to him. um maybe with some kind of a a celebration reception depending on what he wants. Uh but 13 years as a city manager in a Monterey city, Monterey County city, uh it's it's rare and he's definitely the longest uh sitting city manager currently anywhere in Monterey County. And he came here for his love of life and his love to help communities. And you think of him, if you know him as a city manager, but when he's not working his tail off at for the city, he's spending his off time helping people as far south as down in South County with their rent, their problems, their needs as a deacon. I think in his church, he was deacon longer than most deacons serve as deacon. And it really takes it out of you just to be deacon. But he was being deacon and city manager at the same time. So when he's not here helping the our community, he's somewhere else uh helping other communities and individuals in in the in the dire of straits, helping them get their life where they want it to be. So you don't know that about him, but he'll be here late at night and then on weekends he'll he'll be helping the rest of the county. And that's not something that you come across very often. And no one will ever question Lane's kindness or integrity. He's able to work with everyone and respect everyone and sort of from the top down in Marina people feel accepted and Lane lets everyone know that he accepts and respects them and so it's been a wonder for Marina to land find Lane and that he was able to stay with us 13 years is wonderful. Thank you Lane and thank you Maggie for being there every step of the way. And by the way, when he moved here,

you guys standing so mad. Uh small a small but um revealing tidbit about Lane when he came here 13 years ago. He had four children under 18, right? Three under 18. And they moved into Abrams Park. We were just talking about Preston Park. Abrams Park is a sister park. has about um about 150 units. And uh so he lived there because he wanted to understand uh what goes on, what it needs because that's kind of on the end of town and it didn't always get the understanding or attention that it needed. But when he moved in, it started to turn that around and it got it's gotten a lot more attention because he lives there and he strives to understand what's going on there. And part of the reason we just heard about the double A uh loan um bond rating is because he's been so integral to the property management and uh upgrading both Preston and Abrams Park because he, you know, decided to live there. That that went a long way and it meant a lot to all of us. And so thank you for that life decision. Yeah. All right.

Thank you, mayor. Um, Lane, you used two different words. One was retire and one was resign. I hope you meant retire because retire means taking the time to, you know, write the next chapter of your life and spend time with family. You have worked tireously at the city of Marina. Um, arguably maybe too much. I mean, I've come here at 10 o'clock at night and you're sitting at that desk benefiting the residents of Marina and I I am forever grateful for all the work that you've done uh to do that. So, um, yeah, I just hope for Maggie and and your family that you did mean retire and not resign and that you're, um, going to going to spend some time, you know, doing some really neat things that help write that that new chapter. And the other thing I'll say is to members of the community as we kind of plan this celebration of all that you've done, if if you know of things that you want to contribute or make sure that we capture, please reach out to your council member or or staff to uh make sure that gets incorporated in the celebration. So, thank you, Lane.

Thank you, Brian. Let's go to Council Member McAdams. Okay, let's go to Council Member Bial.

Thank you. And for some reason, I didn't know you were going to announce it tonight. So, I was thinking, "Oh my god, I I I literally cannot say um all that's in my heart about this." And so, I'm going to kind of turn it to another time when we're in a party mode and we're going to be doing this. But, um I have two things I think that come to my mind. And the first is that um Lane has been a good man. He right to the his core he is a good man. And thank you Maggie for being there for him. Um I I have to say that that sincerely. The other thing I want to say is that um Lane has worked so diligently on bringing um Joby Aviation to Marina at a time when who knows what an EV tall was. He was he knew that there was something special about this company and that for years now he has been nurturing it working with the the um Joe Ben on on bringing it to Marina keeping it here for research and development. So our little city became famous because of Joby Aviation. It is a worldclass leader in EV talls and it and it's here in Marina at our airport and he worked on that with the FAA. They had never even known how to even classify that kind of aviation and it's here now to stay and in the world and it it's here in Marina and so not only did it bring huge amounts of jobs I think the last count was 540 employees so little Marina has been not only you know an engine for this research and development but also been a a regional engine for jobs and so I I'm just so grateful for everything you've done and there's so much more that I can say and I'll save it for later. Thanks, Lane.

Thank you, Kathy. Mayor Proton Fisher.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Lane. Yeah, when I two words that I that I think of when I see you is extremely hardworking. Oh, that's two words already. And inspiring. Uh people might not know as council members, we have one-on- ones regularly with our city manager. We always have to go through the city manager. we cannot just go through staff which is hard now and then but um so meetings I I bring an ongoing list usually and the list has only been growing and that's just shows how many things are happening in our city the three major projects of course the but then besides that parks jobby whatever there's always something that comes up and sometimes it's frustrating not to get all the answers or to hear like oh yeah the park will start the end of this Oh no, the end of this year happened. No, no park yet. Things like that. But when I go to my meetings, when I come home from my meetings with you, I'm always so jazzed up, so inspired because there's so much happening. And I understand that's why it's so hard for you to choose a moment to retire. But I want to apologize to Maggie because my meetings midlane often are cutting into dinner time at home. So apologies for that. And I've told other people who retire. My husband retired almost two years ago now. If you're half as happy as my husband, you'll be a happy man. So, so thank we can we cannot thank you enough for all the work that you have done and are still doing. So, thank you.

And let's give uh Council Member McAdams last word on this. Thank you, Mayor. I I think for me it's easy. Just drive around the city and there's your legacy work. And it's as simple as that. you know, the growth, the the new businesses, the economic development, the housing. We are the model of affordability for housing. And so, you know, that's that's just an easy go-to for me. So, thank you so much and for being so welcoming when I when I joined the council.

Thanks, Jenny. And thanks, everyone. Uh, how about in the name of time we move on? Is that okay to public comment? So, we'll kind of uh pass by on these council announcements unless you have anything burning in your Okay, so let's go to public comment. Uh, everyone has up to three minutes. We'll start with those of you in the room. Okay, your time is up next. Welcome, Eric. First of all, I'm gonna miss you, man. You are a good guy. You know, I I've really enjoyed you whether I was at the Portor National Monument as a manager or my new job at the general manager regional park district. I always enjoy working with you. I'm really miss you. So, didn't know you were going to say it tonight. Uh I'm Eric Morgan. I'm the general manager of the Regional Park District and we represent uh over 150,000 residents all the way from Marina down through the Big Su uh peninsula. Um our mission is to acquire and maintain open space in the district for the preservation and use uh working with partners in the community for public benefit, enjoyment and environmental protection. We've worked very closely with the city for quite some time uh since 1979. We've accomplished a lot of good things. Um the Marina Community Park, which I believe is Vince Deaggio Park. uh the Los Arbala Sports Complex was a park district property with you uh Marina Dunes Preserve and of course Lock Padden Wetland Community Park and that's what I'm here to talk to to you today a little bit about is uh the status and hopefully a path forward for Lock Pad and Wetland Community Park. I sent you a a Valentine's letter on February 14th which is basically explaining hopefully

will be a path forward where to go uh to to bring conclusion a lot of really good projects that are talking about being talked about for quite some time. Um so just a little history about lock pads uh the city's request in the 80s we acquired and protected key parcels with federal and state funding there at Loch Paden. Uh we put also some important restrictions in place uh to prioritize passive recreation and habitat preservation and we've worked together on various conceptual plans over the years to balance conservation with public enjoyment. Today the park unfortunately is dealing with some some issues. Um the original lease expired in 2012. Uh that has caused some neglect of of the wetland complex. Uh, in particular, Bull Rush is taking over the wetland complex and we all want to restore that. Um, there's also been a lot of really positive things that have happened. We have great volunteers C4SM that have been doing just amazing work. Uh, every time I I see them coming to the regional park district, you know, to talk about the status of different things. And you did a wonderful presentation, Mr. Mayor. I think the last presentation or the last meeting that we had, but a lot of wonderful things happening to keep that park up and running um in in lie of a lease being in place. The central uh reality is that we don't have a planning process to to further some of the projects that are currently on hold and we're hearing from a lot of of citizens that they want to see some progress in particularly the Asian American garden that

Excuse me, Eric. Just for time sake, how much longer do you have, do you think? Probably a minute. Council, is that okay? Uh, I mean, this is a a partner of ours. I'd like to give him five minutes if that's what he needs. Sure. Okay. Sorry about that. I'll go I'll go real quick. I'll remember this. That's right.

Um, so I just wanted to to to mostly just say that we're on a to to get to where we need to go. Uh we want to engage and work with the city on a planning process that will involve some SQA compliance uh to further a variety of projects that are sitting in the the wings waiting to to have a life. Uh that inclu includes the garden that includes a wonderful study that Fred Watson did to restore the wetland complex and we want to engage the city on a planning process and sequa analysis and all the permitting and we hope you'll join us on that planning process. Thank you for giving me the extra time. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eric. So, Eric was the uh Ford monument manager since 2000. Eric, 1999. So, about 25 26 years and he did a great job and things are good things are still happening there in in the wake of his legacy there. Thank you, Eric, for all you've done. Okay. Hey, anyone else here in person like to speak to public comment before we go online? Good evening, Shante.

Good evening. Um, I this would be my first time doing public comments, so can I still comment on the Black History Month that you Okay, just want to make sure. All right, I'll begin now. Good evening, everyone. And I want to thank the city of Marina for recognizing Black History Month. For those who don't know me, my name is Shante Sneed and last year I had the privilege of uh in the honor of speaking at our first Martin Luther King Jr. celebration right here in Marina. And while Dr. King's life and words are just one part of black history. They were a personal entry point for me. They helped me connect with the ideas, resilience, and progress that Black History Black History Month celebrates. And more than that, I felt connected to my community. And the people that came up to me afterwards were able to talk to me and share their thoughts. Those conversations reminded me that celebrations like this don't sorry uh celebrations like this don't just remember history but they also build on the community. Black History Month is about honoring resilience, achievement, creativity, and progress. And these are the values we already hold as a community. They are the bread of what we share and celebrate together. But there is also the future we are creating and I would love to see more engagement like we saw that year last year and more people stepping forward sharing ideas attending events you know feeling truly part of what we're building here in Marina opportunities for possibly the next Shantae for anyone ready to stand and

speak to participate in the ways that they imagine spaces where everyone can contribute belong and shape their own future. And that idea aligns perfectly with Marina's visions. The city aims to be diverse, vibrant, and thriving, where residents have the chance to contribute, belong, and help shape their future. Celebrations like this are a small but meaningful way we all participate in bringing that vision to life. Black history is ultimately a story of perseverance and hope. Hope that understanding grows. Hope that communities become stronger than their challenges. Marina's Black History Month proclamation reminds us that the city values history, diversity, and the voices of all its residents. It's a declaration that we honor the past and invest in the future. So, let's carry that forward with more listening, more compassion, and more commitment to one another as neighbors. Thank you for being here. Thank you for caring about this community and especially thank you for making Marina a place where history isn't just remembered, it's celebrated, shared, and used to build something better.

Thank you very much for those words, Shante. Anyone else here in person? Okay, let's go online. So this public comment is for something on your mind other than what we're going to discuss later that's on our agenda as action items and consent agenda. This is the time to talk about consent agenda items too. Yeah. Anyway, okay. So this is okay because the time for the children's garden comment

other things other things that might be on your mind. Let's go to Denise Turley. Welcome Denise. Yeah. Good evening.

Welcome Denise. Hi. Um, uh, so, um, um, I would be remiss, uh, if I did not congratulate, uh, Lane Long on his many years of faithful service for the city of Marina, two small corrections. Lane was in fact bishop for our church for many years and now serves on a council uh that governs those of us in all of Monterey County. So the question that this brings up before anyone terribly panics is does the city want to make any kind of announcement about the recently hired newly starting assistant city manager that will take his place and a date that that person him or her might start. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh thank you so much. Uh, Denise, let's go to Grace Silva Santella. Hi, Mayor and City Council. You can hear me okay? Loud and clear. Welcome.

I want to share with Lane my gratitude for all the years that he has given to the city of Marina. The first time that I met Lane, he came in for one of the indie films that Rey, my husband, and I were doing for The Friends of the Marina Library. And I was bit overwhelmed that the city manager would show up for a little small movie event. But I realized what he was doing is he was moving through the community to make sure he knew and understood who we are. And I greatly appreciated that. And he's always been extremely supportive of everything that the friends of the Marina Library has done down for that building. And uh I appreciate that he was the one who wholeheartedly supported getting the blackout shades in the community room, supported pursuing the audio visual system in the community room, supported the friends of the marine library when we wanted to when we um proposed the synthetic turf and the three- tiered planter. I just I I want to tell you, Lane, that I uh I know that you and I have at times been at odds with each other, but I also know that we have respected each other. And I am extremely grateful for what you have given to our community. And I hope that come July, you will be off there playing lots of pickle ball with your family and with your friends. and uh that yours and my vision of having a location here in Marina with many pickle ball courts will have you come back visiting us and you and I can play a game together. So, thank you very much and um Ray and I

express our gratitude for your commitment to our community. Thank you for those kind words, Grace. Anyone else online like to raise your hand before we close public comment? We'll give you a moment. Mhm. Okay, we'll close public comment. And Denise asked about an assistant city manager who will not be replacing Lane, but that would be the number two administrative job in our city. And Lane, do you want to go ahead and make an announcement relative to that?

Uh, sure. We have hired uh Courtney Lindberg. She is currently the public works director for the city of Watsonville and she will start on March 9th. will be her first day of work and we are very excited to get um have Courtney on board and we'll put a press press release out probably the first week of March that'll give more information about her. But she is excited to be here, has a great skill set. Um, one of the things I like best is she oversees a ton of capital projects like we have here and so she'll be able to fit right in and help keep the momentum going of of all these projects that we're working on. So, we're excited to have Courtney come on board and she is really excited to be here.

Fantastic. Thank you very much, Lane. Let's move to our consent agenda. Do any council members have anything they'd like to briefly comment on or question? Council member McCarthy. Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to try to breeze through these because I can tell we're all eager to uh adjourn on time tonight. Um couple brief questions. The Marina Hillrest uh affordable housing project. Um glad that we caught that issue. Just so that I know, I'm curious how we caught it. Um you can just kind of give a quick just so that we can kind of prevent maybe this from happening uh in the future. Was it just something that staff caught or was it through the Hillrest affordable housing site. We caught caught a small error. Um just curious kind of if you can give some color on how we caught that. Was it like an attorney that we was reviewing?

I don't Paul. It was either Allison or the city attorney identified when we were preparing the agreement that there was an oversight in terms of density bonus law in terms of the density bonus allowed per either low or moderate for for the units. Okay. So it was caught in house as far as you know. That is correct. That's correct. Great. Um and and the reason I asked was just want to make sure that we're doing everything on this side of the dice to make sure that we can catch these things and I'm sure you would say give give me more staff um to to help review those things and to see if that's necessary that if you want to give me more staff that's great. So how many more would you like?

However many you want to give me, mayor. So So

all right. Thank you. So then I'll jump to the affordable housing item. I don't know what number it is, but um thank you for including that in the uh consent agenda. I did want to hand out and I meant to hand this out at our last meeting when I attended League of California Women Voters on renters and affordable housing issues. I had disseminated a a flyer from my own perspective. Just wanted to make sure I shared it with the public and the dis I'll put a few on the table in the back and I've also posted it on my uh Facebook page. Um, and the last thing that I'll say is in regards to the appointments, um, council, you hear this from me every time, but I think that there's still some room to take a look at how we, uh, appoint on our different commissions, um, in terms of making sure we have representation from each of our districts. Um, I did have a question for staff. I think this goound we had as many applicants for every single seat as we did appointments. Is that correct or that's correct? So there were and so I guess my question would be is that where we want to be? Is that a good place to be? Or does that mean we're not advertising enough and encouraging enough people to apply? It's a little bit rhetorical at this point, but I'll just um kind of put that out there as something for us to think about.

Thank you. That wraps up my comments. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Council Member McAdams.

Thank you, Mayor. Um I just wanted a couple of comments on 10J6, which is the um affordable housing document that Guido put together. Thank you so much. Um you can find it on page 206 of our packet. Um and I just I'm very grateful and proud that the city of Marina is just doing excellent job and really peninsula model um for housing affordability. Um and then 10M123 which is the commissioner appointments. I wanted to thank them for their service and willingness to step up and serve. Um really our commissioner's work is vital to the council uh and and the city. So thank you. And that's it.

Thank you very much. A motion we approve the consent agenda. Second. Okay. Any comments before we vote? All in favor, please say I. I. Any abstensions or nays? Okay. Thank you everyone. That passes unanimously. With us present, let's move to the accessory dwelling unit ADU public hearing.

Is it going to be short because we're going to pull it? The Oh, sorry. Sorry. Uh, should be relatively short. I have my PowerPoint up. So, at this point, I'm going to be writing our ADU ordinance in pencil because the state keeps changing it every year. Um, next slide. Um, council member Viser asked me to articulate the difference between an ADU and a Jedu before we get deep into it. So, a JADU is basically uh with with for the most part within a garage of a house and then the ADU is either attached to the house or detached from the house. So, that's the distinct difference. So, uh, yep. This is just another in a series of changes by the state to ADU law. It's mostly minor edits to state law. They did take effect January 1st. I did jump on this because this was one of the items flagged as part of our pro housing designation by HCD. Uh when we met with them in November, they had thought that our ordinance was from 2020, which is not. We've updated it twice since I've been here. So quickly educated them on that. And then as part of the process, they said if you want pro housing, which we're supposedly supposed to get in the next four to six weeks, then you need to update your AD ordinance anyways. So that that's why I was uh fasttracked. So I'll just go through very briefly uh some changes. SP 2011 allows lots with existing multifamily to have up to eight detached ADUs or as many detached ADUs as there are dwelling units. Uh there were changes to the parking standards to further limit what kind of

parking we can require for ADUs. There is a new bill SB477 allowing ADU to be sold separately from the main house if it's built by a affordable housing nonprofit organization. Uh AB 1154 just made it abundantly clear that JADU shall not be for short-term rentals. Um the same ADU laws uh regarding impact fees now apply to Jadus. And the whole the whole gist of this bill is just that they want to fasttrack and streamline ADUs and not burden property owners and developers with um u obscene amounts of impact fees. And so that that's been on the Jedu the the ADU book since 2020. that now applies to JDUs. Um, you can now have an ADU built separate from the primary house if there is a state of emergency declared by the governor in a particular county. This comes out of all the fires down in Los Angeles. Um, the fire sprinkler provisions that we've had in ADU law for the last 5 years now apply to JDUs. And there were several just minor technical edits related to JEDUs in terms of entryway and access. There were some clarifications about the unit sizes and making it abundantly clear about the permitted by number of ADUs on single family lots. All the work we're doing here is consistent with the general plan. These are the specific policies we've identified. And yesterday at 4:40m, we did receive a letter um asking for some additional

edits uh meeting with the city attorney. Today, those edits I've uh summarized on the screen. Um there was a clarification to 7B of the ordinance about height of ADUs to have the same roof pitch as the primary dwelling. Um there was some further clarifications about maximum size and additional edits related to parking requirements. And so this is the recommended motion and then I did add to the bottom of it incorporating by reference the amendments uh as presented in this PowerPoint. So, a lot of this stuff is very deep into ADU law, very technical, but the gist of it is just further streamlining Jedus, ADUs, reducing impact fees on both and further clarifying the byite allowed use of ADUs in in your city. So, that concludes my initial presentation.

Very much Guo. Let's go to public hearing. Open up to public comment. Firstly, anyone in the room that wants to speak in person, please rise to do that. Not seeing anyone come forward. Let's go online. Anybody online wish to comment on this matter? We'll give you a moment. All right, let's close public comment and go to council member Biala. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, Guido, so when was it that we had our first city uh ordinance on ADUs? Uh, that I that's before my time. The first real ADU bill got adopted in like 03.

Really? It's But the the latest ramping up started around 2019 and then they've changed it every year since then. So, and do you know off the top of your head how many ADUs we have in Marina? I don't have the total number, but we did run our report just so that I knew by reference. So, we've actually approved 61 in the last three years. Okay. So, Okay, great. Do you get the sense that that's the majority of ADUs in the city or could there be 10 times as many? Um, no. We're pretty diligent about code enforcement that that I mean, if if somebody would try to do one without permits, we we would know. Do you think there's less than 100 ADUs existing in Marina?

I I wouldn't Yeah. I'd have to pull those numbers, mayor. That's fine. Okay. Council member McCarthy. Thank you, mayor. Uh, couple questions. So, in regards to the letter that we received, did we kind of like fact check those and just make sure that what they were suggesting was Yes, we conferred with the city attorney today. Great. Um,

yes. So, so a couple of those were uh the last the maximum unit size and the parking. uh they those are called I guess you can call them or they've been referred to I guess by HCD as exempt ADUs and so those would otherwise not need to conform to our ADU ordinance but I thought the better practice would be to incorporate those into our ordinance so we have one place to look for the requirements.

Okay. Um, second question is and and um we don't this will be no surprise to you because it's been mentioned many times, but there's often this question of can you take the path of going down building an ADU using new ADU law, but there doesn't really seem in the city of Marina a path to say, hey, I want to build it over 500 or whatever the maximum square feet is. I want to build it and I want to make it a short-term rental. I want to do whatever. How would if somebody wanted to take that path is one is that an option? I'm not clear about the second option. What's the second?

The second option would be so current ADU law that has been written in the last couple years allows ADUs to be buil using for example ministerial processes. Right. Um and those laws dictate can it can only be of a certain size. Um it can't be used as an STR. Right. Right. if a resident wants to build something on their property that's let's say bigger than that maximum size or that they do want to use it as an STR or that they want to use the legacy path right um and it goes through regular objective re or subjective review of the planning commission all of those things does that path still exist

well state law says you can't use an ADU for STR so that would be off the books no if you're wanting to build a bigger than the maximum. I guess theoretically you could go through a normal subjective process, but I don't see the benefit of that because then you have public hearings and notices and all the stuff that we're trying to not do to help people out. So,

so, so maybe I can kind of jump in here a little bit. So, if you were going to build an ADU that's beyond the maximum unit size, then potentially it's not an ADU and maybe you're building it, you know, I guess two primary residences on a lot, for example, let's say. And so there whether zoning you comply with zoning would be a question. And then, you know, you'd have to go through the process to get a what what is called a variance. So, it all depends on how it's characterized, I guess, what path you would go down for something like that.

Or would it be this distinction that you just mentioned of exempt versus non-exempt ADU? Um, and this isn't just hypothetical, by the way. I mean, people are asking me some of these questions. So, I'm trying to figure out um right now it seems like the plan the planning department doesn't really give people this other path. as a council, if we have the ability to do that, that's something I would like to discuss.

So, so I think it's hard to kind of without having a development plan to figure out what a likely path might be. Um, but just your hypothetical, I mean, that's just one potential path, right? Whereas, if you've got sort of it's now a two family home as opposed to a single family residence, then whether your zone allows for a single family residence is something that you have to overcome. And so there there's a there is a process for that. So uh

yeah and then also just clarified I mean somebody could file for an SP9 project where you could get up to two to four units on the property right. So, I think uh might be better to take this offline if there's particular residence, council member McCarthy, that I can assist you with. Then we can explore an SP9 project or a larger than a typical ADU, how you know. Yeah, we can add they can add on to that house. I mean, there's a lot of different ways we can help our our residents out here. So, you know,

yeah, it'd be great to have the planning commission maybe take a look at that because I'd like to give if if people want to contribute to our community by building an ADU that maybe doesn't meet the ministerial requirements, but contribute to the community in some other way. I don't want to tell them no, you can't build this on your own property because it has to be X, Y, and Z under ministerial new ministerial review laws. Unless that's what the state says it absolutely has to be. And if that's the case, I'd like to know that as well.

Sure. Yeah, just send them my way. Glad to help them out. Uh, I'd like to motion that we introduce the ordinance before us adopting the proposed amendments as we described by as were described by Guido section 17.42.040. Uh, and that this be exempt from SQA per uh, SQA guidelines and section 15303 and 211080.17 of public resources code. I'll second. Okay. Uh, any comment before we go to a roll call, Mr. May? Uh, and if we can incorporate by reference the second slide with the edits. Can you put that back up? Um, yeah, please.

So, uh, Guido added a a sentence of the end of a sentence to the recommended motion which is incorporating by reference the recommended edits presented in the PowerPoint presentation tonight. Does the second still hold? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Any comments before we go to a vote? All in favor? Oh, sorry. Roll call. Council member McCarthy. Yes. Council member McAdams. Hi. Council member Viala. Yes. Mayor Pton Fischer. Yes. Mayor Delado.

Yes. So, that motion passes unanimous with the five of us. Thank you very much, Guido. A lot of work behind the scenes on that. Really appreciate it. Let's go to the city at city park at Dunesformational Update. And Ishmael Hernandez is uh our public works director. Thank you, Ishmael, for all you're doing.

Thank you, mayor. Um, we have uh Matt Wilkins here with the Wallace Group who will uh lead us through the presentation. But before he gets started, I wanted to um uh start this off with two uh really quick stories uh that that that are relevant. Um they're they're they're relevant and I will be quick. Um, when I started working for the city of Dauba, uh, that was my first city. It was my hometown. So, uh, I started walked into the public works yard and and I already knew like four people there. Um, one of them was, uh, at the time he was the supervisor for the utilities division and he moved up to public works superintendent and then he retired. M um when he retired, he he was excited about it, but there was just one meeting that we were in. There was a problem that we were trying to find a solution for. And he he looked over at me and he made this statement. He said, um, "Every time somebody retires from city government, they get blamed for everything for about two to three years." He said uh he said he said do me a favor and defend me when when that happens. And and I did. So um ever since then though it's kind of stuck with me. Uh because I I have seen that every time somebody retires they they get blamed for everything uh for about 2 to 3 years. And so, um, when I went to work for another city, I made sure not to ever say anything. Uh, when I was asked, "Why are things like this? Was that the last guy?" I just said, "I'm not sure." I I did my best not to blame him. And so, uh, I said all that to say that, uh, tonight there's a lot of things that, uh, about this project that I don't have the background for. So, um, my assumption is that my predecessor did

everything he could and if he were here tonight, he'd be doing everything he can to move this project forward. And, um, anyway, for what that's worth, uh, the the other story, uh, Preston Park, we are working hard on Preston Park right now. Um, we're going through all of feasibility. So we have uh uh worked with the Wallace group to um do some drone survey work to assess the topography and determine how much land we can get out of it. Um and to do that you basically cut the tops the the highs and you move that dirt into the lows and and by doing that what's the most we can get out of this land. Uh so we've done that and and what you have in front of you is is a um conceptual design based on on the maxima maximum use of that land. Uh we'll bring you another presentation later that's just there so you can uh hang it up uh on your refrigerator when you get home. Um we are also assessing all utility needs for Preston Park. We are we are um we're going to start the environmental pretty soon to see what needs to be mitigated and and and you you do all this feasibility work so that when we come to you and say here's our park budget um that hopefully does not change uh when it comes time to put the project out to bid. Um the only thing I c I can say about the Dunes Park and and the budget issues we're having is that some of this feasibility um work wasn't done. So we're going through it as we design it. We're identifying costs as we design it and and that's kind of led us to where we are. So just to give you a little bit of background um uh on where we are with the Dunes Park, I feel we're still in a very good place. Um, I hope

that you enjoy the presentation, that we can get some direction um on on phasing options and uh three of you and one resident have emailed in questions. We um have those questions. We've provided written responses to Lane, but it was too late to get it into this uh to you before this meeting. So, he'll get that to you later. Uh hopefully though, the presentation and uh we'll answer most if not all of those questions. So, here's here's Matt.

All right. Thank you, Phil. Well, good evening. It is a pleasure again to be here this evening. Uh, Mayor Bruce and uh, city council and Mr. Lane. Congratulations. It's really been an honor working with you and um, you know, just hearing the the folks here in this room and and beyond, you know, just shows how much appreciation everyone has for you. So, thank you as well. Um, so we want to uh obviously go over Dunes Park and uh talk about some of the things that we've been doing since our last meeting which was back in uh December. So here on screen um I'll you know run through a few of the slides many of what you've seen and you know go over some of the items that we wanted to present based on some of the comments from last time. Uh so next slide please. Just a little bit of intro and re Thank you. Perfect. makes a little bit easier. So, a little intro and recap. Um, last time we met, we really, you know, got a lot of good positive feedback and we really appreciated that. Um, love the story Ismail mentioned about predecessor as you know. Uh, we, you know, took on this park with a a big task on us, uh, to move it quickly. um almost a reconceptualizing if you will to final almost bid ready in six months which was you know really big endeavor for us but we're we're up to the challenge and looking to get this out to bid here soon as well. Um, with that, you know, there was notes, um, concerns about schedule, overall budget. You know, those are things that we're working on hard as well. Um, you know, I think for us, knowing that we're going to have a decision hopefully here this evening will help move us into those next steps. Uh, there was some discussion about additional funding. Uh, we will touch on that this evening. Requests for cost estimating, um, and, uh, really looking at different options. That's going to be the core of the presentation this

evening. Really want to get in front of you to, you know, get some feedback here. Um, ask for clarification on feasibility volunteer built playground. I think we addressed that last time, but we can go over that a little bit more. There was some discussion on mosquitoes and uh I think that was somewhat resolved, but we can discuss that further. Essentially, the the idea is that there's no standing water in the park. Um there's some discussion on capacity of parking. We're going to touch on that and uh prioritization of sports courts and really looking forward to this uh this discussion here. So that summarizes some of the the points. Felt it was good to set the stage because it's been a couple months. Um just wanted to let you know what was behind the scenes as far as this presentation. So the objectives this evening are really to address those comments, go over those a little bit more in depth. um choose a phasing concept and go over those priorities with you and then give a general update on timeline uh some other things there as well. So to touch on the parking uh we did do a comprehensive study um look back this was again before uh Wallis group took on the project a lot of the parking was uh studied at that time and we can um confidently say that with the entirety of the project site we are adequately parked so there shouldn't be any uh really impact or need for external parking um you know this matches the city code and other reference documentation We did provide a count. I won't go over this in too much depth, but there are numbers on there just to give a little bit more information and we can go over that as needed. This is, I think, a really helpful slide to just gauge where the park is relative to other parks in the area. Um, our team has worked on a few of these. Um, and we

know there's one that's very near and dear and and you are very familiar with, which is Gloria Gene Tate Art. um you know from a park acres per uh you know cost there standard the park really is in this graph you know shown kind of on the lower tier uh I think what that helps to showcase is that you know there was prudence and care um in terms of the design uh there was an an overdesign if you will but really to to emphasize as well the cost per acre uh and it's growing you know the cost today is is cheaper than the cost will be tomorrow and beyond. So, you know, just something to keep in mind. Uh I'll leave that, you know, there just to look at, but you know, again, something that we could come back to if needed. There was some discussion about the underground utilities, the things you don't see on the surface. What we did is we went through and we studied all the utilities. We put it into this map here just to illustrate what's happening below the surface. it's really, you know, uh, integral to the design of what we're doing. Um, but really not seen on the surface level. In addition to this, you have, uh, this is really showing again all the utilities, but the grading, uh, the UV EV stalls that are needed, um, to meet, you know, the current state regulations, things like that really bring the cost up as a baseline. I mean, you're looking at something, you know, 7 to 8 million before you really even get the amenities on the site. So I think that's really key to keep in mind every time you do mobilization uh bidding things like that that also adds costs. So you know just something to keep in mind um as a baseline you know you have to have some of these things uh and we can talk about that a little bit more about phasing options if it it comes up. One of the things we wanted to look at was the cost

continuum. This is really the focus of tonight. On the left hand side you can see really the the cost as it relates to uh you know maybe having a more phase program or park. Uh what what does that entail? You know you may have uh less cost today but again the cost may go up in the future as you're bringing in more phases. On the right hand side you may have more improvements get more you know but there's more capital that you're putting into it. So we just wanted to illustrate that what we're doing today and this was based on you know input from staff working hard behind the scenes. We came up with four different options that we feel you know represents that scale and and gives some um you know very realistic options that may you know bring forward a park here that could be used by the community. Uh in addition to that uh the things you see above ground are also a cost to the park. uh and that can go across that scale as well. One thing that our team did um based on feedback and input from the last meeting is we did go through each one of those amenities and we we shopped around a little bit more. We tried to find things that wouldn't be a detriment to the user experience but maybe a little bit um you know less expensive and and allows for still that that uh enjoyment of the park. So you can see that there. The right hand side is where we were with some of those materials. left-hand side is where we're at today. Um, which did help to bring the cost down across each one of those options that you see this evening. Again, showing, you know, that we're we're looking at this seriously to make sure we're, you know, being prudent on that. So, the first option here is really looking at the full buildout without the amphitheater. I won't go through all the items in there, but you can see

essentially the the entire park gets built out. Now, you do have the opportunity for some bid alts. I think Ismmail touched on this last time, but really what those bid alts give us is at bid time the ability to pick and choose some items that could be optional to help adjust that cost. Uh so that keep that in mind. That number that you see on the top 2 point or 21.5 to 22.5 does not include those bid alts. So if you were to subtract that from that amount, that's essentially what we would be looking at, you know, as a bid. Now, if the bid comes in favorable, then we may be able to bring in some of those bid alts, but those are things to keep in mind. That's going to be the case for the the various options I'm sharing.

Can you on that slide explain the future cost six and a half to 7.5 million?

Absolutely. This is a really good question. So that is the deferred cost for phase two which would be the amphitheater. Um on each of these we did take into account that additional cost. Um there are some uh things behind the scenes that were looked at in terms of the overall expanse of time that may go on. Um there's other costs as far as mobilization. Um code changes that may happen over the years. Those type of things that we wanted to work into that. So, uh, there's a a delta on that number just to touch on that. All right. So, this option here is looking at really um bringing forward a a park that could be used, still could be enjoyed, but has some phasing to bring the cost down. In this particular case, we're taking out the sand volleyball and footall. And we also are looking at the um the garden area on the kind of bottom left. It's really the south east side of the site that could be phased in. The the site could be graded and those things could be brought in at a later time. But we felt that this, you know, provides at least an option that gives some park amenities. It's a majority of the park there, but allows for some expansion. Uh the cost for that is you know kind of in the range of 18.5 to 19.5. Again that you know doesn't include the bids. This option here is looking one step further. What could we do to bring the cost down even more? In this particular case we're bringing or taking out the um pickle ball and tennis court as well as the picnic area. And there's a couple areas there as well adjacent to it next to the playground that could come out to help bring that cost even further uh

further down. So uh in this particular case obviously the the thing to keep in mind with the future cost is not only the affformentioned items but you will have some improvements that go in that may need to be taken out um some temporary improvements uh whether it be hydro seed or or something of that nature. So keep that in mind. Each one of these, you know, does have that in the background as well. And then lastly, this option is uh really what staff and and our team thought was a responsible uh version of of kind of the um least expensive option. And it really looks at bringing in some of the core elements that we feel are needed for the playground. And that would be the restroom, the parking, and uh we do have that activity um workout area already purchased. The city purchased that. So, it makes sense to put that in. Does provide an activity for parents um and and others that are going to the site. In this case, the the park site would be mitigated for. you, you know, essentially do grading, take out some of the existing structures there and uh get the site prepped so that future uh activities could occur there. But really, it it gets down to somewhat the bare bones. You do have the um basins on the kind of bottom part of the page, the west side of the park or east side of the park that then you know are needed for the infrastructure of the park. This slide really illustrates in a diagrammatic manner the cost comparison between all those options. And I think one thing to point out here is that the the playground cost is fixed between all those two or four there. The uh other thing that's that's relatively fixed are some of the underground improvements. So

again uh some of the things that we're not able to change so much. Um again there's a lot of thinking behind the scenes that it's it's cheaper today as a site is being mobilized and worked on um than you know going in the future with some of those improvements. Now what really changes here are the surface improvements along with the amenities. Surface improvements include walking trails, DG plants, trees, the user experience. the amenities are really the pickball, tennis, those type of activities that again provide a level of service to the community. So I do want to um you know illustrate that I think it's good to see the the cost comparison in this manner um where things are similar and the the differences there. So with that uh that you know kind of summarizes our presentation certainly have a lot of uh discussion here. I know this evening we did look at some of the questions that came in and we're prepped to talk through those with you. Um but again the the idea this evening is looking at this cost continuum knowing that the cost today is cheaper than the cost tomorrow and you know we want to bring something to the community that complements the playground. Uh it was I think well stated by staff and andrea here that this is going to be a very special playground the largest in the state. So keep that in mind. You do have the sports and aquatic center. You know this is a complimentary element to that as well. So you know it's serving the region serving the city. And with that want to open it up for discussion. I'll turn it back over to you Bruce.

Thank you very much. Great presentation. Um and succinct as well. Let's go to the public comment for those of you starting here in per person. If you'd like to speak, please come on up to the podium and then we'll go to the folks online.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Fred Watson. I'm one of the co-founders of the Fortag, the Fort Regional Trail and Greenway Project. Yesterday you were emailed a letter from Scott Schwaltz who is also a co-founder of the Thorp project and I'm here to speak further to the issue raised in that letter. We would like to ask the council to provide direction to staff to explicitly represent on the city park plans the that Fort is anticipated to include an undercrossing beneath Second Avenue just south of where the astronomy institute is now located. We're not asking for the city to pay for the undercrossing. We're just asking for it to be anticipated and for the maps to be annotated as such. As many people here may know, Thor tag is envisioned as a 30-mile mo multi-purpose trail system throughout Marina, Seaside, Dory Oaks, and Monterey. It's intended to be one of the major attractions of living in Marina regardless of your income, your age, or your level of mobility. First meeting to conceive for tag was in September 2013. There were five of us there. Mayor Delgado was one of them. The third meeting was in October that year. Seven of us now joined by city manager Lane Long. So we've been at this for 12 and a half years. uh several formal actions by this council have crucially supported and advanced poor tag in the 12 years since those early meetings and we now have over $50 million in funding. We've have four major segments under construction or in final design and permitting and we've even constructed an underpass under a state highway. The second avenue underpass has been a major component of Fort since the start. It's been closely studied. There have been site visits with engineers in the city's former director of public works. There have been maps and cross-sections

and preliminary assessments of utilities. It's been co-planned by the city, by Tampy, and by CSUMB. There are specific reasons why we've pursued an underpass instead of of an atgrade crossing. And they're about the vision, the continuity of the experience, the safety, and just what makes it memorable to live in Marina and visit Marina. We all do a lot. It's really hard to keep all the balls in the air. I'm a volunteer and I have convened or attended about 600 for four tag meetings and I might have dropped the ball here, but just looking at this the park map in the packet now, I'm not seeing the underpass that we previously had on the map. So, as council, I I would I would ask to uh you to direct staff to indicate on city park maps that the forag undercrossing is anticipated. And if there are issues to be resolved, we'd like to just hash them out, but maybe not go any down any one-way streets tonight. And then lastly, Lane, you're one of the most inspirational people I know. I consider it a great fortune to have had the opportunity to work with you and learn from you for the last 10 years. Thank you for your generosity. Sorry for the headaches. There's been some gnarly headaches. I'm truly sorry and and really enjoy your retirement. I know what it means to you. I can imagine that it's going to be great. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Fred, for keeping that on our radar. Anyone else?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Uh Doug Y representing the Dunes Project and Jay Holmes here tonight. And uh I want to first echo comments. I mean, congratulations. And I know we've worked close and I just want to say um really appreciate your leadership in the city. for administrative purposes, obviously council leadership, but your leadership and all of your hard work and as a former recovery city manager, I know that how hard it is and uh thank you for all of your service. That's really impressive. Thank you. So, I I just want to say uh one that's uh impressive designs on this part all the way through. It was a good process bringing in Wallace group as well. I'd just like to put in a pitch that uh the dunes of Shea Holmes particularly because of the contributions to the park and of course the adjacency to the dunes project that wraps around it to just include u the dunes representatives shade representatives in the planning park planning and and going forward particularly with value engineering particularly with things that may be important um the dunes project will be the neighbors to the park uh and it's a great amenity for the city. I would also encourage you to aim high. Uh there are other potential resources coming to the city. There are other opportunities. It's it's this is a once in a-lifetime opportunity particularly with the sports complex and aquaponic center but also with the amenities like an amphitheater. to celebrate won't will not only be a city park, but it definitely be a regional attraction and uh throughout the all of central California and maybe even the Bay Area. So, just think about that uh of the long term. So, thank you.

Thank you, Doug. Anyone else in the room? Then we'll close public comment, go online. Welcome back, Denise Turley.

Hi, thanks. Um, so, um, in my little, uh, sojourn at the Home to Suites, uh, back last year, um, I don't know whether it was embarrassing or just disheartening for when people came to the desk and said, "Where can we take our family to a park?" and they had to unfortunately direct people out of town. So, please include uh those folks in any um updates or anything like that because they would love to um refer the the people staying at the hotel to the closest thing and um that should be the wonderful uh all needs park and uh whatever else is going on. Thank you for the time.

Thank you very much, Denise, for that comment. Go ahead, Larry.

Yes, I just have a couple questions about the uh the maps, and one of them was what's the purpose of the ponds um shown on the map? I didn't realize that was in the design. Are they display drainage? What what's their purpose? The second one was in the reduced options on the on the maps. U what are you going to use for ground cover in all the un undeveloped parts of the park? You're going to have a developed playground in one section and you're going to have these great big open se sections are going to be what? Sand. And the third is your original map showed a fairly complicated amphitheater design. I would recommend you look at Cababrio College's amphitheater which is simply a tiered set of concrete bleachers you know carved into the hill. I mean, the idea of this amphitheater was to provide something that the community colleges around here could put on, you know, musical functions here fairly simply outdoors. And it doesn't have to be elaborate with spaces for, you know, uh, food and vendors and stuff like that.

Thank you very much, Larry. And we'll respond to those comments after public comment is over. Anyone else online? Please raise your hand if you'd like to speak and haven't done so. Okay, we'll close public comment and uh starting with Larry. Uh purpose of the ponds, storm water retention, that kind of thing, and whether you think that they'll be uh holding any water for any significant amount of mosquito time.

Uh the purpose of the ponds is is uh storm water retention. Um no the the percolation rates we've we've sampled there uh on site um water percolates so fast there will never be standing water in the middle of a major storm like yesterday I was coming down reservation I had to slow down to 25 just so I could see um during something like that you're going to get 6 in uh but 30 minutes later that 6 in is gone. Um, we have an existing ponding basin. Um, I always get my directions uh messed up here. West of um northwest of the the northwest corner of the um of the whole site, there's an existing ponding basin near the roundabout that's going to go away. Uh so that water's got to go somewhere. Um anyway, so it it's all storm water from parking lot in uh the sports and aquatic center, parking lot in the um uh for the dunes park and and the uh street runoff

and then the undeveloped space. Uh what kind of ground cover will you have? So So that's something that we need council to give direction on right now. Um, we assume that at the very least if if we did a phase one that was that had minimal uh amenities, the rest of the land we put in irrigation uh and um uh turf just just you know grass seed um which means we're going to be mowing and at some point ripping out that irrigation and doing something else. So uh we need council that's one of the questions we need council to give us direction on. So, even if you didn't have a a great big lawn as an option three, actually you would.

Correct. Okay. Um, lastly, Larry asks about amphitheater design such as at Cababrio College, which is it sounds like um pretty bare bones or simple. How does our design compare?

Uh, we'd have to go look at the college to see what he's talking about. Um, yeah, that's a phase two and it's down the road. We Um I I I will say this um the direction given when we started looking into that was up to 700 people for community events. So um uh you have to account for uh if you're looking at 700 people a percentage of that is uh uh we need to work uh plan for a percentage of them being uh ADA needing ADA uh amenities. So, uh, just grass, just, um, walking bark or something won't work. We need hardcape to get, uh, a wheelchair in and out or a walker. Um, so, okay. Uh, thank you. That's Larry's. And then, uh, Fred asks about, uh, the viability of making sure that Second Avenue undercrossing is mapped and anticipated. So, so Wallace Group staff did meet with Tamcy uh and work with Tamy on this. There is nothing in our design that stops uh the Forag Trail from being able to do what it plans to do. We don't have designs. The Fort Trail doesn't have design. We don't know exactly where um so what we do know is where the alignment is, but on our property, the Forag Trail is going to have to have um a way for people to get out of the tunnel. So, we we don't know what that looks like. So, when the Forte Trail uh goes in and puts that underground tunnel, um they will have to remove some of our sidewalk, but my guess is it would be a $10,000 cost. Um and and if we knew exactly where everything was, we could design the sidewalk to go right to it, but right now we don't know.

Okay. Fred did mention during his comment that there sounds like there's some some extensive uh uh maps, maybe even some engineering design, but I guess getting together with Fred just to make sure. Yeah, and I think what Fred talked about just an annotation that that shows um it doesn't have to be the exact location, but an annotation that shows you tag. I think I just want that on the map. think that survives. And Fred, if you could resend any documents you have that give some detail beyond what we see tonight. Sounds like there might be some. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. Uh, did I miss anything that others may have written down as far as questions? All right, let's turn it over to Brian McCarthy, Council Member McCarthy, to start the council discussion. Thank you, Mayor. So for me, I'm going to be looking heavily towards council member Visher just because than her district and presumably you know the area a little bit better than than I and what the residents said. Um but I do want to give input. Um you've heard me several times talk about my frustration and kind of displeasure about how many times this has been for it. I have been promised by staff and the five of us here that this would be the last time we talk about it. Yet here we are again. Um, but without belaboring that, I do want to talk a little bit about the ponding basins. And I sense this might be a question that we don't want to dig too deep into, but I'm going to ask anyway. H how did we go 10 plus years without realizing this was going to be necessary? Because this takes a significant chunk of usable space out of the park. Um, and yeah, so maybe I'll start there. And then the second part of that is you mentioned this other basin that's kind of going away and and has to be redirected now into this new area. Can you elaborate on that a little bit. And

so the existing basin um well all uh some ponding basins are permanent. You know, they're going to be there forever and and some are temporary. You you plan to eventually develop on top of them. This ponding basin was uh put in. It was temporary. Actually, it was moved when the roundabout was put in is my understanding. Um, so the reason why you want to get rid of ponding basins is is uh number one, the mosquitoes. If if you have a ton of water going there, there is sitting water. Uh, number two, the maintenance costs. Uh, number three, the just the visual. Um, it's hard to keep them maintained, clean, clear. So, uh, there there's always unsightly appearance to ponding basins. So, we can leave it. Um, and there would be a savings of about $400,000, maybe $500,000 split between the Sports and Aquatic Center and and Dunes Park. Um, but but then you're always going to have a base and never have an option, an availability to move that water somewhere else. Um, moving it into the park gives us um, when you look at at a two-dimensional um, conceptual design, it looks like there's a hole in the ground and there isn't a hole in the ground. It's going to be an art piece. Um the the vegetation planned, the walking um uh the boardwalk uh raised boardwalk. So it so it's it's part of the art of the park. Um we tried to take a necessary storm uh water retention basin and turn it into something beautiful that can actually be an amenity. People will take, you know, they'll be posting pictures on on uh social media with a selfie and the vegetation in the background. So,

sure.

Yeah. No, I think that answers my question. I I think what I will say from where I sit and I'm reminded of your story about blaming the guy from right two years ago. I know you're relatively new to the city and and haven't um been part a lot of these discussions, but from where I sit, I've always said, well, maybe we're not doing the sports fields now, but there's always this land here that right, we can put them in later. Now, it kind of sounds like that's off the table because there's these basins that need to be protected and you can't have a drain in the middle of a soccer field, right? And so, for me, that's really frustrating. I just want to share that with the council and city staff. Um, the last thing I'll say for now is one thing that I've worked over the last 10 years that we've been talking about these park designs is working with the observatory to make sure that the light pollution issues don't affect their operations. They claim they're looking for life on other planets and, you know, right here in Marina. I think that's something that we want to protect um and at least collaborate with and ensure that these new designs as each one comes up isn't introducing some unknown problem for them. So I guess I would ask to either the consultant or staff have have we contacted them regarding this latest set of designs. I see a nod.

I can address that. Um when we started the project, we did consult with them and they've been a really a stakeholder along the way. Um so in terms of lighting design, we're trying to minimize the um spill off the site, looking at other options as well to minimize the amount of fixtures we need. So certainly one that we're taking near and dear to heart. I think the buffering with the basins was intentional for that as well. Um, and just to touch on that too, you know, there's a lot of inerous area due to the playground that those have to accommodate, but I think Ismail made a good point that we endeavored to make that into an educational element that could be used and celebrated

and and reminiscent of the um existing floor and fauna that were there. Okay, great. Yeah. And with all that said, I mean, I'm super appreciative of all the work staff does. I know that it, you know, it's it it's easy to complain from where we sit, but, you know, again, this is a a a piece of work that's been in the works for over 10 years. I mean, we've been talking about this for a long time. I remember when we were talking about preserving barracks buildings on this and turning it into this and that and you know, and I mean, we've come a long way from there, but um I hope that I hope this really is the last time we talk about this. Thank you, Mayor. All right, let's go to Council Member Viala.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, so we've got four options here and presumably because uh we don't have enough money to do everything all at once and that's certainly the the desired outcome is that we could have enough money to do not in phases but the whole thing. So I would say of the four options, the first one is something we probably can't afford and the last one is too stripped down. I don't think anybody's going to be happy to that point where um council member McCarthy is going to say e gads. We we've just, you know, finished a little tiny corner of this beautiful park. So um so it really leaves two A and 2 B. And what this entails then is to know how much money we really do have. And I would really like to get a more detailed assessment from the city manager about if these are the two options and they're different prices and what can we afford? I mean, you know, uh I'd like to hear that because that's fundamentally our choice is what can we afford um and what is priority um to um to consider building when we have a limited fund for phase one. Um, could you give us a little bit more insight?

Sure. I'm going to have Tori come up and she can help us a little bit more with that. We have some uh potential funding options that we can share with you. So some of the options um is within the staff report we did we did mention additional $2.4 million and um other than that and that does include estimated revenues coming from parks impact fees. The other um option would be uh using some of the funds or all of the funds from the Preston Park proceeds, the 6.5 million. And right now um we have come in with a better than anticipated fund balance in the general fund which is I believe 2.6 million. And we have those funds available. However, the city manager has cautioned that uh he might need another 1 million $1.5 million appropriation for um for the or some of the legal uh with Calam. And also um there are some additional capital projects that may be coming in over budget. So those could be some potential resources. So just to clarify, so you're saying of the 2 million that is in excess from the general fund. So you've just you're saying don't count on any of that 2.5 million. Is that what you did implying there? There is 2.6 million. I I want to say that you know just in conversations with the city manager at least 1.5 million is earmarked and he has some thoughts on different projects that may

use some of the residual balance. So, it's it it it could be something that you could use and look for other resources, but right now that's the biggest pot of money that we see is really the 6.5 million and um the 2.4 million that is already considered appropriated for this. Thank you, Miss.

All right, let's go to Mayor Bertan Viser and then Council McAdams. Thank you. Thank you all. This is one of the less fun subjects to talk about. Um, when I looked at the options bar graph on page 18 with the four options, I was missing one line, a line that shows $10.4 million, which is what we have. And even the smallest option which is called option three for me that will be option one

um cuts right through the playground. So we don't have have enough to complete the playground. And of course we can talk about 6.5 million but I thought we would thinking about that to use that for our city facilities. We can only use it once. So I share the frustration. Um, we all would love to build this park. If we don't have the money, we cannot do it all yet. And we can talk about I had expected to get more of a pick and choose, you know, like each each element, each amenity, what what does it cost? Because for me it would more um this can be different for everybody but for me it would make more sense to already build that uh part uh walkway the connection to the um sports center to that new connector building that uh pavement get the pavement from there to the playground. I thought, forget about the fitness court. But now I understand that we might already have purchased the fitness court, which is a bummer because across the street are beautiful fitness options at the linear park open to everybody. I walked there today in the rain. And by the way, there was no water honding anywhere, but my shoes were pretty wet because I wasn't planning on walking there, so I didn't wear my boots. But anyway, I walked there because I wanted to look at the trees that fortunately have been saved. And I'm so glad that they were because even if we cannot build that entire park yet, there are beautiful trees there. And I thought the same thing. What can we do to make it affordable to throw in some grass seed and mow it or not mow it, put some goats on there or whatever we want to do? But we cannot spend money that we don't have. And and I know we got letters or emails from uh the public saying,

"Please do it all." Uh and you borrowed money for the sports center. I'm still very grateful that we did do that. So the sports and or the convention and aquatic center will be built in one phase and I know that saves money and um I don't regret that but it also means that we are stuck with that loan. That money won't come in until the next couple of years. It will slowly come back which is good. We can use it when it's back. We cannot use it if we don't have it back yet. So, I'm the um I don't know how to say this, the the less optimistic person here, but probably I think we need to look at what can we do, what's really necessary. And I did send in a lot of questions uh like um the undergrounding I was so in support of yes, let's get it all done because it will save money in the long run. If we don't even know if we'll ever get a second bathroom building there, we're not in the next 10 years at least. Maybe don't do the undergrounding for that part yet. I don't know how much we can save if it's reasonable to save it now because maybe we'll do something that will never get used or not by our generation. So, it's and this is the hard part. This is the hard part of deciding what can we do and what needs to wait. So, um okay, senators. So, let me see. Um I also ask you know how much money has come in for all the park impact fees since the the large development started and how much is still expected. Just to show people the original um plan here was 23 I think 23.4 million. This was a couple years ago and all the impact fees together will not even be enough to cover this one park let alone all the other parks in the city. just to give a an an idea of how much or how little that is and I would like to thank Shay that you know

they will give us a couple of millions but again this has been decided a couple years ago that's 4 something million I looked it up of course again it's it's worth you know nowadays it's worth way less or it should be 6 point something now to make it or from a few years ago to make it even so So we are running in the same issue every time. We get plans, we get uh cost estimates. By the time we finally get it back here, we don't have enough money because the prices went up so much. So how can we break this cycle? What can we do? I know we we'll have a couple years to blame somebody, but you know, no, this is the hard part. It takes too long to get things through and then we cannot afford it. So, sorry I don't have any more. Well, I have more, but nothing more optimistic at the moment.

All right. Thank you very much. Let's go to Council Member McAdams.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, for me, the 6.5 million Preston Park proceeds is just completely off the table. Like, it's just a non-starter. Um, and so when you talk about what do we do? Well, we have a potential $9 million shortfall. So we either need to take that money from another project or department or somewhere and reallocate it um and we also have to make a decision. So, um, and unfortunately, it's not helpful being up here when we have no idea, um, where that money would come from or tangible, um, suggestions because what I heard from Tori didn't sound promising. Um, it sounded like a half a million dollars. Um, and so with that, out of the four alternatives that we have, um, and recognizing that each option exceeds the $10.4 million that we have allocated, what is staff's recommendation out of the four? And also, um, you know, what are the funding options and funding ideas to cover all or part of the remaining $9 million shortfall? So, I I think bare minimum if we weren't um going to try to get any funds from other projects, I think we'd be looking at option three. Option three would put in the all-inclusive park. Would put in the um restrooms. Um allow the installation of the exercise equipment, picnic area. Um it provide the access the entrance to the

park connection to the sport center. And that would be using uh the 2.4 million in park impact fees. We think that combined with the 10.4 4 million would get us pretty close to where we needed to be and and pretty close being that everything is still coming in at that bid. Correct. Correct me still. So there's like not really any contingency room to wiggle. I have to ask Matt on that.

Jenny, can I can I jump in for a tiny clarification then get right back to you, Lane? I thought you said that option three would include the connection to the sports center, but it in exhibit B it shows that it wouldn't be uh I guess it's the upper connection. So, but not the main entry uh connection to the sports center. Correct. Okay. Please continue, Jenny. Thank you.

Um Okay. So, so that really concerns me because as we continue to like perpetuate this, the bids are going to come in higher period. Like it's construction, double the time, double the budget. So, um, and I do feel strongly that we need to decide something tonight cuz this can just come back and come back and we could talk about pickle ball 25 more times and we could talk about whatever, you know, on and on and on. So, I do really encourage that we make some sort of decision um and and get going on this um knowing that we're not going to be able to do what we want to do exactly, but at least we can do something and especially with and I've talked about before like the community buyin and the community momentum with with the the build of the all-inclusive park. Yes. So, um, so that's sort of where I'm at. Um, you know, I'm happy to go with staff's recommendation. Um, and again, I just I I do really encourage us to make some sort of decision tonight. Um and then maybe moving forward we have a subcommittee that could sort of navigate and move forward the rest of the um of the phases. Um that might be more helpful than us just trying to figure this out over and over and over. Um so just something to consider.

Yeah. One thing that that I will put out there is you we can um we can put um add alternates to the bid and so put in an add alternate for the tennis courts, the pickle ball courts and some of those amenities so that we'll get bids and quotes in. Uh April or May, we'll be coming back to the council with our midcycle review of our budget. And so we'll be coming back looking at all our funds and we may have some um additional monies that we'll as we look at all the projects and you had mentioned maybe reallocate some other projects and that would be a time to do that. So the idea is let's put together some bid alternates and some of these key uh components that aren't included right now and then may as we look at the budget again maybe we can allocate it. Um later on tonight, we're going to be talk about our city facilities and Tori is going to give you some more information on the utility user tax and and that may open up some other options too.

And just curious, you know, like the city of Monterey, they have metered parking by their baseball parks and um at at their sports center and some parks. Is that something that we have, you know, talked about or thought about just those like pay stations? Um um no, we haven't really talked about that. Okay. I mean, it's not my favorite thing, but it might be something to consider just to help with the ongoing maintenance and potential investment into the additional phases.

Yeah. And one of the things that we heard um is like the sewer lines and stuff of those potential phases. We'll look at that also and and come back. And so we'll we'll try to um if we can identify those amenities that are really important to you, then we'll try to structure it as we go out to bid to give some options to include those down the down the road. Great. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Jenny. Um, at a recent meeting we said 6 and a half million would be set aside for our public facilities, fire station, police station, community center and those would augment the money we want to get out of the user utility tax if that goes on the ballot this November 6.5 million. So I just want to put out there at the start of my comments that if we split that in half and 3.2 2 of that 6.5 million were to go to this project. Of course, it would help. We'll talk about the UUT later tonight. And it's possible that those figures would work. Uh we could get the UUT and the money we need for the public facilities and and bring 3.2 million of the 6.5 million, so about half over to this project to add to the 10.54 that we have in hand. Add to the 2.4 before that Tori mentioned and you're up to 16 million. We haven't talked about our reserve fund, but our reserve fund is ambitious. It's at 20%. Most cities don't have 20%, they have 15%. We went from 15% reserve uh to 20% reserve because we just wanted to be extra fiscally responsible and prepared for natural emergencies. in our 50 years, we haven't had the use of that money. So, it just sits there uh gains interest, but we haven't used it. And so, we could probably have a plan where we we borrow from that reserve by reducing our 20% to 15% to match what most cities already have. So, it's not considered irresponsible by any means. If we did that, how much is that uh from 20% to 15%? Is it 1 million or 3 million? I'm checking right now. I believe our reserve balance is 7 million, but I

So anyway, when we get that number, I asked this ahead of time in an email. Nothing I'm talking about now is new. Um grants, have we have we identified any grants that are applicable to this project? Just for reference, our emergency reserve is $7.2 million. Um, and we also have the pension stabilization at at 5 million as well. So, I'm not talking about I wouldn't touch the stabiliz the stabil the pension stabilization. So, if it's 7 million for the 20% reserve and 20 to 515 is 5%. That's a quarter. So, a quarter of 7 million about 1.75 million ballpark.

Ballpark, right? Yeah. So, ballpark. So, that brings us up to almost 18 million ballpark. Have we had any grants identified? Uh there's one coming up in June and we're definitely going to apply for Preston Park. We're still trying to vet Dunes Park for this particular grant program.

Dunes Park is not being built in a uh affordable neighborhood, a disadvantaged neighborhood. So hard to get. It's a lot harder to get grants. Um, however, Dunes Park does provide a park to residents that are far from a park and you get bonus points with some grant programs for that. Uh, we we have one grant program uh that we have submitted a grant to for Preston Park. Uh, we're still waiting to hear back from that. And then, uh, Preston Park is also a really good candidate for the grant coming up in June.

Okay. So I would like to propose we consider option 2B which has a lot of amenities. Um its estimated cost is 15.5 to 16.5 million. Just the ballpark that we just discussed is $18 million. So they don't use all of that ballparked money. Um we could afford 16.5 million. Like Jenny said, we often get sticker shock with bid packages when they come back, but not always. Sometimes we're under bid. So, you don't know until you try. And with Lane's idea of all these bid alternatives, um I would prioritize um the amphitheater, the restroom that goes with it, the tennis court, the pickle ball courts, and the main entry connection to the sports. and that prioritization of those bid uh alternatives could be done at a later meeting. Um but whatever we do, you know, whichever the four options, there's going to be bid alternatives for what's left out. And so we can prioritize those later. Uh so that if the bids for the main project come in low, we'll have some money for the bid alternatives. And at that point, we would be able to prioritize where that money went for the whichever bid alternatives we thought were most important. But anyway, so my basic drive here is that we we consider 2B and that gets us a lot of things. Uh it makes it look a lot more whole and um and I think we can afford it with some adjustments that I talked about that add up to 18 million potentially ballpark. Okay, let's go to uh Council Member Viala.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, that was my target too to say could we get something at 18 million because then it we have some other um I think we could do 2B. Now I have been a strong supporter of any any excess funding for the city go to the public facilities. However, when I look at these choices here and how long we have waited to develop this and it it's being developed side by side with the sports and aquatic center and so I want all of this to look as finished as we can possibly be. Um, so I I would not be opposed to using the 6.5 6.5 million to option B and then we could actually implement all of this and have a little maybe um a little cushion if it costs 17 million and we would have up to uh to $18 million because it seems like what we're saying is we have 10.5 that's already allocated. Um, we have some 2.4 million and then let's not even go to the 2.6 million that that that uh Tori you just explained because it sounds like it's really complicated and it's not so dependable. But we do have we would have then 6.5 million from the Preston um you know funding. So that would take us up to 18. And because I I you know I feel like we're sort of 1.7 million here and half of 6.5 is three million. I just feel like we're piecing it together and we won't have nec there's there's too much complexity to that. And so I'm thinking if we just do that, we we're going to be considering later in today's

meeting about the UUT and we can have a bigger picture of more substantial income being planned for the big project of the um public facilities. So this this park I think if we could um carve out the 6.5 and you know that I have I've been a you know a very um strong supporter. So I say this with a lot of consideration that the 6.5 could be added to this and we have other options to consider for the public facilities with the UUT or whatever else that we decide in the next agenda item. So, I I would like us to seriously consider that too because we we have to be able to as I said uh as I agree with Council Member McAdams that we have to make a decision about the funding for this tonight. I mean, we have the plans. We've looked at the plans for so long and so that is something I would like to see us do and I think the 6.5 million could help us um stabilize that.

All right. Thank you, Kathy. Mayor Bran Fisher.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The 6.5 million for me that will be the last thing to touch because we really said that would go towards city's facilities. We're already going to ask our uh voters to tax ourselves. We did say the 6.5 million will go towards it and to change that would be not good. Um yes the um we cannot see this decided about this I think without knowing more about the other projects. So these were some of my questions. Um what is the status of the Preston Park project the expansion how much money did we all have we allocated towards that already? How much do we need? Um because I just want to remind all of us when we spoke about this park a few years ago. I then suggested and I think the whole council agreed no we will only do phase one and at that point phase one was going to be 10 million instead of the 23.4 million. We said we'll do we'll see what we can do for 10 million and we will not do the second phase until Preston Park has been completed. So Ishmael can kind of update you. They show the Do we have a slide at all of

I I don't have a slide for the Preston Park layout. Uh council members all have a copy of the Preston Park layout at your at the dis. Um timing for Preston Park, like I said, we're we're working on uh all feasibility work right now. Uh Matt and I talked today about starting the environmental uh or at least getting a quote for the environmental um uh studies to see what kind of mitigation is going to be required there in addition to the the uh sandgillia mitigation that we're already working on. Um assuming we start design um September just to throw a month out there um design would take a year. We we could be under construction the following year in September. So, September 2027, uh, September through December 2027, the last quarter of 2027,

would would be start and finish starting construction if we have the money.

If if we have the money. So, regarding the money, we currently have about $10 million set aside. One grant application out there that would bring in four if we get it. Uh, we'll apply for the full amount of the project in the upcoming grant uh program that's available in June. Um, so it depends what we get. Right now, our estimates for Rustin Park are between 10 and 13 million. And and the reason why there's such a big gap there is because we haven't decided how many uh we haven't brought it to council yet. So, uh, once we bring it here, you add amenities to it, it's going to grow. Um, but as you see on that paper there, we're looking at between 10 and 13 million if we want lighting. Um, so just to give you an idea of how much costs go up in a project, if we want lighting so that uh our youth can play sports in the evenings um and under really good quality lighting, uh that could be as much as $4 million for lighting.

How much? 4 million. 4 million. Okay. Just just just for lighting, nothing else. Of course, we want lighting. We want lighting. We want this part. So that so that moves Preston up to the 15 million range. Did anybody bring some money? Yeah. Well, anybody? Okay. So, the good thing about Preston Park is that it is competitive for grant programs.

Yes. So, that was what I wanted to um talk about and the mayor already asked, you know, did we go out? Did we try to get grants? Because the examples that were in the packets, I looked up two and one was for Santa Maria Herman Sports Complex. And by the way, two two parks that I did look up, they both started the initial concept in 2016. So, it's not unheard of to that it takes 10 years to

get to the actual construction. And looking at our process, if if I looked I looked at the original designs again and this design is so much better. So, I think it was worth the wait. But anyway, the one that I looked up in Santa Maria, they um um the city paid 6.63 million. Originally they were going to pay 1 million but then in 2025 they had to approve an some more so that we I don't want that here to happen and uh but they got uh 6.1 million from the state department of parks and recreation development and community revitalization program 1.5 million from Santa Barbara County I don't think we got it from that county but have we asked our county I don't know 1.46 46 million from federal community development block grants and 1 million from the state of California. So they got about 10 million in grants.

Yeah. So why did they did they get it and we don't get it? And by the way they're doing it's in between um the Terasina apartments and the university village apartments. Does that help with any grand application? It will help with this. Yes. Because it's deep. People can walk there. That's why it's so beautiful. It's there. The bus stop there. So, you mentioned two um affordable unit projects that total about 215 units. Yes. Yeah. 200 units kind of. Yeah. And they're right next to the park in the sports complex.

So, um Okay. So, yeah. And I already said Preston Park. We don't know how much that is going to cost. We we need to get that done. The sooner the better. Uh what is the status of the city park at Sea Haven? When are the bids due? Those those bids are due soon. um in a couple weeks and we don't have any costs yet, but uh that park's a little bit different. We're pretty confident those are going to come under bid under budget. That would be good. Yeah, because that will give us some extra money. Yeah. More money for two. Yes. And uh and of course the rec recreation and aquatic center. When are the bits due for that? Uh about the same time. So three three or so weeks. Yeah.

So we we will know a lot more in a couple of weeks. And um okay, yeah, we like I type we cannot decide until we know whether we need more money for those projects. Getting money out of that will be even bit better. Of course, um parking, I was the one who asked for those parking numbers. And by the way, um it's not correct. There are no four parking spots on N Street when you come from Second Avenue. But um please do not count any of the street parking that's being used by residents of those apartment complex that I just mentioned. But you did forget that there's a whole parking um lane south of the uh sorry east east of the park on Second Avenue. There's a whole there's a bus stop and then there's a whole and those were not counted. But um I asked the city manager about the demand numbers and he didn't he couldn't give me an answer. So I thought well what do we know if we know how many there are but we don't know how many are needed. So how can we say it's enough? I don't know. I'm still concerned about the all-inclusive playgrounds. It's the it's going to be the biggest in the state. So how do we know how how many people will come there? And then the recreation center of course. So I thought actually being forced to not construct the the park completely will gives give us a chance to look at the parking we can see how it's working and then we might decide forget about the 700 seat amphitheater because those people can never park. Just some thoughts. Um okay. Okay. It's too long. Yes. Sorry. I just get a warning. Yeah. Um the the agenda says receive information, provide direction. I'd like to make a

direct a motion that the direction we provide uh is that we ask staff to go out to bid for option 2B and figure out how we're going to get there. But yeah, and to consider the 10.4, the 2.4 four from Tori, up to 3.2 from the um Preston Park, 1.2ish from the reserve adjustment, and 1.0 million from the unallocated uh monies that Tori and Lane discussed earlier. It's 18.2 million. And uh so that's my motion. And I have just a 10-second comment. Second, and then I'd like to comment.

Okay, so we have a second. So my 10-second comment is that if we go with 2B, we save 7 million uh that the next alternative would cost. The next alternative cost 22 million. This one is a minimum of 15.5 million. So we save about 7 million if we're able to finance 2B and it's a much more wholesome or holistic project than the other options that are less. Uh, Council Member Viala, uh, in your motion, did you include the reserves consider? Yeah, I did. You did. But those exact pieces staff can figure out just some ideas.

Okay. Yeah. And I'd like to see us build something to target the 18 million is about what you're doing. Okay, great. Which is the higher end of the 2B. Yeah. Could be 15.5.

Okay. And I have a question to you guys, the develop the um folks who've designed this on 2B. Um you know I construction costs are rising like by 15% every single year. I think that's the kind of number out there which is shocking but any delays one year two years is going to create that kind of additional expense. So, and if you look at 2B and you have made certain choices of, you know, what to go for, and I think we're we're all pretty much in agreement that the playground is the number one priority, but looking at all the other ones, are there any other ones that um have high construction costs that we should probably tackle early than than later? On 2B, are is there anything like that? I think that's very uh forward thinking and you know one thing that I was just mentioning to is with that option we could consider taking some of those sports amenities as bid alts as well. Again using that as another discretionary item that we can then during bid time make a decision on. Right?

Uh those are items that are a little bit easier to phase in uh which is why we included them in these diagrams. Um, so I

and particularly because the sports center is right next door and what kind of thing I don't know the timelines. I'm I'm just getting, you know, really kind of overwhelmed with the the different um projects timelines, but but we don't have to be duplicative if we if we have no money for it and we would like other things. So, so that kind of finessing from staff about how to peacemail the $18 million and then work you guys work on this 2B to also then figure out what is the biggest bang for our buck right now as opposed to delaying major construction and then having phase 2 be, you know, twice as much as we started with. Definitely. So,

and just to add a little bit to that, you know, as we get direction to move forward with a bid set, which is what we're asking for tonight based on these options, we were looking for other areas that we can save money. And so, every day we're we're creatively thinking, you know, can we, you know, change this or move that. So, we'll we'll continue to do that. Um but I I think to that point if we settle on 2B or an iteration of that where we have some bid alts that gives us forward direction so we can continue making that timeline but we've been a little bit on pause because we haven't given uh that direction.

Great. Thank you. Do we need to add that to the motion? it just or just keep it based on the money and not necessarily the focusing on what what in within 2B that kind of money what could could be changed to

alternatives. Yes. Well, what I would think is if you set it like a dollar amount of $18 million, you go with 2B, but really then we would look at 2 A is bid alternatives that picks up pickle ball court, tennis court, some of those. And that way we'd have price as we get through our budget discussions. Um there may be annually we'll pick up another half million million. Okay. Okay. Mayor Ban Bishop,

thank you and thank you for that suggestion, uh, Mr. Long, because I totally forgot to mention I would like to know the price of a tennis court because this is the one. Sorry, Jenny. I'm talking about tennis courts for pickle ball. The one tennis court, we do not have a single tennis court in our city. And if we can add one tennis court, by the way, a year ago I sent in a suggestion that there is grant funding for that probably. But if we can have the one tennis court constructed, then we can see whether it's being used or not. And then we can make decisions later to add another tennis court or pickle ball.

And if the decision is to make a subcommittee to go over the bits when it comes in, I'll be happy to be part of that. So I can talk as long as I like. Thank you. So, I I do have an answer and Oh, okay. Um, we did look at that a little closer. That that cost for that tennis court is roughly around 1 million. So, that gives you kind of a a price tag for that. Uh, and we thought about you obviously the last time we met, we had that discussion about tennis and that's why we put in that option 2A to consider that and bring a level of service that's higher for those needs there.

All right. Any final comments, question before we go to a vote? Yeah, the motion was that we select 2B. So, the bids go out for 2B and we gave several ideas about how to add up to 18.2 million, which is hopefully more than the project will cost. And those potential ideas are the 10.4 million in hand, the 2.4 million that Tori talked about earlier tonight, the 3.2 2 million from Preston Park, one point approximately 2 million from the reserve adjustment that's potentially uh doable and then approximately 1.0 million from the unallocated general fund amounts. These are ideas, but generally staff is going to come together bring together a a package of funding that will meet of the 18 million uh actually 18.2 approximately 18 million. Is that is that clear? And we were going to add some language that after the um the money has been sec s um secured or identified that that the I don't know what you call it the consultants that that go back and really um relook at 2B with the idea of bid also can

it doesn't have to be part of the motion but staff totally gets it they would do that anyway that's what we will do if we have money unspent on the project to be plus good alternatives that are coming from option one. We changed it to 2A so that it will include more of the amenities to get the bits instead to B or not to B to A. All right. So I don't need I don't want to add that to the motion. It just complicates it. But staff totally with you on that 100%. We're with you on that 100%. Second. Second it. Okay. Council member McAdams.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, could it possibly I'm not sure if this would be direction to staff or friendly amendment, but could the 3.2 from Preston Park be like the last funding source? They hear that. Okay. Okay. I agree with that. I think we all do. That's a good point. Okay. Thank you, Mayor P. And also to make it clear that we're borrowing, you know, for the park impact fees, it will go back. It will come back. what I mean we will pay it back to the to the general fund the 3.2 or whatever whatever we are now doing with all the millions that we're throwing over the D now. Yes. Okay.

Yes. And um I did have one more remark about that tunnel the underpass. You're not allowed to call the tunnel. I think what I've remember that I've seen probably two years ago or so it will affect the design because you will to make it ADA compliant you you need a whole lot of space to get up to ground level. So I don't think we can just say oh they just need to remove some of the sidewalk and it's okay and this can be a design item for that park. Yeah they uh they're not going to come up inside our park. are going to come up along the curbon gutter really north to south come down.

I thought it might be fun to make some low square add a couple of millions. Yeah. So anyway, but to use it instead of just having a tunnel and then tunnel. Okay. Okay. Anyway, that's where the sub committee may. All right. If we do subly. Thank you. All in favor please say I. I.

All oppose or abstensions. Thank you very much for that presentation. And thank you, Tori, for mentioning some members and Lane for your help and your guidance. We have a couple of small projects, but they're important. Um, we're going to move to the food garden, Eagle Scout project on city land outside the Lina Library. And Steve Lee, do you want to work with Drea? And before you get started, I want to disclose that I'm a volunteer. I don't get paid anything. and I serve on the steering committee which is a loose committee of volunteers for the community sustainable marina or just sustainable marina as it's also known. It's a local action group. It uh is underneath the umbrella of communities for sustainable Monterey County which is a nonprofit countywide entity and under the government code section that Renee gave me 10 point I'm sorry 1091.587. this constitutes my my involvement constitutes a non-interest that does not preclude my participation. So, I'm making this disclosure just for the record because the law requires I do so and it's good for everybody to know. Go ahead, Drea.

Hi, Mayor. Hi, council. I just want to give a little background on these two projects. Um, the food garden eagle scout project. Sustainable marina, a local action group of communities for sustainable Monterey County in partnership with Marina Eagle Scout Amelia Forstell proposes the installation of a small community food garden on city-owned property adjacent to the Marina Library. The garden is intended to support youth leadership, development, environmental stewardship, and community engagement through a volunteermaintained space that complements the existing oak woodland community garden. The Sustainable Marina also proposes the development of a children's sensory garden on city-owned property adjacent to the Marina Library in proximity to the Oak Woodland Community Garden. The project is designed to expand nature-based educational and recreational opportunities for children and families through interactive garden features. Previously at the May 6, 2025 council meeting, city council expressed support for the food garden and children's sensory garden projects at Lock Pattern Park. On January 12th, 2026, sustainable marina volunteers presented both concepts to the recreation and cultural services commission and received feedback regarding the conceptual design and proposed locations. And communities for sustainable Monterey County, uh, C4SM have also provided input and clarification regarding the projects that you'll hear tonight. Sustainable Marina is now requesting city council approval to move forward with planning and implementation of both projects on city property and staff is seeking council feedback on the proposed project concepts and formal approval of the proposed site locations. Thank you. And now you're going to hear from Amelia.

Thank you Dre. Yes. Uh Steve Lee for sustainable marina. Um um Dre has just uh introduced I'm going to introduce Amelia Forsaw the Eagle Scout for the project for the food forest. Uh I'd also like to congratulate Lane on his on his uh retirement. Um I was watching on YouTube earlier and I missed the standing ovation. So

So there that's my contribution. So So if a million described the food for us and I'll come back. Uh unfortunately we've uh lost our uh proponent for the uh uh the sensory garden, Vilene. She's stuck in a snow drift in Tahoe this evening. So um you'll have to make do with me later on, but for now it's Amelia to describe the food forest.

Thank you. Um my name is Amelia Forstelle. I am 15 years old. I am a dual- enrolled student at Monarch Pencil College and I'm currently working on becoming an Eagle Scout. I am proposing to create a food forest which is basically a mini forest made out of food plants. So whereas in a garden the plants are all kind of separated doing their own thing, in a food forest all the plants are working together to create a mini ecosystem. um and they have different functions that support each other, things like that. So, uh I am looking for approval to utilize the land near the library for this project. Um it's the piece of land between the cypress trees and the parking lot. Uh I started working on this project about a year ago, but I hit roadblocks when I was trying to figure out what land to do this on. So, I'm really hoping they could have approval for this. Um, and as Miss Drea mentioned, I proposed or I presented this to the Recreation and Cultural Services Commission and they supported the project. Um, so this project has many different um things that it will do to help the community. It helps with food security, sustainability, educating people on how to grow food, and encouraging people to go outside and work as a community. It also goes well with the adjacent library because people can go inside the library, learn from the books, and they can come outside to food forest and engage in hands-on outdoor learning. Also, this project will be especially targeted for children and will work well with the proposed children's sensory garden if that gets approved as well. Um, because this project is targeted towards children, everything is kid-friendly, so we'll have thornless plant varieties. there won't be any toxic plants or anything

things like that. Um, do we have the plan that was um that I sent? Do we have that to put on the screen or not? If not, it's okay. I can just talk about a little bit. No, it's okay. Oh, no, no, you're okay. It's okay. Um, so we currently have a conceptual plan. Um, we might change some slight things, but the plan that we have is very close to what we will be doing. So, just a quick overview, this project will cost about $5,000 or less, but Sustainable Marina will be paying for everything and also maintaining it, which I will go over later. Um, and we are planning to implement irrigation similar similarly to the pollinator gardens that are nearby. So my eagle project is phase one which is planting the plants and then after that we will implement the irrigation and mulch. Um currently we are in consultation with the California rare fruit growers. So we will select plants that grow well in the light conditions of the site. Um if this project is approved I will organize a workday to do this with scout volunteers. And since it's my Eagle project, I'm the I'm going I'm required to be the one planning that um implementing that, leading it. So the city doesn't have to worry about that. Also, the city really doesn't have to do anything for this project as I'm providing volunteers for the workday. um sustainable marina is providing the materials and also this project will be maintained by the volunteers that go to the Oakwoodland Park every Saturday. Um so that's how we will be maintaining it. Um that's it. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them and I really hope I have your approval for this project. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Amelia. So Drea, we're going to take this one at a time before we go to the children's garden. We'll deal we'll talk about this. Is that what you had in mind? Or or city attorney, city manager, you want to do two at once or one at a time? I think it's really the pleasure of the council. We can go either way, council. One at a time. I think Okay. So, our practice now is to go out to public comment and stand by in case we need you. Um, Amelia, thank you for your good presentation. Amelia, are you 14 or 15? I'm 15 years old.

Thank you very much. All right. You did a good job. That's why I wanted to ask because it's pretty amazing coming from a 15-year-old. It's wonderful to see. Okay. Anyone in person want to comment on the food garden eagle scout project.

Good evening, honorable council members and mayor. Uh, thank you for your dedication and your commitment to making Marina an even better place to live. My name is John Mott and I urge you to support Sustainable Marina's proposal for a food garden at Loch Paden Park. The Eagle Scout project will be a wonderful resource for families and children, helping them understand where food comes from and how to grow it themselves. It also has the potential to ease food insecurity in our community by giving people the knowledge and confidence to grow food at home and in shared public spaces. Volunteers already do an outstanding job at the Oakwoodland Community Garden and this new project will complement and expand their efforts. I personally love visiting Oakwoodland Garden. It's a joy to experience and I believe the food garden will bring the same sense of connection and learning to even more residents. I respectfully ask for your support in this project and bring it to light. Thank you.

Thank you very much, John. Anyone else?

Hello, council and Mayor Bruce. Um, thank you for the time to speak tonight. I would just like to say that I am Anakin Michael, first of all, a student at CSUMB here. And I would like to say in my experience speaking with my uh fellow students, I have been sometimes saddened to realize how many people have not had opportunities throughout their life to experience growing their own food or general gardening activities, which I think is something that is a very valuable um skill and knowledgeability for everyone to have and I think it generally serves as good experience. So, I implore you tonight to consider the impact that a local food garden could have on our future generations. Thank you.

Thank you, Anakin. I'm sorry, Dre. Okay. And the council has them in our packets, but they're kind of Anyone else wishing to speak on this? And if you're thinking you're going to speak, you can go ahead and stand up and be prepared to walk up. Save us a little bit of time tonight.

Hi, I hope you're all doing well tonight. And I want to thank uh Mr. McCarthy especially for listening to me a couple, you know, a month ago or something like that. I really appreciated your attention and um just just listening. Really great job. And uh thank you all tonight for listening. Um I'm a CSU I'm Mark Melendez. I'm a CSMBB um member and I'm out at the garden every Saturday and I think the idea of a um this this food garden by Amelia is just a great addition to what we're doing. We're trying to get children and the community together understanding what it is. You know, the the fieldto table type of philosophy. Again, where does your food come from? Well, having them involved at this level is is just the best. The more we can have them, observe, you know, dig a hole, water with us, just enriches the community. And that's really our goal, right? To enrich the community and educate. And what better and a lab to do that in than out there in our city garden. Um, thank you so much. And Amelia, thank you for all your effort. And I hope you guys can all get behind her on this. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mark. Anyone else before we turn it over to uh remote? Okay, let's go to Denise Turley. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Um, good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Shante, and I'm here as a secretary of the steering committee for Sustainable Marina. Our organization helps care for the Oakwoodland Garden community, a good community garden. And tonight specifically, I want to focus on the project here at Oakwoodland. Um I we support the agenda item 13B, which is the Eagle Scout food forest project as

well as 13C. But going into the food forest, it expands the community learning and it strengthens local food resilience and it builds on our volunteer work already happening there at Oakwoodland. And it would be uh these projects would align with our mission and really help with creating the community part of this garden. And so I would really hope that you consider it. Thank you. Thank you, Shante. Okay, uh we'll go to remote. Uh Denise Turley, welcome back.

Hello. Um in six short years, this lovely young 15year-old would be an adult in our community. And what better thing than to have a youth um have a good experience with the city and get a wonderful project like this started and hopefully we might retain her to do a lot more things in Marina. Uh I support the project. Thank you.

Thank you Denise. Let's go to Grace Silva Santella. Hi, mayor and city council. I am just first I want to be sure that all five received a letter that I sent. It's about both this food forest project and the sensory garden. And I applaud both of these projects. I applaud the enthusiasm behind them and I applaud the study and uh level of detail that's gone into the projects. But I'm very concerned, especially on the food forest, that it'll succeed. And I would hate for this young woman with the amount of enthusiasm that she has to uh create something that could possibly struggle. I've been really observing the site that's been proposed for the food forest. First of all, I think it's important that we clarify this is not Lock Padden Park property. This is city of Marina property. It's a distance away from the raised food beds that are currently in the oak woodland site. So, so that's the one really important caveat here. Unless I have observed it incorrectly, I don't believe there's any raised beds being planned for this location. uh which means it's going to be suscept there's going to be the potential of damage from foot traffic. People who bring their uh dogs to walk in the park, they often park in this particular part of the parking lot at the library. Secondly, it's in a deep amount of

shade. And thirdly, as I said in the letter and that I raised to the recreation department, the irrigation system in March of 2024 went through an extensive amount of evaluation. And in that evaluation, it was strongly recommended that there be installed a 2in meter and water man and that there be no additional irrigation done until that water man was installed. And that has not been done. And I strongly urge that if you're going to go forward with this food forest project, despite Sustainable Marina doing an extensive amount of hand watering, that it be put on hold until the irrigation consultant comes back in to evaluate the system. I would hate to see this project fail. and you were alerted to property that Marina Coast Water District has that this project could be on. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Grace, for those comments. Let's go to Elias Rodriguez. Welcome, Elias. You're so stupid. Little extra comment there. Go ahead, Elias. Oh, I'm sorry. Still, there you go.

Hi, council members. My name is Elias Rodriguez. I am a resident here in Marina. Um, I visit the uh city property, the outside the library uh weekly and uh it's just such a such a joy uh that we have that in our city. Um, and it's such a joy that we have community members who um are wanting to step up at such a young age. So, I wanted to express my my full support behind the food forest um idea and and also express my uh trust in the sustainable marina group. Uh they've been operating uh for almost two decades now. Um and I wanted to express my full support that they uh will maintain the property uh or m maintain the project um and see it succeed. So, thank you um for your time tonight and your efforts on this uh issue.

Thank you, Allayia. Let's go to Caitlyn Sterry.

Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, loud and clear. Hello.

Okay, perfect. Um my name is Caitlyn Sterry. I am a CSUB student and I've had the pleasure of working with Sustainable Marina for the past roughly 5 months. I just wanted to come on here and um show my support for this project. I truly believe that it'll be a positive impact. It'll make a positive impact in the community um and that Sustainable Marina will do their best to see it succeed and uh assist with the project. I've seen them drag out hoses every day or every weekend to make things to help things survive and make things work. Um, so yes, thank you so much and have a lovely evening.

Thank you, Caitlyn. Thanks for all your help. Okay, let's go to Himea Santos Lee. Hello. Am I

Yes, we can hear you. Hi, my name is Sina Santos and I've also been working with Sandber Marina for the past 5 months and honestly like community food garden would be such a fantastic idea because it provides like fresh healthy food and offers like educational purposes too. Like I've known that's not very common where I'm from. I'm from the Bay Area and we don't really have that in our gardens, in our like schools. It would just be like such a great way to like straighten the community, too. All right. Thank you very much, Ha. Is anyone else online wishing to raise their hand to speak? Now would be the time. We'll give you a moment. Okay. Um, thank you everyone who did comment. Um, I didn't see any question. Uh, Grace had some concerns. Um, I'm happy to help address those, Lane, but let's turn over to you if you'd like to provide any input. Ishban,

do do you know any more about the irrigation issues up there? Okay. U I'll I'll speak to the irrigation that um on site of the both of these projects because they're right next to each other. There's already infrastructure. There's already water on these sites. We connect to it uh about on a monthly basis because there are pollinator gardens uh within about 10 feet maybe 12 feet that we have to water by hand sometimes when the system is off. Uh if we replace some dead plants those new plants need water and the system during the winter is often turned off so it's not getting drip irrigation. And so we augment that by plugging in a garden hose to the infrastructure that's under the ground on this site where we're proposing these projects and we immediately have a hose to water by hand those replacement plants. So when the system is down, we have a backup of garden hose. In this case, uh I agree with Grace. We we this is a good time to do another consult with K&D Landscaping and that could be paid for by the grant funds that we have for this project, not the city funds. uh to ensure that um not only is the existing irrigation sufficient, but to give us a price quote that the volunteers would pay for um to put in a a new selenoid, a new valve box because although there's water supply, there's no valve box to which you could set up a drip system on a timer. Um, but all of our other projects, there's nine other projects in the library parking lot, nine different pollinator gardens where we've gone through this process of checking with the irrigation, checking with sta irrigation experts, checking with staff, installing the plants, installing the drip irrigation, covering it up with mulch chips, and then it's on

a timer system that the city controls for all of the gardens around the library, including the Martin Luther green grass uh which is actually on park district property. So water is always an issue as you can imagine. Um and it's really close to the 16 garden beds. You could throw a rock easily from these two projects to the garden beds. It's a hop skip and a jump um to the existing garden beds. Not that that really matters. What really matters is that every week, every single week, rain or shine, 52 Saturdays a year, there are volunteers working uh north of this proposed site in the library parking lot and south of this proposed site at the Oakwood Community Garden. So, this would be in the middle of what we're already doing. Uh so, thoughts of going to Marina Coast Water District property on Ford for kids and you know, it it's it's not I if anyone wants to do that, I think that would be great. But this group has been coming here for years and it's right in their wheelhouse. It's right where they work. Um, so I think that water is an issue. We've got to address that. And then the trampling with the dogs, the vehicles, the shade, those are all issues we always have to deal with wherever you plant plants. And they're definitely uh an issue in the parking lot where you have a lot of trampling, a lot of people getting out of their cars trying to get to the library across those landscape islands. Uh so we we do deal with trampling. Um you'll notice if you go there there's um driftwood where we try to encourage people to go across pathways instead of across the garden. And the more dense you plant, the less trampling there is because they it's obvious they don't want to go through bushes. They'd rather go where it's flat and easy. So yeah, there's always going to be issues. And that's what makes this great is because the community comes together and they

work on these issues every single Saturday year round. And if you didn't have issues to work on, you wouldn't have the opportunity for education and new volunteers and returning volunteers who are kids to teach the new volunteers and put the kids now in the leadership positions. It's good that plants are dying. It's good that we have problems. We have gophers. We have aphids. We have squirrels. We have slugs. And that's okay. You know, it's a it's a it's a functioning living, breathing space where 30 to 40 people often show up on Saturdays. So, where else is that happening at the park where every single week you have up to 30 or 40 people, you know, on their hands and knees digging, pulling, planting, watering, talking, laughing, eating, lots of food, breakfast, lunch. It's wonderful. But this would be a game changer because we all know that the first five zero age, zero years to five years, they're kind of short shifted in in Marina. We don't have a lot of first five activities. This both these projects we're talking about the food garden right now. It's a first five activity. You know, a one-year-old, two-year-old, they can dig, they can pull, they can water, they can pull, they can harvest, they can eat with their parents coming out of the library, dad's reads day, you know, Earth Day, all these events that go on around there. These is this is going to be a game changer, these two projects, because they're so highly visible and right in the middle of where we're already doing so many good things out there. All right. Um, let's go to uh, Council Member McCarthy and then McAdams.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, first I want to say it's it's fun and exciting not only to hear the mayor's passion, but um, uh, to just kind of articulate the passion of a of food forest in general. It's a very exciting project. Um, I'm very grateful for the nonprofit leaders, for the Eagle Scout that has stepped up to talk about this issue. Um, and frankly, if you've followed me and you, you know, one of my things is it's about these healthy, engaging spaces spaces um that kind of encourage community input and civic spirit. Um, that said, spoiler alert, I do have some very specific concerns about the project um that as presented, I don't think I could support, but the good news is I think we can get there. Um, for over 15 year over 15 years ago, I consistently advocated for nonpollinating olive trees. And you're probably going to think that's a little bit bizarre. Um, but let me tell you why. Who's heard of Puma County, Arizona? Probably everybody. Most people because that's where Nancy Guthrie lives, right? It's in the news a lot lately. that entire county outlaws the sale um buying or planting of olive trees. Why do they do that? Because um it's a it's an extreme allergen. Um who knows how to use an EpiPen. Um well, hopefully several of you because some people are so allergic to olive pollen that it it can create a serious health impact. And so for me, that in and of itself is a little bit of a disparity. I don't know if the olive planting is um something that's a musthave of the project or if it's something that um

they've been there since the library

built non-fruiting or fruing. Oh, okay. So, it's not a food food issue. Got it. Okay. So, yeah, that would have been good to have been articulated in the in the plan. So um yeah, so if it's non-fruiting and it doesn't generate pollen, right, it's not an issue. Um so that's good because that's something that the tree committee really talked about and um you know over 15 years ago decided that um they didn't want to support fruiting or poll pollinating olive olive trees. There's other trees too that are kind of high on the list of of um health impacts. a lot of nut trees, which I assume wouldn't be maybe good for this area anyway. Um, but that's something that I would hope would be articulated in any proposal or plan. And I'm I'm definitely glad to hear that pollinating all that that actually goes a long way to getting me more on board with this project. Um, I do have other concerns, some of which have already been articulated. I don't know. Do we know if there's a backflow preven um public works on that on that meter?

Yes, there is. and it's meets the standards of the coast water district and all of that and it's checked. Okay. Um backflow preventers for those that don't know it prevents contaminants from your watering source from flowing back into the system and and contaminating for example the library drinking fountain or whatever it might be. Um the last thing I'll say is in terms of harvesting food even with the existing garden beds I don't know I've so I I've been told anyone's welcome to harvest. I know I've taken some Asian uh uh basil and made soup with it. It was fantastic. But there's really no articulation of like what's allowed and like who's allowed to harvest and there's no posted rules or so I would hope that as part of this project we kind of talk about that and and think about what's appropriate and you know if somebody claims they got sick is there a process for kind of reporting that and um you know who's responsible for that if somebody I know that the staff report mentioned that there's insurance is required or something would that be something that goes for C CSM insurance or the city insurance. Um, so those are all kind of questions I have. Um, I'm going to pause there for now because I think I've been at about five four minutes. Um, and we'll come back to you. So, thank you, mayor.

Thank you very much, Brian. Counselor McAdams. Thank you, mayor. Um, and the mayor spoke a lot about water and the use of water. So, I'm curious, what's the process for the reimbursement and or the payment for the C4SM water usage? I think the water usage they're not proposing um to do that. That'd be hard to break out. I don't think Ishmael with how it how that is metered. I don't think we could break out that branch. Well, where's the hose coming from? So, it it's from the same line that feeds all the all the landscaping.

Yeah. the landscape in front of the library, the pulinary garden. So it comes off that same line. The Martin Luther King turf. So the city pays for the water, you correct? The city pays for all that water. Okay. And do we get like a credit or like a nonprofit like a annual write off for the donation of the water? We have not discussed about about C4SM paying anything for the water usage. Um, and then are there other city projects that rely solely on volunteer maintenance? And if so, how are those structured and monitored?

I think C4SM is probably the only regular volunteers that we have in the city. We currently do not have any um agreement with them. That's one of the things that um our city attorney has discussed and uh we definitely want some direction from the council on that tonight. Yeah, we uh to answer your question directly, Hilltop Park has 3.3 acres that are wholly maintained by volunteers. Um and all of Lo Patton Park, this group of volunteers has a special use permit and an encroachment permit to remove graffiti, trash, and weeds all around the park and to do the Oakwood Community Garden um that you see there. Tamy owns the railroad corridor and uh they're in the process of giving us an encroachment permit because we do the same kinds of things uh within 50 ft either side of the railroad which includes part of the lake even though you don't think of it as that close to the lake. It has lake property on it that's flooded and we clean that up with um on occasion. So the city

Okay. Sorry. Thanks. Okay. So for me a suggestion for theou um I have two would be um a reimbursement agreement for water usage and also um any public work staff time when or if volunteers are not able to address maintenance issues um or if they're not able to reimburse then we receive some sort of since it's a nonprofit we get some sort of credit because I understand the mayor's um you know saying that he doesn't have a conflict of interest. But I mean to me I just want to make sure that we don't leave leave any gray area for that. So it has to just be you know absolutely by the book and I would feel comfortable with that. And then also the second um consideration for theou was to make sure that um all the so right now currently are all of the volunteers associated with this project or that show up on Saturday are they vetted by the city like we typically do with with other city property volunteers that's like an application a live scan? Um, no. Uh, for most of our volunteers, they just sign waivers. Um, the ones that do life scans are typically those that we do for our city employees. Um but with C4SM we would be looking at those who are supervising um the project supervising children or those who are regular long-term and we would um and we have a process that we would life scan them and keep and monitor those records.

Yeah. So I would want to live life scan everyone because obviously there's kids we've heard from youth and just as a mom I would I want that insurity that the volunteers that my kids are working alongside are live scanned. Um and also I think you know just as far as liability for the city um it's something that that we need to to be doing citywide not only you know just on on this property but citywide. So, um I appreciate the application because that gives staff information of like emergency contact and that sort of stuff, right? Yes. Okay. So, if it it sounds to me that the volunteers are working with children and we're expecting children here and we're going to talk about a mud kitchen. So, I want to make sure that all of the volunteers are properly vetted to be working around children and minors.

Just a small point, it's rare that we'll have a minor without their adult. They're always there with their parents. But good point. Well, so I think that and are you disclosing if there's issues with some volunteers to the parents? I mean, that's where I'm getting at. So to know that every volunteer is vetted and live scanned would bring assurities whether or not the parent is there or not. We're having these volunteers at our library with children and so they need to be lifescanned.

Yeah, it's it's not too much different optics as dads read where you have a couple hundred kids a lot of uh Marina tree not Marina tree garden marina friends of the marine library running the event. So there's lots of interaction on Dad's Reads Day. Uh is

Well, I disagree, mayor, because if we're going to have a child working alongside with volunteers that potentially are on parole or unhoused and for the day, for hours versus like a 20-minute dad read, there's a a big difference for me there as a mom. And so I want to know who and also for the protection of myself who I'm working alongside. And I know that that might be hard to hear.

Um, but I think that it's important for the city to be transparent when we're having our youth being potentially working alongside with ladies and gentlemen who are on parole or unhoused or having mental health or addiction issues. And so that's why I'm advocating for this right now. Um, or we need to somehow disclose it because I think I I'm very uncomfortable with that aspect. So, I would like that in theouou. Um, and then as far as um the fee for the live scan, I'm happy to have a hardship waiver um if you know for for some of the residents or volunteers that that um will need assistance with paying for that, but I think it's very important that the parents know who their children um potentially could be volunteering alongside. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And did you have some input, Renee? Okay, go ahead. We'll wait for the city training. Uh yeah, just let's have a motion to continue um to 11 o'clock. I'll second. I make a second motion that we can continue to the end of this item. Um it is 10 o'clock. As we've talked about many times before, you know, we we don't give do the public any justice when we go late into the night. Um I started this meeting by making the comment that it was going to be a long night and that we should plan accordingly. Clearly, for whatever reason, we haven't done that. Um, but that would be my motion if I could get a second. If not, I'll probably end up having to leave either way. I'll second that.

Okay. Um, yeah, going past 10:00 is pretty routine for a lot of cities, but we have two motions on the floor. Uh, let's vote on the substitute motion first that we go home after this item and don't hear the children's garden, etc. All in favor of that, please say I. Can I just as a point of discussion it was mentioned that the proponent for that project's not even here right so this would give them an opportunity to come and present in person yeah we can talk about that but we have very qualified people to give the presentation uh so all in favor of the substitute motion please say I I all oppose please say no no no let's go to the original motion that we go to 11 uh all in favor please say I I I All oppose please say no

no okay that motion passes 3 to one to zero. So, let's continue. Who had the floor? Uh, Ryan, did you have the floor? Or Renee Ortega, our city attorney, had the floor.

Yeah, just just one one quick comment, I guess. I I so I viewed these when I, you know, was presented with the staff report. And so, what what was the what were these projects that were being proposed on city property? And the question is, I mean, for the council to answer, are these city projects? And if they're city projects, then sort of the the issue of reimbursement or the public works staff time that may go into it, you know, kind of sort of becomes uh a less concern uh in that respect at least if it's a city project. Like in other words, is there a benefit that is being provided by giving public works time and water uh for these projects? Is there a benefit to the nonprofit? uh and I didn't see very much benefit if they're city projects rather I saw um this as a trying to figure out how to balance out the benefit that the city is getting as a result of these projects and sort of um you know what it is what is being provided uh in exchange. So so for example um if there's a benefit for these for the city to you know adopt these projects then who's going to maintain them? what's the cost to maintain them? So, the agreement should be something to the effect of, well, the volunteers will maintain it, the city will provide some resources so that there's sort of a balance there. Well, we have a really good example ongoing, the Opel, the community garden next door. Um, it's run by the same volunteers we're talking about. The land owner blesses it through permitting and um the city uh provides the water and the benefit that the city gets is that they have a recreational opportunity that's unique to our city at no cost to the

city other than employees um turning on and off the the water system on their phone when it goes off for inexplicable reasons and there's no water to be had out of the um municipal water, but it would be the same here. Um, and the city council has voted at least twice that these uh projects be city projects whether they're on park district property or not. So, um, yeah. Okay, let's go to Council Member Biala and then Mayor Pretam Fisherman.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, I'm going to start with live scan. Um uh you know I did conceive of this as a city project and so for me how much water I don't anticipate it's going to be massive amounts of water. So it's a city project and I I think there's no you know there's no cost to the people who are at sustainable marina or the girl scouts. I mean, we just use your water to to help build this uh really unique um uh recreational um project in in our in our city park. Um so I I see it more like that and I don't see a problem myself with it. Live scan if it's that important. I don't know that we we do we require live scan for other volunteers in Oakwoodland or anything? Um the park district has asked for us to go down that path. So we're going down that path and we expect to go down the same path for the city. There's no difference. It's the same thing. Volunteers on city land, park, district land, same park doing the same activities.

I I almost feel like we we only need to require live scan for the people who are overseeing the volunteers. And so that you have your parents are also there plus you have people who have been vetted in some way by live scan but I can't imagine asking people to go through live scan because they spend one morning it you know in the park and in Yes. Go ahead. I I was I'm a boy scout leader in two different troops just to help out the scout. At least on the scout side, all of the leaders are live scanned and fingerprinted

and get are given extensive training about how to protect youth if that's any consolation to the council. Um, so the Boy Scouts and the leaders would not do anything to put the scout in jeopardy and there are very clear markers about appropriate behavior for the adults and the scout. And so just just to further the discussion at least for the scout uh the scouts under her guidance for the project management there are very clear guidance for the youth. So wanted to offer that. That's very important and that goes along with my suggestion that that uh if we can use the Boy Scouts model and Girl Scouts, I'm sure it's the same for the people who are overseeing the project. I think that would be really good. Um the these uh two projects are near the library and I think it's wonderful. I I I feel like it's going to be a magnet for adults and children um at that space and promote further learning by the the the accessibility to the educational uh uh facility that we have there. So I and I think that when you dissect and try to anticipate every everything that could go wrong with a new project, I think we're doing it injustice. I think we we we we go in thinking it's a wonderful project. I know there's so many motivated people. You're going to be learning what works and what doesn't work. And you'll figure out between the Girl Scouts and Sustainable Marina. You will figure out every possible problem that you have. There will be a solution. Even if it's geez that that plant died and we'll never plant it again. It's okay. I mean we can't we can't put up so many obstacles that we then kill the project basically. So I I feel like you know there there will be uh a lot of

learning uh a learning curve. You're going to find out that maybe some things that you know you didn't anticipate will really jeopardize the project and you'll figure out a way somehow. So, I don't I don't have any qualms about about my support for it. And uh Amelia, I I'm so grateful that, you know, as a young person, you are using you leadership skills and you're pulling in so many other people to say we can do this and we will do it. So, thank you very much for it. It's, you know, really a really unique opportunity for the city of Marina. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Kathy. Let's go to Mayor Pertamisher and then

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would just like to second, you know, um a very good project and thank you very much. I'll try to keep it short this time. Uh apologies to uh Julie and Grace. Yes, I did receive the emails, but I instead of replying to emails, I started walking under the trees, got sidetracked. Anyway, so I did not uh reply. So, um, and, uh, the suggestion from both Julie and, um, Grace to look into the Marina Coast Water District Courtyard. Yes, perfect. Let's have a community garden there as well because that will be walkable for other uh, people, other children. It can be, it doesn't have to be either or. H, and the water I um, let's not make it more complicated than it is. I looked it up. Thank you, Tori, for always giving us those uh AP um printouts. Um in November for 188 seaside circle, we paid a a whopping $289.73. Everybody who gets the Marina Coast water um invoice knows that most of these are the fixed fees. So, the usage was uh we cannot even uh determine how much the usage was for just that little part of irrigation. it. I can promise you most was for toilets. They don't have a washer there. Anyway, let's just keep it the way it is. I and and let's continue the city paying for the water usage that our volunteers might use in their spare time. So, thank you. I I'm looking forward to seeing this happening.

Thank you, Elizabeth. Let's go to Council Member McCarthy.

Thank you. Um I was a little confused about the discussion um that the city attorney mentioned about providing resources. For me, I don't care if the city provides some resources. I just want to be transparent about it. So water was mentioned as one. I know even staff time. I saw public works out there, you know, spending hours on searching um where the water went. I mean, we even talked about that, right? Like that's that's quite a bit of expense. I know wood chips have been delivered by public works staff and um and so again and I think that's okay. Um but I think there needs to be a little bit of an accounting there because the staff report says oh this is like you know completely funded by C4SM. Well not not entirely true, right? Let's just it is what it is. Um, council member Viser mentioned having another food garden over by the and I I agree actually a fantastic place is the the now defunct Los Animus site. There's no tree cover. It gets plenty of sun. Um, I think that's another potential spot. Um, so I think there are a lot of options and again I'm genuinely excited about this concept. I do have some concerns right about allergens and in places where people congregate, right, a library where you've got young kids and stuff like that. I'm thrilled to hear that the olive trees that are depicted on this are not new plantings. They're existing trees that um are are non-fruiting. Um I do have a couple other questions. So, there's this issue of kindness rocks. It's been brought up for a long time, and I' I've brought this up before, but as I see those rocks begin to migrate into other areas of the park, um there's this issue of what's called a public forum. you know the Constitution of the United States has the first amendment and when the government says hey people come and write something unfortunately the government's not has no ability to dictate what you write so if you want to say something that sounds very hateful I hate white people whatever it is we can't I'd actually like to ask the city

attorney but we can't dictate what people want to say is that right it depends on what kind of form it is right so For example, here the council chambers is a limited public forum. I guess you could put up sort of policies and practices that you would, you know, or some rules around that. Uh there there are rules, but they can't sort of ban, you know, you can't sort of control the speech, right? But you can put some parameters around it. So if there were guidelines.

So I think that's really important as we look at different areas. Again, I don't know if kindness rocks is a specific part of this project or if those rocks continue to migrate. Um, city marina was recently sued on a first amendment basis and we actually lost um and in some respects. Um, and so I just want to be very careful about that. Um, so that that's one area of concern for me. Um, and I want to, you know, I I talked to a friend the other day that said, "I ain't got time to to beat around the bush, you know, let's get the business of the city done." But I want to talk a little bit about this life scan thing. Um the concern is clear. There have been volunteers at the park who it has been said have been sex offenders and in at least one case a convicted murder. And maybe that's okay. Maybe it's not. I don't know. But let's be let's be honest about what that is and what the risk that it is that presents to young people that are volunteering alongside of those folks. So um I to Council Member Biala's point where I don't know that we should have everybody live scanned in every situation. maybe you're right, but if your particular volunteer activity has kind of developed a reputation of bringing in populations that um are higher risk, then I think that warrants a little bit of a different approach. And so um for me, that's why I share Council Member McAdams concern about ensuring that when we have young people alongside volunteers that we're just making sure that those volunteers are appropriately scanned. I had to be live scan just to volunteer with the police. I mean, the right the police have all people up. You would think they wouldn't be afraid of me, but apparently they wanted to make sure that I was right an acceptable volunteer. So, I think it's reasonable to ask that all the the volunteers at these projects be lives. Um, and then, you know, the last thing I'll say for now is just this harvesting plan. Again, when we go to look at policies, whether it's the public forum, whether it's harvesting, what does that look like, right? Is it anybody can come? Is there risk? Do we put up a sign that says, "Hey, harvest at your own risk." Right? if you get sick, it's not,

you know, not the city's fault or whatever the case may be. So, I just want to make sure that we're kind of covering all of our bases there.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you very much. Um, the olive trees were planted by the city as part of their landscaping plan in 2006. They're doing better now that the water system has been turned back on. Um, but we just work around them that we we we don't really have anything to do with them. We're not cutting them down, but um we look forward to the day when they're dead out of natural aging and we can replace them with oak trees or whatever, but right now they're all the trees planted by the city. Uh mulch. I can't remember a time that staff brought mulch. I can remember many times over the last many years where the volunteers bring the mulch, whether they paid for it or get it from free. But there may have been once or twice that I can't remember that mulch came by the staff. I just don't know why that would happen. and we have our own trucks and we don't even think about asking the city to bring mulch. Uh the water fix that was mentioned where the staff took a lot of time to fix a broken water line, it was a city water line. It was a library water line. It had nothing to do with the Oakwood Community Garden. It was on the uh right next to that plexiglass patio behind the library. And it was a uh it's a water it's a water location. sometimes we use to water our our uh rear pollinator garden, but it's a it has nothing to do with, you know, we didn't put it in. It's still there. It's been there since 2006, and it broke and it took them a long time to find it, but had nothing to do with um with our project. The kindness rocks haven't migrated. They're contained within the Oakwell Community Garden. Once in a while, kids will pick up the rocks and move them to the Martin Luther King sculpture uh and we'll move them back. So sometimes things get moved around when you have so much visitation to an area, but the kindest rocks are meant to be at the oak woodland. They've never been anywhere else. They're not planned to go to the um this location we're talking about. They stay on the south side of the Martin Luther King sculpture garden where they are today. If you were

to go and look at all the rocks there, a reputation that we have for volunteers, if we have a reputation, it's got to be a good one because we've had so much good people coming in and out of there. Uh there was a gentleman that came through the Veterans Transition Center. They have had hundreds of um come to the Veterans Transition Center. They've had zero recidivism. They've had zero uh crimes committed in the community by those people who are coming, done their time, done the crime. But there was one that came up one day and asked me, "Hey, I'm at the VTC. What can I do?" And I said, "Well, if you can clean off those those 10 trash cans, clean the lids, that'd be great." He said, "I'm also an artist." I said, "Great. You can paint the endangered species that are on the outside of those bins." So, he took home those nasty, gross lids, and he cleaned them. He sanded them. He primed them. He painted the endangered species, 10 different species on one of each bin. And now we don't see him anymore, but he went from the VTC to Joby to HERS, which is a nonprofit organization that gives housing to the homeless. Uh then he went back to the VTC. He's he's like, you know, what we want to happen to rehabilitated people. Now he's just finished getting his master's degree. He's going to go on to get his PhD. He's the only person I can think of that has come from a parole situation, but we haven't seen him on the garden for probably about a year, maybe uh uh you know, 15 months, something like that. He's a great guy. Uh and uh anyway, so I don't think we have a problem, but we have a lot of things that could become problems with any project, and when when they become problems, we'll have to address them. and trying to think ahead proactively with as many live scans as we can get is great, but I don't think you can expect every volunteer that shows up to be live scan, whether it be a city event or a volunteer event like

we're talking about every Saturday. We do these events twice a twice a month to pull weeds uh elsewhere on city property. We we pick up trash once to two twice a month uh on city property. We do Hilltop Park two times a week on city property. So, we're on we're on city property a lot. We're working with city staff to be more life scans. We have several volunteers going through the life scan process. Our lead volunteers, we're using them as guinea pigs. And then we'll work down the ranks, but I don't see it would ever be where every single volunteer that sits on the steps on site would be have a life scan. But, uh, we'll we'll talk about that. But, we just got to keep working down getting better and better at this. There's not been any issues, problems, crime. We fix problems. so we don't cause problems. Uh but you know there'll be a first time someday and we want to do is be as proactive as we can. We know we're fully insured um at the holding the city as an additional insured so that this something happens with us. It's not the city that's on the hook. It's it's the volunteer insurance from community sustainable Monterey County. Okay. Um Elizabeth Fischer, you have the last word. Maybe you can make a motion.

Yes, I would like to do that. But first, a public service announcement for anybody. If you have not turned off your sprinklers yet, please do so because our plants don't need any more water for quite a while. So, but yeah, and I would like to make a motion to um approve this project as described in the um staff report. I second. Okay, let's go back to Council Member McCarthy. Thanks. I'd like to um either add some conditions or make a substitute uh motion. Um one condition that um let's do the substitute motion.

Okay. Uh that we approve the project. Um with the condition actually I want to add some friendly first. See who made the motion? Yeah, I'd like to um add some friendly amendments if um if the motion maker is willing. um that we ensure that the project has no fruit and olives. Sounds like it's not going to be an issue, but I want to just put it on the record. It's something I fought for for a long time. Um uh that uh any pollen producing plants are compared against an allergy database just to make sure that they're not severe allergens and and high congregation areas. Um, and there is such a database that's out there and I don't think again don't think it would be an issue but I don't the pro my problem is I haven't seen what plants are going to be planted right is it going to be corn is it going to be walnuts walnuts would would probably be problematic but I don't think that's um planned um and that we come up with a harvesting plan um for the the food that's grown So those three conditions,

the the the olive tree is okay. That's pretty clear. But having allergies myself, I know it doesn't matter if a tree is very far away or right next to me, I it will find me. So um so I think that goes a little bit too far. So I can accept the first the olive tree is okay. Okay.

And what was your third one? The harvesting plan. uh even that just we could ask them to to now even that goes far. I would just like to start the project without all trees. Okay. And just see how it goes and I know that I'm sure they'll handle it. If any instructions are needed and if any plants turn out to be make people sneeze too much, it's okay. I'll stick with the first condition if you're willing to accept it. Okay. I have a question. if my harvesting has been illegal or not. I mean, I assume I'm welcome to do that, but it's it's unclear, right? Like you're it's a community garden. That's what it's for. Okay. I just wanted to make sure.

Okay. Um that we ensure that fruing olives are prohibited. And we have the police, chief of police who will enforce that. It won't be a big part of your job, Randy. I promise. Okay. second holds. Yes. All right. You would have second. I was Yeah, her second holds to the friendly amendment. Council member McAdams.

Thank you, mayor. And then I'd like to add a friendly amendment. Um, and I'm not I'm I'm totally open to suggestions on how to word this. I just want to make sure that any volunteer working with a child or a minor 18 and under is properly vetted as a city volunteer

that's already being worked on. So I don't know if we need to add it to this. I want I would like to add it. I don't have an issue with that. I think it can be done fast enough. Who knows about Yeah, you you can't live scan every volunteer that shows No, no, I'm not saying live scan. I'm saying properly bedded. So, I'm leaving that up to staff what that means. Is that the application? Is that fingerprinting? So, I'm leaving it up to staff to figure out what properly vetted means. And I I we can we can work with that. Yeah, because we have policy and procedures for our volunteers. So, Right. Great. Thank you. Okay. All in favor, please say I. I. I. I.

All oppose, please say no. Or any abstensions. Okay, that motion passes five to zero. That's unanimous. Thank you, Amelia. Thank you, Mom. Susanna, I know you're there every step of the way, and this has been a long not tonight, but the last year has been you. You've learned a lot about public process. Thank you. Okay, next project, children's sensory garden. Okay, thanks for that one. Um, my live scan appointments coming up, so just to reassure you. But I can still stand here, can't I? Even without the live scan. Okay. uh the children's century garden. Um as I mentioned before, unfortunately Valen Marino or Danielle Canrell who are the real dynamos behind this project. Unfortunately um Bian was supposed to be here but she's got stuck in snow somewhere in Tahoe. So I'm stuck with me to try and promote this uh exciting project. Um the purpose of the children's uh sensory garden is to encourage children and their families to enjoy nature through food and wildlife gardens while providing a spark for their curiosity and environmental literacy. The children's sensory gardener would compliment him be part of the Oakwoodland Community Garden. Oh, he's got it up there. Oh, great. Thank you. Yeah, I just read that bit. Uh this is uh Vilene and Danielle. So they're the they're the two Marina families. Um uh

and that was their idea, their um inspiration to build the sensory garden. The what we're looking at is a 40x4 foot area with amenities enjoyed by children that also contribute to learning about the natural world and playing in it with their families and other children. These amenities would be to the extent affordable electrical and water services, a mud kitchen, sitting benches and chairs or stumps uh for children and families. Uh just to bear in mind this is going to be a this is not going to be a volunteer-led this is going to be a facility like a playground. It's not uh you know so in in so this is where families and children will enjoy themselves together. Um so you got logs and boulders, wildflower plants to see and touch and a vegetable garden to grow, taste and smell. Uh the location which if you can just about make it out is uh near the library near the playground. Uh it's uh so be parked it will connect to the playground and of course it's not very far from the oak woodland community garden on the other side of the cypress trees.

Got over excited there. Hang on. Might delay.

Yeah. Oh, you got it. Go back a few. There. There we go. Ideas. If you go one more. There we go. Go forward one. Yeah. So, these are various ideas. This is at moment. We have, you know, we really asking for the the the the concept to be approved and the location. Um, but within that there will be uh the most likely item is the mud kitchen, which is a uh apparently a very popular with with children and families uh where uh children uh can sort of, you know, work with mud and pretend to bake mud pies. And I I'm no longer a child, so I can't really make much sense of it myself. But uh but again, we got digging and raking, so they can rake and prepare the ground. We got we may not use tires. There may be some environmental issues with tires, but again, colorful tire plant beds or similar uh sustainable or recyclable materials. Uh this is one which might be a little bit controversial um because it mentions the water again. Um very often there's a a water pump for for for the kids to to get water from. Um in reality this is just going to be like a hose bib or a faucet where they might just get a cup of water to you to make their mud pies in the mud kitchen. uh also to uh flowing of water through various uh uh structures. Uh again there's a sort of a like a river style there but again it's not this is not a water feature. Won't be large large amounts of water. It's really just a source of source of water for for playing with. The other thing is got tree stumps. Um we've if you've ever been in the fairy garden in the oak woodland, there's

nothing better than the kids love to turn over the stumps and find bugs and creepy crawies. So again, or for climbing on, but again, this will be a useful uh a familiar feature which the kids will love. Um there may or may not be a driftwood sculpture garden. Uh again, there may be maybe some issues with sort of safety there, but uh again, something that people can the kids can construct. uh uh various things with playhouses and so on. Uh uh most significantly of course particularly in the with your current debates about money um we've raised or communities for sustainable Mterrey County. This was our um MC gives project uh at the end of last year. So we've just raised $25,000 already. Uh we're waiting for the matching fund to come through which might be another four or five thousand dollars on top of that. So we have the money to to uh to to build this provided we've got the facility and the and the space to do it. So uh with that if any anybody's got any questions um I probably can't answer them but if you I'll give them a go.

I have a question Steve. Why don't why doesn't that tree in the picture have any leaves? It's trying very hard, I'm sure. Okay, let's go. Let's go to the public, starting with those in person. You'd like to comment on this, please come on up to the podium. You have up to three minutes to do so.

Hello, John M. I'm John Mott and uh glad you're still here. Um I'm here to express my strong support for the children's sensory garden project. This garden is a welcoming space that speaks across cultures, abilities, and languages, something our community deeply values. The proposed location is already a vibrant hub where families and children uh explore the outdoors, making it an ideal setting for such a handson learning activity and play play area. The sensory garden will give families meaningful ways to spend time together outside, helping children discover nature through touch, sound, scent, and creativity. These experiences build curiosity, confidence, and a lifelong appreciation of the natural world. Our volunteers at the Oakwoodland Community Garden have already shown how much energy and care this community brings to these shared garden spaces. This project will open the door for even more volunteer involvement, offering new opportunities for residents to contribute, learn, and connect. I encourage you to support this project and help bring this enriching space to life for all families in our community. Thank you. Thank you very much, John.

Hello. Once again, I'm Anakin Michael and I would just like to state my support for this project. Um, as already stated, of course, we have the funding for it, and this is already an area where kids love playing. There's the playground right next to it. We would have that food forest going in very close. So, if they're volunteering there, this gives them another option to explore and expand their imagination and their curiosity. Um, and it gives us volunteers more fun stuff to do on Saturdays. So, I implore you to uh move this motion forward. Thank you. Thank you, Anakin.

Good evening, council members and mayor. Um, my name is Shante and again, I want to enforce that I'm speaking as the secretary for sustainable arena. Um, and behalf of the children's sensory garden, the reason why I uh, we believe that it's should be incorporated and considered is because it reflects a successful model used in many communities and it offers families an engaging outdoor activity in an area already enjoyed by children. It also encourages hands-on exploration and appreciation of nature and can be supported by the same dictated volunteers that already are incorporated at Oakwoodland. Um, I wanted to also add that there was a comment about the kindness rocks and I wanted to address that there have been guidelines already incorporated at the kindness rock which is a part of the oak woodland garden and it already asks the volunteers that volunteer um when they come in they suggest they have guidelines but they suggest it to the parents and children the older children when they come around. So that's already incorporated. But these projects very much create the opportunities for residents to contribute and get involved in their very own community. Thank you.

Thank you, Shante.

Hello, I'm Jackie Gardner and I'm a member of the uh sustainable marina and a lot of subjects have been brought up. There's one important one that I think we all know of and there's been a lot of studies about it. Mental health and being outside and having our hands in the soil and get back to nature. And I think starting at a young age the children bring their adults out. I mean it's just a matter of being there they have their hands on the plants on the soil and getting interactive with it and being friendly with it. There's a lot of students that come to our area from the college and somebody had already mentioned they don't even know how to use a shovel. Some of them never pulled a weed and we I go, "No problem. We're just going to teach you. This is what we do. This is a weed. This is good. This is bad." And they start experiencing it and um some of them act like it's a lot of work, but within an hour they're having fun. So, I just like you to encourage there's other aspects to this garden, too. Thank you. Thank you, Jackie.

Hi, I'm Angie Landram. Uh, I want to clarify harvesting of food. So, the raised beds that are at Oakwood, the individual raised beds, those are reserved for the people who are growing the food in those beds. They're growing it for their families or their community. the food forest that we're planting and the one that we've already planted in Oakwoodland. Uh that will be for everybody. You know, that's when we start adding plants underneath the trees that are already planted or when we do the children's food forest, that'll be for everybody. And the one that's close to the um mud kitchen and everything, the parents that are wanting to be involved in teaching cooking or gardening, they're those two things go together. the raising the food in the food court garden next to the mud kitchen. You know, they're going to do demonstration how to make a pie or whatever. So, those two things go together. But the anywhere you can walk through a food forest, the plan is that you can pick and eat whatever is growing there, whatever. Okay. Thanks.

Thank you, Angie. Anyone else in person wishing to speak? Okay, let's go online. Laura Hoover, welcome. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, loud and clear. Great. Thank you. There are actually two of us here. I'm here with my husband, Scott Chapley. So, if we can share the time, is that okay? You can also each have three minutes if you wish.

Okay. Thank you. So, I want to start. I'm Laura Hoover, and I am voicing my approval for uh the both the children's uh sensory garden and the wonderful food forest project. I really think both of these projects are fabulous. I'm so excited as I was hearing the volunteers in the room discussing them. Special shout out uh to the Girl Scout who's becoming an Eagle Scout. I'm so proud of you. Great work and I really really hope that uh both of these projects are approved. I well the one already was approved. Uh but I hope that the Children's Sensory Garden gets approved as well. Um, and I'm really excited that the city of Marina has such a wonderful force of volunteers who are coming out on a weekly basis uh to make the city even more beautiful than it already is. So, thank you everyone.

Scott, I'll jump in here. Um, I'm Scott Chappley. Um, just uh wanted to give great shout outs to everybody. Um, I'm actually an Eagle Scout from many years ago. So, uh, kudos Amelia for your project. I think it's a great a great idea and I think uh lots of work but uh thank you for putting that effort in. Um as far as both of these projects goes, I think it's it's just a natural extension of what already goes on at the Oak Woodland. I already think that the Oak Woodland has been a great success in drawing kids um who may start at the library, move on to the playground and say, "What's this fun stuff going on over here?" And they're really getting outside and it bring it just brings the community together. just people who never knew anything like that was happening, they walk over and they're they're hooked. They love it. Um I think when you have um the the children's garden, which is specifically, you know, even more tailored to kids, um that just uh helps even further to bring draw them into the natural world, the outdoor world. And you know, we honestly right now I'm on a screen, but I'd love to be outside somewhere doing something else. And I think any chance we can get to get our kids outside, I think is a great a great thing. And it's it's just so seamless being right there next to the library, near the playground, near the oak woodland where you've got all the volunteer help that you've got. Um but yeah, just seeing parents and their kids coming to all of those spaces, um it's just heartening and it really brings a sense of community. So, um I wholeheartedly approve of both of these projects.

And I'll say one more thing. Thank you to the city of Marina for being such a wonderful supporter with the water and any other way that you've been supporting these projects. Uh we want to give you a big shout out as well. So, thank you as well to CSMC, C4SM, everybody who's involved, all of the volunteers. We really appreciate you. All right. Thank you, Laura and Scott. Let's go to Elias Rodriguez. Welcome back, Elias.

Hello, council members. Again, my name is Elias Rodriguez, uh, a resident here in Marina. And um I just again wanted to reiterate my gratitude for sticking through this late council uh meeting um to build community uh through these projects. Um I'm in full support of the children's sensory garden. Um I think it's it'll bring a lot of uh opportunity for the community to connect uh and for uh kids to connect to nature. Um I'm in full support of the project. Uh thank you. Thank you very much, Elias. Let's go to Caitlyn Sherry. Oh, sorry, Sterry. Welcome back, Caitlyn.

Hi, council. Um, good evening again and thank you again for tuning in this late. Um, I just wanted to show my support for this project. I have worked with children in for about seven years in schools and outside of schools and I've realiz I've seen a sort of disconnect between them and the outside world and you know getting involved with plants and bugs and getting in the dirt. So I truly think that this children's sensory garden will do a lot of good towards that. Um also I know sustainable marina works very hard with all their projects and works to solve any problems there are. So, I believe that the sensor garden will truly succeed. So, thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Kaitlin. And if there's anyone else on remote that would like to raise their hand to speak, please do so now. We'll give you a moment. All right, we'll close public comment. Um, I didn't note any questions. Did any other council members note any questions? Okay. Uh, would someone like to make a motion? Mr. Mayor, did we have any comments from the from council yet? I don't think so. Oh, right. That's our next order of business. Let's go to council member Viala.

Yeah, I'll make a motion as soon as I can make a comment. So, um, just I don't know if Steve you can answer this, but when I saw all those things and the pictures, is there is it all free play or is there some times when there's somebody who is helping them the children make a mudpie or you know how does that work? As far as far as I'm aware, this is like a it's like a playground where they can do there'll be certain structures there like the mud kitchen, like the water pump, like uh the stumps and the it's it's possible you could have, you know, um uh elementary school classes there potentially. So, you might have a class there other features. Um, you have uh uh other programs that go on around the library with the water district, not the water, the park district. They may they may use that facility for some some purpose, I I imagine, but uh generally it's going to be like a playground where families can go and explore the various fun.

So there's nobody conducting a Well, there may be. Yeah, there's potentially there could be. Yeah. Right. But but it's not meant to have that. Yeah. I think that's the usual usually the way these things work. Yeah. like a playground. Okay, Kathy, I do think that it's very possible on Saturdays, we would treat it like the kindness rock area where we would have someone stationed there,

uh, probably a college student or one of our regular volunteers, um, helping out with structured, you know, here's how you take the water from the little mini workshops. we could advertise them, you know, come between 10 and noon on this date and we're going to be doing a plant exploration or a bug exploration and kind of uh use the children's sensory garden as the hub. It's like the little children's area like an amphitheater sort of concept where they come together to Yeah. Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. You want me c uh mayor pretender like just want to make a someone like can make a motion that's fine. Otherwise

and just um another very nice project to see this presented. Thank you uh Steve for having done the presentation and I especi especially like that it's fully funded so we don't have to cut anything. And uh at the um vacuation commission meeting it was discussed you know that there will they'll look into having a space where the kids can have their shoes or their feet cleaned before they go to the library because there were was concerns about tracking m into the library but that's I don't think it will be a big issue now. Yeah, I think we have to stay in close contact with library staff to make sure that an issue doesn't uh, you know, come about, but we're not expecting this to be a water park. We're expecting it to be uh like it has what they call a water pump that doesn't really pump. It's just kind of like a onoff. You pull it and you fill up your little cup of water and then you take it over to to your mud and you mix it up. you know, it's not going to be like you go to the beach and there's a shower and everyone's walking around and they transfer that mud. So, we haven't decided the ground cover. It might be chips, but it has to be, you know, safe to walk on. Uh, so we'll work that through.

Like one of the speakers mentioned issues will be will be resolved. I think we just need to get these projects going and if there are any issues, there's so many volunteers there who can help solve any issues that might come up or might never come up. So, Exactly. So, I would like to move for approval. I second. Okay. Um, if you want to read the u like approve the number two and three because it does get into some details with anou.

Okay. approving the project and site location and authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute an agreement orou with community for sustainable Monway County/C4SM for the organization to provide volunteers for development and maintenance of the sensory garden project subject to review and approval by the city attorney. Thank you. Is there a second? Early second. Okay. All right. Any comments before we go to a vote or questions? All right. Uh, all in favor, please say I. I. Uh, any abstensions or nos, please say no.

All right. So, that motion passes with the three of us here. Unanimous. And, uh, we have some time left. I would suggest we try to work through 13E. Uh, city manager, I think we can do that in a quick amount of time. disregards surplus land and moves us uh progresses us on an important matter that's fairly administr administrative. Belinda, do you have the presentation? Okay. So, I can just walk you through this in five minutes. Um so, uh next slide. Is there a slide that was missing? Oh, there we go. That one. Okay. So, what is the Surplus Land Act? Just to give you one minute overview. Enacted in 1968, but essentially ignored for decades. Uh, but in the last, you know, four years, there's been a couple of amendments that have added some pretty strict compliance rules. Uh in the last amendment, they did grant HCD authority to investigate violations and impose fines that are 30% of up to 30% of the sales price. Uh also the attorney general can uh compel compliance and private parties can also sue uh to compel compliance. So next slide. So the property we're talking about is a 1.33 acre property in on Cedill. Uh it contains six blighted former US barracks. It's not currently used for any governmental or municipal purpose and was originally part of the Ford or uh military reservation. Uh it is in an area that's planned for residential development. So next slide.

uh obviously it was part of Port or but uh then it was originally conveyed to the Monterey Peninsula Community College District and then subsequent to that uh I think there was some swap swapping that occurred uh in September of 2010. So currently the owner of that property is a city of Marina. Next slide. And the property we're talking about there is highlighted in yellow. Next slide. It's a closeup. same property. Next slide. Okay. So, the required steps. One, the city council needs to declare uh the property as surplus at a public meeting, which is what we're doing today. Next, there would be a notice of availability to ed eligible entities that needs to be provided. Those entities are listed there on the right hand side. uh those entities would have 60 days to respond to that notice uh declaring you know indicating they have interest uh and then the city would negotiate with any of those uh for a period of 90 days. Uh after that we would submit that documentation to HCD for review. Uh and then we would return to council for final approval whatever the disposition is. So for example if no uh if you know we don't staff does not recommend entering into any agreements or accepting any proposal we would come with that report to council sort of the results of that difference. So next slide. Uh this is just sort of the next four steps after tonight. What would happen if you decide to declare it a surplus property? Then the next step would be again the notice of availability. The review and negotiation for 90 days. Step three HCD reviews. And then finally we come back to council for any further

uh direction. Uh, and just want to note that council retains full discretion. You're not required to uh accept offers below fair market value. You can reject any proposals provided you do it in good faith. Uh, and obviously the city council retains approval of all terms and conditions. Uh, including not electing to depose the property, dispose of the property at all. Uh, and any SQL review will happen uh, at the appropriate stage. That is my report. Okay. Uh let's go to Council Member Viala. If you want to make a motion.

Let's go to Council to make a motion at the same time. That'd be great. Sure. Um just one quick question. Um so um if we um if we I'm sorry. Let's do public comment. I got ahead of myself. Anyone in public here in person want to make any comment on this? Please step forward. Not seeing anyone. Anyone online? Let's go to Jeffrey Markham. Good evening, Jeffrey Markham.

Thank you, Mayor. Um the uh demolition of the barracks um historically has been uh difficult because of the um asbestous and lead and other contaminants that they contain. Does disposition of these properties um take into account any proposals of how they're going to do that or is that beyond the scope of of this particular uh dispersal?

Thank you, Jeff. Anyone else? And we'll answer your question as soon as public comment's over. Anyone else online wish to raise their hand to speak to this matter? All right, we'll close public comment. And as far as cleanup of any contamination or hazardous materials, how does that work relevant to tonight's agenda item? Uh will any proposal, it wouldn't be necessarily be relevant to tonight's, but it would be part of the process in the sense of any proposal would it have to address the addressing that

issue? Okay. So if if uh if a buyer if someone was interested in buying the property before they bought it, would they have to give us a plan or they do that with the appropriate agencies after they buy it? I think they would have to come with with some plan to address those conditions. Our intent we would not want to sell it to an entity and then they sit out those blighted structures be there for another two years. We would require a plan with firm timelines to remove the blighted structures.

We do like Could we do like we've done with um Sheay Holmes where we had a takeback provision. If not by a certain date, you don't remove these structures, we will retake site control or is that not possible? Uh yes, that would be possible. Something we could look at. Correct. When the time comes. Okay. Um, I um will motion that we uh direct the city manager to make findings that this parcel is surplus land. Declare it as such, complying with all surplus land surplus land act requirements and direct staff to return with recommendations after completing the process.

I second, but I also was in the middle of asking a question. Yeah. So, so now there's a motion on the floor. Council member Biala. Okay. Just a real quick question. So, if we get to the stage of notice of availability to eligible entities, is there no deadline we can have that open for a long time if we get no no interest in it? We don't have to do it for a period longer than 60 days. But but I know but if we could if we wanted to keep it open

we do we have any deadlines for that if after 60 days there's nobody biting at the at the hook then we can just keep it going until somebody has an interest. Um no that that is not our intent. Oh okay. So at 60 days then we close it and then we what we go to option B which is really option A. We just want we want to go through through the surplus land process and so we're going to go through the timelines and so

Okay. Okay. That doesn't really answer but it's okay. If if no one responds after 60 days and our report to council is we've complied with the surplus land act now you know we get further direction at that point but if you told us for example can you do another 60 days then we could do that as well I see so okay got it thanks all right we have a motion on the floor any final comments all in favor please say I I

all oppose please say No. Any abstensions? That motion passes with the three of us. Uh now, theoretically, we could ask for a brief uh discussion on this next item in case any of the three of us have any burning questions or direction we want to give staff to move this process ahead. And I uh I'll motion we go five more minutes. I'll second. All in favor, please say I. I. Okay. So, I want to ask our city manager, how are we doing on timeline? You know, we always say we want to get this done as quick as we can. So, are we falling behind?

Uh, we will start falling behind. So, any direction tonight would be helpful because FM3 really needs to um get our surveys out there to the community. So, if we can get some direction on the UUT, the percentage, that would be really helpful.

All right. Uh so this is an update because we've already heard it all with the full council and we've asked them to come back with some information. They're coming back with the information. There's nothing really new here except exhibit C. It gives us some of the information we wanted which compares u what other cities are doing with the types of um utilities that are included and the amount of tax uh 6% 5%. And then the last page they staff responding to us about how we we would use discounts and how that would affect the bottom line. And we see that I think that the citizens committee did they recommend 7%.

Yes. So the CIS they recommend 7% with discounts for PG& we would bring in $51 million and I think that's that's in the ballpark a little bit more than we would need. Correct. Yeah. Yes, but although with escalation of cost um u but I think anywhere between six and 7%. Um okay

and I think what the uh citizens advisory uh committee they said they just want to be sure that we did the UT enough to build all the facilities and they were comfortable if that was 7% if it was less if that's fine but they wanted to be sure that there is enough to build everything. Okay. So, to move this along but not um remove the other two council members from the process, the direction I think would be appropriate was since we haven't Did you receive any comments or concerns by council members? Did you receive any comments or concerns from the public? I have a big one. You yourself? Yes.

Okay. Um so, let's let's get that just a moment. So, um well, let's let's take that now. Let's go to council member Viala. Okay. Oh yeah, public comment if anyone would like to comment on this matter regarding strategies for the construction and funding options um to come forward. Thank you, David, for being patient tonight.

Well, I I do hope you'll give me the entire three minutes. Well, first of all, believe it or not, this issue has a little bit to do with Lane. And uh I'll explain that, but I want to say uh Lane, congratulations on your retirement. I'm proud to have been to have worked with you in the past as a city council member. And um I want you to try to imagine I want the whole council and the city manager to imagine that you're long gone. you've been replaced by another city manager and the this project has been built on the MST parcel and then one a couple of employees go to the city manager and they say well boss why have why are we in this set of buildings that is right next to um Lucky and CVS and how'd that happen and the new city manager would say, "Well, it's probably the old city manager's fault." Because what apparently he did was he advised council of the of the proper location and he looked for the ugliest strip mall in the county, which is includes the L. It's an L-shaped strip mall, right? and he picked that one because he was disgruntled. Now, of course, you of course you're not you're not a disgruntled employee, but but that's the kind of thing one would say. And um it it the MST site is such a bad location. Aside from the fact that the city doesn't own it, MSC does.

There's much more park space around that will be around the ultimate um city center if it's built in in Lo Padden Park. Uh let me stop you just for a moment, David. Let's hold this time. Uh let's go to 11:20 if needed. That's my motion. Second. All in favor, please say I. I. Okay, I that's unanimous. Please continue to Does that mean I have more time like some of the other speakers got? You got You gave one guy five minutes.

It was special. Well, that's sometimes a problem, isn't it? So, there's much more park space around the Vince Deaggio site and you're going to have happier employees, better morale. Um there is more room to expand and you don't want this this city new beautiful city center in a crowded place filled with car exhaust and no room for expansion. It's just a bad idea. Lock Patterson Lock Padden with the current facilities is one and um not only Lock Padden but Vince de kind of

the the courthouse is there in Lock Padden. The the library is in um I'm sorry it's the other way around. the library is in. See, I'm getting nervous because I'm thinking you'll cut me off at any second like has happened many times before. So, uh, if the council doesn't object, we'll give another 30 seconds. We have a couple more people that want to speak. So, 30 more seconds. Dave,

I guess I'm special. Thank you. At any rate, it's kind of a city center Lock Padden and Vincio. is separated by a street and by wetlands but it's a nice be both place the whole area is much nicer than the MST site which is not going to leave any room for expansion and the city doesn't own it. So that's all I have. Thank you and congratulations again, Lane.

Okay, anyone else in the room that'd like to speak to this? So, I'm thinking where we're going to go with this tonight is here's some public comment, not really take any action, you know, but we we'll continue with public comment and then we'll talk about it, but maybe we'll take action, but okay. Um, let's go to Denise Turley. Welcome, Denise.

Hello. Um, so as to that very complex issue, have we as yet had a Saturday or whatever day meeting for a couple of hours? Uh, paper on the wall, people can write comments. Um, meeting is my question. Thank you. Thank you, Denise. and we'll we'll answer that question as a public comment is over. Let's go to Mike Mohler.

Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Loud and clear.

Okay, great. Sometimes I have problem with my microphone. Hey, um what I mean what's what's going on here? We had two council members left and you guys keep adding stuff on and I'll be honest with you, I don't know. Um, are we really going to go full boore and talk about this with at after 11:00 at night um with two council members missing? I think this is this is a bad idea. Um I and really you all up there should be ashamed in keeping this conversation going right now. Uh this is a big deal and for you to even have this discussion and even consider making some sort of decisions tonight on this this late at night is is really disappointing. Um and and I I wish you would stop right now, please. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mike. Let's go to Jeffrey Markham. Welcome back, Jeffrey. Uh thank you, mayor. And um I won't use the same words, but uh this is a very consequential matter uh for the dis and I think it would be wise to have the full dis on board um before you take any action, which I hope you won't. Tonight it is 11:08 and uh and uh probably an illconsidered time to take this up. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jeff.

Okay, anyone else wish to speak? Please raise your hand. We'll give you another moment. All right, we'll close public comment. Um and uh let's go to Kathy Biala. Council Ba. Oh. Um question um Denise asked what will we have any community meetings basically where we have a full discussion of this.

Uh yes we will. We have um uh Ryder Smith, Lutra, Pepe Smith uh online and the council has brought them on board to do extensive education and outreach and and part of once we get some guidance really for the next three or four months. It's going to be extensive outreach. Um, and I think part of that will be community meetings as Denise talked about and and and putting um posters in the wall, but also talked about um and this was directed from the council. We'll be doing site walkthroughs of city facilities. We'll be doing site walkthroughs of the MST site of the Vincu site. And so there'll there'll be a lot of more um outreach. Definitely don't need any decisions but definitely need some direction to keep the process moving forward.

Okay. All right. Um and then there was concern by two individuals that we only have three of us here and to some extent I share their concern and I I think that um the best we can do is uh make the most progress tonight without making any big decisions of course but we don't want to lose time on this. Everyone agrees we have a tight time frame. So, whatever we can get out of tonight, let's try to make some progress, but it doesn't have to be anything that can't be, you know, um, uh, reversed or anything like that when we have the full council and more public comment. I just hate to leave an item on the table this important when staff has done some work on it that we ask them to do. And we often go later than 11:00 as other cities also do. But let's u, so that's that's our feedback. Let's can return to Council Member Miala.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, let me let me just say my my opinion about having only three people left at this time. It was a choice and we do have a quorum. And so, I I just want to say that. However, I do agree with um Jeff Markham and and Mike Mohler because when when you tackled this uh I thought you were just going to ask, you know, about the timelines. I have no intentions of talking about this at 11:00 at night. I have a serious issue that has to do with the 6 point I'm sorry. I'm getting so tired. I'm I'm I'm blocking 6.5 million from

No. Um, no. The purchase price that was said in in this for the MST property is what? Is it was

45 million. 4 to 5 million. No. And it's at 6 million. So I need to talk about that. And it has direct implication to the percentage on the UUT. And that's big. And I'm I don't think it's it's right for us to just categorize this as as old information and we're just summarizing it. So, I I need to talk about it, but I'm not willing to open that up today and have a debate because it would be a debate about it. And I feel very, you know, very compelled to uh say it when when people are all here to hear it and to understand the impact of that that um purchase of that land on the UUT percentage.

Yeah, thank you. That's exactly why I wanted to have a little bit of discussion just with the three of us here. Give um staff some flavor of what we're thinking because if they know what three of us think, that's better than knowing what zero of us think. And we're not going to make any big decisions tonight. So, so I hear that uh we're going to have public meetings. We're going to have site walkthroughs. I didn't know that before tonight. So, now we can tell that to anyone that we talk to on the streets. Uh, we know that at least council member Viala is very concerned about the price tag on one option. Um, and I'm sure there's pros and cons that we'll hear next time this issue comes up for for any location that we consider. Um my big input is that um consistent what the citizens committee said the 7% UUT uh is going to get us to the finish line. Um, and that the other big piece I want to say is thank you for looking at the uh discount rates and the impact they will have and if 7% with households eligible for PG& care are exempted brings in 51 million. If that does the trick with the three uh point five million that's left, you know, after what we did earlier tonight, any other re and any other revenues. So, sorry for my cough. I hope that staff can come back next time when all five council members are here and sort of add up, you know, what's needed and what's available. And they've done a good job of adding up what's needed. I don't know if I see here. Um, yeah, I do see that the the in the U$ 56 million

is the income that the revenue that we might have available to this uh is that accurate, Lane? Yes. the the the biggest thing in it is it's it's the exemp exemptions of the diff different groups and it and we can certainly have that discussion at the next meeting but it really does uh impacted um quite a bit. So one option would be um the people that are already under the P Gen care program their utility rates are already lower. Therefore if we do the UUT they are already getting a credit. Now if you if you say if they're qualify that that they get exempt from all UTS then that has a much greater impact. Um

okay so I think we need to explore that more.

Yeah because if you look at the 7% line on the last page 62 million no exemptions 51 million if you have exemptions. But what I don't know, and I guess I don't see it in here, is what revenues do we have available to add to that number? So the UUT brings in X. What else do we have? And we know we have at least uh 3.2 million, 3.5 million from Preston Park, right? So that means that we have 65.5 million with no exemptions and 54.5 million with exemptions. But there might be other monies that we can add to that, too. But we need to get that total up to afford 56 million as I read it. Um 56 million is what is needed. Uh is that accurate?

So whatever we do on this last page has to join with other funds available and at least equal 56 million. So that's the purpose of tonight at this late hour is just to get some feedback. Uh so we have the pros and cons of both sites. we still need to discuss and and we need some we need some more math that's not in here. It might be fairly simple math to do and Kathy you're shaking your head so I'm done talking. Let's go first to Mayor Pro Bisher and then back to Kathy. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Yeah. So city manager that's what you need from us now. We we of course will not make any big decisions and I appreciate the public still being here to remind us of that

but this is all you need is to to know that yes please go ahead with the UUT option. Uh, correct. But and we we certainly we'll talk about that next bean, but it really helps what the mayor talked about to crystallize it that we want to be clear on what's the target amount and then the discussion is if we exempt all the PG& qualified then there's a higher percentage but we have to charge everyone else 7 million. If we say, "Okay, um, we aren't going to exempt them from UT, but they're already getting the credit." Um, then the percentage is is a lower percent that we charge everyone else. But yeah, that's the discussion that that we need to have.

And I did have a question. It seems that that the calculations are for 15 years. If I look at 4 million per year and then total of 62 or 51 million. So that seems to be calculated over a duration of 15 years. Yeah. Have to do that because we could also look at making that longer. I mean it it might take longer to get all that money. If we good bond for the facility and the bonding would be

it it is a 30-year bond. What you're seeing is also the interest estimated that goes into that. We had our um financial advisor run samples of of different um at the at what they project the interest rate to be and what the debt service would be both principal and interest. Yes, I just looked at total UUT revenue estimates. I assume that's per year. And then the uh preliminary estimate of bond capacity turns out to be 15 times that. So that's why I thought that they look at a duration of 15 years because if you don't have a time limit, you can make it as large as you like.

Let me interrupt here on time. We said 11:20. Okay. I'll motion we go to uh 11:30 if needed. I'll second. In favor, please say I. I. Uh Nita, I didn't hear. That's this is a question maybe that if I might not have be the only one with that question. So that might be something for the next meeting to um I will have to back into that.

Yes, thank you because I might have and for the rest I just one remark since my my fellow council member did make remarks about the location. Um I see it as yes, we do not own the MST uh parcel so it might cost 5 million. The alternative we would give up most of Vincy Miguel Park. We cannot buy a park somewhere for $5 million with mature trees and having that as open space. So for me that's a trade-off. I think that there's a beautiful park. It's being used a lot and we would give that up instead of spending 5 million for a location that I think is perfect for a city hall. Per city hall should be where the people are and not in a beautiful park. In my opinion, the library is not even in the right spot. The library should have been where the people are, but that's another one. Sorry. Okay, I'll stop. It's fine.

Okay. Thank you very much. Let's go to Council Member Bola. Okay. Um, Mr. Mayor, when you said the Citizens Advisory Committee recommended a 7% uh UUT, that's what you said, correct? That was my understanding.

Okay. Now my challenge is is one that that an alternate site was never addressed in that we had to find it later because a citizen in that group brought it up. Now I'm looking only from the UUT perspective. This this uh table here on page is exhibit E does not include the the uh the um purchase price of 6 million. Correct Tori when when you have the 7% and you you have 51,000 on the the I mean I'm sorry that's right,000. Okay,

that is correct. It is it would be an additional does not it does not include spending the need the upping six6 million for the purchase price of reservation roadside. Correct. That is correct.

That is very important for us to have then to show that if that site is chosen we're going to probably bump this up to 8%. It's if you look at from 1 to 2% it's basically you know 7.5 right of of million in order to go to the next 1%. So here we have if you're going to choose 8 7% and you say that you want to buy reservation road you have to add that 6 million to that cost and then you're going to have to say the UT has to be 8%. I didn't want to talk about this, but it really upsets me that we're going down this path and we're we're we're we're we're not being accountable for that extra expenditure,

right? We will be accountable. I know, but at 11:00 when there's no one here, right? This is just to get off our chest any burning comments, questions, it doesn't change the process. Uh, but to your point, and this is why I'm glad we're talking to your point, if you go to exhibit A, that talks about project costs. And so, you know, a good question would be when it says city hall council chamber 21.5 million, do we need to add 5 million to that? 6 million or 6 million.

Okay. So, then when you go to the page that Kathy was referring to, this is the revenue page. This is not affected by whether you have to buy something or not. So it is relevant because you'll need a higher revenue if you have a higher project cost. That's right.

So if you look at exhibit A and you see uh city council chamber 21.5 with let's call it option A with this the majority of the um citizens committee recommended reservation road. You might bump that up to 275. I'm not sure something like that. So with 275 you'd add another 6 million to the total grand total which was 46. You add or 47 almost 47 you add 6 million to that now you're talking 53. So that final number on exhibit A becomes 53 instead of 46 ballpark you know 53 million. So then you come back to the table that you were talking about Kathy where do you find 53 million? you find it with no exemptions at 6% 54 million or you find it with exemptions um uh on 7.5% which was kind of your point you had to get a higher u but tonight we're not going to do much except get some things off our chest and kind of get familiar with some of these numbers. We'll come back in the near future, probably the next meeting, first thing on the agenda, and we'll go over all of this all over again. But staff is further ahead now than they were 20 minutes ago.

Okay. Then I would like to request then that this this exhibit E be updated to include the 6 million if that site is chosen. Yeah. So Kathy, I think you want to update exhibit A exhibit. It has the project costs. So we might have two columns. uh option A reservation road option B vincio park and they'll have different costs and then we'll have to compare that to this to say how do we afford it right

so the direction I hear tonight which is not which is reversible we're not doing anything that's irreversible is that um staff add project costs for two sites so we don't get the impression that the same cost no matter which site and that uh staff do a little math and tell us how we get to that final figure of either 40 or 47,000 minus 47 + 6 53 million. Uh so 47 million versus 53 million. Sorry I misspoke misspoke. So how do we get there? They staff can give us some options like one package is 7.5% uh no exemptions but another option would be the lowest UUT we could get because that's going to be the most popular with other funding available like the 3.5 million that we left on the table after our first item. So it's this it's this money on exhibit E plus 3.5 million plus whatever else just like we did today for the park. Is there any other money that can can add into the pot so that we can go for a lower UUT? So if the citizen committee said seven, but of course they'd like it to be six or five, can we get there somehow? So that's the direction that I hear tonight

and it's 54 million because you're you're still using 5 million that was previously said in this staff report said 6 million for the purchase of that. Uh can you repeat that just so it's clear? I I wasn't You're still using the 5 million from the previous um uh council of the purchase price of the reservation road uh property. Now in this staff report it says it's 6 million. So just just be consistent. It's 54 million total. Yeah, I was adding 6 million in my last five minutes of discussion. Oh, I I heard you say 50. So the 40 the 47 million

bottom line becomes 6 million more becomes 53 million bottom line if you chose option A reservation road. Oh okay. I I thought I had 54 but I have to look at that again. Yeah I'm just looking at 47 million on exhibit A. But that's not thinking about the 6 million purchase price. You add that it becomes 63. 57 becomes 63. So then you look at this table here and you look for 63. I was saying that because isn't it what what is the total 57?

Yeah, go to exhibit A. Yeah, if you go to exhibit A, the bottom right number is your total for all uh facilities and it's 47 million bottom right total total. Yeah, it's here. It's 46932. We'll call it 47 million. Got it. And then you add the 6 million. Got it. for for project A and then you got to find that money. So, um does staff feel comfortable about our discussion?

Uh this is very helpful. Uh if if I could writer just address one question because we don't necessarily need to select a site. I mean there's pros and cons. Um but if Ryder, if you could talk about that a little bit. I think this is kind of reflective that um we start to divide the community if we focus on the site. Um but what are your thoughts on that writer and and what should we talk about? What do you suggest talking about the site next time?

Yeah, my I mean it would be it's always helpful to have more specificity. I I will also just say the more specifics you have, the more uh there are particular constituencies who will be excited or unexited about the particular selection. Um, and I think I would also say interpreting from what I heard from the citizen advisory committee, there seem to be a general desire to have more specificity than less. Arguably that would mean if you were to at least narrow down to two possible sites as the final concluding and there's a discussion about those that goes all the way through November. Although I would love to see some polling data about this from our friends at FM3. it should that that would be better than having a wide openen plan with no particular designated sites uh that have been determined based upon um the council's actions. So even getting down to two would be better than having four or eight from my perspective on that.

Thank you. And can I ask one another question as far as our timeline engaging FM3 because we're trying to get as much information as possible from council before we go out in the survey. How is that affecting our timeline? Yeah. Well, we do it next March whatever 3rd, fourth.

Yeah, that's that's fairly. I mean, obviously the sooner we have access to some perspectives from the community that benefit from a survey, the better off it helps out with all our community outreach and uh and understanding voter sentiment. So, but we also need to make sure we're asking the right question. So, like that's been our our concern tonight is to make sure we have enough direction to even know what level of UT tax to poll on. Um, so that if we go ask the question, we're actually testing a relatively accurate ballot question. Um, so you know, if what I'm hearing tonight is UUT 7% uh seems like the likely outcome and we might just go down from there if we find an alternative plan, then that gives us enough details to know how to go out and pursue that question uh and ask the ballot measure question with the specific language that would speak to a 7% UT. But we want to make sure we're confident that we have some council support that level so that we don't end up asking the wrong question and wasting our time asking the wrong question. Okay. Uh, who spoke last? I want to go back and forth. Was it Elizabeth or Kathy?

Okay. Let's go to C uh, Mayor Bertam Fisher. Just a question for U. City Manager. Where did the $6 million come from? Because MST said four to five million. Is there a reason that it was increased to six or just be careful? Just Okay. I like this because Yes. Um we don't have it's it's not an appraisal of the property. So and what will be the process to and let me interrupt here. Um oh yeah I'll motion we go to uh 1140 if necessary. Second and all in favor please say I I go ahead Elizabeth. Sorry.

So what would the process be to get to that number? uh if we had direction from the council move forward then we'd start talking with MSG and I'm sure they would then do an appraisal for the site

and we don't want to decide that without the full council probably yeah so we'll wait okay u and then just to remark um because it does say you know the of the the amounts exclude potential land acquisition cost of 6 million million but it also excludes excludes the 6.5 million in unallocated funds from the Preston park fund. So, and of course, if we leave this site, this overtime could be sold, but the problem is you won't get the money in for what you sell until you have built your new location. But there are options further down the line. So, um, in the the project cost work and the revenue building math work, it sounds like you want there to be some some consideration of the value of this property. Were we to sell this in

the same that's the same for Vincy Macho as well. You would this you would vacate this. So, that doesn't make a difference. It's just for for us or for our future people on the council there will become there is a chance that money will come in at a later time when this can be sold. So it's kind of complicated but if we let's say theoretically we passed a 7% UUT then we sold this and we had more money than we had planned on in exhibit A we could always reduce the UUT even without going to the public. Right. Yes. I think how we'd board the ballot measure and right you can jump in. It'd be up to right

um maximum amount and then you could adjust it down and I guess we would go to the public because it would be a council discussion and they're not going to complain for nobody complain. I didn't don't think anybody. So, it's a good point that that this number here on exhibit E might be more than we need, whatever number we pick because we might have some some some payback if we were to sell this. Whatever site we choose, this could there could be some clawback of of the UUT. Okay. Anything more before we go to council member Viala? No, thank you. Okay.

Okay. So, excuse. Okay. All right. Um I have not spoken about the the sites. I am just saying that based on the UUT that you have to be transparent that one of the sites if chosen will impact the percentage of UUT. So when Mr. Ryder said says uh you know he wants to get some clarification of the sites etc. my I haven't commented about the sites. I just want us to be transparent that one site will be 6 million more than any other options. I'm fine with saying that the the two options are Vince Deaggio and and uh reservation road. But please understand I'm not touching that that preference. I'm just saying about the UT and the finances attached to it.

Tonight you're not saying exactly. So whatever you say the committee thought that 7% was the target number I am saying then transparently if we decided on reservation road then you have to say we're asking for an 8% uut and now you're saying well we could always see if we could get some more tweaks on this and stuff like that. I understand that but I'm looking at the information that was given to us tonight and I'm saying that that's not transparent.

Right. And that's why it's good we talk tonight. And one of the directions to staff, which should not upset anybody, is that we come back with two different project costs, one for site A and one for site B. Then when we all meet again, we'll be able to compare those two costs to this table of revenue.

I understand that. I'm sure. The other direction for tonight is that uh city give us city staff give us a little bit more math next time about how we can build up to whatever the project costs are for those two sites. And I don't think 8% looks necessary because the highest this thing this this table goes is 7.5%. And if you don't have exemptions, this table suggests we would have 67 million which is more than 63 million. But but and you're basing that on this, but if we said then based on all the other savings that we could possibly have, it looks like we could go to 6%. I just want the the public to know that that 6% would change to 7% because of that purchase price of 6 million.

And we'll be able to do that next time we meet because it'll be in black and white. Right. Tonight it wasn't in black and white. We're asking for the direction we're giving is that it be this table exhibit A be augmented. So, so what you're saying will be more easier for everyone. Um, okay. So, I think staff heard the director. Well, may make we don't need to make a motion. We just want more more math on exhibit A and more math on revenue sources to try to meet those exhibit A costs. Okay. All right. Uh, we are ajourned. Thank you staff for sticking it out. We appreciate that. Okay.