City Council - Regular Meeting

recording in progress all right welcome to tuesday july 7 2026 marina regular city council meeting we're about to go to closed session uh we'll call this meeting to order if we have a roll call please anita council member mccarthy here council member mcadams council member biala shall be late mayor tim fisher here mayor delgado here any changes to the agenda

No, there are no changes, Mayor.

All right. No one here in person wishing to comment. Anybody online wishing to comment? All right. Then we'll move to closed session and reconvene here at 6 o'clock for the reception and then 6.30, 5.30 for the reception and then 6.30 for the open meeting. Recording stopped. 30 minutes. All right, we're going to go ahead and get going, everybody. Man, you are a raucous crowd. You're all so happy that Lane is retiring. All right. Thank you, everyone, for being here. It's a very special reason that you're here and we appreciate it. We're going to have a moment of silence. And then Lane Long has been voluntold to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, please stand for a moment of silence in the pledge. for being a good sport all right we have a press special presentation oh sorry um at um duties first our city attorney renee ortega is going to summarize our closed session that we were in before we came out for the reception yes thank you mayor so council provided direction but took no reportable action and that's so boring it's what he always says why even go to closed session So we're going to start this special occasion off with a presentation from Senator John Laird's office and Assemblywoman Dawn Addis's office. And to present will be their staff, Natalie Boston and Nicole Holquint. And Nicole and Natalie, come on up. And our city clerk will give you a microphone or you can stand there and use that microphone. That's fine too.

Okay, hi everyone. My name is Natalie and I'm a district representative for the office of State Senator John Laird, but I'm also a resident of Marina. Yeah, and I'm here to celebrate Lane Long's incredible work as the Marina City Manager for 13 years. And he's really helped our city thrive. It's clear through the housing infrastructure projects, through the new business developments. As someone who lives here, the work that you've done has made me very proud to call Marina home. So on behalf of the office of Senator Laird, we have a resolution that we'll present you with in a minute to kind of honor your hard work and dedication. And I just want to say thank you so much for everything you've done. And I hope you enjoy your well-earned retirement.

Well, thank you, Natalie, for that beautiful introduction. I don't have much different to say that, but I am Nicole Holguin. I'm here on behalf of Assemblymember Dawn Addis, and we're here to also honor a decades long public service career culminated in a 13 year run as the city manager. we know marina has flourished under your guidance and leadership so on behalf of the 30th assembly district and assembly member addis and also senator john laird we would like to present this joint resolution to you in celebration of again your well-earned retirement so if you'd like we can take a photo with you

Okay, the city of Marina also has a proclamation to present to Lane. And I wanted to read off some comments about Lane since we're here tonight to honor his retirement as city manager. We'll start out by saying that he joined us here in Marina in 2013, bringing 24 years of prior government experience, Utah, California. So we already knew how California worked as a city manager. He's given 37 years to public service, the last 13 of those to our Marina community. Lane's story here in Marina has been one that's bold and transformative. One tangible impact of Lane's hard work and support of our community is the Dunes Development Project. We have Don Hofer here. Thank you, Don, for being here and representing Shea and the Dunes Project, which in 2017 was on the rocks. It wasn't working and it could have died 40% completion. Lane went to work with our partners there and brought to council in 2018 a third implementation agreement that gave some teeth for the city to move ahead. And it gave Shea Homes a new path, a path that they both could rely on, Shea and the city, to finish the development. Then came Trader Joe's, Brass Tap, 143 Terracina affordable housing units, Hilltop Park, and funded plans for Dune City Park to include the all-inclusive park, which we're all very excited about. And more recently, a plan for a Mercedes dealer that made it. generate tens of millions of dollars, should it be built, and we hope that it will, in the next few decades for Marina to continue upgrading its parks, streets, et cetera. The teeth in this 2018 agreement gave Marina the option to buy back the hotel opportunity parcel on which we are currently discussing, for which we're currently discussing an upper end hotel. Harvey Dodwell, are you still here? Harvey's here, the hotel builder. And this hotel, if it's built, and we hope it is, would bring in tens of millions of dollars of hotel tax revenue over the next few decades. Overall, Lane has brought financial strength to Marina by his steady, disciplined leadership that has Marina on solid financial footing that we weren't on prior to his coming here. And this is for the long term. Another direct impact of Lane's effort for all of us was Joby Aviation. When we interviewed Lane before hiring, we said, you know, what have you done lately? And he said, I'm an out-of-the-box thinker. I brought a Velodrome to what city? Draper? To Draper, Utah. You know, one of those high-speed, high-end bicycle competitive arenas. And So he wanted to do something equally as great for us. And that turned out to be Joby aviation at the Marine airport. Joby is the leader. If you didn't know of the world's efforts to provide electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircraft without lanes out of the box, thinking there would be no Joby and Marina. Now we in Marina are blessed with 600 jobs at Joby. And many of those are employing Marina residents. Lane has been involved in every park and housing project, every road and recreation program improvement Marina has seen since he arrived in 2013. The once abandoned portion of Fort Ord within Marina has been transformed into life with a bright future. Our aging streets and parks in Central Marina are visibly being renewed this very day and last week and last month and this will continue for years into the future because we have a plan we have funding we have great staff and leadership many of whom lane hired one of those hires was brian mcmahon no longer with us as our public works director and uh brian said before he left regarding the growing pains that we're experiencing now, he said, careful what you ask for, you know, because we want everything to be improved. And when that happens, there's a lot of disruption to our lives. That's what he was talking about. But we'll take the disruption for the improvements. The $44 million remodel of Injun Parkway transformed bumper-to-bumper traffic along its eastern 1.2 miles to free-flowing traffic through four roundabouts and a safe and separated new bike lane. This transformation is thanks to Lane's leadership within and outside of Marina, including Brian McMinn, our former public works director, Ishmael, our current public works director, and Edrie De Los Santos, Transfusion Agency of Monterey County, and monterey prince engineering champs funded it primarily monterey prince engineering built it on this the city's largest capital improvement project ever lane is the mastermind mastermind behind the concept of a seventy thousand seventy five thousand square foot recreation and aquatic center to some extent that's going to be our velodrome as well and one of the largest all-inclusive playgrounds in california planned to be built by a thousand volunteers over a three-week period and the immensely popular pump track which was the best most popular thing we ever did and it cost us only 1.5 million which nowadays doesn't sound like a lot uh but that pump track was the most popular thing we had done until gloria jean tay park and wendy hill parks were remodeled and open then they became the most popular things we'd ever done lane has had that kind of vision he's found the best team to achieve it and he's given the council over the many years great options to choose from lane jumped in when he heard the martin luther king jr bust was damaged face down in the dust on a concrete floor in airport storage Now we have a beautiful tribunal Martin Luther King Jr. sculpture garden outside our library that reminds many of its observers how the civil rights era and its point man changed our country for the better. These accomplishments represent examples of what Lane has done for our city. and his role that he has served to strengthen our community and celebrate the spirit of Marina. Beyond the projects and numbers, Lane has been widely respected for his integrity, his kindness, and his genuine commitment to Marina residents and employees. This has earned him trust and admiration from staff and from the community that he serves. Lane's grace and hard work habits, his accessibility and his kindness are some of his well-known virtues. In conclusion, on behalf of the city council, thank you Lane and Maggie and your entire family for 37 years of exceptional service. Yours is after all a family effort over the decades. not just in Marina. And we extend the whole community's best wishes to you and yours as you begin life's next chapter. Thank you. All right, before we have Lane, give his three minutes, no more than three minutes. Anita, you're going to time him. Ishmael has a special gift, fun gift to give Lane. Wherever he lives, whatever street he ends up moving to, this is for Lane. okay so now the moment you've really all been waiting for lane's three minutes of fame and then we'll have some photos with the council and then we'll have some comments from the council i kind of wrote down some comments because i tend to get emotional at times like this and maybe i won't

through my written comments um i think at first i want to acknowledge maggie um you don't realize the time it takes to be a city manager and the time it takes you away from your family and and everything i bring home on the late nights and weekends and the amazing thing about maggie is she has supported me a hundred percent she has not once complained um about staying away or pulling away maybe maybe she complains to girls um i have four daughters and a amazing son and and they have supported me uh in this career hands down when we moved to Marina, two of my kids are out of the home, and so we had three. And they're a little unsure. We moved from a nicer house from Utah's large 6,400 square foot, big acre lot, and overlooks a creek and things. We kind of moved them into Abrams Park. And they're kind of, what, Dad? But they quickly grew to love the community. among everything else it really is the people it's the people in our community it's the people our businesses uh it's the people that we work with it's our religious institutions it's our commercial businesses it's the smallest the large uh and it all really comes back to your political leaders your mayor and your city council um i can't tell you how much i appreciate working with them um the leadership their vision their direction and yeah sometimes we've disagreed on things a little bit um but we all come together because we have the same goal we want to make marina a better place for everyone and and uh through it all i want to really thank the mayor and the city council for um making my 13 years here truly enjoyable. i honestly it'll be okay to give up city council meetings i think i've had over a thousand in my career and so uh it'll be nice to have it tuesday nights uh with my wife and maybe we'll go out to celebrate every tuesday night to celebrate um but i also really want to thank say thank you to um the residents of our city know we talk about we have 52 languages and i don't really know if we have 52 languages here or not but i can tell you we have a very diverse population and we love each other we work well to each other we enjoy each other we grow with each other um we are better because of our diverse population and And I think that is something that I've learned coming from Utah, which is predominantly a white culture. And I've thrived with our diverse group here. And as I've got to know individual people, that's what makes my day. I want to give a little shout out to Don Hofer, the mayor, to acknowledge that. When I first got here in 2013, and you got to imagine 1994, 95, Fort Arden closed. And for 10 years, the community was dealing with the impacts. And so your downtown is dying. And they had these wonderful plans put together, but nothing was moving forward. And then so by the time I got here in 2013, really nothing had happened. And there's just a lot of challenges with that. And Don was the first person and met him with the mayor. and we said okay what do we need to do to start this transformation of our community and and it was hard to get um shay's back to committed to marina um but the thing about don hofer he's an amazing problem solver and we have a great level of trust and we can get through the hard times and and we've started the building and it just that first domino started going and and you can look at everything today um uh the mayor talked about these parks and and My staff knows I love parks. And building these typical parks, it's like, no, that is not who we are. And I can promise you, Marina will be known for its parks throughout California. But it all comes back to the council. I mean, I work with the staff. We get the ideas. We found the great partners. But the council... it agreed to these ideas and the council implemented all these decisions and and so these parks that are happening um are going to be amazing and it's really a team that put that together i look at the whole string that's coming down the road we have um the the city park at sea haven we have the groundbreaking next week um and you have our Aquatics and Sports Center. We are now calling that MARC. That's our acronym. It's the Marina Aquatics and Recreation Center, M-A-R-C. And that is going to be an amazing facility. And you're going to see the city park at Dunes. That's going to be under construction, as the mayor talked about, the all-inclusive park. uh that tore my strings and and you know we went the extra mile found the right right group and the thing is my staff they all jump in and they embrace these ideas and these concepts I couldn't move anything forward if it wasn't for my staff and so we have that and and just look bam bam down the road the luxury hotel of harvey dad ball um i i think that is going to be a reality is there going to be challenges absolutely um but um our council is amazing at those challenges and so i just wanted to say um this really has been the best community i've worked for maggie can vouch that This is, it's the people, it's the businesses, it's everyone that works together. And it's our political leaders that have set, they set the tone of what we're like. And so it's been an honor and a privilege to work here. And I'm very sad to go, but I'm absolutely looking forward to spending time traveling with Maggie and spend a lot more time with my kids and grandkids. So thank you very much.

Let's do a quick, let's do a round robin with our city council members and then we'll take some photos. Kathy Biala.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I did write down stuff because I don't want to skip any of my sense of appreciation for this man sitting next to me. I truly cannot express the deep gratitude I have for Lane's work and dedication to Marina. He has been the quiet visionary and engine behind the city council such that KSBW's recent broadcast on Marina started off by saying, just when you thought Marina was reaching its pinnacle on new development, and then continued by saying that a luxury hotel resort is being proposed. This speaks to that region-wide positive reputation about our city. And over 13 years, Lane has been in the background making our council's vision all possible. He doesn't get in the limelight and he doesn't want it. But he can be found working in his office until late at night, six days a week, answering phone calls on his vacation, contributing to Marina's public face of being respectful, professional, and always friendly. He has never been mean-spirited or petty or dishonest. He has been our role model of the best of interpersonal relationships to all people, including those whose opinions may differ from others. I always remind myself of Lane's impeccable demeanor while I grapple with the many challenges before our council on this dais. I want to bring up only two examples among many that have already been mentioned by our mayor that I feel only Lane could have done this for us that are absolutely critical to the future of Marina. Two examples that he has dedicated his life to and for which the public has largely taken for granted. The first is his support of Joby Aviation some nine years ago when they first approached the city. No one, including the FAA, Federal Aviation Administration, even understood what an eVTOL was. But Lane's instincts told him that this was something visionary, and Marina had a chance to be part of it. He worked closely with Joby, the CEO and staff maneuvering the FAA resistance and bureaucracy to get air taxis on the map internationally. And most importantly, for Marina to become almost synonymous with Joby. it brought fame to marina and 800 plus new jobs including high-level jobs to our region lane was a driver of all this and we should never forget this the next important contribution of lane is the vital role he has played in protecting marina's water supplies from calam over 10 years he has become our city's long-term expert alongside with our extremely competent water attorney skip spalding lane was there at every public hearing and gave testimony after testimony in the courtroom such that maybe this year marina may finally have a conclusion about water rights When the public hearings went out of the public eye, and by the way, Marina residents showed up in mass time and time again, Lane was there to continue the fight for now four years in the courtroom. You should see how eloquent, knowledgeable, and credible he speaks in the legal realm. He has been my hero on all things water. Without water, Marina will be so compromised under the predatory practices of Cal-Am. Lane has done all he could to help ensure a viable future of our water supplies. This is my last chance to give Lane the honoring he so deserves. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for the dedication and self-sacrifice you have demonstrated to our amazing city. We are the little engine that could because of you, and we should never forget that. So thank you, Lane.

Online, we have Councilmember McAdams. Hello, Jenny, and welcome.

Hi, Mayor. Can you hear me?

Yes, loud and clear.

Thank you so much. I wanted to just take a moment and to express my deep gratitude to Lane Long for his service to our city. Lane's legacy is all around us, from bringing Job B Aviation, to meeting and exceeding our RHNA housing goals, to ensuring our city provides shelter beds, transitional housing, domestic violence housing, senior housing, veteran housing, just diverse homes and safe, affordable housing for people from all walks of life that no other peninsula city is doing. Also, Lane has really shown his innovation with the below market rate program that we have. And to piggyback on Council Member Biala's comments about his advocacy and just passionate fight of protecting our water, Marina's natural resources. Lane loves the city, he loves the staff, he loves our residents. He truly is a visionary and When we look around Marina today, we are living in so much of that vision that he helped create. Truly exemplary legacy work. So, Lane, thank you for your leadership, for your service. I'm so sorry I couldn't be there tonight. But I just... I hope that you enjoy and relish in this well-deserved retirement. And thank you for your leadership and service to the city of Marina.

Thank you, Jenny.

All right. Mayor Pro Tem Elizabeth Fisher.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I did not prepare anything unlike me. But Lane, I just wanted to thank you. And I want to echo what my fellow council members have said and what the mayor has said. I often say there's so much, everything is happening in Marina and it's happening because of you. So, and also when you say the council has, you know, made the decisions, I also want to acknowledge previous councils. We're just the lucky ones to be here now that so much is happening. But I see there's at least one previous former council member is online and we have council member, former council member, Christina Medina-Dierksen here. So all those previous leaders have helped to make it happen in Marina. Everything's happening here. And just personal, when I started as a council member, many people might not realize, we always, as a council member, we go through our city manager. He's the boss. And I used to, in my job here in Marina and also as a as a resident i used to just email staff they're so happy i don't do that anymore but so and when i had my first meeting with lane as a council member i said oh but now i have access to you and he said yes you have me and boy did did i have you and i'm looking forward to our final meeting Last Thursday. And I apologize to Maggie again. It's late afternoon. So he might come home late because it's always so inspiring. You know, even if I went in there with my whole list of questions and then I always left energized. So thank you for that. I wish you all the best. together with Maggie and your children, even your parents, grandchildren. Yes, everybody. All the best, Blaine, and I'll see you next week. I'll see you tonight. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. You know, one of the things that throughout life I have always admired when I go to bed at night and I see someone that exhibits this behavior is someone who doesn't act like a short timer when they know they're leaving. Someone who works twice as hard in the weeks before your departure. And I've seen that. And again, it's just something that stays with me. It's something that reflects on who you are as a person. And I'm very appreciative of that. You're a person of great work ethic, tremendous faith. And I think that that faith has given me such an assurance in your time here that your intentions have always been honest and good and uh for the benefit of of the people of marina and so i appreciate that as well um and the last thing i want to say is that and i i've told you this personally but you have just knocked it out of the park with your hiring decisions and so while you might be leaving there's a piece of you and all of the staff that's represented in this room that is going to be here for a very long time uh i hope um and and so i i think that's a the last thing that i think about um with just all the good that you've done for marina and so thank you for all of that and of course you know everything else has been mentioned you know tonight thank you

All right. So, you know, it's been a team effort. So let's do this right. Let's all go outside and be in the photo. Because I know some of you have other things to do tonight. We won't. You'll probably leave after this ceremony is over. We'll get on with the rest of the agenda. Let's first take a photo with everybody in this room outside in the sunshine. So we'll be looking at a sunset. And so we'll be illuminated. And Belinda, our HR director, if you can find someone to take the photo, you can be in the photo. Let's all step outside. Andrea Willer is volunteering. So let's all step outside and see if we can make this work.

Oh. Oh. Oh.

Yeah. Yeah.

Are you okay?

He bought.

Thank you.

That was.

Yeah. Right. it's like that you say i have all these on your family christmas I can. Hey, here we are. Mark, Scott, and all the other staff. Come on up. Come on up. Come on up. Come on up. Come on up. Come on up. Come on up. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh.

Oh. Okay, this meeting is adjourned. Good night, everybody.

What?

We have other items on the agenda?

All right, tough act to follow, but Elizabeth Fisher, our Mayor Pro Tem, is going to do just that. with the National Parks and Recreation Month proclamation. But before she does, we have a couple of photos to present on the screen that Elizabeth, our Recreation Cultural Services Department Director is gonna lead into with us.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council Members. I'm not sure how we're quite going to follow all of that, but we will certainly give it our best Parks and Rec shot. So my name is Elizabeth Crisante. I'm the Director for Recreation and Cultural Services. I also have Andrea Diallo with me tonight, our Recreation Manager. Where are you? Okay, there you are. Perfect. And we are here to make a quick presentation on July is National Park and Recreation Month, so deemed by the National Recreation and Park Association. And so one of the great things about Parks and Rec is that we people often perceive parks and recreation as being the fun and games department um we're the folks that put on a great event a great party and people are not wrong i mean look at last saturday the fourth of july was amazing um and we love that but i want to talk a little bit more um about the other far far reaches that parks and recreation has um next slide please So this year's theme for National Park and Recreation Month is the power of parks and recreation. And I have some statistics to share. So just a couple quick references. More than 227 million people in the U.S. visited a local park or recreation facility between August of 2024 and September of 2025. Local park and recreation agencies reach more than 40 million youth, and that's just youth, each year through programs that build skills, confidence and connection. Three in five U.S. residents say proximity to parks and recreation facilities is very important when choosing a place to live. Visiting parks or recreation related facilities is known to improve physical and or mental health. 72% of people surveyed feel safe at their park and recreation facilities. And 85% of park and recreation agencies are involved with preparing for and responding to natural disasters such as fires, earthquakes, floods, and extreme weather. So what this tells me is that parks and recreation, facilities, amenities, programs, events, and all the social services that we as professionals do are integral components to the community. Our locations are places for people to gather and connect. Our programs and services enhance the quality of people's lives. And we have meaningful impact on those we engage with. And parks and recreation are essential and add value. Next slide, please. I'm now going to turn it over to Drea, who's going to talk about the power of parks and recreation in Marina.

Thank you, Elizabeth.

Hi, everyone.

Let me just bring this all the way up. So just some power facts about our department, along with our community. We have about 500 plus in membership programs that include senior, teen, youth. We have about 139 youth sports participants who participate in all sorts of sports throughout the year with Coach Ron. And that includes like youth futsal, youth basketball, track and field, and many more. This last year, we had about 20 plus community-wide special events. And at each of those events, we had about 50 plus volunteers from our community. Some major milestones this year were the first 4th of July in 2025. We had about 3,500 in attendance, and I'm pretty sure that we had close to 5,000 this time, and I'll find out exactly this week later on through Placer. We celebrated Marina's 50th anniversary in October of 2025. Very special event. And we had two park openings, one at Windy Hill on June 7, 2025, and then this last June, Gloria Jean Tate Park. And we also celebrated on June 13th, the first volunteer recognition luncheon with the Human Resources Department. And that's only going to continue to grow. Thank you.

Great job. Thank you, Drea. A lot of work behind all of those bullets.

Just kidding. Sorry. So just so everyone knows that we do have a lot of goals coming up for the rest of this year and 2027. It is to increase our overall participation by 20% throughout our department. Launch our facilities module feature in Civic Rec so that our community members will be able to rent Vince DiMaggio, Gloria Jean Tay Park, and our other facilities through our Civic Rec process online. and to have the Recreation and Cultural Services Commission retreat, and to execute our all-inclusive playground volunteer community build for our 34,450 square foot playground that we will build at the City Park of the Dunes, and to break ground on the Marina Aquatic and Recreation Complex, also known as MARC, and to produce a fee study of our department. All right, thank you.

Great goals. Thank you.

Okay, next slide. So how can you leave an impact? How can our community leave an impact? How can you get involved with Parks and Recreation? Some of the ways that people can support us, you can visit a park, you can participate in one of our programs, attend one of our many events. Sign up to volunteer with us. There's a ton of opportunities for people to volunteer. You can advocate for us. You can go to a public meeting. You can talk to City Council. You can come to our Recreation and Cultural Services Commission meetings and advocate for resources and things that you think that the community needs. And you can also follow us on social media. We have both Facebook and Instagram. One last thing that isn't on here that I wanted to just give a shout out is Friday, July 17th, which also happens to be Lane's last day, is National Parks and Recreation Professionals Day. So if you're out and about and you see one of us, feel free to give us a shout out. So we do have some of our team here. Well, a lot of them are resting from the 4th of July, but I think Carolina is still here. Still here. Thank you, Carolina. So, at this time, I think we're going to have mayor pro tem sure read the proclamation and then we want to do a couple of quick photos with our staff here and then also our recreation and cultural cultural services commissioner chair Lisa.

Great. And Elizabeth is going to decide how abbreviated to read the proclamation because you've done such a good job of addressing the topic.

Thank you, because you mentioned so much, Elizabeth. So thank you for this. Sorry. No, no, Andrea, together. So I will just read the bottom part of this proclamation. National Parks and Recreation Month. Now, therefore, I, Mayor Bruce Delgado... On behalf of the Marina City Council, do hereby proclaim July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month in the City of Marina and encourage all residents to explore and enjoy our parks, cultural programs, and recreation services throughout the month and year-round. Signed, today.

Fantastic. Let's give our Recreation and Cultural Services Department a big hand.

Thank you. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the former Recreation and Cultural Services Director. Is she still here? She sure is. Andrea Willer, who was here for only a short while, but had a very large impact on the department and the citywide team in helping kick off some of these amazing projects that Lane has been fostering for a number of years. And so I'm picking up that baton from former director willer and and carrying it and hopefully across the finish line so i'd love to invite former director willer to come up and be a part of the photo shoot too because once you're in the family you're always in the family so come on up let's get those photos and i think lane you know you're an honorary member of parks and recreation so you have to be in it too

And we would be remiss not to mention what seems like a lifelong contribution made by our former, former director of the Cultural Services Recreation Department, Terry Segrist, who many in the community still remember, who passed away suddenly several years ago, but did an incredible job with us. Thank you, Terry Segrist. okay we're going to move on to council and staff announcements oops i'm so sorry we're going to move on to ishmael and edry de los santos a great presentation actually really seriously on our city's pavement management program and thank you to public works As we speak, there are streets all over the city of Marina that are being improved this week, every day. And Scott Shepard is going to lead us off. No relation, huh? Scott Shepard, Anita Shepard?

No, it's spelled differently, too. Yes, please. I know we have a lot to do, so I'm going to try and keep it somewhat brief if I can. But it is important because it is a big deal for a city, especially the city-sized marina, to have this type of program. This robust is a really cool thing. All right. So as I said, it's Scott Shepherd. I'm a city engineer here at City Marina. Maybe a quick update on the payment management program.

And you can slow it down if you want. This is good. Takes a second. Takes a second.

All right, yeah, next slide. All right. So quick outline. I'm going to go over a very brief overview of the maintenance methods that we use just so everybody has a brief understanding about it. I'm going to talk about the pavement condition index, which is how we grade our streets. We're going to talk program history and then kind of next steps and what's upcoming. All right, types of maintenance activities. So from top to bottom, quick fixes to rebuilding your street, less expensive at the top, more expensive at the bottom. You can do crack seals and patches if anyone's been out on reservation past Crescent. That's crack sealing. It never really looks nice, but it does its job pretty well in making sure those cracks don't get bigger. slurry seals and microsurfacing almost the same thing those are wearing courses that we put on top to protect the pavement section the structural section of the pavement that way the top like quarter inch wears down but the actual pavement section is still there for the future and then overlays grinding overlays essentially taking that top two to three inches off and replacing it with fresh stuff and then when it's really bad you just got to go in there and tear everything out and rebuild it not great and very expensive Pavement condition index. So you can see grades from 0 to 100, just like everything else in life, I guess. And what we really want is to keep it between 70 and 85. We want our streets in that satisfactory zone. When they're at risk, that's when we need to start doing something before it gets to the poor and failed, which is a reconstruction project more expensive. So right now, the city marina has a PCI rating citywide average of 65. There's a caveat to that. And then that's based on data from 2021 and 2022, which is the last time that the streets were reviewed by Tamsie, who hires a consultant to come in and do this review for us. Our goal is 70. So we're really close to it. And with all the work that we've been doing since 2021 and 2022, I think we're going to be really, really close, if not at that number in the future. which should be soon, actually, because TAMC just released, I think, an RFP in September that was awarded to NCE, I believe, to do this for us countywide. So we should be getting data pretty soon. Sorry, next slide. Okay, quick county map. So on the left is 2018, and on the right is, sorry, on the left, No, yeah, on the left is 2018, on the right is 2023. So we've kind of moved. It's gonna be hard to see. I didn't realize it's gonna be this difficult, but there's a little blow up on the left side of Marina in like a dark blue. And I believe that dark blue is at high risk, which means our streets are rated between, I think the number is 50 and 60, which is not where we wanna be. And if you look on the image on the right, they're anticipating us to have moved up a category into at lower risk. which is between 60 and 70, which is a lot closer to where we want to be. So compared to the rest of the county, we look great, I feel. And we're obviously not even done with our program yet. So even more improvement coming. Next slide. Just quick informational on what type of improvement we usually do at different PCI ratings. So at the excellent, you're doing crack filling and slurry seals, right? The less expensive stuff, when everything's going good, the more expensive stuff, when everything gets bad. Just a little quick graphic on it. All right, this is an image taken from Street Saver, which is a program the city has access to that kind of depicts all this information for us graphically. And so this is just a quick graphic of when the streets were last reviewed. So in that indigo cyan color is 2022 and then that dark blue is before 2021. So you see there's a lot of streets in there and that brown has never been looked at. So there's a lot of new streets that just haven't been reviewed at all. So this is an image of the actual PCI numbers. They're not numbers, it's just a rating from bad to good. But as you can see, there's a lot of red on there, which is part of this conversation. And we fully expect those more blue, yellow, and orange colors to start creeping up into better categories as we're doing the resurfacing project this year and previous years, and everything gets reviewed this coming year by NCE and TAMC. All right, project history, like I said, pretty robust. The best data I have starts in 2018. We did some chip and slurry seals, and then just continuing from there. Those dig out repairs, we have to do that before the slurry comes in, because if you've got settlement or something, you can't have that with the slurry. You want to fix it before it gets worse. And then the current program, which was, I think, started in 2023, resolution 2023-66, started the APR-1801, and we started reconstruction. That was phase one. Phase two was a slurry seal. And then right now we're working on phase four. It's out of order. But phase four, microsurfacing, which is currently going on. I'm sure everyone's been impacted in some way. And I apologize, but sometimes we don't have a choice. But a lot of the streets, I think, are turning out really nice. And it's going to look even better once everything's restriped. And then the next phase of projects is the phase three reconstruction. We have to split that in multiple phases due to budgetary constraints. Things are turning out a lot more expensive than we anticipated. Some of the estimates were lower back in 2023 than current data showing that they'll be. So we're splitting into two phases, trying to hit all the local roads first, and then the collectors and arterials after. And then after that, it'll just be about regularly scheduled maintenance to try and keep these roads in a satisfactory condition. Next slide. I didn't realize this was gonna be a small either, but this is the budgetary outlook. So you can see from resolution 2023-66, there was about $21.5 million approved. Of that we've expended and or encumbered about 14.2 million and current estimates show about 15.5 million left to complete the reconstruction phase, that phase three. So we have a total deficit with all those numbers added up of about 8.6 million. So right now there's still 6.9 million left in the budget. And phase A, the local roads, is expected to be about 8.5. And the collectors and arterials is somewhere in 6.5 million range. It's still loading. It's a big image. So I'll talk about the image, but the image that's going to come up, hopefully there it is, is the program, the Phase 3 program. Those are all the streets that we plan to hit in Phase 3. The yellow is all of the local roads, and those purplish colors are the collectors and arterials, Phase B. um it's a combination of four reconstructions and overlays and um it's a lot of work but it's you know carmel's in there one of the worst streets i feel like there's a few other streets in there that really really really need some tlc uh but with that leave it up in the questions or can you go back to the budget slide sure i see the deficit and then i see the three numbers below that yep i don't understand the three numbers below it as they relate to the deficit So if you were to add up the Phase 3A local roads estimate and the Phase 3B collectors and arterials estimate, if you were to add those two numbers and then subtract out the 6.5 or 9, hard to read, that's where that 8.5 comes from.

Okay. So we have everything we want to do except the big number, 8.6 million.

We have 6.9 million of budget left to handle everything that we can. And then there would be a remaining 8.6 to complete all the roads that we have in that phase three.

Okay. And when will we have spent the 6.9 remaining dollars?

At some point after we send out bids for phase 3A. So phase 3A, we can bid out. But if we get bids higher than what we have budget for, we would need to find more money to complete that phase 3A phase.

Okay, is that within the next 12 months?

Yes. Yeah, yeah. So we plan, we're working right now to split the project. It's a decent amount of work for the designers to go in and parse things out and create two packages. So once they finish that, we can bid out that phase 3A. And then we'll have a better picture of exactly what that phase costs.

um and maybe what the real deficit is but because these are all just estimates at this point okay so in nine to twelve months ish we'll have approximately an 8.6 million dollar deficit or something lower or more depending on how it works out but we're basically looking for close to 10 million dollars yes that we don't have our hands on right now to do the three-year program

To complete the major remaining streets, yes. I mean, basically complete the program, yes.

Okay. And if we found the $10 million and finished the three-year program, what streets would be left in less than satisfactory condition? What kinds of streets or how many streets?

very few to none there may be streets out there that weren't inspected previously that we haven't inspected ourselves um to figure out if they're you know deficient or something but from the original program that we tried to hit all these major streets that had problems under you know 60s and 50s maybe a handful of streets um that's great i can't name them off the top of my head i wouldn't be able to give the exact number but i would say handfuls and accurate

Well, council, that's great news because when we started this, we were told it could take 20 years. And after 20 years, we'd have some significant roads that were still poor in poor condition. That was after 20 years. And so we jumped, we leapfrogged the 27 worst streets. We found $11 million to fix those. And that was going to push out fixing some other roads. But now we're hearing that if we can find 10 million, which is no small feat, we'll have almost all of our roads in satisfactory condition, which is very different than when we started back in 2019. We thought we had a 20 year program that wouldn't even still address all of our roads to that satisfactory condition. All right, let's go to Council Member McCarthy.

thank you mayor a couple quick comments um first one of the things i'm most grateful about our prior public works director was the payment moratorium that we talked about last time you came um and i dug into that a little bit since we you came to us last and just realized what a great benefit to the residents that is in terms of requiring contractors to fix streets to a certain degree having said that as we grow anytime you cut into a newly constructed street right it's like broken china you can superglue it all you want but it's never like a fully constructed street so i think that's something that we're going to be challenged with moving into the future um a question for you is how are you working with entities like the marina cross water district to make sure that we're timing this in the best possible way so that we don't seriously whatever it is and then the next month right they're digging it up

With MCWD, it's actually easier than some of the other utilities like AT&T. So MCWD, we meet pretty regularly, bi-monthly, monthly, to talk about some of the major CIP projects that we have and try and coordinate them to align them pretty well. California is one of them where we worked with them to delay slurring or microsurfacing part of the street while they're handling their major waterline reconstruction. And then we're planning to come back when they're done to finish off the rest of it. But with other utilities, it can be a little bit more difficult. And emergency repairs sometimes happen where we don't have a choice. But as part of our encroachment permit process, we usually put in conditions of like, hey, you got to resurface this whole street or something like that so that it doesn't look like patchwork.

OK, and that's my final comment is just, you know, although I'm grateful for the payment moratorium, which is part of our code, I did also have an opportunity to kind of dig into our encroachment permit. And while it's it's good, I think that there are some areas for improvement there. I mean, one example is it says that streets have to be filled to a certain standard on a short term basis, but it doesn't define that short term basis. So while I think that's supposed to mean 30 days on my street, it's been that way for four or five months. AND PRESUMABLY PUBLIC WORKS IS HAVING A HARD TIME HOLDING THE CONTRACTOR ACCOUNTABLE BECAUSE THE ENCOURAGEMENT PERMIT ISN'T SUPER CLEAR, RIGHT? SO JUST A COUPLE COMMENTS. I KNOW I'VE SHARED SOME OF THESE CONCERNS WITH YOU OFFLINE OR WITH THE DEPARTMENT OFFLINE BUT WANTED TO SAY THEM ON THE RECORD AS WELL. THANK YOU, MAYOR.

I wasn't planning, but I can always say something. I just wanted to acknowledge that the information this year was so much better than it was two years ago. So whatever contractor you're hired, it's he or she, they're doing the job very well. So thank you. Yeah.

That's good to hear. That's what we wanted.

I want to follow up. I don't know of any pothole in Marina right now. There are probably some somewhere. And as soon as people report them, they will probably be fixed right away. But it used to be fairly commonplace. And I just don't see potholes in Marina anymore. So if anyone out there knows of them or sees them, please report them and they'll get fixed. But we expect to have a lot fewer potholes now that the streets are in satisfactory condition. So thank you, Scott, and Ishmael, and Edry, and everyone else that's been working on this pavement management program. It's one of the greater successes over the last 10 years. I don't think our city streets, since they were new in the 60s and 70s, have ever been in this good of condition overall.

Okay.

Can I give you a quick plug, too, for Marina 311? So if you do see potholes, plug it into Marina Connect, and we'll do our best to get it fixed.

And how do they plug it into Marina Connect?

Go online. You can go to Citi's website. There's a tab for Marina Connect, and that'll take you to a map. And then you can go in, plug in a location, type out your information if you want. I think you can remain anonymous, too. And if you describe what's going on in a location, get sent to Public Works or other departments as needed based on what you comment on. And then we put it in the queue to get processed and fixed.

That's great, Scott.

Thanks to you and everyone on your team.

All right. So now we go to council and staff announcements, starting with staff. Edry, more on the payment management. Sorry. Okay, great.

Thanks, Edry.

Quick celebration next week on Tuesday, July 14th at 1 p.m. We're going to be closing off Imgen Road and having a ribbon cutting ceremony for the project for the Imgen Parkway widening and roundabout project. We'll have representatives from our elected officials. We'll have speakers from TAMC and here we'll be looking forward to you speaking. uh mr mayor and we'll have um little gifts to give to uh to those who attend so we hope all could attend tuesday july 14th at 1 p.m again this will be on imjin road we're going to be closing off the entire roadway so if you'd like to attend you could take california avenue to 8th street come on the southern end of imjin road and as well having the ceremony closer to the roundabout check the website for more information thank you

Great project, Edry. Great to see the artwork there, too. All right. That was July 14th?

Yes.

And what time was it? 1 p.m. July 14th at Imgen Road. Come around the Equestrian Center to get to Imgen Road, and you'll have a good parking opportunity there. All right. Anything more from staff? Council? Okay, I'll just say something that Elizabeth said or Andrea that the second ever July 4th party block party at the airport was fantastic. There was probably I don't know. 75 to 100 people lighting off fireworks. And there was probably three times that amount of people just spectating, watching the families do the safe and sane. It was a really precious end. It was about 8.30 to 9.15. to a, uh, a party that started at 3 30 PM. And I wasn't there at the start, but I understand at 3 30 PM, there was quite a long line of people waiting to get into the event at the onset. Uh, I saw two of the three bands. They were great. A lot of people dancing. The beer and wine garden was great. Otter's den local business was running the beer and wine garden. Um, I saw pictures of councilman McCarthy climbing the rock gym, rock wall with, uh, Drea and Amanda. He looked like Spider-Man, like a monkey. He got up there first. The food, there were many food trucks we had. We went to chilling and grilling, have barbecue ribs. I haven't had those in a while. Uh, it was great. Uh, it's just so much fun. Everybody was happy. Uh, you know, thousands of people. And when I walked away, it was about 10 o'clock, 1015. There were so many public works, police, fire, closing down the event. It just looks so safe and well organized and totally cared for by the city of Marin and all of its partners, including Green Waste, our hauler partner that hauls all of our recycles and trash and organics. It just was a tight you know from the outside looking in it was a tight run super successful event i'm sure it was disorganized if you were running it and you saw the flaws it could be made better that's always the case with events when you organize them yourself um but uh what a success that was and it's the second time a little bit better than last year i think one more band than last year more food it was just a little bit better round event as you might expect but just thank you it really spoke well to the city most people i talked to were from salinas which is great you know and having visitors come and understand that marina has something to offer them they'll come back and and come to other events and come to our downtown and things like that uh we know that a lot of salinas shoppers are at our walmart and our target and our other stores are out down our restaurants our lucky shopping uh market so it's it's great to cater to residents and visitors alike just a Just a shout out to a home run on July 4th. It was such a great event. Thank you.

Okay, so now we'll go to the public. Anything that's up? I may, just one real quick. I rarely advertise an event in another city, but the 77th annual Obon Festival is taking place July 12th, 2026. And I just think it's so relevant to our cultural heritage and kind of the things that we're involved with here in Marina. If you haven't been, the Obon Festival and Seaside is just a really fantastic event. You can Google it and find more information. Thank you, Mayor.

All right, and that's O-B-O-N. O-B-O-N, Obon Festival. Okay, so at public comment, anything that's on our consent agenda or anything that's on your mind that's not on our action item agenda, you have each have up to three minutes. Come on up to the podium. We'd love to hear your input.

Hello, City Council and Mayor. My name is Eli David.

I'm Matthew David, and we're student leaders of the Spay and Neuter Imperative Project, or SNP, of Monterey County.

We're excited to announce SNP's partnership with the City of Marina, as Marina will be hosting a low-cost spay and neuter clinic on August 8th for Marina residents that provides spay and neuter services for $25 each.

clinic will be at the marina airport so please call or text 925-967-1001 to schedule an appointment appointments are call or text only for marina residents only and please provide a utility bill for proof of residence again call or text 925-967-1001 this may include pain meds

an e-cone, two free vaccines, a $25 microchip, $25 sedative, and hernia slash cryptochip additional fees. We have flyers we would love to leave you to hand out for those who are interested. They're back there.

Thank you on behalf of not only the animals, but on behalf of leaders trying to make a difference in their local community.

This step will prevent so many unwanted litters and will help mitigate an overabundance of dogs and cats who don't have homes. A single unspayed female cat and her offspring can produce over 100 cats in two years and more than 2,000 in four years. Spay-neuter also extends animal lifespans and lowers mortality rates. Studies show... Intact dogs live an average of 7.9 years compared to 9.4 years for altered dogs. And neutered male cats live up to 62% longer than intact males.

The step you, the city of Marina, have taken today shows how much you care about your residents and your residences and their animals. So thank you so much for being part of the solution by joining the spay and neuter revolution. We will leave you these flyers in the back with all the information necessary for the community. So thank you, City Council and Mayor.

Thank you. Thank you, Matthew and Eli. Good job.

and to everyone at snip and one of those leaders you mentioned is brian mccarthy our city council member who cares very deeply about this issue and has bulldogged it to make sure that it happens here in marina thank you brian i think it's awesome that students are getting involved with leadership so good job you guys and all the animal welfare you're doing um also when i echo that the block party was awesome and i had a great time and a lot got to see a lot of residents really enjoying themselves so thank you guys for putting it together Got to do a little dancing myself and good for it. But also wanted to just put an observation. One I think as a former civil engineer, definitely appreciate all the pavement improvements that have been done for the city. I will say the only observation or question that I have in regards to that is, how they went about the ranking of the order of how they were going to go with the pavements. Only saying that because there are certain streets that I recognize were more in desperate and greater desperate need of repavement versus other ones. And so if we're talking limited budget or a priority, could we have tackled some of the more desperate ones that were still considered like main streets over some of the I want to say newer streets that could have waited a little longer to get repayment just because always thinking about constraint of budgets. So I was just wondering if they can speak a little bit more to that effect, but I definitely want to echo the appreciation of, you know, great roads and all that good stuff for the rest of us. Thank you. What was your name? Ana Luz Acevedo Cabrera.

Ana Luz, so please on your way out, speak to Ishmael, because there's a total method behind the madness that explains why the best streets get done first, the worst streets get done last, with some exceptions that we've already talked about tonight. But please talk to Ishmael back there in the booth on your way out, and he'll have a good discussion with you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else here in person? Come on up.

Hello, everyone. My name is Christina Medina-Dirksen, resident of Marina. And for those of you watching online, I want to show you this binder. And this is a light binder. Well, actually, it's pretty heavy. But I would estimate this probably has about 600 to 800 pages of information. And Mr. Lane Long is responsible for ensuring at least twice a month fun weekend reading for council members. And not just that, is directing these people who put it together, the staff, you know, the expertise that they have. I just commend you honestly for having a very functional city. Please don't listen to anything online because people will say how dysfunctional we are and how we're wasting money and Mayor, you live in large because you're taking money. Lots of crazy positions and all of you need to go because you do a terrible job. That's why Lane... No, I'm leaving. But the point of what I'm trying to make is that is so not true. If you read these binders and if you get the understanding of what Lane puts out to the residents and how he educates all of us, you come up here, I kind of think about it like it's... city municipal government jeopardy you have to know a little bit about everything and he puts it together and he educates not just the council but the community and i think you've done a really good job of that um it pains me when i when i do hear how things are so bad when i remember what it was like when i moved here close to 30 years ago you know um i'm looking at my time this city has gone from negative, negative hopelessness. We have no money. We can't do anything. Excuses across the board of why we couldn't do anything. We are too much of a disadvantaged community to even consider taxes because we could barely pay our bills. to where we are now with people are willing i i we see them at the parks coming to our community community people who live in my neighborhoods seeing their tax dollars at work the street pavement plan that we just talked about it's all you it's your vision and it's all of you so i think we have a lot to be proud of um Again, don't listen to what's happening online because I think a lot of it has to do with the function of what's going on up here. And you are leading a team that works very well together. Of course, there's some things that we're never going to agree on. We can do things better. A house can always do better. But I think you did a wonderful job. I'm going to miss cooking for you. That was one of my favorite things to do for him is bring him food because he was always here late. And inspiring the staff. decorate for halloween like that's kind of way out there but he let us do it and that was a matter for your staff to feel appreciated so i just want to say on behalf of the residents of marina thank you thank you very much thank you christina okay

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Superintendent MPSD. I also just want to come and pay my respects and admiration for Mr. Lane Long and all his years of service to the city of Marina. We came on around the same time, and it's just been a joy to see the city of Marina grow and flourish and really become a place that gives me hope for the entire peninsula. And I just have always felt that Lane was so open, always would take my call. If it was about kids and improving their lives, he was all for it no matter what. And Lane was someone early on that really said to me, hey, you have a high school here and you need to invest in it. We're going to build this city and it needs to have a great high school to go to as well. And so we'd like to think that we've made progress on that end as well as we've grown together. But most importantly, just want to honor your leadership and you've become a friend and I admire you greatly. So thank you for your service on behalf of over 10,000 preschool through adult school students in MPSD. They are better off because of you. So thank you.

And if anyone didn't know, that's PK Diffenbaugh, the superintendent of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District for 10 years, well, 13 years. He retired, and then he, like three months later, he unretired. So hopefully he'll be here for a lot longer. But PK has been transformative in the school district, and everybody appreciates and admires the work that he has accomplished with the schools. Thank you, PK. Anyone else in person? Come on up. I see a couple people, one at a time. That'd be fun.

Still getting used to your agendas. Is this the appropriate time to ask questions about the UT?

That'll be on the action agenda. This is for other things that aren't on them.

All right. Sounds good. Thank you.

Thank you, Philip. Coming up, Adele?

Good afternoon. My name is Adele. I'm a resident of Marina and actually I have some disagree with the ordinance of the short-term rentals as published last month. It's actually very short-noticed and we try to export all the like all the problem we had with this new regulation. Unfortunately, I joined Marina as a resident two years ago and when we bought our house with like a unit over there already, we tried to make it a legal edu and with the new ordinances came like i feel like i get punished because we follow the rules of the city to make everything on like we follow all the rules and law and make it happen and we we help our community also for like um provide even a long and short-term rental in the same time. And we try to even help ourselves because the cost of living in our state and cities is more than... in other places but again we know i will really appreciate if we can just look forward and open uh this ordinance again so we can negotiate and uh we looking forward to work with the city council and the whole city of the marina that's it thank you adele to your wife for meeting with me and help me understand your circumstances appreciate it appreciate thank you

Okay, anyone else wishing to speak? We see someone coming up. All right. Thank you. All right, we'll go online. Eleni Maniakis. Sorry if I'm mispronouncing that.

Oh, hi. I'm Eleni. I was just wondering, what is the future of the Marina Equestrian Center? Because it was a shame to see it close. And I just want to see it go to a good home to someone in Marina.

Okay, Eleni, that's a really good question. Lane, what's the phone number she can call to talk to the right person?

Just call her City Hall main line. They'll transfer it to

That's 884-1278? Yes. 831-884-1278. That's 831-884-1278. And a wonderful woman's going to answer and direct you to the right person. There's a story behind that for sure, Lenny. So we appreciate your question.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's go to Nancy Amadeo. Welcome, Nancy. might be an issue on your end, Nancy. We're trying to unmute you. Nancy, we'll come back to you. Let's go to Mike Moeller. Welcome, Mike.

Hello.

Mayor, Council, Mike Muller here. I didn't want to miss the chance to congratulate Lane on his retirement and thank him for his 13 years of dedicated service to the city of Marinette. That's when I understand 13 years is a pretty long time to serve a city. And I do appreciate this. I know your leadership through the unique challenges of redeveloping the former Fort Ord has helped shape Marina's future and leaves the city in a strong financial position. at a time when other peninsula cities are struggling marinas left pretty strong um i also want to thank you for championing the all-inclusive playground at the dunes park i truly enjoy being part of that project and i hope you'll come back and see it completed and filled with children and families enjoying it well i wish you and your family a happy healthy and well-deserved retirement line congratulations good night thank you very much mike let's go to nancy amadeo try again nancy

Okay, we'll try you one more time in the immediate future. Let's go to Retta. Hello, Retta. Welcome. Retta must be at Nancy's house.

There, okay.

Go ahead and say something.

Can you hear me?

Yes, Retta, please go ahead. Or, Retta, if you pause, Retta, we're going to go to Nancy and Dan Amadeo.

It's actually me. Nancy's on another Zoom meeting. Two quick things. Oh, by the way, Lane, thanks. You did great. Gloria Jean Tate Park is such a great success, but with it has come two challenges that the city needs to take on. One's pretty simple, trash collection and maintenance of the restroom area. The park is so crowded that there's insufficient trash receptacles. And quite frankly, you guys need to do something about that. But more importantly, as a public safety issue is the parking at the park is uh atrocious if you're trying to leave on dolphin circle trying to get out on cardoza when when all of the streets covered including the red marked areas and the curbs uh you cannot see out on the cardoza you have to actually drive out onto the northbound lane of cardoza to see what's coming up the hill and what's coming on the southbound side up the hill on the other side so i see that as a risk to the city in terms of potential injuries and god forbid some kind of wrongful death issue because you've got kids running through there they cross the street in any number of places uh supervised and unsupervised so that's uh something i really think the city needs to take a hard look at and make some temporary fixes until phase two which is another question is what is the status of phase two for the park because i was under the impression that included some additional parking someplace uh second point whole different subject is uh cypress cove confused when you dissolved the district we were told that uh because we're an r1 unit didn't need a tree removal permit and did not need to replant a tree the other thing we were told that you could develop on your property line down to the street as long as you had the appropriate permits, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm pretty sure I heard the city attorney make statements to the effect that yes, it could because the easement around the district dissolved when the district dissolved. And to the best of my knowledge, there are no public utilities of any kind that run through the easement. There's no electric, there's no power, there's no gas. So I would like confirmation on behalf of a neighbor who wants to do something that my understanding is correct. You can develop on the property, you can remove a tree and no tree removal permit is required. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Dan. And we'll answer your comments briefly in just a moment. Anyone else online? Let's go to Grace Silva-Santella. Welcome, Grace.

Hi, Marina City Council and Mayor. Lane, I want to express my gratitude to you and how much you have supported the Friends of the Marina Library and all the years that I've known you and that I've had the opportunity to work with you. If it hadn't been for you, we would not have the blackout shades that are in that room now that have allowed us to have a number of really fantastic monthly movies and free films in the library community room. If it weren't for you, we would not have been able to move forward with a built-in AV system in the community room, which not only accented, improved, made fantastic the films that we showed, but also has provided an amazing community room in that library when different nonprofits and government agencies use that room. If it weren't for you and the support that you gave the Friends of the Marina Library, granted Friends of the Marina Library paid for it, but the three-tiered planter that is now almost like an extension of the playground equipment you gave us, support to move forward with putting the synthetic turf in that three tiered planter. And if it weren't for you, we would not have received the blessing that you gave for the Friends of the Marina Library, the Marina Tree and Garden Club and the Marina Foundation to move forward with the plantings we did along the side of the building and underneath the flagpole. So I want to express to you my gratitude. You always were embracing of any ideas that we brought forward to you, and you were always extremely supportive of the efforts. And I'm speaking not just for myself, but for Ray, because you really did make it much easier for us. And you also really, when we recognized a few years ago that the irrigation system was in desperate need of repairs, you and former Public Works Director Brian McMinn stood by our sides and helped made sure that that system was improved so that we could move forward and make that library the building and the outside landscape as best as possible. So thank you very much, Lane. And I really truly wish you the best in the retirement ahead of you.

Thank you, Grace. And thanks to you and Ray for all you do for our community. Anyone else online wants to speak, please raise your hands. All right, we'll close public comment and uh Dan there is no phase two. Well, there is a phase two. We are done with phase two. That was the playground Um, and we just there are just some cleanup tasks to do Regarding gloria jean tay park. I think the staff is on it on the trash and on the restrooms including the trash and the restrooms um And then uh, please contact public works. Lissandro He is in charge of our uh landscape and lighting district uh projects so please come to public works and talk to lisandro uh to talk about the do's and don'ts since the district has been dissolved any other questions that uh someone may have noted that i didn't Councilmember McCarthy?

Mayor, I'd just like to add that specifically with the parks, please report via Marina Connect. You can make public comment all you want, but I think that Marina Connect is a place where we're really trying to have a record of some of these issues. So please use Marina Connect.

All right. So we're going to move on now to our consent agenda. Councilmembers, do you have any questions or brief comments or wish to pull anything? Councilmember McCarthy?

Thank you, Mayor. A couple quick comments on 10F10. Just congratulations to Courtney Lindberg. You know, this passes tonight as being our interim city manager. I think it's a really exciting opportunity for her, even though we're scheduled to appoint a new city manager later tonight as well. I'm just congratulations and I know you'll do great. 10K1 is the Justin Park item. And I just kind of had some questions. I thought that those fires that occurred were going to be covered under some kind of insurance. And then in this item, it looks like maybe that's not the case. Is that for Lane or Renee?

Those are already being addressed.

so um i think under 10k1 it says that there's like a one point something million dollars to rebuild did i miss that or see it wrong i think the question is whether it was covered by insurance lane yeah yes it is all covered by insurance But isn't there an item that says that, yeah, that we're putting, maybe we should pull that item and have a broader discussion.

And Vanessa is here.

If it's a brief answer, Vanessa, come on up. If you think we want more discussion, we'll have that later. And thanks for being here, Vanessa.

Thank you all. um so council member mccarthy the question was whether the fire units are covered under insurance they are fully covered under insurance okay um we are absolutely at the cusp of beginning the project um so it should be started and finished probably within the next four to six months and um it is in the budget but it's offset by the insurance got it so okay thank you

anything more brian that's it from you thank you all right i'll motion that we approve the consent agenda second Any comments before we go to a vote? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Thank you to all the staff involved with all of these many items on our consent agenda. It takes a lot of time to write the staff reports. It takes a lot more time to do the projects. And everything seems to be moving well, thanks to the staff. Everyone is helping you. Thank you, Lane, for all those items. And welcome, Courtney, to being our acting city manager starting tonight, starting the 17th.

Starting the 17th.

Starting the 17th. Sorry. All right. You get to go on vacation until then. All right. All right. So we're going to go to a couple of hearings, the first of which is really important. It regards our user utility tax. Who would like to lead us through that? City Attorney Rene?

Yes. So I will introduce my partner who you've heard from, Robert Perlmutter.

Thanks, Rene. And if we could have the slide deck. slides i'm gonna just while that's getting set up i'm gonna walk you through this is uh a lot of information that'll be very familiar about how we got here and then and then discuss the item that's on for today but Great, thanks. So the item is, as we all know, is a utility user tax proposal. This is the proposed title of the ballot question. Can we go to the next slide, please? As I mentioned, I want to just briefly cover information on how we got here that Lynn and others have introduced over several meetings over the last year and a half. But the quick overview is that the city has aging facilities that no longer meet modern standards. Your fire station is at capacity and can no longer fit modern fire trucks or store essential gear. The police headquarters is likely maxed out. There's no capacity to add officers. no private space for crime victims or consistent backup power and too few lockers both of these buildings have significant seismic vulnerability and fail seismic standards with the result that response could be paralyzed after an earthquake likewise that slow emergency response times based on all that and as you well know city hall isn't still in 50 year old pillars and the reality is that the improvements to these facilities that are needed, your general fund just can't cover them. Next slide, please. So, as you know, your city facilities citizen advisory committee looked extensively into the issue of the status of city facilities and how to fund their improvements. They unanimously agreed that replacement for several of these buildings is needed and also unanimously recommended a utilities user tax as a logical, locally controlled revenue source to fund these improvements. Amongst the issues they looked into, Marin right now is the only city along the Monterey coastline without a UUT. All of your sister cities within the county have one, and it's one of the few remaining options available to fund essential services like this. As a local tax, if this is put on the ballot and approved by the voters, it would remain locally controlled every dollar would stay in marina and could only be used to fund uh local services and priorities uh it provides it um uh it helps stabilize your city finances and offsets changing consumer and shopping patterns in terms of the different types of services that are covered um and i want to be clear from yes that this would be a general tax so the funding would be available to fund any general municipal services and that includes your the core services that are at the heart of what the city does including 9 11 response times law enforcement streets parks senior and youth programs and libraries next slide please so the proposal based on the direction and feedback from the council at the last several meetings including your june 16th meeting is that the um the tax would be at a standard rate of seven percent for all covered utilities that's water gas electric telecom and mobile and video um so that's the standard rate in all covered utilities with a reduced rate half of that of 3.5 percent for eligible um lower income households um the key features there on the side as i mentioned arts is the general tax the revenue does go into the general fund The reduced rate of 3.5%, this was the direction from the council, would apply to people who are enrolled in the PG&E care program for low-income households and for seniors that are 65 plus who are at or below 80% of the county AMI. And we've got some figures on that in the next slide. as proposed and based on the input was, I'm sorry, the last two items were that there's no sunset in this measure until the vote, it would continue until the voters end it. And there are this built in accountability with annual independent audits and public disclosure of finding. Here's some, this slide is the projected UUT revenue, UUT revenue, that's annual revenue generated by the tax in millions. um uh and the percent in their top chart uh you can see is about 3.83 million total in annual projected revenue uh 2.86 from residents and the balance from commercial industrial users and then you have the by the percentage basis basically 75 of the revenue will come from residents um you've got the estimated monthly cost of the ut per household um for the households eligible for the reduced rate would be about $15.70 a month. And for all other households at the 7% rate, it'd be $36.60 per month. This is expected to generate a total annual revenue of $3.83 million. And then that money could be used for lease revenue bonds and the projected, the preliminary projected bond capacity based on your financial consultancy is $58 million. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, there is a reduced rate or relief for low income and senior households of a 50% reduction for people either enrolled in the PG&E care program or the qualifying senior households at or below 80% of mont area county area median income and then you have the um the dollar amounts there on the other side uh roughly 37 percent of marina households are estimated to be eligible for the reduced rate people would have to apply for the reduced rate through a through a third party administrator that the city would we would staff recommends the city used for the tax but um if they apply and meet the criteria they'd be eligible for it um next slide please So this is the proposed ballot question. This is what the voters would see on their ballot. It's got the wording for the measure. You've all had a chance to read it. One thing, again, I want to reiterate that this would be a general tax. So although this listing a number of different things the funds could be used for, they would as a legal matter be eligible for other municipal purposes. And that's the definition of a general tax. And that's why this tax would only require a simple majority vote of 50% plus one votes. um that's by the voters i do want to point out that in order for this measure to be placed on the ballot under state law it requires a two-thirds vote of this council to adopt the resolution placing it on the ballot that's and that's a two-thirds vote of the entirety of the council so even though we have one council member absent it's still two-thirds of the total which is is for council members to vote for it um I did want to go to, before we go to the final slide, which is sort of the process from here, there are a couple of additional questions in response to the staff report that Renee asked me to answer. So, Renee, would you like me to go ahead and address those at this time? Sure. Okay. Sure. The first was, and I believe this came from a council member who noted that the proposed ballot question uses the word paramedics on that first line there to ensure firefighters, paramedics, police officers, et cetera. The city apparently employs EMTs, but not paramedics. And so the suggestion was they could, should this wording be changed? I think that's a good suggestion. So I would recommend that when I come sign the vote on the resolution, the council actually substitute the letters EMTs for paramedics, where state law limits the ballot question to a total of 75 words. And we're at exactly 75 words right now. So if we were to replace the word paramedics, it would be with the abbreviation or acronym for EMTs. And that would count just as one word under the word counting rules of the elections code. The second question was, would it be possible to lower the rate of 7% or end the tax once sufficient revenue is collected to pay for the needed public facilities. and the short answer is that is that yes the ordinance as proposed especially allows the council to um to reduce the rate or create additional exemptions at any point through the economic conditions or because you no longer need the revenue or at any other point the council or under the ordinance has proposed would have the power to reduce that um either permanently or for a period of time it could later on raise the um increase the amount up to the amount authorized by the voters but it could not increase it over that amount um and um related to that and that's one of the reasons why the staff is not there was a question about um another way of getting at that uh way of reducing the race in the future was to include a sunset provision staff is not recommending a sunset provision the council would always have the ability to lower uh lower the rate and obviously and the voters could always propose um to terminate it as well um uh the third question was should the council also place an advisory on the measure on the ballot to seek voter input on how the funds generated by this revenue should be spent that is something that was discussed at past council meetings um that was actually um that question was polled um during the polling and during the public outreach and as a result of that public outreach staff does not recommend uh uh having a companion advisory measure for for a couple of reasons um and one is that past experience in other cities has showed that uh advisory measures combined with um a straight tech measure can actually be more confusing to the voters because it's unclear whether there are one or two taxes being proposed um the second is an advisory measure is just that it's not binding it would have to be very clear that it doesn't it has no direct or binding impact on the council or on um or how the money could be used um and uh and the third of the polling that uh that the city did do showed that that yeah um the voters had indicated, or the people who were polled had a strong indication of how the money should be used, and they expressed that through the public outreach and the CAC process, but that it turned out that a polling, that an advisory measure wasn't deemed to be either necessary or helpful, and in fact, as many people found it not helpful as helpful, and so ultimately that led to the staff recommendation. um not to uh advise it and uh not to recommend to do an advisory measure along with this and then the final question was um sort of a technical one regarding um someone read the ordinance very carefully about adding a definition of the term day right now the proposed ordinance defines the term month um there's a lot of details that go into the implementation of a using of attacks like this because there's so many different things covered and the word day actually appears 31 different times in the ordinance and we just make the suggestion was to make clear the day means um a calendar day i think that's a good suggestion that was not in the different ordinances we looked at uh to use as a model for this but nonetheless i think it's a good um suggestion and my recommendation that would be that a definition be added as follows that day I shall mean a calendar day, so not a working day or holiday, but they shall mean any calendar day. It shall mean a calendar day, except where expressly specified otherwise, because there are a couple of places in the ordinance right now where it talks about what happens if a day includes a holiday or a non business day. So again, add a definition that is days shall mean a calendar day, except where expressly specified otherwise. and with that i'll go to the uh the final two slides next slide please this is just the timeline i think we showed this last week uh we're recommending that today the council adopt um the resolution to place the measure on the ballot again that would take four affirmative votes if the council members for any reason the council does not do that today uh the last possible day under state law to place a measure on this november ballot is august 7th so you would have until then to do so. And I believe you have at least one more regularly scheduled council member meeting before August 7th. The next two dates are the due dates that the County Registrar of Voters has set up for primary and rebuttal arguments to be submitted. If you adopt the resolution, it would confirm that those are in fact the dates. And then November 3rd is the date of the election. So next slide please. So the final question is the staff recommendation is that you adopt the resolution to propose the utility user taxes ascribed to the voters on November 3rd. In addition to the two minor, the one change to the ballot question and the one change to add a definition to the ordinance, The one additional item that the council will need to specify, if it so chooses, is in the resolution right now, as you may recall from the last, the bottom entry you did, the council has the option of authorizing either the entire council or one or more of your members to sign the argument in favor of this, what you did for the bottom entry and what we recommend. is if the council decides to go forward with this is to authorize up to two members of the council to prepare the ballot argument. And so you'd need to select those two council members and their names would go in the resolution They could prepare the argument, the Ouija board would recommend limiting it to two so they can talk to each other without violating the Brown Act. And then they can include, invite up to three other members, individuals, non-council members, I shouldn't say members, three other individuals, such as a police or fire chief or other respected community leaders to sign on to the ballot argument. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much, Pearl. Okay, let's go to public comment. Anyone in the building speak in person? Come on up, Philip.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Philip Tolubin. I actually support replacing our aging police station, fire station, and city hall. However, I believe these projects should be phased responsibly and that taxpayers deserve complete transparency before being asked to approve the utility tax. Related to that, I have essentially four questions that are going to hit transparency and accountability, because I think those are the two critical issues in getting this resolution or getting this passed by the voters. The first one is with respect to general tax versus special tax. the maria utility tax presentation discussed at the last regular meeting repeatedly stated that the utility user tax is being proposed to finance approximately 50 million of police fire and city hall facilities yet the city's proposing a general tax requiring only a majority vote because the revenues are legally unrestricted My question to the council is, has the city's independent bond council issued a written legal opinion concluding that the proposed utility tax qualifies as a general tax under Proposition 218? If so, will that opinion be released to the public before voters are asked to decide on this measure? The second one deals with accountability. If the utility tax is intended to finance these facilities, Why is the tax not legally restricted to those projects? As it was stated, this money can be used for anything and future city councils could legally spend these revenues for other governmental purposes in addition to the utility tax that has no sunset date. So my question is, what assurances do voters have that these revenues will continue to be used for the new proposed facilities? The next one is regarding transparency. It's the total cost to taxpayers. The Marina utility tax presentation estimates annual revenue and bond capacity, but it does not tell taxpayers the total cost of borrowing. So the question is, what interest rate is being assumed? What will the annual debt service be? And what is the estimated total principal and interest taxpayers will repay over the life of the bonds? And then lastly, this goes to alternatives and due diligence. The question is, did the city's financial advisors evaluate alternative financing methods, including phase construction and financing, a restricted utility tax, or other financing options? If so, will that analysis be released before voters are asked to decide on this matter? I APPRECIATE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TONIGHT AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, PHILIP, FOR THOSE GREAT QUESTIONS. WE'LL GET TO THEM AS SOON AS PUBLIC COMMENT IS OVER.

NEW SPEAKER I'M DAVE MOOREHOUSE AND I'M GOING TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THIS UTILITY TAX. I, uh, since we're talking about vision, I wanted to bring it up that, uh, I moved about six years ago to Marina from Brentwood, California and Northern California. And they were in sort of the same mode of, uh, expanding and homes and commercial buildings and stuff. And during that period of time, they dealt with the, the contractors and stuff, and they developed a plan where the contractors and developers paid for a brand new school paid for a brand new firehouse not putting on the taxpayers back but actually having a vision that this city was going to grow and they had the developers become part of it the problem to develop part of the solution to the problem instead of going to the taxpayers and putting it on their back which seems to be the way that like california loves to work but You know, I think that moving forward, the vision should be, these people are coming into, to be part of the community. They need to be part of the community and helping develop what we need as far as upgrades to the police station, to the fire department, et cetera, instead of always sticking it on the taxpayers. So I think that even though the vision has been good for Marina, I think it slipped where it could have been even better. And moving forward, I'd like to see that. I feel like Marina is just so happy that somebody comes to develop here and, oh, here, here you go. And you know, and just, they're putting something in the, in the Marina and everybody's happy, but it's not helping the situation where it comes to our, our police and our fire department. So that's, that's basically what I wanted to say. I think it's, you know, moving forward. I think we need to look at that. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Dave. Thanks for being here tonight.

Good evening, Mayor, council people. My name is May Holland-Dumo. I'm here because I support this. We all know we need the police department, fire department, and our civic center. I mean, our city is growing and we need to grow with it too. And the longer we wait to build, the more expensive it's going to be. And I'm, you know, I know you all doing a tremendous job improving our city, but this is for the whole city to work together and make it happen. I hope that you will vote for to build our city and for our for our now and for our future generation as well. Thank you. Can I just thank Lane Long? That's what I came in here for. Thank you so much for the hard work that you did. And I know I'm not a part of the whole team, but I appreciate you very much. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, May.

Ana Luz Acevedo Cabrera, resident and homeowner. I also actually agree with the gentleman here about the the concern i have in regards to adding more taxes to taxpayers there's already a lot of taxes that we always have to pay so i would also question if there are other alternative waves ways that you guys can get the funding for this expansion doesn't require more raising more taxes um and also in particular the order of priority of these infrastructure projects in terms of what is the highest need followed by what goes after that, just because there's a lot of competing priorities. So the question becomes, which ones are the ones that you have the biggest need at this moment in time versus what is something that you can delay down the path? Not saying that the structures could look a little bit better, but they are still standing like city hall. So the question becomes, what is really the biggest risk in terms of what needs to be fixed ASAP and what needs to be made bigger? So I would question that just because, again, it's... it's not fair to the taxpayers to be adding more onto them. So what can be done alternatively would be the question. And yeah, I also agree about the development projects. There's so many development projects, but at the same time, like how is that factoring into where the money goes to address the bigger developments for the city so that it doesn't have to come from the taxpayers? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Anneliese. Anyone else in public want to speak? All right, we're going to go online to Zoom user. Go ahead, Zoom user. Okay, Zoom user, we will come back to you. Try again in a minute. Let's go to Denise Turley. Welcome, Denise.

Hi. Hi. I don't remember putting my hand up, but anyway. So my only question has to do with Sunset. And I think that from what we were originally promised and what you're offering, we took some really sharp, unexpected left turns. and um they um frankly weren't in the best interest if you actually want to get the tax uh passed i will leave it at that thank you thank you denise let's go to nancy amadeo welcome back nancy and dan can you hear me yes dan welcome

Ray, it's still me. She's still on another meeting. I'm concerned about perception management in order to get the UTT passed. I voted for Measure U because it made sense. But this is too much of a blank check, and that's the perception you're going to have to manage. In fact, just this evening, we heard of an $8 million shortfall to finish the roads. And by law, if I'm understanding the attorney correctly, you guys could just use $8 million of that tax to pay for the roads. It's got nothing to do with public facilities. So and I agree with the speaker said, how do you guarantee that's where the money is going to go? Second point is, is. for whatever reason, you guys brought up this dadgum luxury hotel and what possessed you to bring that up was a tactical and strategic error. When you're talking about managing perception, if you're prepared to incentivize someone to build a hotel, Why on God's little green earth are we not using that money for the transit occupancy tax to pay for some of this stuff? Again, it's a major perception issue. Third one. No offense to anyone on the dais, but when you guys gifted yourself 1,000% increase in your salary and spent basically $120,000 a year to do that, that's a perception that's going to have to be managed not only for this UTT, but for future elections. It doesn't sit well with a lot of people. Lastly, I guess this is a legal question is, If there's going to be opposition to this, whether it's formal or not formal, how do you get arguments against this measure on the ballot? What needs to be done? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Dan. We'll answer your questions really soon. Zoom user, we're going to give you another try. You're unmuted. Go ahead.

Can you hear me? yes good evening mayor uh this is mina back home uh just wanted to say good evening uh to everybody i wanted to congratulate the city manager for a great run what a great one um have a great retirement uh thank you for all you've done for the city um I'm sorry, I couldn't actually make it in person today, but I really wanted to jump in quickly and talk about the short term rental ordinances that the city has adopted recently.

And I really wanted to, first of all, excuse me, Mina, this is only for comment. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, was it?

Okay.

I'm so sorry.

I didn't really, I couldn't really figure out where you guys at with the agenda, but again, I mean, I'll, I'll drop in next meeting, but I just wanted to thank everybody for the looking into it and understanding. Thank you for allowing me to speak today.

We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you so much.

Okay. All right. Three, one, five, go ahead. All right. Three, one, five.

Hello?

Yes, hello.

Hi, this is Rebecca McAllen. Hi, Rebecca. Hi. I just wanted to weigh in because I know we definitely need updated fire and police. We needed it way back in 09 when my brother was killed. Everything's outdated. They're working on the skin of their teeth. But I'm very concerned about where all our money has gone with all the developing that we have. And then we have a hotel come in and we're wanting to give them a break. And yet the council, why do they want to keep coming back on the taxpayers when they're already paying out so much tax? What has gone on in the last 17 years with all the building? Was no money put away for the expansion to expand for our public safety? That's my question. Did that even come into thought? Because we're 17 years down the road and we're looking at the citizens now to cover for the expansion that I think should have been considered at the time that they were planning all this expansion. So that's what I wanted to get out there and ask.

All right. Thank you, Rebecca. And we'll answer those questions in a moment and hello to Kevin. Okay. Anyone else that hasn't spoken wish to speak? We'll close public comment and start with the questions asked by Philip. Has Prop 218 compliance been met with the language proposed in the ballot measure before us in regards to it not being a special tax? but a general tax.

Rene, would you like me to address that?

Yes, please go ahead.

Yeah, so Let me address it as follows so so this tax as proposed a by its terms is a general tax it can be there there's no doubt about this is so standard. We phrase general tax question and then and that's why I put out that it's a definition of a general taxes it that it can be under prop to eighteen and all bunch of other problems in case law can be used for any general purposes so the tax as proposed. is a general tax it is in our view clearly lawful um the technique of that i understand your financial consultants have looked into of of using lease revenue bonds funded by um um by your general tax or other sources of revenues is one that the courts have repeatedly upheld whether or not your bond council has provided an opinion on that issue i don't know um perhaps renee or um Erlang can address that, but this technique is well established and recognized by the courts.

All right. Phillip's next question is, why isn't this ballot measure legally restricted to be used on these three buildings, since we're talking about the priority of these three buildings so much? I think that's what he meant. And who'd like to answer that? City Attorney? Rene?

Yeah, Pearl. I mean, this is essentially another version of the same question that was answered. I mean, this is a general tax. If it's restricted for any reason, then we would be talking about a special tax.

Okay. Moving down this line of thinking, what assurances do voters have that it's these three buildings that are going to be funded should the UUT pass by that revenue?

I can take the first thing of that. One of the things that I would encourage everyone is to go to our website. We have a lot of information and some of the questions you've been asking. This has been a discussion with our community for over three, four years now. There's so many public meetings, so many presentations, just so much information. But one of the things that I would suggest is uh we have these walkthrough of our city facilities we do them on thursday the third thursday um we've had five or six of those now and everyone that does that walk through they come back and they they say i had no idea i am appalled at the condition of our buildings i had no idea how awful it is i had no idea of the conditions that our police and our firefighters work so the first first thing i suggest is come to that tour if you can't do it on an evening call ahead of time and we'll do a special tour you walk through and you see the city hall and you walk through the police and fire station you will understand the real issue here and so if your question is on city priorities you um how can you have the trust that it will be spent to that well you just heard a presentation on our roads we're in great shape on the on the finances of our roads we have amazing parks getting in we have made significant improvements in our budget here the major problem that we have is our police and fire in our city hall facilities we did a bond we don't have 50 million to spend anywhere else that is our priority but that that is the challenge of having a general bond versus a a specific bond and we could definitely do a specific bond but the threshold goes goes up to 66 and two-thirds and the state and all our advisors tell us very clearly that's almost an impossible threshold the state changed all its bonds to 55 because they couldn't pass anything school districts they did the same thing they lowered their threshold to 55 because they just couldn't pass them and so we would love to do a specific bond but we know the greatest need is to get these facilities built it is a critical point in the life safety of our citizens and so we're trying to do the measure that will give us the best chance that we can get it passed. When you look at those slides, walkthrough facilities, I would question where and why would our city council allocate those funds anywhere else? I think that answered the most part of that question. You had a bunch of other ones.

Next one, Wells. What's the total cost, including interest rates? Well, debt service. What is the interest rate over the life of the bond? So total cost over the life of the bond, including debt service. And what's the interest rate that we're expecting?

We've not determined any of that right now. If and when the measure gets passed, then we'll really go into high gear on designing the facilities, selecting the sites, because we will not go out to issue a bond right away. um because what you don't want is issue a bond that have the money just sitting there and so we've got a lot of preparatory work to do once we've done that preparatory work and we're ready to go then we'll issue the bond we're probably two years out from issuing a bond uh and we also look at timing with interest rates and that plays a part in our decisions there so we don't have any of that information now that'll be a couple of years out

A couple folks, Ana Luz and Philip have asked, have we looked thoroughly into alternative financing mechanisms to consider options besides the user utility tax?

uh yes we have as a community we've looked at every tax option that we have and this is what is suggested and the thing about the utility user tax is almost all your communities in monterey county have that tax they depend on that tax for the quality of life marina used to have that tax And then the voters in the early 2000s discontinued that. And you look at that at that same point in time when our infrastructure and things started decaying. And so it's something that is widely used around in our in our areas and certainly across California.

All right. Thank you. And I was asked, what are our priorities? you know, have we looked at the priorities and what are they in regards to this UUT proposed measure?

I think the number one priority is it really is the safety of our community. That's what we're talking about. We talk about life safety and emergency, getting your fire and emergency medical response to your home within five minutes. In certain parts of the areas, it's not going to be there. As the years go on, it's going to get worse and worse. So the measure really is all about life safety. for our community members. That's the top priority. I think the second priority is the working conditions of our employees. Our employees, this is their life. They spend a good part of their life here in these city facilities. And again, I say, walk through, go through that tour and you'll come out and you'll say, these are horrible facilities for employees to work in.

Dan and Rebecca, kind of hypothetically ask this question, you know, why is a hotel going to get a break? And why are we even dealing with a new hotel when at the same time we're asking voters to pass a UUT tax measure?

I think Marina has done a very good job in a long time of leveraging. Leveraging revenues to maximize their benefit to the community, and they've done it in a lot of things from the dunes development to Seahaven development to Marina. To the Marina Station development. Leveraging revenues is a way that companies, organizations, and cities move forward. And so with the luxury hotel, the city is not interested if we can get all of our tax dollars that hotel that's what that's what we're going to do but what we're interested in is getting that luxury hotel built and we have our tax experts our finance experts working on that and if the cost to build the hotel and the um the operating cost and the debt service and everything goes with the construction if that pencils out that's unable to get built then the hotel doesn't get built and then we're out out of a huge revenue source and so um we aren't given any any money we're far away from that um but that's what we look at so it's not giving any money it is maximizing leveraging facilities leveraging a hotel coming in for our future we get revenues like this that's how we're going to add more police officers more firefighters one of the questions asked was what have you been doing with those monies in the past and and we've added on a second fire company that's huge we've increased our staffing to three we've added new fire engines we've had several new fire engines we have a new ladder truck that is getting built all this becomes with our revenue sources and as we're being wise and how we put our revenues together

Rebecca asked, why was no money put away during the last 17 years from these developers' developments to do things like fire, police, city hall?

Actually with these developers, we issue, they're charged impact fees for public safety facilities, for roads and intersections, for parks. And our city, we charge the maximum that we can under state law. for these impact fees so we are doing it but what state law doesn't allow you to do is charge the developers to fix an existing deficiency well we have our existing deficiencies in our facilities and so you can't use developer impact fees to do that but we are collecting the maximum we can uh and we're adding new parks is what you what you can see here um as we plan a second fire station A good part of that is going to be these impact fees from public safety. If you've looked on the information that we've put out in the public, you can see that over $9 million will be going to these facilities that comes from impact fees that we've collected from developers so that we are currently doing that.

Dan had a last question that I didn't write down fast enough to remember. Did anyone note Dan Emberdale's last question? It was after we talked about a thousand percent increase on our elected official salaries.

What needs to be done to get opposition on the ballot?

Okay, Pearl, I think that might be a question for you.

Yes, I can answer that. State law, the election scope, provides for arguments both for and against any ballot measure, and there are the process for doing that is governed by state law the um and the resolution contains the information on when the arguments would be due they need to be submitted to your city clerk for the primary arguments by august 13th and i would recommend the people interested in so many arguments either way um could reach out to the city clerk if and if it's a process if more than one argument is submitted for the city clerk with the assistance of the city attorney to to select from those arguments the order order for priorities and selecting them is set forth in the elections code all right thank you Pearl questions that I forgot to write down all right let's go to Catherine McCarthy

thank you mayor um I just kind of want to address the elephant in the room given that I don't think that I was really thinking that this required the two-thirds vote and with Councilmember McAdams not here I don't know how I would want to vote on it at this point I still want to hear a little bit more discussion but I'm wondering if there's some value in just tabling this into the next meeting I mean is there any harm in that um I I hate to waste extra staff time and and uh You know, attorney time, but I just want to have that discussion first before we go too far down the road.

Well, the time is best used tonight to have discussion with the four of us here, go to a vote, and when that vote is taken, we'll decide what the next step is.

I guess to the attorney, what does that mean? That would be highly unusual for a failed item to come immediately back.

So there would be, under your council rules, you could reconsider that item at the next council meeting. So there are options on the table either table it you take a vote and uh someone moves for reconsideration at the next council meeting under the council rules to reconsider the vote at that time so those are your options and that would be someone that voted in the affirmative right that is correct okay that that helps me um a little bit then i i would recommend we go go forward um but ultimately

okay any more i do have a couple questions if i can start into those um one of the things i love about being on council is i get to learn so much and ask questions that probably annoy the The experts, but I noticed in the telecommunications provision and the one of the other provisions, it talks about a rebuttable assumption that these services are used within the jurisdiction. I just was wondering if somebody could elaborate on exactly what that means. What does it mean to want to rebut that? And does that happen very often?

Did you want to take a stab at that, Pearl?

And maybe further, if I can just add, why don't we just say it doesn't matter if you use it here or not. If the billing address is here, the taxes do. Why do we not say it in that way?

Yeah, those are great questions. And this language has been crafted particularly with the emergence of new technologies around video and streaming and cable. There's been a lot of litigation around the country on this kind of issue, and there needs to be what's called an insufficient nexus for whether or not the services are consumed within your city for you to tax them. And so a rebuttal presumption is a technique that, frankly, the courts have created over time. If someone wants to argue, hey, even though I live in this and I'm paying the bill at my address, I'm actually receiving and using these services out of state, and therefore you can't tax me. This is simply a mechanism saying, okay, if you can prove that even though your address is here, you're paying for them here, you're actually not using them here, then you can demonstrate that there's not a sufficient nexus for you to be required to pay this tax. So it's a pretty standard And frankly, this is one we borrow from other existing ordinances where this has been drafted in light of those kind of challenges.

I appreciate that, and that kind of leads me into my next question, which really isn't hypothetical. It actually happens all the time. In fact, I'm guessing people in this room share cell phone bills with two or three family members because there's such a great discount by bundling those services. I know members of my family do that in three different jurisdictions, but it's billed in one. I mean, are those folks committing tax evasion, or how do you divvy up the percentage of tax that might be due, or is it just... Pretty much, hey, wherever it's built, that's where it's going to get collected and we don't typically pursue it any further.

Yeah, well, I'm telling you, I'm not going to comment on was there anyone. I think it was only happened just as anyone committing tax evasion. Yeah, I think the answer is the same. These rebuttable presumptions are used to build something in like this. The amounts, the monthly amounts for taxes are small enough that people, I think, tend to not want to contest them. But at the same time, our recommendation is that to be legally safe, you have a provision here to allow someone to rebut the presumption that they're using it and that the taxes do here.

Yeah. So maybe I should clarify. So let's say I share a bill with a family member in another state and I want to pay my tax due. How would I pay that if it's not collected by the service provider? And how would I apportion that to what has been used in the city of Marina?

My understanding is that it would be collected, and correct me if I'm wrong, Pearl, it's collected by the provider, and then it's turned over to the city. So I'm not sure how you would work with the provider to divide that up. It just gets added to the bill.

Right, but it's going to be in... in another state, I mean, and that tax is going to go to that locality if they even have a UUT or not. But my point is, is I've used a service in the city of Marina, do I as a resident bear any responsibility to pay a tax that hasn't been collected because the bill goes to a different address?

Yeah, I mean, I think we try to do the best we can with the wording of the ordinance to capture those taxes. But if someone is doing that, I'm not sure that we can capture that tax.

One thing I will add is, I think we talked about the staff report. We will be contracting with HDL, who actually administers these programs throughout a lot of cities in California. I think those little nuances, I think HDL would help us to work our way through. Okay.

All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. That's it for now.

Any more comments from council members? Council Member Vialla?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I want to first clarify that the time element, we have spent so many council meetings on figuring out how are we going to get $50 million in order to build the kinds of things that we have to. There is no choice. These 50-year-old portables, they're unsafe. We have trip hazards all around. We've taped down wires. We've got... You know, you just need, as our city manager, you just need to go on these tours to really see what kind of condition 50-year-old temporary portables produce that should have been addressed many years ago. I've said this many times. But we've had now how many meetings? We've also had a CAC outreach with public members, and that was over several months. And I'd like to find out from the city manager if you can remember how many times have we addressed the issues of the 50 million needed for these facilities? and the outreach. I mean, it's been more than a year since Measure U, right? So that was already an attempt for us to solve that problem, and it did not pass. However, it was shocking that it it got to 60% of our general public voters. We just couldn't make it to the 67%, which is a really high bar. But that means 60% of our general public were in favor of the bond issue for this exact same things that we're considering now. So that's a year. And then after that, we had other meetings because the CAC... public outreach came as a result of our discussions. So then we had a few months related to CAC, and now here we are again. And if we continue to table this, we cannot avoid making a decision. At some point, we cannot satisfy everybody's desires, but we have dire needs that this council has the responsibility and the accountability to figure out the solution. So is it been like,

three years plus or how many meetings have we been grappling with this oh it's been multiple years before the 2024 election is at least two years before that we're having community discussions so we're well into four years now

Okay. And as one of the public speakers said, and we all know this, every time we set a budget for I don't care if it's the Gloria Jean Tate Park that was supposed to be $3 million, and then by the time we actually build it, it's $8 million. So we know that any delays we have increasingly... added on to the cost of any development, any of these three facilities are going to be astronomically different than what we think if we even made the decision today versus what if we had done it two years ago or three years ago. So I just want to make that point. and yes we want to consider and be fair and and all of that but i think that we as a council have responsibly examined every detail that we could including our staff our financial people our city manager so i just want to put that in perspective And I think Lane covered really all the important parts, but I feel distressed that we're still talking as though the hotel is somehow connected to the UUT. The hotel is not giving away money. I think we spoke about it at the last council meeting. We don't get a penny of any money if this hotel isn't built. And when it's built, then we engage in a sharing of money the taxes that's essentially the incentive okay so it it is it is not to be confused with getting 50 million for um in a uut for a construction of these three facilities if that's what we intend to spend it on which we do but they are totally different we are not going to get 50 million from the hotel i think the projections were if it's built we will maybe generate 1.5 to 2 million How many years of that? It's a wonderful thing for Marina to have that kind of long-term connection. annual additions to our budget, but that is not going to get up to 50 million. It will take how many years to do that. So they are very, very separate. And unless you think that you can take 50 million and cut services or say, we're not going to go ahead with all the projects that we've, that's the only alternative for us, I think. we can't we just simply can't in other jurisdictions they don't get these huge projects of rebuilding their city centers unless they go to a bond measure unless they go to this kind of tax there's no way we could save enough money even with a gorgeous luxury hotel we're only going to be getting 2 million for the next 5 10 years But that's wonderful. That's 1 million and a half, 2 million that we never had before. So we need that to continue to build all the things that Marina residents want us to be handling at this point. So please don't conflate the two things. They are completely separate. The hotel revenue is completely separate from the UUT and what that's for. So I just want to make that really clear again. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Kathy. Let's go to Mayor Bertrand Vischer.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for this presentation, Pearl, and for having answered all those detailed questions. For me, it's important to know that, yes, future councils could lower the rate to zero if finances allow that. So that's a way of ending this. In the far future, probably, future council members will decide that. So that's kind of a sunset option. and also it was important for me to hear again that an advisory ballot will be confusing it's not binding and it would not be helpful because i know people have been asking why not an advisory measure on the ballot as well and um i echo everything that councilmember beata said so not repeat that The development impact fees, I don't think people know that for each new home that gets built in Marina, I don't know what the total is at this moment. I know it was years ago, it was $65,000 roughly. It also goes to the school district, but city manager, do you know what the

Our total impact fees, maybe Don, he pays these, I think for about 26,000, 28,000 total impact fees for a residential home.

More, eh? Yeah, the 26,000 was close to the fora fee, but the developer impact fee is closer to $75,000, $80,000 per home.

I don't think it's 30,000, so it's somewhere around 20,000, 29,000.

But anyway, it's tens of thousands of dollars that people realize, yes, each person who buys a home in Marina does pay towards anything that needs to be constructed. The roads, an increase in the public safety, parks. Let's get another one. But anyway, we cannot use that for new structures, for expanding the structures, to improve the existing structures, let me say that. So for me, everybody knows this structure, 50-year-old temporary buildings. and the city hall where our employees work, our staff members work, we cannot justify investing money in these structures. they will still be too small. Even if we would put a lot of money in them, get them up to code, which I think wouldn't make sense. It will be cheaper to build new, but also they are still too small. So for me, that's not an option. Then those three, we need those three new structures. No question. If this measure doesn't pass, we will still need those three new structures. The only way we can get enough money then is by cutting services. There's no other way. So, and I already told the recreation director, it won't be cutting into our police or fire. So guess what? It will be recreation. And the things that makes it so enjoyable to live here, that help our youth, our seniors, any age, you know, pickleball. I mentioned pickleball. But anything, before school, after school. So for me, it's no... There's no other way. And for those who have not done it yet, please go on a tour or watch the movie. There's a movie made. If you don't have the time to ask for a tour, there's a movie on our website that shows you what the facilities look like. And just like city manager Long already said, anybody who has been on the tour, there's nobody who questions the need for new structures. So that's it for me.

Thank you. All right, my perspective is if we vote yes tonight, all four of us, we still have a lot of work to do. I am surprised that my perspective, my thought is it's approximately $75,000 per home for impact fees, and our city manager thinks it's around 30 grand. we have to be on a better page than that when i spoke to the marina station developer about developer impact fees he went through how it ended up costing about seventy five thousand dollars per home that doesn't all come to the city it goes other places to county uh school district etc so we need to know a few basic numbers what's the total impact fees per home per thousand square foot commercial and what part of that does marina get Is that different on Fort Ord with the Fort Ord fees that were not developer impact fees? I remember it was like $32,000, and the developers got together with Fort Ord Use Authority, and they lowered it to about $26,000. But that's different than developer impact fees, right? So for Fort Ord, that's a little different. Marina Station and Central Marina, we need to know some of those fees. um facts so that we don't say different things to the public and lose their competence because we don't we're not consistent with our facts um the sunset we have no sunset in this advisory uh i'm sorry in this ut proposed measure uh my question to pearl is how much trouble is it to add a 30-year sunset um if that's a good direction with the council we could do that Is it a lot of work?

No.

I'm sorry?

No, it's not a lot of work to add. I mean, the simple task of adding that to the measure is not a lot of work.

Okay. If we were going to vote yes tonight, the four of us, could we say direct staff to add the 30-year sunset? without upsetting the apple cart.

Yeah, you could direct staff to do that. And Renee, I think that would be consistent with what's been agendized. I don't think that would be a major change. Correct. And the council also has, you have until the 83rd day before the election, to modify this resolution. So you could also, if you did, you know, if you had another meeting, the August, I'm sorry, the elections code uses the days before the election. So August 7th is the 88th day before the election. So you have until five days after that, if you wanted to modify this, be roughly August 12th.

All right. Thank you, Pearl. Is it true that similar to buying a house, what we're talking about here is a 30 year payback timeframe for these three buildings? yes um as you talked with our financial advisor that's that they've recommended is a 30-year type bond okay so if we're expecting to go to 30-year bonds to but to pay for these three buildings 30 years is already so far out normally we have 15-year sunsets sometimes 10-year sunsets when we have them so a 30-year sunset is like forever i mean it seems like it because it is a long time but it matches our need for the three buildings every city other than Delray Oaks and us nearby has already had a UUT for a lot of years. There's some sunset, some don't. But we're talking about a UUT so that our community members will be asked to invest in their city similarly to what all other cities almost are already doing. Except that we've had a break of over 20 years of not having a UUT while other cities have had it. They also have more tourism. They also have auto malls. And so without auto malls, without the tourism they have, without a UUT, we've been doing darn well for ourselves without these other revenue sources. When it comes to these three buildings, those other cities couldn't afford it without a special tax or a bond. And surely we can't, even though they have some tools that we don't have, such as more tourism, bringing in more money than we get. And they have a higher, much higher per capita sales tax than we do. And most of them have more people than we do, or some of them do, like Monterey and Seaside. So what I'm saying is we need a UUT if we're going to get these three buildings. The public needs to decide if they want to support these three buildings and invest in our city like other community members have in our sister cities. If we have a sunset of 30 years, it just makes a lot of sense. If we don't have a sunset, it's because we're saying, after 30 years, when we get these buildings paid off, we will likely have other needs that are unfunded. And that might be true. But I think a sunset would be smart. We've kind of raised the bar in the price of this project. We were talking to the Citizens Advisory Committee, as far as staff, that it was gonna be a $69 million cost for three buildings, 19 of which we have in hand, 50 million of which we need from this UUT or some other new source. And so the Citizens Advisory Committee said, thumbs up to a 7% UUT to raise $50 million. At our last meeting, we were discussing how that cost is probably going to go up 10 million. So instead of being 69 million, it's probably going to be about 79, 80 million. And so we adjusted our UUT language to give a... 50% break to low income, that's 34% of the people are going to get it. 34% of the people are going to get a 50% break on the 7%, that makes 3.5%. So that instead of raising 50 million, we could raise 58, 59 million. And so I want to ask if that's true. And if it is true, we better get out to the public real quick, some hard numbers showing that it's true. So my first question is, what's the total cost of this project? And was it at one time $69 million? And is it likely to go up $10 million?

Yes, the original cost was $69 million. As time has gone on, and we know that if the measure is approved in November, then you still have to go through the site selection process, then designing all your facilities, getting the construction drawings. And so by the time you put the shovel in the ground, you are probably a couple of years out. um and so we know over that period of time inflation is going to go up and and we've checked with the architects and on inflation prices and and uh we can assume uh a growth of eight to ten million dollars for all these projects and so unfortunately with the citizens advisory committee recommended they said seven percent because they want to be sure that all three buildings got funded police uh fire and city hall and and they knew there'd be some uh cost fluctuations and and that these were just estimates and that that's why they said we want a seven percent so we can ensure that all facilities got billed all right my last question for the five minutes uh i haven't read the citizens advisory report for a few weeks but i think it said

Peg the UUT to whatever it would take to raise the $50 million. Is that true? Like 7%, if that's what's needed for $50 million?

No, their focus was they wanted the 7% to ensure that all three facilities got billed.

Okay. I thought they were told by staff $50 million, and I think that was in the advisory report, but I'll look it up later.

Yeah, it was at that point in time. It was talked at $50 million. That's what it was at that point in time.

Okay, so they pegged 7% as needed, according to our financial experts, to raise $50 million. yeah okay and so now it's gone up from there about eight or nine million so i hope that if we approve this tonight we quickly get out some hard facts to the public that citizens advisory committee was told 50 million but now it's higher and that's why we're giving a 50 discount to the low-income account holders utility account holders rather than 100 discount okay let's go uh to councilman real i'm so sorry uh catherine mccarthy and then viola thank you

Councilman Bialik would like to go first, if that's OK. That's fine.

I think I had my hand down for a while. So I just wanted to add on to what the survey, the recent survey said about the 7%. I thought this was quite remarkable. The survey showed that our public was in favor of a higher percentage, that is 7%, if we gave discounts so we have here 37 of marina households are estimated to be eligible for the reduced rate and that was over the other alternative of asking for less like five percent without the reduced rates. So that's how kind our general public is that they would rather us have request a 7% rate if we gave reduced rates. I just wanna point that I thought that was a pretty interesting outcome. but i just want to reinforce that today's vote is only to put to the public ballot in november this uut that's all we're saying it's saying that we're going to legally word and comply with every ordinance so that the public can decide about this we're not saying that this is going to pass We're not saying that that is something that's going to happen. We're saying that we're going to do this tonight so that we put it on the ballot and then the public decides. So please, if you're undecided about what your vote should be tonight, It's simply to get it to the public. And and remember, there's a rebuttal statement that can go along with that ballot measure in November. And so I think, you know, we may be complicating things if we kind of veer off. We're just saying we want we're we're agreeing to take this to the public in November. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Kathy. And we do these round robins. I try to just go in the same order. Ask Brian to speak earlier. Brian, do you have more comment at this point?

Thank you, Mayor. I'm feeling a lot of irony of being all alone over here, but a quick procedural question. Just in response to Councilmember Piala's comment, if the public wanted to bring this tax on the ballot themselves without our input, could they do that?

Pearl, if you have more input, but my understanding is yes, by initiative, the voters can bring such a measure, correct?

Yeah, I think what Council Member Matthews is asking is a voter-sponsored measure. The voters can put a measure on the ballot through the initiative process. You've seen people out gathering petitions. There's not enough time for anyone to complete that process now to get something on the ballot for this November. There's a whole Wednesday process that goes into that, but that is an option to be done.

Okay, thank you. I just think that's an interesting fact. I'm guessing that probably doesn't happen very often where voters bring a tax measure to the ballot, but it is a possibility. I've really struggled with this topic starting years ago when we first started to discuss this. And fast forward, we're in the midst of a K-shaped economy and the struggle is certainly more real than ever. Tonight I am likely to be supporting, um, placing this measure on the ballot out of, for a number of reasons, out of respect for my colleagues, um, really trying to read the tea leaves and, and try to know what maybe our missing council member might vote or how she might vote. Quite frankly, I don't know the answer to that, but I'm doing my best to guess, um, and allowing the voters a voice, but I want to be clear that any vote. in the affirmative is not should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the tax itself through the process i've struggled with two concerns first i represent a district that i believe has the only disadvantaged community census blocks in marina where many residents are already feeling the effects of what economists often describe as a k-shaped economy some households this is an economy where some households have recovered and are actually doing quite well And others continue to face rising housing costs, higher insurance premiums, and increasing utility bills. A utility user's tax is inherently regressive because it applies to necessities that every household depends on. And as a result, families with the least ability to absorb the additional costs feel the impact the most. Second, I continue to believe that before government asks residents to contribute additional revenue, we have an obligation to provide a clear roadmap for how those dollars will be spent. how priorities will be determined, and how taxpayers will know whether we've delivered on the promises that we've made. Public trust is earned through transparency, accountability, and results. I'm likely voting yes tonight because I believe in the interest of the council that this actually saves money, staff time. Again, reading the tea leaves, believing that my missing council member would likely vote in the affirmative. I'm not interested in wasting any more time and money than we need to. But I also recognize that a citywide vote means that the cost and benefits are going to be experienced differently across our community. This is really important to me, really to the community. I hope that every voter, including the four of us up here, take the time not only to consider how this measure affects their own household, but how it affects neighbors who may be struggling much more than they are. And I understand that we're giving discounts to care residents, but I want to emphasize something I said at the last meeting. And that is that a family of two doesn't qualify for care if they make $44,000 a year. A family of two that makes $44,000 a year is rich enough not to qualify for the discount. And I want you to think about what it means to live in this community with a family of two for $44,000 a year. Um, finally, I just want to note that the initiative process does, as we just mentioned, give residents the power to bring tax measures and, and to repeal them, um, in some cases, uh, before the voters. So my vote tonight simply allows us council sponsor proposal to proceed, does not diminish my responsibility to express my concerns. And it does not relieve us or our obligation to earn the public's trust. Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, Brian. And then Elizabeth. Okay, Mayor Bertam Visscher.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a few more remarks. Citizens initiative, I think that's what you mentioned, what you meant, Council Member McCarthy. 2018, the three propositions, and thanks to citizens having put it on the ballot, that's, I don't know how many millions of dollars the city has received since 2019. um that that's what got me into politics by the way um 30 years that's a standard time period for a mortgage anybody who buys a home usually has a 30-year mortgage we're still paying for the library which we all enjoy using that building so um it's comparable a sunset date might help to get this passed but residents in 2056 might be blaming us because we will again be probably one maybe the only city here in this area who doesn't have a ut anymore because if it hadn't been stopped 20 years ago look at how much more money the city would have had and people would have been used to you know if you choose a utility you know that there's an extra percentage you know seven percent or it could have been less But that's water under the bridge, as they say. Yes, and increasing utility costs might mean that it will be paid off sooner than 30 years, City Manager?

Yes, you're absolutely correct. We fully expect, as our community continues to grow, we'll get a larger utility tax base. And if it is sufficient and exceeds that bond payment amount, the council certainly will have the ability to make some decisions at that point.

Yeah, they can lower the percentage as was discussed before.

That's correct.

They can even lower it to zero if hopefully at one point it's paid off.

Right. When you issue the bond, they'll have certain bond requirements that have to be met. Yes. So it won't be zero.

So like I said, for us, it's the easiest to say, yes, let's do a 30-year sunset. But it won't be the best decision, I think, for future residents here. But I will go with that if that's what my colleagues prefer. And so finally, yes, the voters will decide. All we do is decide to put it on the ballot. And it's always up to the voters to say yes or no. So thank you.

I was continuing with a few questions I had. The advisory ballot measure was recommended by the Citizens Advisory Committee, and I think that if they would have had the new information that we have, that a survey has been done, and the surveyors find it more hurtful than helpful, I don't think the Citizens Advisory Committee would have suggested it, because they wanted this to pass. But I don't know that. But that's my thought on the Advisory Committee. The increase in revenue that this UUT would bring in if it passes is 3.8 million per year. That's to fund basically an $80 million project using about 59 million from the UUT. If we were to keep it at the level that the Citizens Advisory Committee expected when staff made presentations to them, it would have been 3 million. So we're going up from 3 million a year revenue to 3.8 million a year Basically, by only giving a 50% discount instead of 100% discount to that 34% of our population that qualifies for the discount. So I think that if we vote yes tonight, we have to get out to the public the information about why this change from 3 million to 3.8 million in our outreach that we do in subsequent weeks and months. the three priorities of the city hall building the fire police buildings are not mentioned in the tax measure it comes close by talking about emergency services and firefighters but it doesn't come close to talking about city hall And so if on one hand, we all understand the three priorities are those three buildings. But one of those buildings even mentioned in the that there's a disconnect by not mentioning the city hall in the ballot measure. And that's one of the three priorities. And by not mentioning the police and fire station, but instead indirectly referring to them as services, you know, that's also not exactly matching up at least directly. So my question is at this late hour, as I was the 11th hour of putting together this ballot measure, this ballot language to Pearl, is there some way we can insert the word city hall somewhere and take out some other words, or is that too much work at this point? And it's the, the,

the horse has already left the barn on including city hall in the ballot measure language um is uh the wording requirements are so precise that i would that reason alone i would recommend not doing it at this late hour i um i would also note that this is based on the language that was used um based part of the language that was used in the polling that was done on this question uh yeah and small word changes can really have an effect on that so you know as as your outside counselor i think your staff has offended you i would not recommend making changes of that significance to the ballot question at this point i'd also note that again this is i don't want to be very clear whatever this is a general tax so the funding will be used and the ballot materials need to make that clear it will be available to be used for any purpose the client the council has indicated its priorities um Based on the information that Wayne explained, you know, and you're all aware of, and the assurance, you know, and so future council does not, until the bonds are issued, the council could change its priorities. But I think the facts speak to how important those issues are for the city. And so I would, for all those reasons, I would not recommend changing the ballot argument, ballot question at this point in time.

Sure.

Okay. In the resolution, I know it's not on the ballot measure because we have very limited number of words, but it does say, whereas general fund revenues support essential services, including police protection, 911, emergency response, youth and senior programs, library services, parks, infrastructure, maintenance, and general municipal operations, and whereas the city general fund revenues are insufficient to support major facility investments such as police station fire station city hall and council chamber facilities and using such current general funds to pay for new facilities would require significant cuts in other essential services such as police and fire staffing street repair and maintenance parks and recreation program and keeping public areas clean and safe and it goes on from there so they're saying essentially if we don't have those then we're going to have to cut into other public services so it's kind of a little bit of you know you know but it is mentioned in the resolution

Okay, thank you. I think most voters are going to see the ballot when they're ready to vote. And we have until August. And so when I see the words, maintain safe, clean drinking water, repair streets and potholes, you know, that's about 10. It's about 10, 10 words, two, four, six, seven words, eight words. So those eight words talk about safe and clean drinking water and repairing streets and potholes. None of us expect this revenue to go to those two sources.

That's true.

And so if we're expecting to go to a city hall and we're not mentioning it and we're not expecting it to go to those eight words, then it seems to me logical to switch the words and we have a month to do it. And we want to get this as right as possible so that as many people as possible understand what this is about and few as people as possible oppose it because it's not clear or accurate. then why do we have some words in there that we don't expect to be spending for these things and then not mentioning a city hall or a police and fire station if there's room to mention that but you've already talked about firefighters and police ability to respond to emergencies so maybe that's indirectly accurate because you're building a new station at a right location so they're going to get better services that way that's okay wish it could be more direct but um i guess i'll ask pearl pearl what's the biggest risk to spending the next couple weeks, whatever it takes, to switch a couple words around to delete something that we don't expect to need and include City Hall, which we expect to need.

The council can certainly amend the ballot question. That's done, and there is time to do that. But if that's what you want, the council majority wants to do. Okay. We need to make clear, you know, these things, the ballot question is undergone a pretty thorough legal review. There's a lot of litigation around ballot questions, so we want to do that review. And if there's direction to come back with a possible amendment, we could do that. It's time to do that.

All right. last question what option do we have this is more a question for lane what option do we have to pick a site and design the buildings prior to the election because i've talked to some people they're telling me like we heard tonight, the blank check argument. We don't know what you're building. We don't know where you're building it. I guess I say, we don't know where you're building it and we don't know what it's going to look like. So we don't know what's getting built without the design. So that's my question. What options do we have before November to communicate actually before October, when mail ballots go out to communicate, to pick a site and design the buildings?

We, uh, tested that on our survey questions with FM3, and that was one of their conclusions based on the survey. The survey is representative of our community, plus or minus, I think, 5%. And so it's a really statistically valid survey. And so with that survey, 65% approved and adopted them. Um, but the survey didn't, um, didn't talk about that dinner. Didn't, uh, it did. And, um, uh, it was, um, it was felt that it would not positive if it do better, but certainly was not needed.

Okay. So my question was, do we have the option to pick a site and design the buildings? Does that say 10% design? before the October ballot?

No.

Okay. Let me ask Pearl, was this survey statistically valid?

You're muted. You're muted.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, I've worked with a lot of pollsters and surveys. People do public opinion surveys over the years, but I have no expertise in the area, so I can't independently evaluate whether it's not statistically valid. They've presented it as statistically valid, and I will say from my experience, polls like this are really a remarkably helpful source of information. I know polls sometimes get a bad rap for candidates and at the national level, but in terms of giving you a snapshot of what matters to your voters, surveys like this, particularly when they're also informed by focus groups, which I understand were done, are pretty useful about telling you what matters to your voters. And just, you know, and I just want to clarify one main thing said is, you know, that was specifically asked to the voters, you know, would identifying a specific site affect your vote?

And the answer is basically no.

No, no, that's not true for every voter. And obviously there are people who have spoken tonight who have a number of concerns. But if you're trying to get a snapshot of what your voters as a whole think, You know you've all you you're all like the visuals you have your own experience of my experiences we've been particularly with this polling firm. The post like this give you a pretty good snapshot of what your voters said they think at that moment of time it doesn't guarantee how the low, but I think it's a it's pretty useful source of information about what your constituents are saying matters to them.

All right, thank you let's go to a customer viola.

Thank you. And along those lines, and I appreciate what the mayor has been asking about the changes in the actual ballot measure, could we, instead of saying maintain safe and clean drinking water, could we not use some words like replace dilapidated or failing infrastructure, for example? And that's just off the top of my head. But rather than something, as the mayor pointed out, you know, that will not be one of the priorities for this particular pot of money. So we might want to think something like that. And also, I just want to say that if one is not in favor of the ut what are the specific recommendations to build a fire police and city halls and i don't think that we can't we can't um oppose a valid option that we've considered for several years now unless you have an alternative it's just so easy to criticize and it's hard to find solutions and that's what we've been doing in the last few years so i just want to give that perspective thank you mr mayor

Thank you, Cathy. Let's go to Mayor Pratap Viswa.

If only I remembered. Oh yes, I know. So what is the risk, probably for Pearl's question or Renee's, what is the risk if a specific building gets mentioned in the ballot? Does it turn into a special tax instead of a general tax?

I'LL LET PEARL ANSWER THAT, BUT JUST BRIEFLY, I THINK AS WE ‑‑ I THINK YOU CAN PROBABLY LOOK AT IT AS, YOU KNOW, YOU MOVE MORE TOWARDS THE SPECIAL TAX, AND PEARL, IF YOU WANT TO ADD ANYTHING TO THAT AS YOU ADD AND MENTION SPECIFIC PROJECTS, THEN YOU'RE MOVING MORE INTO THAT TERRITORY, GIVING THE ‑‑ PERHAPS NOT ‑‑ WE'D HAVE TO ANALYZE WHAT WAS PROPOSED IN TERMS OF LANGUAGE.

pearl did you yeah yeah that's exactly the concern you know and so look it's the council members job ultimately to select the ballot question this is what your your staff and your legal team have proposed based on you know um both the legal requirements and our understanding of your desires but you know what i would recommend is um the one thing i would rather recommend is not trying to change it uh tonight given the laid out and without the opportunity to review so if you know i've i think we've heard the direction and if there's a desire to change it you know i think what i would recommend is you direct staff to work with your council and come up with some options for for changing it that we feel are legally safe and also take the council direction into account and then we would present those options to you at a um at a future date

okay that's great lots of options like provide adequate city buildings don't mention fire police stations don't mention city hall delete the words that kathy just referred to you know about the water and the potholes just say provide adequate city buildings that's closer that's more accurate than what it states now but it's not going to be done tonight uh i understand that um this perception that with a luxury hotel, we don't need the UUT would be similar to an argument saying, if Mercedes comes into town, we don't need the UUT. You don't need both. That's the argument. And that's a very intuitive argument. It's our job to engage that argument. And if the hotel gets built, that's an if. If the hotel makes bank, like we hope it does, that's an if. But it's not a secured recession-proof income. And so we would never go out to bond for $60 million because we have a new hotel. And we expect that hotel to be built sometime soon in the two or three, four years. And once it starts building, once it's built, we expect it to bring in 3 million a year. We'll probably share half that for 15 years and then we'll get all of it for the next, you know, 50 years. Therefore we don't need a UUT. If that's our perspective, which I think ours is close to that, that needs to be getting out to the public that it's not an either or. And we also need to get out to the public that we, We could manage these buildings if we stopped a lot of other projects. Like we loaned $11 million to the aquatic center. Does the public really want to ditch that project to redirect $11 million so that this UUT could be a 6% or a 5%? But we need to let the public know in an educated way what our options are, because we do have options. We can cut services. We can stop projects that are in the hopper, such as the aquatic center. So we have a lot of work to do. And I think that the surveyors said that. They said that we're likely to get over 50% if We do really good outreach. And I think when I'm hearing these public comments and questions, which are really good, it's obvious that we haven't yet done that outreach. But I think there's a powerful story to be told about ongoing increasing expenses needing increasing ongoing revenue like the hotel tax and the sales tax. They need to increase to match our increased expense needs of labor and materials, which only go up. The UUT, however, is for a one-time projects using that money. So we have these three buildings that no city other than Bel Air, kind of cities could ever afford to build without a bond or a special tax and probably no city in monterey county has ever built it out of their general fund whether they have a hotel or not So those are the kinds of arguments I think that we need to discuss and hone in on to make sure they're accurate and true and then get them out to the public because I think they are accurate and true. City Manager, on the arguments that I've just outlined between a luxury hotel income and a UUT income and division of ongoing expenses versus one-time buildings. Is that the perspective you think that city staff is in the ballpark having?

Yes. And we can certainly do other things like we can build five and 10 year revenue projections, which we do when we adopt our two-year budget, but we can update one and we can show here's our current expenditures. This is where we expect them to go over the next five, 10 years. We will show our revenue base and And across every city in America, expenditure services demands are exceeding the revenue basis. And so expanding your revenue base is critical. That is why all other communities in Monterey County are looking at Marina because we're expanding our revenue base and we're able to address some of these long-term needs. But to answer your question, yeah, absolutely, we can do that.

well my question was was my articulation of the separation similar to what staff's thoughts are oh yes yes the the whole mercedes-benz the hotel is very um yeah it's definitely like you said okay all right let's go to councilman mccarthy thank you mayor um i you

You guys kind of lost me on the language change. If we're going to tinker with the language, it's going to have to come back to us anyway, right, for a vote? Correct. So I guess that's the question. If we're changing the language, my recommendation would be let's table it and have it come back. If we're not changing the language, then let's vote on it. But I don't want to do, I don't think we should do both. Vote on it, then change the language, and then come back and vote on it again. Those are my comments.

We have to give direction to change the language. so we wouldn't be voting yes go ahead with the ut tonight we'd be voting change the language to come back and then when we come back we vote yes or no okay but we got to do something tonight to give staff direction with the vote but not vote on the motion that's in the packet We can do anything we want. But yeah, so I'll make a motion that we ask staff to bring this back at the earliest opportunity and include a 30-year sunset language and include language that relates specifically to inadequate city buildings or something in that regard instead of some of the language that we've talked about that we don't expect the money to go to. so that we have enough wordage. So I'll restate that, that we direct staff to come back at the earliest opportunity to reconsider this UUT ballot language with a 30 year sunset and some revised language relating to city buildings. OK, does anyone want to make a friendly amendment after the now that we have a second from McCarthy?

Council Member Biala? Yeah, this is July, so we have no meeting anymore in July. So I recommend that we have scheduled some sort of special meeting in July to handle this.

Yeah, Pearl, I don't think there's any issue with having this adopted at a special meeting, correct?

I am... Nearly certain that is correct. There are some taxes that I think do need to be placed on the ballot at a regular meeting. I don't believe this is one of them. We'll need to confirm.

What's our August meeting? What date?

Oh, we got plenty of time.

Okay, so if we leave tonight and we find out we can't do this at a special meeting, then what do we do?

Then August 5th. Council Member Vischer?

We heard that we can change the text for the ballot. Can we vote tonight and then use that opportunity only to change the text for the August 5th meeting?

I mean, well, no, there's two things. One is we can bring back the revised language. so you don't have to vote on this tonight. And then I think there was a second, Earl, remind me, you said about something changing later once it's adopted a few days after the deadline.

Yeah, my initial recommendation, and just because I always think it was that you adopt it tonight and then if you want to change it later, you could do that and you come back and do that. I understand there's been a lot of discussion about different issues there and actually there's um there's additional time to modify a resolution you know as long as you're not changing the substance of it um beyond august 7th but um but i don't want to over complicate things though the lives you know your last regular meeting to do this would be august 5th um but uh my initial recommendation bethea to adopt it tonight because the council depending on our options that you know there was a possibility at least the council may wanted to I want to give you the option of sticking with this language.

All right. Thank you, Pearl. Council Member Biala.

So I have a question for Pearl. So if we adopted it as it is today, full well knowing that we want to modify and you would work on that and we'd come back for essentially an amendment to that.

Right.

Does that help with the special meeting?

I think it does, to be frank. And that's what I'm thinking of it. It helps with that issue then because you would have placed the measure on the ballot at a regular meeting. And what you would be doing if you modify the language is not placing it on the ballot. Simply be changing the ballot.

Okay, so all three of those issues that we talked about, about the, you know, taking out the water issues, the 30-year sunset, those are not considered, you know, they're minor. And what problems being an amendment?

That's my view. And again, I want to remind you, this is a general tax. So whatever the wording in the ballot question, this revenue will be available for general purposes. And that's why it wouldn't be a change in what the tax is.

okay all right so i'll modify my motion to be closer to the staff recommendation we adopt the resolution before us to submit to the city voters a proposed utility tax ordinance at the general municipal election on november 3rd 2026 and that we direct staff to come back with modified language to include a 30-year sunset and some specific language regarding city buildings So I guess, well, is there a second to that revised motion? I second. Okay.

Any comments or questions? If I may, just one point to clarify that the resolution as drafted does call for you to make one additional addition, which is to specify the two council members who would prepare the ballot argument in favor of this. So if you're going to adopt the resolution for the sake of completeness, I would suggest that you fill in those two names if that's what you want to do.

all right so um we'll add this to as a friendly amendment those two names jenny's not here let's keep her in mind staff what's your preference as to the two of us who should be on that ballot measure arguments in favor i think the mayor is always i think important i think of measures like this okay so again council keeping in mind jenny uh who do you recommend not me

I would recommend Council Member Biala to a few work routes together. Okay. Council Member Biala and myself? Yes. Okay.

If Council Member Biala is prepared. Okay. Is that okay with you, Brian? All right. So I'll amend my motion to add that. Kathy Biala and myself would be the designated council members on the vote for ballot argument. Does the second hold? Yes. Okay. Any questions, comments before we go to a vote? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All of that passes unanimously with the four of us present. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Pearl. All right. So we're going to move on. It's 10 o'clock. What's critical for tonight? The next public hearing is not critical. Shell oil then? Council rules? Oh, that's critical. And the city seal? Is any of that critical? Council, are you okay punting on those three?

No, the downtown is not critical.

Okay. Council, okay, adjourning?

All right. Actually, I think 13A is kind of critical. 13A.

oh so i'll motion we go till 10 15 if necessary second second all in favor please say aye okay so uh let's take up 13a after tabling um 11b this city manager business is very high maintenance all right so uh would you like to introduce this item lane or belinda sorry thank you belinda

Good evening, mayor and council. I'm going to do a little bit of reading because there's references to some CalPERS and the government code. So in accordance with government code section 54953D3, I am providing an oral summary of the recommended action. The item before council tonight is to approve the employment agreement and set the salary in terms of and conditions of employment for the city manager position with a mutually agreed upon start date to take effect in August of this year. The recommended action is to approve an employment agreement for the new city manager with an annual base salary of $301,900. In addition, the city manager will be classified as a classic member and will have a retirement formula of 2% at 55 with an employer share of retirement contributions of 12.58%, which is set by CalPERS. The city manager is also entitled to fringe benefits specified under the city's director's compensation and benefits plan, including health, dental, vision, and other supplemental benefits. The city manager's total compensation is $435.38 per year, inclusive of retirement contributions, benefits, and all other compensation mentioned, as well as employer paid taxes. Additional details regarding this item are set forth in the agenda and resolution associated with this item, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Okay.

Let's go to the public first. Anybody with questions who are physically in the room? Not seeing anyone rise. Let's go online. Brad, welcome.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor. If we're going to get a copy of the employment contract for the new city manager.

I think it's in our agenda packet now. It's in our agenda packet online you can just click on the link.

OK does that include everything that she had discussed with regard to compensation.

Okay, Brad, I'm sorry, we got into a back and forth here. Go ahead and provide your comments, and then we'll answer them when you're done.

Oh, okay. Thank you. With regard to the previous discussion, I wasn't able to speak before.

I think what do you mean on the UUT, Brad?

Yes. Okay, Brad, you're going to speak on that.

That's right. We're on the city manager item now.

we adjourn in 10 minutes yeah sorry for these technicalities but i think it's hypocritical that you're asking taxpayers to pay after the council thought uh brought upon themselves to give themselves the two thousand dollars i'm sorry brad are you talking about the city manager have a good evening thank you okay brad thank you brad okay let's go to mike moeller welcome mike

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Welcome back, Matt. Congratulations. I'm pretty sure that they will go ahead and give you the hands up for the employment, and I look forward to working with you. Bye.

Thank you, Mike. Anyone else would like to speak to the City Manager agenda item online? Please raise your hand. Denise Turley, welcome back, Denise.

Hi, thanks. Real quick, happy retirement, Lane and family. You deserve it. Welcome back, Matt. That's it.

Thank you, Denise. Have a nice evening. Okay, let's go to Guido.

Welcome, Guido. Mayor, I'm speaking about 11B, so I'll wait until after this item.

We were going to continue that to a date certain.

Yeah, and that's what I need. The four years I've worked for Marina, we haven't been in the practice of continuing items to a date certain, but we actually need to. Otherwise, I spend another $200 putting a legal ad in the newspaper for 11B. So I don't want to disrupt the rest of this city manager. I just wanted to bring that point up. Thank you.

Okay. So before 1015, before we adjourn tonight, we'll bring this back up, Greedo, and maybe modify our direction. Okay, let's go to council comment, questions. Council Member McCarthy.

It's just really brief, Mayor. I have been really surprised in the short time that this has been advertised on this agenda, how many people have reached out to me and said, you have absolutely chosen the right person for the job. And just that I just wasn't really expecting to hear that from the community. I think it speaks well for not only the candidate that we chose, but the decision that we're about to make. So, yeah, thanks.

Thank you, Brian. Mayor Tim Fisher.

I echo those words and also people from Pacific Grove chiming in that they're so sorry to see him leave.

All right. Can we ask, Matt, why is the grand jury going after you for illegal cannabis activities?

Just kidding, Matt.

Matt, I want to say welcome back. I want to say thank you for what you've already done for our community five years as our assistant city manager. I think it's great that you and Lane have already worked together so that the transition between the two of you should be as best as we can expect it to be. Courtney is going to be acting city manager until you arrive. But it would be great if you'd come up and say a few words. But mainly we just want to say welcome back. We're so happy to have you.

Mayor Mrakas, Mr mayor and Council, I do want to say, first of all, and I am honored that you trusted me. Mayor Mrakas, is a big job, I don't even think really big shoes.

Mayor Mrakas, Working on that.

Mayor Mrakas, Oh it's seeing a specific group of the lights on it's off so. Mayor Mrakas, it's opposite um so yeah i'm looking really looking forward to getting back to over here to Marina and working with the staff and with the Council to serve the whole community. and make this a better place that you've already set another trajectory for. As far as the other stuff, I'd love to have conversations about that because there's a whole lot behind that. I'm available for any questions or anything else you want to know. Actually, I missed your session earlier tonight, Lane. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to come here years ago and for being the assistant city manager here for a long time. And my wife and I have loved every minute of living in this area. And I owe a lot of that to you. So thank you.

Thank you very much, Matt. Okay, Kazimier Biala.

I want to ditto what everyone else has said, and we're so thrilled to have you back. And with that, I would like to make a motion. I'd like to move to adopt the resolution so-and-so approving the authorization of one submittal of an application for installation.

Usually, Matt, she's a lot more together.

I would like to make a motion to adopt the resolution authorizing approval of the city manager to adopt the city manager's salary schedule and authorize the mayor to execute the agreement on behalf of the city.

Go ahead. I'm sorry.

No, it's okay. I would like to second it. Seconded by the mayor.

All right. Any final questions or comments before we go to vote? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, please say no. All right, that motion passed unanimously. Welcome aboard, Matt. When do you think, is late August, early August? What's your best guess?

I think it needs to do a couple things that need to kind of line up in Pacific Grove for me to give a definite answer, but it's probably going to be on the August 21st timeline.

Okay, thank you, Matt. Excellent news. So Guido, I think, was suggesting that we take 11b before we adjourn. Is that correctly?

No. So whenever we have an item on the agenda, especially for planning resolutions or ordinances. We put an ad in the newspaper. And if we're not going to get to it tonight, that's totally the prerogative of the council. But we need to continue it to a date certain. And if we do that, then I don't need to spend another $200 putting an ad in the newspaper for my item. So I'm trying to save the city money. Okay. So, Lane, help us out with a date certain.

August 5th.

Okay, so August 5th would be the date, Guido, if that's amenable to you?

Works for me.

Okay. Now, are we sure we don't want to take Guido's issue? Because I think it's going to be quick.

Yeah.

We're talking about 13B.

Yeah.

That's Guido's issue. No, it's 11B.

Yes.

11B. I mean, we're talking about 11B and you're talking about 13B. Yeah.

All right. I know, Mayor, I know I have a lot of things that I'd like to discuss. I know anytime we say it's going to be quick, it's not.

Regarding?

Regarding anything.

How about the downtown?

The downtown vitalization. Right. Specifically that. So, you know, I don't know that I'm opposed to moving forward, but let's not be under the illusion that it's going to be quick.

Can I ask how about 13B? The shell signs that we already...

Sure. I mean, I could see that, you know, a little bit more quickly, although I have some questions there as well.

Have you asked about these questions? I have. Okay. So how about we keep the date certain for 11B to be August 5th. And so Guido can, you know, take care of the rest of his life. And then we adjourn tonight after 13B is completed, which I think is going to be quick.

It's just ironic that the council rules again will be moved. Well, we know that that's going to take a good hour. Yes, but I hope that I don't need a new copy next time. We can save the paper. Yes.

I'm going to talk to Anita. Thank you. Okay, so I'll make a motion. We continue tonight to conclude 13B, the Shell Gulf sign transition. Is there a second? Second. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay, who's going to lead us through this? How about Matt?

Hi, Council. I can quickly talk about it. Thank you, Timothy. Okay, so I'll try to make this as quick as possible. So good evening, Mayor Delgado, members of the City Council. My name is Tim Mayer, Planning Services Manager of the City. This evening, the Council is requested to consider approval of signage modifications and facilitation of a rebranding of existing signage for the private enterprise located at 2700 Imgen Parkway. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Okay, thank you. So the council's requested to consider authorization for the subject side of two items, number one being a submittal of an application for installation of new signage, and number two, approval of a change in signage facilitating rebranding from Shell Oil to Gulf Oil. Next slide, please. So 2700 Imgen Parkway is a city-owned land south of the intersection of Imgen Parkway and Abrams Drive, outside the limits of the city of Marina, but within the jurisdiction of Monterey County. Currently, tenant AJ Petroleum, a private entity, leases the property, including both Forward Market and the associated gas station from the city of Marina. Earlier this year, city staff received an application for new signage of the subject property. However, due to the site's location on land outside of city limits and operated by a for-profit organization, the application for signage modification requires review by the County of Monterey as a responsible jurisdiction. The lease agreement in place states that approval by the city must be provided replacement of any new signage on the property and for approval of change in signage, Because the lease does not state clearly that the city manager may approve of either action in consultation with the city's attorney's office, the matter has been brought to the city council for consideration and for purposes of transparency. Next slide, please. As originally proposed, the signage scope of work included installation of a new pylon sign 20 feet in height and 120 square feet in sign area, as well as new signage at the existing all-weather canopy and on the building exterior. However, the height and area of the proposed corner sign did not appear to comply with county regulations, and the applicant later submitted two revised options. A coordination with county staff has determined that the proposed scope of work included in option one would conform to applicable county regulations county staff have preliminarily approved the applicant's most recent planning permit application pending authorization by the city council next slide please so the next steps include approval by the county of the application for signage as submitted in action by the city council regarding the proposed change of signage next slide please The proposed actions would serve to enhance both the utility and aesthetics of the city-owned site. City staff therefore recommended the City Council grant authorization for submittal of the application for new signage to the County of Monterey and approve change in signage facilitating rebranding of the existing fueling station from Shell Oil to Gulf Oil. Next slide, please. Staff are available to answer questions. This concludes staff's presentation. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much Timothy for your patience over the weeks trying to get this deliberated. Really appreciate your work on it. Any questions from the public in person before we go online? Seeing no one rising, anybody online that would like to comment on this sign matter? Alright, no hands being raised. Let's close public comment. Let's go to Councilmember McCarthy.

Mayor. So I'm likely to want to split the question into the two different pieces and I support and I know that sounds a little strange. I support fundamentally the the allowing them to change the actual sign but the rebranding piece is challenging for me and there's a couple reasons why um many people don't know this but brands have very strict standards by which they hold their franchisees to um and uh shell is known to have very um strict brand guidelines and so there are things like for example if you are selling alcohol to minors um they have the right to revoke um uh the branding I don't know if this applicant has had their branding rights revoked do do we know that I think so no we don't know that okay um Fundamentally also Shell sells a different product than Golf, right? Shell sells top tier gasoline, which is not what Golf sells. So it's a different, similar but different product. So I'm not in favor of the rebranding. I'm probably the only one on the dais that feels that way. But I think for the economic viability of the site that we own, which by the way is in shambles, if you haven't been there, I suggest you go take a look. They have... been found to be selling alcohol to minors i think twice in the last year by the sheriff's office there's a lot of issues with the site that i think that keeping a shell brand would would benefit the city's interest in that property and so that for those reasons i'd be voting no on the rebrand

I think I see the city attorney as well. Yeah, just a point of clarification. I mean, I think that the rebrand has sort of been used in the change of signage, but the lease doesn't go that far. The lease is just if there's a change in signage, that city approval is required. So it doesn't go as far as sort of picking companies and their policies, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So it's much narrower than that.

City Attorney, is it as simple as if Taco Bell closes and Burger King wants to move in, we don't have control over that. If Shell moves out and Gulf moves in, we don't have control of that. Are they similar?

That's correct. But you could approve the signage that goes on that building.

And if we wanted to be really authoritative we could find reason to deny design change because we didn't like the brand but we wouldn't say that uh you could if the language went perhaps even further but it's even more limited where uh approval cannot be unreasonably withheld okay so in bad faith we can't deny correct gotcha okay can't remember any more input Brian

No, just a reminder that I think we know this, but we own this property, right? It's not like a Taco Bell that we don't own and the owner is trying to put in a different fast food.

So you're saying we could say.

No, I'm not saying that. I just want to make it clear that we own the property.

We understand that. But if we don't have a legal right to decipher, distinguish between Shell and Gulf, then we're not going to try to do that.

I don't know if that's what the attorney said.

Okay. Let's get clarification from the attorney. Yes.

I mean, so the use is still the same use. So the lease, and I did look at that to see if there was anything in there. So the use is for a convenience store gas station car wash. And as sort of with the change in signage, it would still be convenience store gas station car wash.

But the signage meets all of the regulations, right? So I guess I'm confused as to why it's coming to us if we don't have some discretion.

I mean, that's a good point. That's the way the lease was drafted. So typically it's so that the owner can kind of look at the signage and say, okay, yes, that works for me or work with the property owner to say no. Another reason would be, for example, if the sign that was proposed, which it was initially proposed, did not meet the county of Monterey requirements, right? If it was in city jurisdiction, we'd have more say, but in this case, we don't. So one of the basis for withholding consent would be that the signage does not conform to the requirements of the county of Monterey.

So if I may, just for my own edification. So if they wanted to change it to Billy Bob's Gas and whatever, like that would be the same thing. Like even if it's not a name brand, that's you're saying that we have no discretion there.

I would say some, but very little discretion.

So I guess that's my challenge, right? It sounds like there's a little bit of a gray line.

City manager, city attorney, could we say no because we don't like Gulf? No. Okay, so Brian, do you still have more input on that?

Yeah, just to clarify that that's not my perspective that I don't like Gulf.

Right, but we can't change it because it's Gulf because they have minors and they have lower gas. That's not within our prerogative is what I'm hearing. Do you agree with what the city attorney is saying?

That's not what I'm hearing. But what I'm hearing is that there is a little bit of gray area to pick an operator that is going to succeed and do well and follow the law and have operator guidelines that encourage that.

Okay. So city attorney, do we have any discretion between golf and show that?

Well, just a couple of things there. So no, this is the answer to that question. I think I've answered it. right and the second one in terms of picking the operator i think if there were issues so first of all the lease does give the city some options and we have actually you know sent a letter to the operator to comply with the lease terms for some of the issues that have been raised uh they have responded and i think staff is going to work with them also to inspect the property so there's some things that are in motion to make sure that happens uh Absent a default and going through that process to terminate the lease, this lease continues essentially till 2030. Okay.

Is there any gray area for us to say, no, because we don't want gold?

Not in that respect, but I was given a much sort of broader hypothetical, which was this Billy Bob's and whether or not that signage had things that... I don't know. We're distasteful, I guess.

Okay. Thank you. Any more, Brian, before we move on?

I guess the only other question I would have is could we find out if the operator lost their licensing rights?

Yes, we could certainly do that.

Okay. Is that related to this item tonight?

No. Okay. I'd be interested regardless of the vote tonight, though.

Yeah, so you can contact staff and talk more about that. Make sure you get what you wish. Let's go to Council Member Bialik. Councilmember, Mayor Bertrand Fischer.

Thank you. And I know it's not on the agenda, so René might stop me, but since Councilmember McCarthy brought up, yes, I have visited the place quite regularly during the Indian Parkway project. As far as I know, they chose to change brand names, brands. Yes, the city owns it and the tenant has plans to invest quite a lot of money there. But I don't know if we can probably not talk about it now, but just so that you're aware, they do have plans to a coffee shop car wash maybe so they do want to do things but this is the the issue that i've spoken about before you know we expect our tenants to maintain and i know i've even asked the city to to inspect because one of the light posts came down and i i wanted them to inspect all the other ones because why would one light post one down so anyway so there has been i have had discussions with the city manager quite regularly about But I know that the tenants have good plans and I like the business. I like how clean it is. And of course, they should not be selling alcohol to minors. But I know they're not the only ones who got caught for that. And it was before they switched to Shell, I think, or maybe both, Gulf. Maybe they also did it while they were having Shell. I don't know. So anyway, and I apologize for making this longer because I thought we would just approve the science. Thank you.

Thank you, that's remember be all i'd like to make a motion to adopt the resolution approving the authorization of one submittal of an application for installation of new signage and to. Approval of new signage at the existing city on site located at 2700 engine parkway and find that this action is exempt from sequel pursuant to section 15061 be three of the sequel guidelines. i'd like to second.

All right, my brief comment is that there's a little bit of similarity here between the Equestrian Center and Water City Roller Hockey, whereas in this case, we are not properly taking care of this property as landlords, and we're starting to criticize this property for not being in good shape. For example, there was graffiti on an outbuilding and volunteers partly covered it up and it's been there for about a year. That's not the tenant's responsibility to paint the buildings, I don't think. actually it is okay so so there you have a tenant responsible to do things that normally we think of as landlord responsibilities and that was the catch-22 we had with water city roller hockey in the equestrian center is that the lease or the concessionaire agreements had them doing everything that landlords usually do so it didn't get done because they didn't have the money so if we're not responsible for the light post and they are if we're not responsible for the parking lot and they are we probably need to question whether that's realistic. But when we say the property is not in good shape, we might have a responsibility there like these other properties that we own. All in favor of the motion? Brian?

I certainly would not characterize that. I appreciate that opinion. But I think that anytime you have a landlord-tenant relationship, you absolutely rely on the tenant to provide feedback when things are going wrong. I'm assuming we haven't received a lot of feedback from the tenants saying asking for the landlord to intervene but um and i know we're getting off track but i you know we can we can agree to disagree but i i just want to be on the record that i don't characterize our relationship with the tenant like that um at all so yeah they're walking on eggshells trying to stay in our good stead so that we can work with them to improve the property they're they're really good tenants all in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye

All opposed, please say no. Okay, thank you. That motion passes three to one with Council Member McCarthy dissenting. And again, appreciate everyone for the long night, shorter than some nights. And it was a great reception for Lane. Lane, thank you for so much that you've done for our community. And Courtney, thank you for stepping up to be interim city manager. And we're really excited, Matt, for you to be here in August or whenever it is. Thank you so much. Okay, everybody, we're adjourned.