City Council - Special Meeting

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recording in progress councilmember mccarthy here councilmember mcadams here councilmember biella mayor tim fisher here mayor delgado

All right, we have a quorum and we expect Council Member Viola to join us at some point. I'm wearing a hat to thank city staff for putting on a summer employee luncheon that was a Western theme. I have a sneaky suspicion our assistant city manager may have had something to do with it. At least she knew about it in advance because she wore the boots and the Levi's and the whole thing. And we are joined today by our assistant city manager, Courtney Lindberg. Thank you, Courtney, for joining us. Courtney becomes our acting city manager on Friday, July 17th at 5.01 p.m. so today she's our acting city manager in place of lane long um we have two items on our agenda but before we get there let's have a moment of silence and then cilia is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance after a moment of silence Thank you, Celia, for being a good sport. Okay, we have a consent item agenda. Does anyone have any? Well, let's go to the public first. Does anyone? have any comment well let's let me back up let's give a short presentation on this consent agenda item if we can if not we won't in regards rehabilitation of the runway 1129 if no one here is ready to present to that then we'll ask how should we do this public comment okay courtney Nope. Okay. I've suddenly turned you mind.

Thank you.

So this is for the rehabilitation runway that is funded almost primarily through FAA grants, and they have timelines for when things need to be bid and awarded. So that was the reasoning. Because we have less meetings in July, it was going to put us very tight up against the deadline to be able to bid this out and award it within their criteria. So 95% of it is covered by the FAA grant with a very small percent being covered by California Department of Transportation. And the city of Marina is only paying a little over $1,000. So it was an opportunity we absolutely didn't want to miss out on.

All right, let's go to public comment. Anyone here in person want to comment on this issue? Please step forward. Not seeing anyone rise, let's go online. Please raise your hand if you'd like to speak to this matter. Not seeing anyone raise their hand, we'll bring it to council. Would someone like to make a motion?

Move to approve the consent agenda.

Okay, is there a second?

I'm happy to second.

Okay. Anyone have any input, starting with Council Member McAdams?

Um, so sort of related, but maybe not. I was recently at Joby and a lot of their employees are parking on the dirt. And you have to like tromp through ice plant and it just sort of doesn't seem very safe. So I don't know if there's funding to help them expand their parking or anything like that. But I would like to, you know, plant that seed a little bit and see how we could be more accommodating to their workforce.

On the agenda, I think you can meet with staff.

Sure. Okay. Thanks. At lunch today, you could have talked to AJ.

Jenny, you could have talked to AJ at lunch today. I'm just kidding. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Any more input before we go to a vote? Then all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, please say no. Okay. Thanks, everyone. That motion passes unanimously. We move on to the main item on the agenda, which is the UUT ballot language. And who would like to lead us in this?

So my partner Pearl will lead that. And I think there's a presentation. I think Shep is pulling it up.

All right. Welcome, Pearl. Thank you for your guidance.

I see you again. Yes. So this item is if we can go to the next slide, please consider adopting a resolution amending the ballot question for the proposed utility user tax ordinance that the council previously placed on on the ballot for this November at your last meeting. In fact, if we can go to the next slide.

just wanted to do a brief review of how we got here and and renee did you want to start with the first um history before i got here do you want me to run through it yes yes i can cover this so this slide in the next slide is just a summary of the meetings that the council has held on the ut starting with september 23 2025 with the study session uh and you know going through uh february 18th on providing some funding options as well as facility costs if you want to go to the next slide And again, March 3rd, sort of provided further information. And then an update on April 21st, 2026. It was an item that was continued actually to May 5th, 2026. And then on June 16th, we did, staff did, FM3 provided a presentation on the survey results. And Council provided direction on bringing back a UUT with specific criteria. And then on July 7th, Council placed the measure on the ballot, which brings us to today.

And the next slide. Yeah, and I can take it here just very briefly. As you know, last week on July 7th, the Council voted to place the measure on the ballot. And at the same time, as part of that discussion, directed staff to return with some proposed revisions to the ballot question to address concerns council members had expressed, as well as to draft some potential sunset language for the tax. So that would be a change to the ordinance itself actually to expire after 30 years. So staff went back and had discussions internally and with council and then with legal counsel, and then as well, we met with the mayor and council member Biala, who had been appointed to the ad hoc committee to discuss the ballot argument, which is a separate issue, but that's why staff met with those two council members. And so staff, today we're bringing back our proposed revised ballot question and resolution to amend the ballot question to adopt that to the council. So that's how we got here. The next slide, please. Yeah, and I just wanted to explain, I think it might be helpful, a little bit of the background on some of the legal and practical constraints around ballot questions. and why the proposed question reads the way it does and why it's a recommendation of your staff and your council, both Renee and myself, to adopt the ballot question as is. And so there's a couple of different considerations going into this. Some are legal, some are practical, some are sort of a mix of legal and practical. Legally, this tax is, as proposed, a general tax. As you'll recall, two years ago, the council placed on the measure a bond measure, which would have had all the revenues dedicated specifically to the new police and fire safety buildings and the new city hall. And while a large majority of your voters voted to support that over 60%, it didn't receive the two-thirds vote needed for such a dedicated bond measure to be approved. So after the process that Renee just went through, the recommendation through your city finances CAC and through staff was to do the UUT as a general tax, which means that as a matter of law, the defining feature of a general tax, the revenue must be available for general city purposes. And the ballot question needs to tell the voters that in no uncertain terms. And so that's one of the issues we want to be clear on. The other is that a separate body state law requires that the ballot measure, the question itself, must be impartial. It needs to fairly state the nature of the measure, what it will do in an impartial way, and it can't sort of advocate for or against the measure. And the council does have a fair amount of discretion in doing that, but the bottom line is it needs to be impartial. Two other things we're wrestling with is, You know, a lot of the discussion has been, well, if it's if the city voters pass this tax, the city will then be able to issue lease revenue bonds. And those will be for a specific purpose for the police and fire and buildings and city hall building we've been talking about. And those as a practical matter could be paid or paid off through the general fund, which will increase these revenue. But the ballot question in this ballot itself cannot earmark the funds for that purpose or for any other purpose. And the final thing, and this is one of the most challenging things, I think, for staff and legal counsel to wrestle with, is the ballot question is not the place to attempt to persuade the voters to vote for or against this measure. And as we get into looking at the language we've come up with, I want to just underscore that. There may be things that you that you would like to say because you think it's important for the voters to know that to encourage them to vote for this or otherwise. But that question is not the place to do that. In fact, it's unlawful for the city to spend public resources at all. to encourage the voters to vote for or against any ballot measure, except we're doing so as expressly authorized by statute, by the state legislature. And one of the very few areas where you're actually authorized to urge the voters to vote in a particular way because of what the ballot measure funds could be used for is in the ballot argument. And your resolution did that. It authorized two members of the council to draft the ballot argument, which can expressly advocate and urge the voters to vote for this and explain why. But that cannot be part of the ballot question. That's a separate issue. Ballot arguments would be due on opening arguments on August 13th, but that's just one of the legal issues we, as your attorneys, wrestle with and went into us drafting the question the way we did. Next slide, please. I also just wanted to briefly go over the issue of why staff did not include a sunset provision in the tax. That was one of the items recommended by the council recommend or directed staff to come back with uh some language to do that staff had further discussion about that um and uh for several reasons which we later discussed with the ad hoc committee we met the uh the mayor and council member viola staff does not recommend including a sunset provision, but instead recommends keeping the language as is that the measure with the tax will remain in place until ended by the voters. The voters will retain the control at any time they could propose a measure to end the tax. And as I believe we discussed last time, there's also a provision in the ordinance itself that provides that the council can reduce the people subject to the tax or the rate of the tax, including to zero, at any time if the council determines the funding is not needed, whether that's in the near term or in 30 or 40 years or at some other time. So with that, that sort of ends my presentation. If we can go to the next slide, that has the proposed language, the clean version that was actually in the resolution. The red line showing the changes we made was in your staff report, which I believe council members have up in front of them. We've also got a slide on I think the next slide that shows the red line and whatever the council's preferences for whether we keep up here the clean version of the red line during the discussion. We wanted to make both options available. And that concludes my presentation. I know, Rene, did you want to add anything?

Nope. That's it.

All right. Thank you very much, Pearl. Let's go to public comment, starting with anyone here in the room. Please come on up. You have up to three minutes.

All right. Athena Bersiaga, pronoun she, her, a, I'm going to give some suggestions and also just some comment on the UUT. Be great if you can keep this tax below 7% because 7% is very high and also potentially include a sunset date as repealing the tax would be very hard for our citizens to do. and also we need to provide an exemption not just for low-income households but for also those over the age of 70 years old based on age not income because 70 folks who are 70 years old and older are on a fixed income and this tax steadily erodes their income and puts them in jeopardy And I know the council has approved giving away millions of a transient occupancy tax to a favored hotel developer. And that tax is collected from tourists, not constituents. And when it comes to the constituents, we want to impose a forever UUT on our citizens. And while it is a valid case that we can make that there are unmet needs for the city, but this TOT giveaway clearly demonstrates that it might be a little bit of a favored response when developers come to the city as opposed to funding things that our citizens need. And we're just basically handcuffing our constituents this forever tax. The only remedy would be to repeal it in an extensive effort on a part of individual citizens to put forward a citizens ballot repeal initiative, which is time consuming and costly. During these difficult economic times, the UUT should be opposed because it directly impacts households when they are most vulnerable. It is highly regressive as it is levied on essential life needs, electricity, gas, water and basic telecommunications. Lower and middle class income families spend a significantly larger percentage of their income on these unavoidable bills than do wealthy residents. Taxing basic utilities functions as a penalty on living essentials, disproportionately harming working class families, seniors living on fixed incomes, and who have no way to opt out of heating their homes or using water. And it multiplies economic hardship because when utility prices go up, the cost of the UUT will also go up. During the current financial squeeze, families have to trim their household budgets to make ends meet. The city of Marina should be held to the same standard, prioritizing efficiency and internal cost cutting over the increasing tax burden on residents. In summary, we shouldn't balance the city's budget on the backs of working people, and we should look inward more so to fund these important things for public safety and whatnot. Thank you.

Thank you, Athena. And I'll note that we got an email from Paula Pillow, which verbatim says much of what Athena just read to us. So there's at least two people who are on that same page there. Thank you, Athena. Anyone else in public? Okay, let's go to people online. Nancy Amadeo, welcome.

Can you hear me okay? It's me.

Yes, Dan, we hear you. Thank you, Dan.

Great. I had the opportunity to see the FM3 presentation from the June 16th meeting. There was a lot of good information in it, but the two main data points this council really needs to consider was the big bullet, the big pie chart that talked about is the city going in the right direction? And in that pie chart, it was like a 50-50 vote. Then later on in the presentation, it was kind of rating various departments in the city. And when you get down to the council mayor thing, it was basically a 50-50 vote. So you need 50 plus one. So let's pretend that I'm that plus one. What does this council need to do to convince me to support the ballot measure? So let's talk about timing. I think it's no good time to do a tax, but there are bad times and this could be a bad time. So one of the questions this council has got to address and sell is why now? Why can't it wait? forget the fact that it might cost more down the road, but down the road, you're gonna have so much more information to make a good decision in. And on top of that, there's gonna be a whole new council sitting in that dais. There could be two new faces come December. So, and their priorities may not be the same as yours. Second point to talk about is trust. Can we trust the council to keep the promise on where this money is gonna be spent? The attorney keeps, on many occasions said you could spend it any way you want. You cannot decide it will only go to a specific activity. So why trust? You have to be trusted. And the only way you can sell trust is establish a relationship where people will trust you. And lastly is perception. Perceptions are, some of them are negative. For instance, that hotel thing you guys brought up. I don't know why you did. It made no sense. You didn't have enough information to even talk about it. The stipend increase you gave yourself, 1,000%, $200 to $2,000, right? You know, for a city that's hurting for money, supposedly, to do these things, that raises questions in a lot of people's mind. You want to establish trust. Why don't you repeal that? Why don't you put it at a reasonable level? Anyway, that's the way that survey goes. But this is not family feud. This is about real people having to make real decisions that affect their pocketbook directly. Thank you.

Thank you, Dan. Let's go to Linda. Welcome, Linda.

Yes, thank you, Maria. Good evening, City Council. This, by the way, does not mean that I agree with the UUT. But let's say it is approved by the City Council to go on the ballot. I have a couple notes on the proposed text. Specifically, I would like to specify, I don't just want to say 7% utility user's tax with, but I would want to say something along the line, 7% utility user's tax including reduced rates for low-income households to make it perfectly clear what that means with. Also, I would want to say, instead of audits, I would want to say independent audits. And I would also want to say... that all funds required to stay in Marina, not just say locally, because locally can mean more than just Marina. So I would want to make that perfectly clear. So I just wanted to point a couple of things out and make a suggestion. Thank you, and I'll yield my time back.

Thank you, Linda. We appreciate that. Let's go to Rick B. Good evening, Rick. Having some difficulty, perhaps.

Rick, you look like you're good to go.

We can't hear you if you're talking. Rick B., you're unmuted and ready to go. Okay. Does anyone else wish to raise their hand so we can have you speak? We'll come back to Rick. Andrew Balestrieri. Welcome, Andrew. Andrea, sorry. Andrea. Let's try again, Andrea. Go ahead, Andrea.

Good evening. Can you hear me?

Yes, loud and clear.

Okay, great. Thank you. Well, thank you for having all of us. I am coming in kind of at the last minute, but I would like to bring a human perspective of what 7% means for those of us in town. I'm a teacher in the area. I'm a single parent. 7% of a utility, not only... you know, might benefit the city, but it makes a decision on groceries for what I buy for my family, right? It makes a decision of whether or not, you know, what I'm able to do for my family when they need school clothes and things like that. So the 7% may not seem like it's that much, but for those of us on you know, working people's salaries, it impacts a lot. And for us to have to decide, well not decide really, I guess, for us to have to be forced into spending an extra 7% that impacts everybody a little bit differently is a difficult thing when we're I'm not exactly sure where all the money is going. And when we are trying to keep food on the table for our families and trying to keep our kids, you know, just being taken care of as well as ourselves, rent increases, PG&E increases, so many things. Asking us to pay another 7% seems like it's unfair and unfair. realistic for many families that are actually living in Marina at this time. So I hope when the decision is made that it is made with the actual citizens of Marina in mind and understanding how that 7% for some might be $20, for some might be $100, whatever it is, but it is impacting us on a financial basis that does impact groceries and things like that for our families. So that's all I wanted to share. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Andrea. And it may be the 11th hour, but we appreciate your input. It's not too late.

Thank you. Okay.

Yes. We'll go back to Rick B. Rick, if you're there, we'd love to hear from you.

Can you hear me, Bruce?

Yes. Rick, if you could increase your volume a little bit. You're soft.

Oh, okay. I'll speak up.

Are you on your scooter, Rick? That might be affecting it.

It might be. I mean, the wind's blowing and stuff. No, I don't use this Zoom thing very often. I'll get closer to the microphone.

Okay, we can hear you, but barely.

Okay, I just want to say that I've been a resident of Marina for 28 years now, and I raised my family here, and this has always been a working-class town, you know, so a lot of us have always been living just like making, getting by, you know, just barely getting by, you know, and then I'm retired now, and to have 7% added on all my utilities is, really impacts me you know because the fact that it's not just a seven percent tax it's a seven percent tax it keeps on going up every time utilities go up and as we know pg&e is already filing right now for another increase in in uh services and uh As it is, my PG&E has tripled in the last five years, and I still use the same amount of energy. You know, that kind of increases just isn't good for the community and isn't good for keeping the type of community that we have here of working class people. Because what it's going to do, it's going to run everybody off. And all we're going to have is the people that can afford these $1.2 million houses and the property taxes that come with them. that's not, that's not what Marina is about. That's not the reason I moved here. That's not what I raised my family here for. I raised my family because it was a small community and it was, it was a community that everybody knew everybody and everybody helped everybody out, but increasing, making it unaffordable, especially for the locals that have lived here for a long time and raised their families here is unacceptable. And I think, and, and, The way it's written in the ballot is real deceptive because it makes it look like it's, you know, for the basic emergency needs, you know, and the way it's thrown into the general fund and also there's no sunset on it. It's pretty much a blank check for the city forever. Anyways, that's all I got to say about it. Thank you, Bruce.

Thank you, Rick. Very much. Okay. We'll go ahead and close public comment. We'll come back to the floor here. We had public comment from the floor, but please proceed.

sorry i was running late um i just wanted to give the perspective that you gotta separate critical services which are obviously fire and police from important things such as you know city council like being in city hall it's obviously an important building and we do need to have um infrastructure improvements there's no question about that the amount of Time effort money that's going to go into upgrading. This is way more than it's worth. And at that point, it makes sense to build something new, but you got to separate the timing of things. It's important at this state to have fire and police. So just make the bond about that because that's critical services and let the city hall be. funded separately, whether it's a future bond, whether it's coming from different sources of income, because you're going to have more businesses putting in revenue and you can collect that revenue over time. You can reassess your priorities, maybe less on parks and maybe use that money to build City Hall and have future money coming in from businesses go towards the parks fund. So you have to think about What are the priorities for the city and how are we minimizing the impact on residents? Because you've heard from the people here, 7% increase is a big deal for a lot of working families. So if we're talking respect for the taxpayer, then we have to look at. Funding the most critical aspects of it and making sure that the terms of the bond, not the tax, but the bond, like, focusing on just being a bond. Because if it's if you have a tax component, there's more risk involved in the fluctuations of the tax. But if you just have a fixed bond, and it's a special type of bond, then let that be for infrastructures in. specific buildings that are going to be benefiting the expansion of fire services and police services and you can ask anybody in the community you need to pay many more consultant fees they'll tell you that the community is willing to support critical services specific to fire and police but they don't necessarily feel comfortable supporting city hall especially in a time when you're considering a big significant tax break for potential luxury developers on the tax sharing side of the revenue. I know that that's common protocol, but you have to realize that on one end, you're cutting money from a luxury developer. On the other hand, you're taxing the residents of marina that are barely making ends meet you're taxing them to build city hall so i would say remove city hall out of the equation focus on fire and police and let that be the driving force for for this um proposal thank you thank you analuz okay we'll close public comment um

Didn't see any questions. I know Linda had three specific changes she suggested to our ballot language. We can get into that later. But did anyone else note any questions that we should answer at this point? Okay. So now let's go to council comment. Would anyone like to go first? And I'm happy to, but Council Member McAdams.

Thank you, Mayor. I just would like the city attorney to sort of clarify what our task is this evening.

Yes, sure. So tonight the council is considering amending the ballot question. So the resolution, the measure was placed on the ballot at the last council meeting on July 7th. So really that that is the focus of tonight is just amending the ballot question.

Perfect. Thank you. And then to confirm, has the City of Marina made, is in a tax revenue agreement with the hotel that speakers have talked about this evening?

There is no tax revenue sharing agreement that exists.

Okay, great. Thanks for clearing that up. So, I was not present at the meeting last week and I didn't have an opportunity to sort of to speak on it. And so for me, I'm not taking this vote lightly. We are here to represent all the residents of Marina, including the many people who are busy working, raising families, and trying to keep up with the rising costs of childcare, healthcare, gas, food, housing, and really other basic needs. I'm concerned that many of the residents are not either aware of this issue or have the time or the ability to participate. Like, we're just getting off work. We have kids. We're making dinner. But they are the ones who are going to be feeling the financial impacts of this ballot measure if the voters approve it. I have solar. My PG&E is like $9 a month. So, however, you know, as we heard, yes, PG&E has gone up, you know, 30%. My garbage bill went up from $80 something to $99. So, and that was just this month. And then the flip side of it is that I am at a complete loss on how we move forward and finally get our employees out of the 50-year-old double-wide trailers and provide our police department with safe, suitable facilities. I have repeatedly asked those who are in opposition to to bring forward, like, how do we do it? Bring your solutions, bring your best ideas. I will advocate the offer remains open. And even through Measure U, no viable alternative has been provided to me. So, We can and we should like we hear this message about, oh, we should, you know, cut this and reduce these costs and do budget cuts. But it's not going to come up with 30 to 50 billion. And the longer we delay, the more it's going to be. And we see that and we've learned that in other projects as well. And then also this sort of like coulda, shoulda, woulda. Well, here we are. Here we are with tarps. And here we are. I mean, I would welcome anyone in the public to go use the restroom in City Hall. It is disgusting. It is embarrassing. I am appalled and mortified. of the working conditions that our employees do work in. And I please, I would suggest that you tour the facilities, go over to the community center, look where our seniors, we have the most affordable quality childcare, afterschool childcare with a walking school bus on the peninsula. Period. And our kids are exposed to wires that are like on the floor and electrical stuff that's just like outward whatever. The kitchen is a disaster and the restrooms are gross. So, you know, it's easy to say that. to blame whoever or how come we didn't charge whoever, blah, blah, blah. But here we are, bring your ideas and your solutions forward. I will fight for them. I will advocate them and nobody can come up with anything. So I do believe though in our democracy and I do believe that this is up to the voters. So if you do not want this to happen, go out boots on the ground and campaign against the ballot measure. But I mean, I, I don't, When councils talk about ballot measures, I really look at it like it's not my duty to ever take away someone's opportunity to vote on whatever it is. And hopefully this will get voters out, renters to vote. all of the demographics that never get out and vote. Like I think the June primary with like a 30% voting turnout for the, for Monterey County, like how embarrassing. So get your friends out to vote, you know? So at the end of the day though, I don't want to impose costs on our residents. And especially this is going to impact the low wage workers. And we have to talk about that. We have to, I mean, there's no question about it, right? And again, I remain open to solutions. And if there's another realistic path forward, I am absolutely ready to listen and to advocate and work towards that. But I don't know how we're going to get there. So thank you.

Thank you, Jenny. Anyone else?

Council Member Biala?

Yeah, I feel a little bit like a broken record in some instances, but I just wanted to say three minor points, I guess. And that is, to me, the issues of police and fire safety issues, that's a given. We all understand that. We're really below the national response time threshold. I'm sorry, we're above the national response time. That is, we cannot get to five minutes if you do a 911 call. So that's what I'm saying is the safety issues are sort of accepted. But I also think our 50-year-old portables are also part of safety. How can we say that we are in 50-year-old temporary structures that should have come down five to 10 years after they were installed, maybe, but 50 years later, that's a problem. That to me is a safety issue as well. So I don't think of them as different. These are dire needs and they're going to be things that we have to get done. We have to. Whether we pass the UUT or not, we have to get these done. We don't have a choice in my thought about what we're dealing with. And in that case, then, we all need to be thinking, if we don't have that $50 million, then what other services, what other projects are going to be halted? That has to happen. We cannot walk away from this again. It's taken, I think I asked our city manager how long it's been that we've been working on the UUT, and he said four years. So we spent two years working on Measure U, and that did not pass by a small margin, by the way. And now we've spent almost two years working on the UUT. If this doesn't pass, we're not going to spend another two years working figuring out what to do we will have to go to we commit to building these things because we have to it's a safety issue and we're going to have to start figuring out what we need to cut in the budget and it's going to be pretty severe but that's you know that is the reality of what we're facing here and i just wanted to to say that Marina had a UUTV for and I don't I wasn't around then so I don't know what the reasons were for it but it's one of the few ways that jurisdictions public agent public cities can raise revenues we're not in the business of raising revenues but we certainly know how to spend it and we have great needs for the constituency. But there's only very limited ways that we are allowed legally to raise revenues, to raise money. And so when I think about how long ago, and I don't know if anybody knows when we dismantled the UUT. 20 years ago? Approximately 2005. Okay. So I wonder, had we had the foresight to say that this was a legitimate way to raise funds 20 years ago and we started saving up for it, we wouldn't be in this fix today. So that is a problem, I think, for us that we kept kicking this down the road, And now it's 50 years that we have not done anything. And I think this is it. This is the decision point for this city to say we're not kicking it down. We cannot kick it down the road anymore. And this is the best solution that this council, and we've debated quite a bit. We debated lots on the Measure U. We're debating a lot on the UUT. We don't have any more other solutions. So to me, this is do or die. I mean, we have to do it regardless of what happens with the UUT. And again, I want to say that the hotel is totally separate from the UUT. The UUT is going to go for funds for the general fund, and the The incentive for the hotels is money that we never had. If the hotel is not built, we will never see any TOT. All we're saying is if we incentivize the hotel to be built, then we will share in their future profits, so to speak. and do a tax sharing arrangement. So we're not giving them $25 million. Actually, we're going to get money from it, and we have no risks. I just want to say that again. I think that we've said this enough, but it sounds like we still have a way to go in terms of education to the public. So that's it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Kathy. Mayor Tim Fisher?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I agree with both my colleagues who spoke. There's nothing I do not agree with. And I will also repeat what I've said before. But one thing for today, somebody said the only remedy would be to repeal And that's not true. Future councils can decide to lower the percentage, even lower it to zero. So there are ways to adjust the percentage for the UUT. If bonds are taken out for the new buildings and if they get paid off sooner because the income increases, there definitely is a way to lower the percentage. the money that our residents have to pay. So, but for the rest, yeah, I have said it before. We cannot afford, we cannot justify to put any money in the existing structures. And if the, if the UAT doesn't pass, like council member Biala said, we still need new buildings. The existing buildings are, It will be throwing money away to put any money in those buildings. And they're still too small. The parking lot is too small. So we need to build new structures for all three, police, fire, and city hall. It's embarrassing how our staff... in what conditions they are working in 2026. It's really embarrassing. So those who have not been on the tour yet, please go on the tour every third Thursday. I think that's tomorrow as well. At 6, yeah, at 6 p.m. Just come to City Hall. Come here. Come to the council chambers tomorrow at 6. And every third Thursday, if that day doesn't work for you, staff will be happy to accommodate a different time for you. So thank you.

Thank you, Elizabeth. Councilmember McCarthy.

Thank you, Mayor. First, I want to thank the work of the subcommittee. It's always hard to find time to put extra time into those things. So thank you for volunteering to do that and coming out with a great product. um look the measure hasn't earned my vote for at the ballot box anyway for a variety of reasons that i think i articulated last meeting as well um but i do hope that regardless of what the voters decide that council city council continues to just be really methodical um in working together to strengthen, you know, the public's confidence in city hall and how we spend money and, um, how we provide information to the public and how we involve the public things that arguably are, are, are not at the highest confidence level. So, um, you know, my stance is still the same as it was at last meeting, likely to support bringing it to the voters. Um, you know, it is interesting. One thing that I heard from my colleagues today was, um, you know, having to make some hard decisions, quite frankly, I'm not so sure that that might not be a bad thing for the council. You know, I know in my own personal life, when money is tight, like many of my constituents, we do have to make hard decisions and we look at money differently and we tend to spend money a little bit more carefully and more wise and right when the money's coming in and flowing, like whatever, you know, we, we, we maybe don't spend it as carefully. And so I just kind of wanted to draw that distinction. I was, you know, Just kind of thinking when I heard two of my colleagues talk about having to make hard decisions, I think we should make those hard decisions regardless of if this measure passes or not. We should act as if spending every dollar of taxpayer money is a hard decision and as if it was our own. So I probably said enough, but again, thanks for the work of the subcommittee and look forward to putting this to a vote.

Okay, I sent my comments to staff and the city attorney yesterday, I think it was, so that this wouldn't be a surprise. I didn't get any feedback, and that's okay. I didn't ask for any feedback. But my comments are that we always decide here based upon the best available information that we've got. And like a lot of people on the dais and outside, we've had questions and concerns over the last years regarding how to provide these adequate buildings, including a community center.

And everyone agrees they're inadequate.

I haven't heard anyone say that, no, keep going. These are good enough. Even though with the bachelor mentality, I think the city hall and the city council chambers are fine by me. I don't mind using those restrooms or those restrooms. I don't mind using the kitchen or the restrooms in the community center. The Scout House has an equally inadequate if if these are inadequate our scout house that's at this brand new park you know 10 million dollars if you include the pump track uh it's got these two little bitty old-fashioned bathrooms lock patent park same thing But they're good enough for me from a bachelor mentality. But I hear everybody saying it's not a professional adequacy. It's not what we want our folks to have. It's not what other cities have. Other cities have much better facilities than us. So I understand that unlike my bachelor mentality, our facilities are inadequate. And everyone pretty much agrees on that, especially the public. Is it Sharon? Sorry. What's your name, sir? Cheryl do real. We were talking before the meeting. He said, when I took the tour, that was it. I was done. You guys got to get new buildings. That's how most people see it. So that's not the argument. Two years ago, we tried a bond that didn't affect renters as much as it affected property owners. I thought that was really cool because that was equity that was putting more financial burden on on people that can afford it more overall, people who own property are better off in life financially than people who are renting. They have more economic security if you've owned property. Anyway, I thought that was really good. There was a little bit of equity in there, but they would still pay if their landlords raised their rents. So it wasn't like they were going to skate for sure. But overall, they had less skin in the game financially with a bond. There are people who then said, that's not fair. Renters should pay too. And that's one of the main reasons why the Citizens Advisory Committee said, don't do a bond, do a UUT. Because a UUT is fair. They didn't really say it was equitable. It was more like equal. They just said it was fair. So that 13 people unanimously, many of whom wrote it against the bond, supported this UUT at 7%. Now we have some people saying, oh, that's regressive. You shouldn't do a UUT. That's regressive. So it's like you just can't satisfy everybody. But the Citizens Advisory Committee that included some well-known citizen leaders unanimously voted for a UUT. And they had some other things they wanted in the UUT. And most of those things are in the UUT proposal we have before us, but not everything. I didn't see any recommendation for a sunset in the citizens report. What I saw was that we need to affirm the right of voters to end the UUT. And so in the UUT ballot language, it includes such language. They also, the Citizens Community Advisory, they recommended an advisory measure. And so our pollsters took out to the voters, do you guys care about advisory measure? Pollsters came back and said, it confuses them more than it gets their support. So that's one way that this language diverges from the language suggested by the voters. committee. The other way is that the committee suggested a UUT of 7% to approximately generate 3.0 million per year. And our UUT language is going to generate 3.8 million a year. So a little bit of difference there, 800,000 more than what the committee, but the committee did this without the information that we've had since the committee. So of course there might be some changes, but we are responsible for, Committee aside, for whatever goes forward, they made their recommendations. They did a good job. They might be right. They might be wrong. We take those recommendations as part of the best available information. And we tweaked it a little bit. We accepted most of it. We tweaked a little bit. So I have more to say, but I've gone on for five minutes. So I'll turn it over to others.

Council Member McCarthy. Mayor, I appreciate you keeping time to kind of what we unofficially agree on, but I'd like to call the question. I just don't see a lot of value in continuing to discuss. I mean, this is kind of a binary decision.

If you call the question, we will call the question. So let's have a vote. By the way, I'm about to vote no on this whole thing. I have a lot more to say, but if you want to call the question, all in favor of calling the questions, please say aye.

No, she's calling the question. But there still needs to be a motion.

Whoever wants to call the question, please say aye. There has to be a motion. There's no. It's a two-step process. The first step is you vote to see if we're going to call the question.

There has to be a motion.

Yeah. So Brian's making the motion. Thank you, Jenny. Does anyone second calling for the question?

I'll second.

Okay. Now, all in favor of calling for the question, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. All opposed, please say no. No.

I'm abstaining because there's no question to call.

Well, so the motion passes to call the question three to one with the mayor dissenting and Council Member McAdams abstaining.

So now... Council Member McAdams has a good point. There's no question to call, but I think at this point, practically speaking, somebody can make a motion.

Yeah. Let's get some attorney input here.

No, I think... Maybe the best thing to do would be for someone to put a motion on the floor and then you can call the question. Okay. I think what was given was that staff's recommendation is what was on the floor, but that motion has not been made.

Okay. So is there a motion? Does someone like to make a motion?

I'm happy to make a motion to adopt staff's recommendation.

I'm sorry, can you say that again?

Yeah, I'm happy to make a motion to adopt the recommendation in the staff report to adopt the resolution to amend the ballot question for the proposed utility users tax. The city council previously placed on the ballot for the November 3rd general municipal election.

I'll second it.

Okay, and city attorney, what must we do right now? Can there be any discussion on the motion?

Yes, there can. Now you can call the question. So now that you can.

Well, first, I'd like to take the floor to say. I am leaning toward voting no. If we don't have democracy, like Jenny said, where I'm able to be heard as the last of five speakers. And I have no choice but to vote no. But if you guys won't even hear me out, well, then, you know, that's OK. That's your decision. So, Council Member McAdams.

Thank you, Mayor. I mean, I feel the same. Like it's not even seven o'clock. If it was 1030 at night, fine. But here's our opportunity. Like this is not a non-controversial topic. So I don't know why. I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me. I can't support this either because I feel like we haven't talked about it. There's maybe potentially some changes that I would like to discuss. So I don't know. This is weird.

We have input from our city attorney.

Yes, I just want to clarify. So tonight is not a vote on whether or not to place this measure on the ballot, but merely to amend the ballot question.

So if we vote not to amend, it goes back to what it was?

It goes back to what was in the prior resolution. Yes, that's what will go on the ballot. If you vote no, the previous ballot question that was adopted on July 7, 2026 will be the question that is on the ballot.

Thank you. Council Member McCarthy. Thank you, Mayor. And to further complement things, just so that the public's aware and council's aware, if any one council member wants to make a motion to reconsider, which I would happily support, either make or second, I believe that's an option on the table. I don't think it would have enough votes to pass. But if the mayor's feeling that he doesn't want the ballot measure at all, um that would be an option to reconsider i believe uh last week's uh meeting but i for me i you know and i i under respect councilmember jenny's comments but you know we had robust discussion about this in the last meeting when you weren't here you know i think the question before us today is either to adopt the changes that the subcommittee recommended us or change it further which would mean coming back and city attorney please jump in if i'm speaking out of turn but that's correct come back for another special meeting which we're kind of running up against a deadline um and so i just don't see really any realistic options we talk about running efficient meetings you know yes we only have one real item on the agenda but with that i would like to call the question or make a motion to call the question if i can get a second i'll second okay uh cast member well so can we have councilman be all on top here no

Okay.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye. All opposed, please say no. No. Okay. That motion passes. Let's call the question. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, please say no. No. Okay. Thank you, everyone. That motion passes 4-1 with Mayor Delgado dissenting. And have a nice rest of your evening. We've got a lot of sunlight left.