City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Sorry. Okay, there we go. That's better. All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the City of Riverside City Council meeting for June 16, 2026. I am Mayor Patricia Lackdawson. I will call our meeting to order. Before we get started, I just wanted to let folks know that Councilmember Condor will be joining us later today. As part of his duties to the March Joint Powers Authority, he is attending a March Inland Airport Authority and March Air Force Base military installation readiness exercise. March JPA spent three years acquiring this funding from Washington, building this community installation utility tabletop exercise. Council Member Condor is joining members from more than 20 other agencies today. So he will not join us until probably after three, closer to four. So just want to let folks know. And with that, we will start our meeting as we do with public comment. And this is on any matters within the jurisdiction of the City Council.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

And also, I didn't mention, this is also for comment on closed session as well. All right. So in council chambers, we have Reuben Gregg Soto. Welcome, Mr. Soto. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody. You know, I got my favorite shirt on. And my name, SOTO, stands for Eagle. I was so high. I was a warrior back in the day. My family is so heritage. This is to do with the Bible, the exact verse that states you will receive what you ask for if you pray according to God's will. 1 John 5, 14 through 15. This is the confidence we have in approaching God that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know we have what he asked of him. Other closely related verses about getting what you ask for, often tied to doing God's will or abiding in Him, include John 15, 7. If you remain in me and the words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done. Or John 14, 13. And I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Matthew 18, 21, 22, when Peter asked he should forgive someone seven times, Jesus responded, I'll tell you not seven times, but 77 times, or 70 times seven. In some translations, like instead of setting an actual mathematical limit of 490 times, Jesus said it's symbolic to forgive all the time. And that's why this country and these Christians are evil, what they do. I don't forgive none of you. You arrest me falsely. Pamela did me wrong. That's all to do with the churches. I don't have to believe in your religion. I believe in God because I got my First Amendment. All these Christian Catholic Mormons who are ever else is trying to stop God's Word to me. The verses detailing Satan's attempt to tempt Jesus, who recognized as God incarnate in Christian theology, are found in Gospel Matthew 4, 1 through 11, Luke 4, 1, 13. Satan approached Jesus in the wilderness and presented the three specific temptations. Turn of the stones to bread. Satan tempted Jesus many times. And the Christians are Satan. They're the ones tempting. They tempted me. They put me in jail. I'm clean and sober. Drugs are in there. Booze are in there. And they're the devil. They need to stop their stuff, what they're doing. I've got some other stuff to say about this, but you know what? They're playing God. You're not God. You're just a human being. You think you're really the Lord. You're just pimping God for money. That's all. So I don't agree with some of the things they say, but you know what? It also says the chosen one will be turned.

Thank you, Mr. Soto. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next I have Errol Koschevitz.

Yeah, I'd like to use the overhead projector. And this is public records I get back from you guys. I'm asking public records, basically, who gets a purchase card? The city employees get a purchase card, and I'm asking how much you guys provide to them and their names. and you guys are not providing this information to me um you have given 330 purchase cards out i have the list of city departments has been going to I have the right to see who you guys have been given these purchase cards to. I asked 10 times at least about a purchase card. Different parks and recs department members are getting them. I have asked and you guys have refused to provide me the information. You're in violation of California Public Records Request Act. I have, you have provided 330 purchase cards. This is what you guys responded back to me. Pursuant to California government code, the Public Records Act only requires the city to produce writings that are owned, used, or retained by the city at the time of the request. I requested this for months. And you right now, you're not providing me the information. So you are in violation of public records request. I don't know what else to tell you guys, but we have a lot of issues here You need to provide me the information that I'm requesting And you guys have failed to do so forever This is very very difficult to talk to you about I should have the right to see who's getting this money and where it's going to and how much they're getting 330 purchase cards Now I do have the list of how many it's gone to the parks and recs. I have the list that going to everywhere else, but I don't know who was getting them. I should have the right to know what you guys are doing. You could be giving a purchase card to somebody for $100,000 to do what? I have no idea. I've asked you many a times, and this is what I've been getting all the time. So you guys are in violation of California Public Records Request Act, and you guys will have a blessed day. I hopefully, you guys will all go to jail pretty soon. You have a blessed day, guys.

Thank you, Mr. Koschevitz. All right, Aurora Chavez.

welcome miss chavez thank you good afternoon everyone i'm looking forward for item number seven a and b today because that's talking about our new city attorney But I wanted him to know that last city council meeting on 6-9, item 13 was debated whether it was legal or not. We need better legal advice. Even in public comment, a lady attorney came and gave her best advice that the council could make a better decision. It passed anyway. But wait, we have our own paid city attorneys. Why is it getting this far to our agenda and complete possibly another lawsuit? Every time there's a lawsuit filed, we don't win. It's paid by the taxpayers. The time, yes, but when it wins or loses, we still have to pay. We're still paying. So we want better legal advice. If it seems like it's going to be any illegal ramifications before it gets here, then we need it to stop and give reason why this shouldn't be on the agenda. And I'm just tired of seeing too many lawsuits. That's all. So I'm looking forward for our... on 7a and b and also too I carry my pack pocket constitution people should carry the constitution with them so that they understand what's going on not only that I brought more show and tell Janet Goski Center changed their logo to butterflies And this represents the J and the G for Janikoski Center. So they're one of my families. This is where I learned everything from is Janikoski. Now I have another second family is La Sierra. Last year, oh, the great people. I wish I could clone myself so I could go to all the wards and help out. That's all I wanna do is help out and I just wanna clone and help everybody, but I don't know, I try to do as much as I can. So if you guys need help or anything at the wards, let me know. I'll be glad to help. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Chavez. I like the butterfly, too. Next I have Gary Stark. Welcome, Mr. Stark.

Good afternoon, Mayor.

City Council members and staff. My name is Gary Stark, and I'm the wing leader of the Commemorative Air Force at Riverside Airport. And first off, I'd like to thank the City Council for holding your Aerospace Expo at our facility. It was very well attended. But I'm here today to talk about what's happening next month. What's happening next month? America's 250th birthday. And we're going to be celebrating that at the Riverside Airport. The Commemorative Air Force is putting on a recalling America's 250th birthday bash. And at this event, it's a free community event. We're inviting all the residents of Riverside and the surrounding areas. It's going to feature historic military aircraft, classic cars, World War II displays, living history exhibits, veteran recognition, and the big thing is skydivers. We have permission from the FAA to drop skydivers out of our World War II paratroop plane. I don't know of any other event in Riverside or in Riverside County that will be having skydivers on the 4th of July. So I would like to invite all the council members to please come out. The skydivers will be jumping from around 1230. We have a singer who is amazing for our national anthem, and it's going to be a great afternoon. And I would like to thank the city staff, the event staff, the commission, and the airport manager for working with us to put this event on. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Stark. I appreciate that. That looks fun. Let us go to our online callers. Let's have caller number one, please. Well, we will get there. Good afternoon.

Jason Hunter, Ward 1. I want to talk about employee compensation. I'll talk more about the new city attorney's proposed comp when that time comes, but You know, we just tried to pass a sales tax here. It failed. It failed miserably. I mean, 4060 is pretty bad, historically bad maybe, for a sales tax measure, particularly considering the $400,000 that was spent in favor of it, both city money, which is the public's money, and then mostly union money on the other side. I think there's a lack of trust and faith in municipal government here in Riverside. I look around the state. Other sales tax measures didn't do nearly as well, or as badly, I should say, as poorly. I look at transparent California. Haven't looked at it in forever. And I see total benefits in pay at the city. You know, this is a city where the median income is somewhere around $85,000, if I remember correctly. I look at individual employees. We've got 50 of them making over $400,000 in total pay and benefits. We've got 200 making over $300,000. I didn't have the time to look at how many folks were making over 200 and 100, but I assume over 200 has got to be probably in the thousands. We only have 2,500 employees or 3,000 employees, somewhere around there. I just think that we've gotten to a point here, and a lot of this compensation is not just salary. You really got to look at the overtime and the other benefits. And then, of course, there's another thing called other pay. I don't even know what's in there. Some people have huge amounts of, quote unquote, other pay. So it's really difficult, I think, for your average person in Riverside to look at who's probably pretty, you know, they have a good education, they have good jobs. to kind of be able to sympathize with public employees that are making two, three, four, and sometimes five or six times as much as their entire family is making. And they could have two professionals in their family. So I think we need to look at, I think we have a bubble in public employee compensation in the state, particularly acute here in the city of Riverside. And we need to start dealing with it because I think the public has told you very plainly enough. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hunter. Let's go to our next caller, please.

This is Keith Nelson. I'll talk to the amount on the 7 and 7a later. I submitted a long written public commenting comment that's also online getting a lot of feedback documenting the record of misconduct boundary failures conflicts and violations involving the city manager Mike Fertel and the city manager's office the council has had this problem in front of it for a long time the issue is not one Facebook post one anonymous letter it's not a misunderstanding it's a long pattern of this city manager failing failing to maintain the most basic boundary between his public office, city employees, city information, city communications, city resources, and his household. The record shows city staff pulled into matters involving Susan Freeman. They show city communications, city HR materials, city hall access, economic development messaging, employee-facing communication, private events, DONATION RELATED ACTIVITY OUTSIDE ORGANIZATIONS FLOWING THROUGH AND AROUND THE CITY MANAGER'S HOUSEHOLD. THE RECORD SHOWED THE CITY MANAGER HAD NOTICE, THE COUNCIL HAD NOTICE, THE MAYOR HAD NOTICE, YET FOR YEARS THE CITY ALLOWED THIS TO CONTINUE. This failure has harmed Riverside. It has harmed employee trust. It has harmed public confidence. It has created legal exposure. It has destabilized the city. It has contributed to Riverside becoming a public embarrassment instead of a seriously professionally run managed city. And now the city's manager has filed a claim to the city for $1 million. This changes everything. The city manager cannot protect the city's interest while his household is legally adverse to the city. He cannot supervise employees who may be witnesses. He cannot be trusted with confidential discussions, litigation strategy, risk management discussions, employee contracts, city attorney communications, or other internal records at all. This is not personal. This is government. Your own agenda memorandum identifies this as public employee discipline under government code section 4597. This confirms this is not a rumor, not political noise, not merely a family controversy. It's formally before the council as a disciplinary measure. And now the memo states that requires disclosure, which includes voting or absentee vote of each member. The public deserves to know who protected the city and who protected the city manager. Mike Fertel has failed in his duties. The City's Council has failed by allowing this program to grow. They failed to act when the warning signs were obvious, failed to protect employees, failed to protect the City, failed to manage the Charter Officer, Hugh Harder. Today is your opportunity to finally correct your long history of failures. Do not hide behind process. Do not hide behind contract language. Do not issue a weak reprimand and pretend the problem is solved. Thank you, Mr. Nelson.

All right. We have a next caller, please.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Ernie. I live in Ward 1. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Go ahead.

Okay, thanks. I'm speaking on behalf of item number 32, but I don't know if this is the appropriate time or not.

We're going to take that up this evening. This is general public comment and then also post-session.

Okay, well, I would like to talk anyways about it because I'll talk later too because I definitely want to bring this up. I don't think 45... electric vehicle chargers is enough for the city. Adding 45 is not enough. In Ward 1 right now, I have to go to the city to charge, and on the weekends, I only have one charger because everything else is Tesla. We have 50 million Tesla chargers, and we only have one charge point that is a Type 2 charger that I can use for my vehicle. So therefore, I have nowhere to go on the weekends except for out of this out of the city or i have to go for as far as merino valley just to charge my car which i don't think is right um we need more chargers we need more type 2 chargers um we need to make sure that i that they're spread out evenly because like i said right now in ward one there's only one charger that i can use on the weekends the rest are locked up in fancy garages that are not open on the weekends. And then the other problem we have is we have people that are parking in those spots that aren't charging. And we can never get a hold of anyone from parking control to actually fix that problem because they're never around on the weekends. Again, this only happens on the weekends because that's when I need my charger. I have a charger at work. Um, the rest of the week, but when I'm home, that's the only one that's available. And it's frustrating when people park there and then there's no parking enforcement. And I know people are going to complain about this because of the fact is I know there are trumpets and they love to complain about EV chargers. Um, but at the same time, it's like, we have electric vehicles now that are saving this planet and saving the atmosphere. So we need to have more chargers. And then the other thing I want to bring up is the speedways on these roads. We definitely need more cops on these roads. These roads are out of control with speeders, and they want to just fly by you and then cut you off, and no cops around anywhere. They use these roads as speedways, and there's school zones that 40 miles per hour they're going through at 25-mile-per-hour zones. There's not enough.

All right. Thank you very much. We have another request to speak in chambers. Judge Bailey? Welcome, Judge.

Good afternoon, Mayor. William Bailey, Jr., Ward 4. I see my man, Chuck, who got a good vote in the primaries in here. Anyway, we'll get you elected in November. Anyway, just here as an observer, average tax paying citizen. And so I just wanted to come and see what's going on. Congratulate Chuck if he was here.

He will be back later this afternoon.

Yeah, he'll be back later. Yeah, I saw Councilman Robillard earlier. I know he had a good breakfast. Anyway, I just want to say I'm interested in what's going on here at City Hall. I did read the morning paper. I'll read the paper tomorrow and see what they have to say. So anyway, all I can say is congratulations on still being here and use your best judgment. Thank you.

Thank you, Judge. Appreciate it. All right, that was our last public comment. So we will close public comment and move on our agenda to item number two. And this is report outs from our council members. And I'm going to start with council member Falcone, Ward 1.

Thank you, Mayor. We, of course, have our annual concerts in the park in Fairmont Park that start off this Wednesday. But I know there's also an exciting event in Ward 7 that I'll let my colleagues speak to that's also occurring this week related to parks. But July 1, though, if you want to make sure you come to that concert in the park where it'll be um the city's second ever drone show the first being uh in ward seven second in ward one so come and join us on july 1st in fairmont park at the band shell for america 250 patriotic drone show and concert and then uh the mayor and i will be at dale senior center on the 24th for uh the final i believe uh mayor's senior tour there uh 10 o'clock dale senior center just across the street from us here at city hall thank you mayor that's it

thank you council member council member cervantes thank you mayor um yes it's been busy we've had and i want to congratulate all of those that are promoting going high school high school graduates graduating and then those that are graduating from our universities across riverside we've had several celebrations and one there's several graduations happening this week for ucr and so i want to give a shout out and was excited that sunday i was able to join mayor pro tem robillard for the UCR School of Public Policy, their commencement ceremony. And this is the 10th annual class that's graduating from there. And it was just wonderful. I was invited by one of the graduates to join and was pleased to my surprise to know about half of the graduating class because of them coming down here to give public comment being interns in different spaces and advocates in the different parts of the community. So just really want to share that it's so much pride to see and to actually know some of the students because of their activism and how they've chosen to already use their voice and already propelling themselves into that space of leadership. But was really happy to be there with the Mayor Pro Tem to recognize, celebrate them, and also want to congratulate the UCR College Corps. We have many interns that are spread out throughout the city of Riverside. We have many that are in War II. And so I just wanted to share that I was proud to be able to give remarks there at their graduation ceremony and to be able to help support them with certificates as well and just to recognize them. Just a true honor to see hundreds of them be able to be recognized in that capacity and for what they give back. They shared stories about testimonies they had. Actually, one shared from Bourns over in Ward 5. about a student that wasn't making progress in math, but because of her, the specific math tutor, they were able to pass their class. And so just to share ways that we're seeing them make a difference. And to share that lastly this weekend, I was able to attend the Juneteenth celebration hosted by the Black Collective and want to thank them for hosting another wonderful event. I heard that many vendors had sold out, which is always a great marker of success for the community to turn out. And we do have another celebration that's going to be tomorrow at CSA, another Juneteenth celebration from 10 to 12. You're welcome to join us there. It is open to the public. And City Hall will be closed Friday to recognize Juneteenth. So just want to recognize and say a happy and proud Juneteenth to our community and to all those who celebrate. That's all we have for now. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Lovellard.

Thank you, Mayor. Last week, I was happy to attend the 2026 Southern California Contracting Conference at the Riverside Convention Center. This is put on by the SBDC, and it's helping to educate and give the resources needed for small businesses in our area to do contracting services with either the city of Riverside County or other municipal governments across their area. So that was a really cool opportunity there. As Council Member Cervantes said, I was at the UCRX School of Public Policy end-of-year celebration. Several of the students who shouted me the last year and a half, they were there graduating. So it was really cool to wish them best of luck. And a special shout out to my LFR's daughter, Ms. Ingalls. She graduated this weekend and wish her luck on her endeavors. And then this morning we had Inside Magnolia Center at the Chamber of Commerce hosted over at the Backstreet Center. restaurants and i got coffee at kramer's that's where i saw judge bailey uh this morning afterwards um and then also uh i want to invite everyone to our next sweet moments in midtown on saturday june 27th from 6 p.m to 8 p.m in the chamois park pool we're going to have a celebration of america 250 there we have lots of snacks and cool giveaways there and uh opportunity to see a council member do a cannonball off of the diving board and that's all for me thank you

I can't wait. Councilmember Mill.

Thank you. Not a belly flop? uh thank you mayor a couple things uh past week last thursday the 11th i had an opportunity to go speak to our friends at the building trades about things that are happening here in the city of riverside always always a good time to they always have a good time at their meetings so it's always a joy to go and to speak to them they're they're a lively crowd And then on Thursday afternoon, I went over to the county and joined our friends, Supervisors Medina and Karen Spiegel and some other county staff to celebrate the opening day of the World Cup. We all had our jerseys on and celebrated the opening of the biggest sporting event in the world. The 25th, I will be having a town hall at the Arlington Library that begins at 6 p.m., On June 26th, movies in the park are happening all across the city, but in Ward 5 on June 26th at dusk, we will have the screening of Hotel Transylvania 3 at Vegas Park, which is located at 3091 Esperanza Street. I would like to join everyone in celebrating and saying a happy Juneteenth. It's America's second Independence Day, a very important holiday in America. If you don't know about it, you should read a little more about it. It's America's second Independence Day and a very, very important day in our nation's history. I want to say happy Father's Day. The mothers always get the love. Everyone's like, oh, happy Mother's Day. The moms always get the love, but this Sunday is Father's Day. So I want to say happy Father's Day to all of the fathers out there, and thank you for all that you do. And lastly, I want to say happy anniversary to my wife because we will be celebrating our wedding anniversary this weekend. And she has to put up with a whole lot. So she deserves everything, all the good things that life brings her. So happy anniversary.

Thank you. We're celebrating ours, too, on the 19th. So, Councilmember Perry.

No report this week.

All right. Thank you, Councilmember Hemingway.

Thank you, Mayor. I also want to extend a big congratulations to the students that graduated this weekend, some from La Sierra University. A big thank you to Senator Sabrina Cervantes for spending time with us there, sharing some meaningful words and encouragement to those graduates. Also, as Council Member Falcone said, we are kicking off summer concerts at the park at La Sierra Park this Wednesday, the 17th, with a concert at 6 and then a drone show at 9. So it's free, open to the public. We'd love to see everyone there. Thanks so much.

What park again?

La Sierra Park.

La Sierra Park. Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so I just, I wanted to take a moment to just kind of make some comments regarding some of the things that have been going on in the past few weeks, and just to clarify, I got some questions over some of the, my call for some review last week, so I want to just clarify real quick. So first, I want to begin by thanking our public. for all your patience as the council members and I work through some recent developments that have revealed challenges here at City Hall. As I said last week, and I found out even more so since then, these issues did not begin with this council. They did not begin with my administration. They've been going on for many years. they haven't been addressed so you know I mentioned last week there are two department directors terminated we've had staff resignations HR complaints a ton of turnover investigation litigation taken together those facts suggest we're not dealing with a few rogue employees but or a single management failure but they're pointing to something much bigger which is what my concern is So, and I will state this, one of my biggest concerns is that the council nor I were briefed on the code enforcement investigation when it happened, neither in closed session. We found out about it when it was released. We had a lot of questions. Oh, I'm sure the council knew. We did not. We did not. And I double checked with my council about that as well. So that's a concern. That question deserves an answer because the fact that elected officials weren't informed about findings of this magnitude suggests this is not solely a problem within one department. It raises broader questions about communication, accountability, oversight, and decision-making throughout City Hall. The good news is we now have information we didn't have before. And we can't change what happened, but we can determine what happens next. And if we're serious about accountability, and I am, and if we truly want to ensure we're not standing here another ten years looking backward and having the same conversation, then we have to be willing to examine the full picture. SO THAT MEANS THE REVIEW OF CEDD MUST MOVE QUICKLY. I'M ASKING FOR THIS TO BE DONE QUICKLY. I'VE BEEN WORKING WITH OUR ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER ON THIS. BUT IT ALSO HAS TO BE COMPREHENSIVE. IT CAN'T STOP AT ONE DEPARTMENT. IT NEEDS TO EXAMINE MANAGEMENT DECISIONS, POLICIES, PROCEDURES, REPORTING STRUCTURES, OVERSIGHT MECHANISMS AND INTERDEPARTMENTAL PROCESSES THAT MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THESE UNACCEPTABLE CIRCUMSTANCES. And we were going in this direction. I know I talked to Councilmember Robart about that this morning, and this has now just, I think, made this situation more urgent. So we need to understand not only what happened, but how it was allowed to happen and why warning signs were missed. So the review that I'm calling for is a broad enough scope to uncover the root causes of these failures wherever they exist. And this situation demands more than just a narrow investigation. It demands an honest assessment of how City Hall operates across departments and across levels of management. Only by understanding the full extent of this problem can we implement meaningful reforms restore public trust, and ensure these failures are never repeated. And our residents deserve nothing less. Thank you. All right, I have a couple other things to share. On a good note, the big city mayors and I were successful in advocating at the state legislature to restore HAP funding, that's Homeless Housing and Assistance Prevention, and they included $900 million in their budget for round seven, and that went from zero last year, so we're very happy about that. It's a major win for Riverside. So I've got a couple other announcements of committee meetings. We've got Safety, Wellness, and Youth Committee at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, June 17th. Economic Development Committee, 3 p.m. Thursday, June 18th. And the Housing and Homeless Committee at 3.30 p.m. on Monday, June 22nd. All right, we are now at item number three on our agenda. I will call on our city manager, please, to give us an update or call on staff to give an update.

Yes, we do have an update from Lieutenant Chad Chinchilla. Lieutenant.

Thank you. Welcome, Lieutenant.

Hi, good afternoon. Chad Chinchilla, Riverside Police Department. I oversee our Traffic Bureau. I have a brief update on the upcoming fireworks enforcement for 4th of July. Just a quick recap from last year. We had five drone teams that were deployed to various locations throughout the city that were determined by the 311 requests and calls for service. Those teams consisted of personnel from the fire department, police department as the drone pilots, and then code enforcement as well. The fire department also had two contact teams that were on the ground that were also conducting enforcement as well. And there was one location that was a search warrant was served on that resulted in 35 pounds of fireworks that was seized. And I believe that was in the north end somewhere. The calls for service have increased year after year. The 311 requests also have increased year after year. And our citations were remaining relatively stagnant until we implemented the drone program. And we were able to more than double the amount of citations that we issued for violations of fireworks. And that call volume was for the date range of June 27th to July 4th for each of those years. Last year we created the heat maps to show the concentration of firework complaints and activity in the city. The map on the right side of the screen shows where the citations were issued and so it essentially coincides with the highest concentrations of fireworks activity that was happening in the city. That's where we focused our efforts and issued the most citations. So essentially these areas chose themselves for additional enforcement. 65 citations were issued, 52 of those were issued by our drone teams, 12 issued by fire department personnel on the ground. Two of those were dropped after we reviewed them and determined that we didn't have enough evidence at that time to proceed. So 63 of those were administratively prosecuted. Last numbers I got were that about a little over half of those have been paid, and a few more are in payment plans. 14 were appealed, but my understanding is none of those appeals were upheld because the state of the evidence that we have, the video, is just too good, and there's no question at that point as to who was involved in the activity. So what's new for this year? Not a whole lot. We're keeping the plan relatively the same. We're making a few minor adjustments just to help with some of the efficiency. So the enforcement locations, again, are going to be determined by the 311 requests and the active calls for service that are coming into the dispatch center. RPD is going to be deploying five drone teams again. Each team is going to consist of two RPD pilots and one code enforcement officer. Essentially what we've done is we've taken the fire department component of those teams and removed them from the drone team so that they can create more contact teams on the ground to do the enforcement as well. So they should have three to five teams this year as opposed to two that were there last year. And finally, the outreach component of this, the education component. We're reaching out on all of our social media platforms, both on the city website, fire department website, police department websites. Digital materials, no printed materials this year, just digital. Billboard PSAs, web sliders on the city homepage, fire department sites, police department sites, and on the 311 app. The electronic sign is being used for messaging as well over by the Auto Center. And then on the TV screens at City Hall and RPU monitors will also show the illegal fireworks flyer. And I do believe that there is a YouTube video that was also published on Friday of last week, and so that is also live. So again, we're going to be doing the same, relatively same program this year. It was very successful last year, and we have some new equipment that we obtained last year that should let us be a little more mobile and move around to different areas of the city. We won't be tied to locations where we have constant power. We're hoping that'll help improve our ability to address some of these problems in the areas that we didn't get to last year. And that is all I have for the update on the fireworks.

All right. Thank you. We do have a question from a council member, Council Member Cervantes.

Yes, and I just got slightly concerned when I heard that much wouldn't change from last year. I did flag that we did see a concentration of calls come in from Sycamore Canyon, and there were no response. And so I had very angry residents that had been reassured that the calls to 3-1 and the calls in would generate hopefully some presence. So I would love to just see if we can ensure that there will be some type of response into that community neighborhood if possible this year.

Yeah, we could certainly do that. One of the issues we had last year was the drones that we were using didn't have a lot of flight time. The battery didn't last very long. And so we were tied to locations where we had direct power, where we could constantly charge these batteries. We were able to get newer drones that there was some funding that was provided by the council last year. Those drones actually didn't show up in time for us to do that enforcement last year. They came immediately after. So we have those now. So we should be able to take those drones and keep them up in the air longer and be able to move to locations where we're not stuck to a wall outlet to charge these batteries.

Thank you. And I will say, and I want to, you know, try not to be so harsh because I know you all have a huge city to cover, and I know there are calls coming from across the site's locations. This was just one that I had flagged to our city manager shortly after when we were briefed that there was a decent concentration, but we never did see the calls make it up there, and I think the challenge was Again, we know west side, east side, how it goes, but with balancing it all, but just if there could be, hopefully, again, if need be, a response up there. I know that Sycamore Canyon, the park up there is a watch view for the city, but we do have a lot of folks that use the streets around it to set off. those other types of you know sparklers or other fireworks um and they have gone off to potentially you know hit vehicles and stuff so just wanting to make sure we can keep the neighborhood safe up there and just have heard the pleas and cries from my constituents asking to please be considered as well so but i do appreciate the hard work you all do to respond to us throughout the city

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Rogelard.

Thank you, Mayor. Similar comments. I understand the limitations of the drones, but just having the ground teams, I think it's a great idea to have just spotters on high points for the wildlands areas because obviously we had the Warden Hills fire caught by fireworks. Um, you know, just having a spotter just to, you know, we don't need to track down every single person line of firework in these areas, but we just need, if they're getting close to these high burn areas or threat areas, have a spotter in there to at least get someone over there real quickly to stop that activity. Cause it's, um, not really no burns, but we don't want the rest of the city to burn. So it's going to be big fireworks. Right. So, um, yeah, that's all the comments from me. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. And appreciate all the work you're doing out there. And I want to thank Councilmember Perry for his leadership on trying to make this a priority for the city and appreciate your efforts out there. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right. Anything else, city manager, was that it? All right, thank you. Okay, council, does anyone have any conflicts of interest or any ex parte communications? Don't see anybody. So we're gonna move on to item number five. I think today we get to hear from our police department and Chief Gonzales, I believe. This is our overview and employee recognition and it's the police department's time, so Chief.

Thank you. Good afternoon, honorable mayor and council members. Larry Gonzalez, your police chief for our annual update for the Riverside Police Department. Mission and vision statement, which we've maintained for the last five years. The one I always like to highlight is the last part of our vision statement. We will invest in the success of our employees at the Riverside Police Department by providing excellent training opportunities, advancement, and personal growth. Excuse me, just a quick organizational chart. If you look at last year, it was actually a year and a half ago, we implemented the change where we added an additional captain to keep up with the staffing levels that we have. So we have two deputy chiefs, one administrative, one of operations, that's Deputy Chief Asuma, Deputy Chief Payne, and then five captains, as well as our police administrator, Randy Becker, who's our highest ranking professional staff employee. Here's the structure as far as the department goes, support services. It's our communications, community services, internal affairs. Admin services, which is Ms. Becker is under, accounting, budget, asset forfeiture, payroll. Special ops are all of our traffic, PACT, aviation, SWAT, K9, TSU, and our mobile field force. Investigations, central investigations, field patrol operations, that's the heartbeat of every police organization. And the newest one, the newest division that we have is our community engagement division with all of our neighborhood policing centers as well as our community services bureau and north, south, east, and west NPCs. You guys probably heard two or three or four versions of all of our budgets. So that's where our budget is in the last month or two. 161.8 million, with almost 30 million being that from Measure Z. Current staffing is a little bit higher now since we published this. We're a little over 400 again, but we're always hovering around there. We did have some attrition to deal with the last year or so, but very positive. We just had a couple more graduate last week, and we are sending another 20 to the academy in August and September. So still moving forward, we'd be happy to hear that the interest is there. People still want to come work at our department. which we're happy about. And I think a lot of it has to do with the, I tell people this all the time, not just the culture of the department, but the city that we serve, the support of our community, and the support of our city leadership year after year. So we appreciate that. The demographic breakdown, something that we're always striving to do is reach parity. So we are a direct reflection of our community. So we're constantly working on that. You can see here's the breakdown here. I think I'll go over every part of it. But our biggest success right now has been going all the way down to our Explorer program. still going out to to labor fairs and things like that and where we can go out and recruit. But we found the most success is coming from right inside our police department with our Explorer program. So we'll continue to explore that. Um, but keep moving towards that. And what we found out is that that program has changed tremendously over the last couple of years. As far as the ideology that we've said before, we just want to put these folks through an explorer program to be good contributors to our society. Not necessarily to become police officers, but we've had so much success that we've kind of tailored the program around developing young police officers. And we've had a lot of success with that. Crime stats, happy to say, in the two major areas with property crime and violent crime, those have trended down the last couple of years. The note on the right just basically talks about how the uniform crime reporting code has changed over the last couple of years. Kind of give you an example for the way we stat things now. If you had a robbery where there was let's just say at a store and there was three suspects arrested back in the old way of reporting, that would still be considered one robbery, but there were three suspects. Now we consider it as three different robberies, three different suspects. So we saw a little spike in that, but still, even with that new reporting cycle, we are still trending downward. Calls for service, busy. 261,000 calls for service last year, almost 262,000. We average around 600 911 calls a day in a 24-hour period. All the reports we process nearing 50,000 with 5,100 felony arrests and 4,200 misdemeanor arrests. Those are the things I usually bring up every year for the report, but I want to talk about And we talked about where we were, where we're at now. I just kind of covered that. But where we are going and where we're moving forward. So three areas I want to cover. The first one is real-time information center. We appreciate the support from our council. You all, thank you. It was approved last July, or July of 2024. So it's basically a centralized hub that analyzes and disseminates our information in real time. And that is the purpose, basically, is just to turn raw data into actionable intelligence for field officers during active incidents, emergencies, and investigations. Some of the key benefits we found is it improves response times, it boosts officer safety, and facilitates faster investigation outcomes. And the other number two is drones as first responders. This is a big thing across the country. We just completed our first pilot program with it. It was very successful. We're getting ready to embark on another pilot program with a different vendor. And at the end of all that, we're going to do an analysis. And I'm sure I will come back to you with much more great examples to try to talk to you about that. But basically, it's basically using drones as first responders. So in essence, when a real-time crime center is up and running with a DFR program inside of it, as soon as that 911 call comes in, a drone is dispatched before the officer even gets the call. So you can imagine, we have drones set up here. We have them on top of City Hall. There could be a fight call here at Market and University. The drone will probably be there under 30 seconds, which makes it Wonderful for the responding officers. They can get eyes on right away. They can make it safer for when they come into the scene. Not just safer for the officer, but safer for the community. So we're hoping to build on that. That's just one small example. But it enhances our situational awareness for sure and provide real time footage for officers as they're coming into these scenes. So that's only going to get better. We had a, like I said, very successful first pilot program. I'm sure I will be coming back to the council again after we finish the second DFR program. And then working together, like I just mentioned briefly, that they do work together, the DFR program, most of the time inside of a real-time information center. It's just a force-multiplying mechanism for all of us. So we're hoping that we can get these. We're both moving forward, and we're very excited about when we both come together and we're actively working, hopefully seven days a week, and covering all the city. What they're not, some of the misconceptions, they're not a replacement for officers, obviously. And it's not a human-less system. It's not a indiscriminate surveillance system. We're always recording when they're up. But they're sent out with purpose, usually 911 driven. We're not unregulated. We will always self-assess and make sure we're doing our own audits internally. And it's definitely not a replacement for our helicopters. Before I go into our part of the year, the last thing I want to talk about is constantly trying to stay With self-assessment and self-analyzing as a department, we've just embarked on a journey through the California Police Chiefs Association. And it's an accreditation program. Some of you guys might have heard of CALEA. In the past, that type of a program where you can get nationally recognized. This is a state position through California Police Chiefs. So it's called CAPS. Of course, we're all about acronyms. That's California Accreditation for Public Safety. So we are one of the first agencies in the state that are going to embark on that. and hopefully receive our certification about a year from now. So we're excited about that. Lastly, I do want to recognize our partner of the year. And I see a lot of them in the room today. I just want to, I can't thank them enough. I'll thank Rebecca for your leadership over the last year. I think of guys like Jack, who didn't think he was going to be on call for this police work, but he is on call for the police department. Just looking around the room with Nadine, Jessica, right now, Charles I think is in trial for us right now, Heather, Deborah, Cecilia, all the ones that have helped us on a regular basis. I know these names because I see their names all the time and we work with them. And I think we've come a long way in that respect that that communication is set. We never get caught off guard. I never get told about something that happened when I didn't already know from the city attorney's office. They keep us regularly updated, whether it's pending litigation or current litigation that's going on right now. We appreciate that, and I think we've come a long way in that respect, whether it's legal advice. drafting and reviewing our policies, litigation defense, like I said before, and then people forget a lot about is training too, them providing training for our staff members. So it was an easy pick for me this year who are city attorneys, our partner of the year would be in the city attorney's office. So I will ask for a round of applause and have them stand up if they're here. With that, I brought all these attorneys with me, so if you have any questions, you can ask them. No, open for any questions.

Appreciate that, and congrats to our partners of the year. See lots of faces out there that we all get to work with. Council Member Rogelard.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Chief, for the update. I think it's, you know, not every city has a police department that they can be as proud of as we are here in the city of Riverside, but we are very proud of our department. I think the residents are very proud of our department and the excellence that you guys are pursuing and continue to uphold as a department. And I really appreciate the investment in technology. We push for that because it's future-proofing our city and our department because every day there is new ways. The police has always done this. They've always upgraded their technology with the times. The further we can stay ahead of the curve and really kind of keep our residents safe, I think the drone program and the real-time crime center is a great example of, yes, there is an upfront cost to getting the technology installed and trained on, but it is a force multiplier that is significant to help keep our residents safer. So keep on doing the good work. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Mill.

Thank you, Mayor. Chief, I just want to say thank you for your professionalism. I get to spend a lot of time we go around the state, and I can tell you that the Riverside Police Department is well represented as we are up here. by your leadership. I've seen you speak to groups that are hostile, and you're still the star of the show, and people love you, even though they may not like what they're hearing at times, but it says a lot about you. So I appreciate you. I, too, like Councilmember Robillard, I'm very excited about the Drone as a First Responder program. I think it's going to, in the long run, is going to save us resources and time that we desperately need. For my colleagues up here, You know, the chief's pretty sneaky. He had his guys have Chuck and I try out the goggles and the drones recently. And I can tell you, you can see an ant on the ground with some of these things. So I'm excited that we're going to bring, you know, the technology that's available to us. I think it's only going to make our department stronger. But, again, it comes from the top. Your leadership is important. is really the key to all of this. You know, I've had an opportunity to go out with your officers, incredible professionals. You know, they represent us very well. So thank you for all you do, and thank all of the folks with RPD that keep our community safe and represent our community well. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Councilmember Mill. Councilmember Falcone.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief. Of course, I think you're superb. The community greatly appreciates you and the work of your department. I want to share a brief story about the drones on top of City Hall because I thought it really captured well, and of course we can have a larger discussion at a later time, captures well the kind of uniqueness of it. It's so foreign to many of us. There was a group in town for the California Preservation Foundation, a group of architects and historic preservationist folks. They're not really particularly experts on public safety. We were up on the roof of City Hall looking at the helipad, and I had pointed out that there was a couple drones that at any point in time we could have some drones taking off We heard a siren in the distance. We kind of joked and said, oh, the drones are going to take off, get ready. And sure enough, they opened from their little egg, and they took off, and they went flying. They hatched, and they took off. And after the conference was over, people were saying that was some of the most exciting portion of the conference. That was a little sad to me, who was a speaker at the conference, that they said the drones are more exciting than my lecture on City Hall architecture. But it was really fascinating to see and felt very futuristic, felt like I was in Star Wars or something. So cool work there and looking forward to not only it being interesting, but of course how it can improve the safety of this community.

Thank you. Thank you, Council. We love your lectures about City Hall history. Yes, Chief, thank you. And I have to say, as I've mentioned to you before and many folks, when I'm out in the country talking to other mayors, our police department is held up for its best practices and the things that we do. And you are always on the cutting edge and you're out ahead of yourself. And you run a tight ship over there, and I really appreciate it. So you make us all proud, as Council Member Mills said. So thank you. Thanks to your whole team.

Thank you all for your support. I appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. Item number six, we have Clarissa from the Planning Department and we are going to receive and file, this isn't an item to vote on, but it is an update on the Faithlands Handbook developed in partnership with Blue Zones Project. So we will let Clarissa begin.

Good afternoon, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. Clarissa Mangus, Assistant Planner with the Planning Division's Advanced Planning Team, here today to present an overview of the new faith-based housing handbook, a joint effort of the City of Riverside Planning Division and Blue Zones Project Riverside. Like much of the rest of the state, the city of Riverside is in a housing crisis. We are under producing housing, causing members of our community to become unhoused or spend much of their income to stay housed as these statistics show. A unique solution that is gaining interest is faith-based housing where congregations are providing housing on their properties. This type of housing not only benefits the community, it also benefits congregations themselves by helping them fulfill their mission slash calling, make the best use of underutilized space, and take advantage of new revenue streams. And in 2024 Senate bill for was passed, providing a new tool to streamline faith based housing development. The key obstacle preventing many congregations from developing faith based housing, however, is that they have no idea where to begin. The purpose of this handbook then is to demystify all aspects of the housing development process for congregations. Specifically, it is meant to outline existing development pathways including the SB4 pathway, invoke fundamental questions for congregations to ask of themselves, guide understandings of important logistic and legal considerations such as zoning that congregations should keep in mind, and inspire action through case studies of congregations that have already developed faith-based housing. For the next couple of slides, I will hand it over to the Blue Zones Riverside Policy Lead, Paloma Montes, to describe Blue Zones' involvement in the project and share the project timeline.

Welcome, Paloma.

Honorable Mayor and City Council, thanks for having us today. I'm Paloma, Public Policy Lead at Blue Zones Project Riverside, and we want to extend our gratitude to you for your support as this public-private partnership really guided this vision and this toolkit and so much more. It's really made it possible, so thank you. Our community blueprint is our detailed guide for our goals throughout our five-year project. And you see one of those objectives here before you. Our policy work revolves around food, alcohol, tobacco, and built environment. And our Blue Zones Project Riverside sector committee members all agreed in the beginning of our project that pursuing and supporting the development of housing through faith lands was a great goal to take on. And so we did set out to, as you said, Clarissa, demystify this process of Senate Bill 4 through creating this toolkit that resembled the Housing and Urban Development Toolkit. So from September to November 2025, the Blue Zones Project Riverside team sent requests for proposals to consultants through national and local connections. In that time, Blue Zones Project Riverside team also attended the Faith, Lands, and Housing Summit in the fall at the Grove Community Church. We hired consultant Chris Danley of Vitruvian Planning as he had already interviewed many Riversiders in our discovery process in late 2024. And he is also an Ontario native, so while not a 951 resident, a 909er affectionately. And so since he is so familiar with our community, we felt that this was an invaluable value add to our project. We kicked this project off in December 2025 and embarked on many interviews with city staff, with congregations, etc. to make sure that we could make this project something that resembled the needs of our faith community. We specifically hosted 25 stakeholders that attended our housing and hot chocolate open house, where these 25 congregations, nonprofits, developers, and neighbors were able to ask about the SB4 process, share perceived barriers, and brainstorm other solutions to make the housing development process easier. At our housing and hot chocolate event, the poster is not here, but there is a picture from the event, yes. So you're looking at those that were in our room at our headquarters. Potential emerged for interfaith partnerships to address Riverside's affordable housing crisis. And some faith communities were able to engage in the conversation on faith lands and housing in Riverside for the very first time. congregations also shared their desire for a designated person within city infrastructure dedicated to ushering this process, and we heard an overwhelming desire for a strong and consistent interfaith coalition to continue meeting on this and other issues. Our team also toured existing and upcoming developments on faith lands in Riverside, which gave us the opportunity to learn about opportunities and successes from faith leaders. And these interviews with congregations and city staff really guided the contents of this toolkit. Vitruvian Planning also diligently folded these components into the workbook, which you will be able to see now. And it was finalized in April, so we're really excited to be able to share it with the community now. I'll pass it back to Clarissa.

Here's our poster of the event. All right, so now I would like to give a short overview of the handbook sections and contents. It begins by first describing its purpose and providing statistics on the city's housing and homelessness crisis. It introduces the SB4 streamlining process, what it is, why it was created, how it works, and eligibility criteria. It encourages congregations to think fundamentally about why they want to provide housing and who they want to serve and to think logistically about the physical housing structures they want to build, the operational models and management types they want to use, the development team they want to form, and their strategy for engaging their local community. It brings awareness to how legal aspects like fair housing laws and zoning will influence who can live in the housing, how much housing can be built, and which other amenities may be developed. It explains each step of working with the city and provides comparisons between the SB4 and city pathways, allowing congregations to determine which one is best for them. It provides case studies of existing or proposed faith-based housing projects, including St. Michael's Apartments and Crest Cottages here in Riverside, Friendship Senior Housing in Oakland, and New Beginning Housing in San Mateo. And lastly, it acknowledges the invaluable contributions that faith-based and nonprofit organizations, the development community, city staff, and others contributed to the handbook. A big thank you to all who contributed. While the handbook may be complete, our work is not over yet. Through the end of next month, we anticipate the formal launch of the handbook, complete with social media advertisements and a joint City of Riverside slash Blue Zones Riverside press release. Then in August, the City of Riverside and Blue Zones Riverside will host a roundtable with congregations and development industry experts on faith-based housing. and in september we will kick off a promotional tour of the handbook to various organizations in the city staff recommend that the city council receive and file this presentation on the faith-based housing handbook city staff and blue zones riverside staff are available to answer any questions thank you thank you miss magus um

We have a couple comments from staff, or I'm sorry, from council, Council Member Cervantes.

There we go. Sorry about that. Yes, just very brief. I want to say thank you to Clarissa for the presentation. Thank you to Blue Zones for being here and for working together with our sitting teams. And I want to recognize, I see we have Chris Oberg, Director of Path of Life in the back as well. So just really want to commend the work on this. We're proud to have an example of Crest Community Church where we have this type of project coming to life and fruition. It definitely takes a community and collaborative effort, but we'd love to see more models and ways that we can partner with our faith-based, community groups here that want to be a part of solving the solutions and that's what we really heard is where they can step up especially as we look at land and other pieces and so just really exciting and really grateful for the work done on this i understand it's a file to receive but there's still a motion so i will happily move to approve thank you okay it's a receiving file so we don't need but thank you in spirit council member um council member mill

Thank you, Mayor. First of all, thank you for the presentation. Just something I want to point out, and it's on page two. You know, it says Riverside is underproducing housing. We need to be real clear. Like, it sounds like the city is somehow underproducing housing. We need to let people know the city of Riverside doesn't build housing. You know, there's a misnomer that somehow when housing doesn't get built, it's because the city's not producing that housing. So I think when we talk about that, we need to be clear because this misinformation continues to – it formats and, you know, and spreads that somehow the city is the one that's not building anything. The city builds nothing. We build no housing. So I just hope that we can be very clear about that so that folks that like to spread misinformation don't seize upon this and spread that throughout the community.

Thank you, Councilmember. Just to follow on that, I think I was just going to say this is one more sort of arrow in the quiver of how we are facilitating housing being built, right? It's this, it's our zoning law changes, it's our... ADU development. We're going to hear about another program in just a few minutes about how we do. So the role that the city plays, you're right, we don't build it, but we can make it a little easier for developers to build, and I think we've done a pretty good job of that in the last year, and this is one example of it. So thank you. I think that's it. That's all the questions I have for you. So we are now, Council, on to our discussion calendar, item number seven. And again, this is another receive and file. So not really any, I have two different things on here. I have a motion and voting, but then also it says receive and file. Okay, so both, okay. All right, so what we'll do then, these are all related, now let's see. Okay, so the receive and file portion needs no vote, but the adopting of the resolution does. So we have both in this item. And this is on, this is pretty exciting. This is our pre-approved plans for missing middle housing. And I'm gonna allow Daniel Palafox to talk about this.

Mr. Palafox. good afternoon honorable mayor and members of the city council this afternoon I am pleased to provide the city council with an overview of the pre-approved plans for missing middle housing project by way of background in 2023 skag and hcd released the reap 2.0 Grant framework which allocated funds to support local jurisdictions with the projects which implement the policies and objectives of the housing element In 2023 and 2024, the city applied for and received a $500,000 grant, which would support the creation of pre-approved plans for what is commonly referred to as missing middle housing. With support of the grant, staff was able to procure consultant support from an architecture firm, Radar Incorporated, to support with the design and development of the plans. Last year in July, the project team held a project kickoff starting up with various community outreach and technical tasks, ultimately leading to our discussion today. When we're talking about missing middle housing, this is housing that is generally missing because in the 1900s, zoning laws and the market didn't really support this type of housing. These are housing types like duplexes, townhomes, cottage courts, everything in between your standard detached family home and your high density apartment building. So with that said, the overall project goal was to provide pre-approved housing plans for missing middle housing that residents can use at no cost, reducing the time and expense of hiring an architect and developing the custom plans. These are cost savings that the residents have by reducing the upfront design costs and ultimately helps make housing development more accessible and affordable. At the beginning of the project, it was important to understand what the needs of the residents are, which missing middle housing types would ultimately be designed for, and what the needs of the residents are. So last year in the summer, in July, the project team released a survey and also hosted various workshops which gauged the various preferred housing types and architectural styles and the needs. Of those, we had 32 survey responses, and overall the workshops were well attended with over 46 attendees. And then earlier, a few months ago, we had three more workshops to showcase the pre-approved plans and let residents know how to use the plans and then connect again to the feedback that we heard in the beginning of the project. I'd like to start off by providing the council with an overview of the duplex plan. It was important throughout the survey responses and the workshops that the plans contain a multi-generational component with giving the concerns that folks have with parents and family members. So the duplex option is a two-story Spanish Revival style, which contains a ground floor bedroom along with an on-unit restroom. And then on the second level, we have two bedrooms with one bathroom. The second plan type that was created for this project was a bungalow unit plan. These are single story units, which are comprised of a two bedroom, two bath configuration, and also contain accessibility, just given the feedback that we heard from the residents as well. As far as how to use the plan, step one, residents will be asked to determine eligibility. So make sure that the property is zoned for the particular plan type that they are looking for. And I would like to note that these plans are pre-approved, but they are not permit ready. And so what this means is in the event that an entitlement is required or in the event that further review is required by Public Works or another department, residents will still need to comply with that additional review. The second step is to select the pre-approved plan type that the resident would like. And then third, prepare a site plan so they can work with a licensed architect or professional to prepare the site plan. And then step four would be to submit to the building safety department. Sorry, step four is submitting the planning clearance, and then after in step five is to submit to the building safety department. With that, staff recommends that the City Council receive and file an update on the preparation of the pre-approved plans for missing middle housing, and to adopt the attached resolution approving the duplex and bungalow unit plans consistent with the REAP 2.0 grant requirements. That concludes our presentation. I am available for questions.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Palafox. Council Member Robillard?

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, this is something that is very much needed in our community. I think this and the pre-approved primary residence and pre-approved ADU plans, this is all getting us closer to what I think is the biggest inhibitor to Housing is time, right? Timing is everything. And there's reasons why it takes so long to get through the approval process. Every site's different. But this is one less thing that people have to take on. And it really does lower the barrier, as you said, for somebody to invest in housing and start building housing currently right now. You have to be a public corporation just about or a very, very wealthy individual to even think about building housing or designing housing. This is going to allow, I think, people who are thinking about multi-generational planning having some housing opportunities for themselves. And I noticed that the bungalow court was the most liked option. That is also my most liked option. I always thought there's a – I forget what movie it is, but there's some very famous bungalow courts in Venice – Venice Beach and they always seen in movies that same little they a little neighborhood and it always be really cool to have a Neighborhood a small little neighborhood, but you can be close to your neighbors and everything like that So anyways glad we're seeing this and I'll move to approve Thank you.

Okay counselor Cervantes

Yes, well, I agree with the comments made by Councilmember Robillard, and just really want to thank you for the work and intentionality in this. And it's exciting when we get the opportunity with tools from grants and partner collaborative efforts, and then we can turn it into other profitable return, hopefully, for our community. So great work from our planning team, economic development. Look forward to hopefully seeing future proposals come our way. Thank you.

All right, we have a motion and a second. We have no other requests to speak. Please vote. Motion carries unanimous. Thank you. Wonderful. Good work out there, team. Thank you. All right, council. We are now at item 7A. And this, we've got a couple. We've got 7A and 7B. Do we have to take these separately? Yes, we do. Okay. So we will first consider 7A. We will open public comment for 7A. This is waiving the Sunshine Ordinance to take immediate action on 7B.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

All right. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Robloch, did you have anything you want to say? You're on my notes here as giving a presentation on this item.

I don't think you need to give a presentation on this item. It's the next item. Okay.

I have it on both. So give that a moment to see if we get, oh, we have some callers. All right. Let's take the first caller, please.

Hi, this is Stacy Cumberbatch. I'm calling in from Blended Impact and I wanted to speak to the previous item that was presented by the planning department and really just commend both the city and the planning department for their hard work on this effort. I realize we're on a different agenda item, but we've been a part of discussion with them since 2022, and this has been community involved the entire time. This is really not only a housing opportunity, but it's an economic mobility opportunity for residents, and they've put in a lot of work here, and it's been community engaged the entire process. So I really just wanted to commend them on their hard work and for the pro-housing opportunities that they're bringing to the city. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Let's have our next caller, please.

Hello, this is Keith Nelson again. I'm asking you to vote no on waiving the Sunshine Ordinance for the proposed city attorney employment agreement. The staff report says the waiver is needed because the city is entering the 26-27 fiscal year. But it's had an interim city manager since October 24 and just simply wants to accelerate the start date. None of this justifies bypassing public transparency, something the city council has opposed. The city has known since October 2024 that it's been operating as an interim city manager. This is not an emergency. This is a long standing management issue created by the council's own delays and failures. The Sunshine Ordinance exists exactly for moments like this, when the public deserves the time to review major decisions before elected officials to take action. Hiring a city attorney is not routine housekeeping. The city attorney is a charter officer. Given this council's record of failure in hiring, supervising, and managing charter officers, the public deserves more transparency, not less. We've already seen the high cost of poor judgment in prior city officer decisions. The last city attorney hire and broader charter officer management failures have damaged public trust, created real financial and legal consequences for the Riverside residents. Now, instead of slowing down, providing full notice and holding the discussion from the public, this council is asking to waive the very ordinance designed to prevent backroom government. This is unacceptable. The report claims there is no fiscal impact associated with this action, but hiring a city attorney absolutely carries fiscal consequences. Excessive salary, benefits, severance provisions, contracts terms, litigation exposure, and the cost of another failed hire. The public should see the agreement, understand the terms, and have a meaningful opportunity to comment before the council acts. This item should be continued, placed on a regular agenda with the full public notice. It should be heard in the evening session when working residents can attend and speak. The city attorney serves the city of Riverside, not the personal convenience of the council, not the convenience of the candidate's notice period, and not the political schedule of city hall. Waiving the city ordinance here sends a terrible message that when the issue is important enough, the city believes the public should get less notice, less time, and less access. This is backwards. The proper action today is simple. Do not waive the sunshine ordinance. Continue the item. Release the full employment agreement. Place it in the evening session. Let the public review it. Let the public speak. Then do your job and pull full public view. Riverside deserves transparent, honest government, especially when hiring the lawyer responsible for telling the council what the law requires.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Let's have our next caller, please.

Hi there. Good afternoon. Jason Hunter, Ward 1. I mimic the comments of the previous caller, Mr. Nelson. I don't think that this is an emergency. I don't think the person's scheduled to start until July to begin with. Let's look at the history of our recent city attorneys. who probably could have used a little bit more vetting by the public as opposed to minimum notice for the public to see this on the agenda with a pretty hefty pay package, by the way, and some really concerning terms within the contract itself. I hope you find them as concerning as I do, and I'll get into that, I guess, next if you decide to go forward with this today, which I think is a bad precedent. Greg Priamos, way back when, get the years, city attorney, basically escaped the hangman, ran over to the county before he got the axe of the council. After him was Gary Geist, fired. After him was Fager Norton, fired. Okay, now we're bringing in somebody new. That's a pretty bad track record. It's calamitous. It's unsettling. More vetting probably should have been done in some of those cases. We're doing minimum vetting here. The track record's not good. I don't see the reason why this has to be decided today. We could do it, and I'll talk about the problems in the contract next, which are several and many, and I just don't even know how you can in good conscience even pass that. I would have liked to have had the time to sort of get together without it being a total rush, and I tried to contact several of you over the weekend, and I did not get a response. about some of the provisions within there that kind of show me that we're not learning anything. I don't mind when the city makes mistakes, but what really bothers me is we don't seem to learn from those mistakes. I have no idea who writes these contracts. It's almost as if the employees themselves are writing the contracts, and we don't have a voice. The residents, the businesses, the taxpayers don't have a voice. We're just giving away the farm here, and the terms and conditions are terrible and we've been bitten by them before and we never seem to learn so as I said I don't think we should do this today if you do it today I will speak next and then I'll probably post something on social media if it gets past because this is not the way we should be doing business and we need to learn from our mistakes thank you

Thank you. I think that was our last caller. I will close public comment and come back to Council Member Mill.

Mayor, I normally don't want to respond to comments made, but I do think it's important to clarify for folks that are listening that Council Member Falcone, Council Member Robillard, and Council Member Mill have never once voted to hire any of the charter officers, but this continual statement that this council has time and again, you know, failed when we hired people. Well, I can honestly tell you that I have never once, nor has Council Member Robillard or Council Member Falcone ever hired anybody to work for this city so i just want to clear that up because i know um some people speak with authority and and people believe them without actually fact checking them but the facts of the matter are um we've never the three of us have never uh participated in the hiring process for any of our charter officers thank you for that clarification council member mill council members rovalard

I do have to read the justification of why we are waiving the Sunshine Ordinance. It's in the discussion, but basically we have been doing this recruitment now for about eight months. We have come to terms, and we would very much like to have a city attorney in a permanent role, and so that is why we are asking to waive the Sunshine Ordinance. so that we can meet this obligation and have him at City Hall as soon as possible. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. And did you want to just make a statement regarding the vetting and the amount of investigation?

We can do that maybe for the next piece on 7B.

Okay, thank you. All right, Council, we had a motion and a second to waive the Sunshine Ordinance. Please vote. motion carries unanimous all right thank you now we are at item 7b and this is again related to the previous item and this is approval of an employment agreement with james johnson for uh the city attorney position we will open public comment for this item

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Thank you. And the reason I was asking about the vetting in that last item, Council Member Rollard, was because it was addressing the matter of urgency and that this was rushed somehow. So that was why. But I will defer to you in when and where you want to speak to it. I will now turn the presentation over to you regarding this item.

Thank you, Mayor. This item is to consider the approving of an employment agreement between the City of Riverside and James Johnson, setting forth the terms and conditions for the charter officer position of City Attorney. The City Council retained an executive recruitment search firm in conduct with the nation and conducted a nationwide open recruitment for the City Attorney position. After completing a thorough background check and pre-employment screenings, a successful candidate was identified in May 2026. The proposed employment agreement reflects the Council's commitment to attracting and retaining highly qualified executive leadership. The agreement includes terms and conditions that are consistent with the responsibilities and expectations associated with this critical role. The following provisions are included in the proposed City Attorney's Employment Agreement. The term of the agreement shall be three years, effective July 17, 2026. The proposed salary for the city attorney is $372,624, and he will be eligible for a 3% merit increase annually upon satisfactory performance evaluation. It is proposed for city attorney to receive a cost of living increases. It is proposed for the city attorney to receive $15,000 for professional dues and conferences over the three-year term of the agreement. It is proposed the city to make deferred compensation contribution equal to 457 plan annual IRS limit. Proposed term for the city attorney to receive a city vehicle and fuel or car allowance of $625 per month. It is proposed for the City Attorney to accrue vacation at a rate of 7.69 hours per pay period and sick leave at 3.7 hours per pay period, and City Attorney to receive one-time credit of 80 administrative hours and 80 hours of vacation. Proposed term if the City Attorney is terminated without cause, the City to pay 12-month severance and then applicable calendar year 401 contribution.

that's it right and I just want to remark that there was extensive editing of this we didn't just do a background check we had a very extensive background check yes this is a very extensive background check we went beyond the typical live scan and just criminal record background check we had

investigators visit the workplace the neighborhood talk to people who work and live with James and also we had an extensive online search history social media search history this was very much lessons learned and implemented certain precautions moving forward. So this was a long process to get here. We had very, very highly qualified candidates that applied for this position. It was a very competitive position. And James stood out among those candidates, and it was a very strong pool of candidates to begin with.

Thank you, Councilmember. All right, let's go to public comment, please. I have one speaker in chambers, Aurora Chavez.

Thank you. I could understand the council's need for legal advice really quick. But you see here, there's not very many people here. And I think they would like to meet the city attorney. And this is not a full show of the response that Riverside should show a newly hired, especially in that position as a city attorney. This way we know the full terms of the contract in case there's any dispute. I just think even my wanting to meet this new city attorney, it got in the way of everybody should be meeting him, not just me. And a room isn't full. And I think that's 6 o'clock, 6.15, would be best because everybody be able to meet him i think they should since it's being paid by us and and he's going to do work for us and so i think i understand that now so so it would be great to have him at the 615 meeting so he can meet everybody thank you and also too for people to be able to chime in and to say uh what oh what they might expect from him you know so i think that would be great a good thing to do so thank you

Thank you, Ms. Chavez. We have a couple callers. Let's go with our first caller, please.

I'd like to start by educating the council a bit. You're allowed to ask clarifying questions while we're still online, not waiting to make untrue comments when we're offline. Sean, the current council has provided over the current city manager and extended that contract. Address the comments while we're online. Waiting to comment till we're offline is transparent. The mayor, you need to understand the public gets to vet our employees and oversee the council. To say you guys did it, we have fallen for that in the past. Remember, the city government is in perpetuity. You can't just say, oh, that happened in the past. You guys sat and didn't fix problems. I oppose the city contractors written. This is not about an individual contact, contract candidate, or how many doors you knocked on. This agreement calls an at-will agreement. But when you read the actual terms, it's not an at-will agreement. It's a three-year term with a windfall salary. Executive group benefits, vacation, administrative leave, deferred compensation. We know why this is in the afternoon. That's clear. This is not a clean at-will agreement. It's a one-sided agreement. The severance clause is huge. 12 months for cause. Given the council's recent history with managing charter officers, there's a lack of trust. The contract also makes termination for cause harder than it should be. It requires a super majority vote, five affirmative votes to terminate with cause. This is a bad contract deliberately held in the afternoon when public can't review it and comment. We should not approve it as written. Protect Riverside first. And before I hang up, is there any clarifying questions or do you want to wait till I'm gone to comment?

Thank you, Mr. Nelson. No one has any questions for you. All right, council. We will close public comment, and we will come back to council. Sorry. I don't see any other comments. All right. We have another caller. Is that correct? That came up? All right. That came in late. We have another caller. Go ahead.

Jason Hunter, Ward 1. I most definitely did not come in late. I've had my hand up the entire time. So it's great to hear that there was an extensive vetting by the council, but see, here's the problem, and Mr. Nelson acutely pointed it out, is that the public also deserves the opportunity for a full vetting, not just the council. It's our money. And so this has nothing to do, number one, I'm going to make a few points, nothing to do with Mr. Johnson. My comments here today. But to address Mr. Mills' comments, you're right. You haven't hired anybody new. That's the three folks that you mentioned. Totally correct. If I had 10 minutes to talk, I probably would have gotten that in, but I don't. But you did approve the contract extension for Mr. Futrell, and you did fix a few things that are clear problems that I'm going to get into now with this contract. I just don't think you can pass it today. You can bring it back in a week or two from now. And I don't think that the person is starting until early July anyway. But number one is you cannot allow someone to take a termination without cause and get a severance of 12 months, which is a lot of money, and then allow them to also sue the city like Phaedra Norton is currently doing. That's obscene. That needs to be written out of these contracts. You should make that conditional. You take the 12 months. You sign up. You waive your rights to sue the city. All right. Get rid of that immediately. And we should be learning from our mistakes. Number two is this whole idea that you cannot fire either for cause or with cause is an executive employee in this city, 60 days before or after election or 60 days after a change on the council, think about what that means for this year's guys. Knock, knock, okay? It means that you can't fire anybody between April of this year and January of next year, okay? Think about the practical implications of that. All right. So that needs to change. I don't see any reason why you can't fire somebody 60 days before the election, maybe 60 days afterwards or 60 days after a change on the election. But we should be getting rid of the 60 days before. OK, these windows are way too way too open to abuse. And quite frankly, it really handcuffs the council unnecessarily. Third is we should not be having 12 month severances, six months and then give a year for every year service. This is outrageous, a year's salary. It's preposterous. And the deferred comp is kind of preposterous. If you go around the city and you ask the partners of the leading law firms here what they think about these contracts, they're aghast. And I have asked. I've asked several. What do you think about this versus your own career? Maybe you've got 30, 40 years practicing law. These salaries, these comp packages are outrageous. Anyway, I'd like to know, who is writing these contracts? And do they have an employee bias? Taxpayers, businesses, and residents' interests need to be protected.

Thank you, Mr. Hunter. Thank you. I have another caller.

Let's take our next caller.

Good afternoon, Melissa McKee. I do support us hiring James Johnson. In the limited amount of time we've had since his name went public, I have heard only the most outstanding comments about his capability. I'm very pleased to see that he actually went to an ABA accredited law school. Unlike many of the prior attorneys we've had, I do share the concern about the pattern we've seen with Gary Geist and Sager Norton where people leave and then we end up in litigation and then we end up paying them to go away. As you can see in my broader public comments about our city doing that, it ends up being very costly. So if anything, since council is likely to, I don't know whether you're discussing this in closed or not, it seems very rushed and I'm sure you're going to get a lot of criticism over that, but those are longer systemic issues we really have to address. Our attorney general in California makes $210,000 a year. The U.S. attorney makes under $300,000 a year. We pay a lot, and that is not to say that he is not worth what you are offering. It just is really problematic when senior management in our city makes substantially, substantially more than people in the public. And I think the only way that's ever going to change is if we have a charter amendment that ties senior salaries to a scale along the lines of what superior court judges make or the governor makes. Because California City's worth spending more on these salaries and pensions, pensions that we pay for the entire lifetime of the employees who come and ultimately go. And we can't afford it. It's one of the real problems in our state. It's not an easy thing to talk about. So with all that being said, yes, I would like us to have a competent city attorney to provide advice to council. And I understand the criticisms that were wielded earlier, but we might as well go forth and hire someone who's a really good candidate. Thank you. Bye.

Thank you, Ms. McKeith. That was our last request to speak, so we will close public comment and come back to council. Council Member Falcone.

Mayor, I know that Council Member Condor is en route, and he said he's just down the street. Could we, before we do comments, maybe go on a five-minute break so we ensure that every member of the council is here for a vote? I think that when it's a chartered officer, I think it's important for all members to be present.

It is. I will defer to council on that, but...

Yeah, he just said he was on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

I'm okay with that.

Okay. All right. We can take a five-minute break if you'd like. Go ahead and reconvene please and get started So we are still on item 7 B this is a discussion in hiring of city attorney and Waiting for a motion on this item I'll go ahead and make a motion to hire the city attorney. All right councillor Perry I

Just a comment on the urgency of the action that we're taking today. The earliest that we can get Mr. Johnson to work is the July 17th date. He is also under contractual agreement with his current employer, and he has to give X amount of weeks notice before he can come to work. That also, and I certainly understand the comments that were made, but that's kind of what's expedited, so just a little bit quicker. If we don't act on it today, With this contractual agreement he has with his current employer, that would put that July 17th date even further back and being on summer session could potentially bring this item back to council in August. Just my two cents, Mayor.

All right. Thank you, Council Member Perry. So here, Council Member Rollard made a motion. All right. Council Member Mills seconds. Council Member Rollard, do you have anything you need to say?

That was from the previous one.

Okay. Council Member Falcone?

Thank you, Mayor. My comments will be brief, and I am very pleased with Mr. Johnson. He's a superb candidate. As Mayor Pro Tem Robillard said, we had several really strong candidates, which I was pleasantly surprised about because it doesn't always happen. And he's a superb candidate and has a wonderful resume and would be very pleased to work with him. Unfortunately, the contract's just a little too much for me, and I am a strong candidate. Anti 12 months severance type person. That's all that's a line in the sand for me. So unfortunately, I can't support the contract Financially, but but I'm very have a very positive experience and positive outlook on mr Johnson himself But unfortunately, I can't the the voters of Riverside this this is this contract is too large of a price tag Thank You councilmember councilmember Hemingway

There is certainly a sense of urgency here, and as Councilmember Perry outlined, I don't know if there's a way to, at this point, I don't know if it even matters to Councilmember Falcone if we were to have a contingency, maybe the option that we have in front of us, but also one that might address maybe the concern about what one might do after the severance, namely a lawsuit or whatnot. If that, I guess I would look to the city attorney to see if you can even sort of have a contingency agreed on here and then go for conversation. I don't think it moves the sense of urgency that we have to act today, but is there a way to do that? I guess I'm just curious at this point when it comes to contracts. Maybe the Mayor Pro Tem looks like he's Got a thought here.

The city attorney can correct me if I'm wrong, but this contract was agreed upon in closed session last session or two sessions ago. And I think it's essentially kind of we wouldn't be able to vote on anything tonight. It would have to go back to renegotiate. Is that how that works?

i'm actually going to defer that to hr are they in here i want to make sure that i'm consistent with the direction from hr on the recruitment and for clarification councilman what you're asking for is almost like like bifurcating the two so voting on the city attorney separately and then the severance could be separate vote

No, I was actually meaning we could propose this adjusted language and if it gets, if it's not agreeable or amenable to the individual, we would just default to this contract in front of us, but at least it's, but it sounds like we might not be able to do that given that this is already this far along.

so my understanding is that you have already come that far and that you did vote on it in a closed session but we can always go back to i mean we can check was he was he offered that already

Yes, the contract on the dais today was already voted on in closed session, agreed to by the candidate, and signed by the candidate is just waiting for confirmation from us in open session. All right.

Don't overcomplicate it. I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Hemingway, I just thank you for that. But, yeah, thank you.

I think Councillor Falcone tried to get to that once before as well.

I've opposed it in the past, and I will continue to oppose it.

You've been consistent with that. I appreciate that. All right. So we had a motion and a second. Ward 3, Ward 5, please vote.

Motion carries with five affirmative votes, two no votes, ward one and ward four.

All right, thank you. Thank you very much and welcome to James. All right, council, we are now to our public hearing, right? Are we, oh, got five minutes. sorry all right we have five minutes not enough time to go into uh closed session but uh we'll take another five minute break and wait um for our public hearing thank you we'll return at 3 p.m we are now going to item number eight which is a public hearing and we are adopting an urgency ordinance to extend an urgency ordinance establishing a moratorium on establishment and expansion of wooden pallet storage yards with some limitations with that we will open public comment

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

All right. Thank you. With that, I'll ask Matthew Taylor from Planning to please give us a presentation. Matthew?

good afternoon honorable mayor members of the council matthew taylor principal planner community and economic development this request is to adopt an ordinance extending the current moratorium on pallet storage pallet storage yards for initial 10 months and 15 days to recap the zoning code currently does not regulate pallet storage yards specifically. They're treated as a general outdoor storage use. Sometimes they require a minor conditional use permit, depending on the zoning. Other general standards that also apply to other types of outdoor storage apply. Storage of combustible materials also need to comply with fire and life safety codes as applicable. On May 19 of this year, the council adopted ordinance 7769, which established a 45-day moratorium on pallet storage yards. California law does authorize the council to adopt an ordinance to establish a moratorium and extend that moratorium, provided that findings are made demonstrating immediate threats to public health, safety, and welfare. The initial term is for 45 days. Those moratoria can be extended twice for up to two years. The first extension is for the remainder of the year that began with the 45-day period, so 10 months and 15 days additional. then a second extension if needed is available for a second year as we've discussed previously improperly operated and unregulated pallet storage yards are present specific public health safety and welfare concerns related to fire risk hazards from improperly stacked materials and code compliance issues including things like screening lighting pest control vehicle circulation and other issues Some of those issues are on display locally recently, including two significant fire incidents in February and March of this year involving pallet storage yards, the aftermath of which can be pretty devastating, as you can see here. Stacking hazards related to how the pallets are stored and arranged can present safety hazards. And there are community compatibility concerns related to improper or illegal operation of delivery vehicles, aesthetic impacts from improperly screened stacks of materials, and related issues. Staff is recommending that the council extend the moratorium by an additional 10 months and 15 days based on the following findings that wooden pallet storage yards pose a current and immediate threat to the public health safety and welfare and are maybe in conflict with contemplated zoning regulations that we are researching currently and The council finds that approval of any permits, land use approvals, licenses, or other applicable approvals or decisions would result in a threat to the public health, safety, and welfare. That these findings are based upon all of the facts provided in the staff report attached to this item, as well as the evidence presented at the May 19, 2026 meeting. and that the council is seeking to direct staff in the planning division and in the fire department to work together to study impacts and consider enhanced regulations for pallet storage yards up to and potentially including a consideration of prohibition of pallet storage yards as a use in the city of Riverside or any combination of other regulations as might be appropriate. So with that, staff recommends that by a four-fifths affirmative vote, the council adopt an ordinance to extend the 45-day moratorium for an additional 10 months and 15 days to last through May 18, 2027. Happy to answer any questions if there are any. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Taylor. We have one request to speak. Council Member Perry, do you want to hear public comment first? Okay. Aurora Chavez? Yes.

Thank you. I understand about the moratorium, but it doesn't get specifically detailed about the storage of the pallets. There should be a height level as maximum as those pallets should be because of that very reason of why these fires occur. If the pallets are too high, of course, it would be bigger fires. There should be a level of height as maximum for those pallets so that it doesn't create a fire hazard. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ms. Chavez. That's the only request to speak. We will close public comment. Come to council. Council Member Perry.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the report. Thank you for bringing it back so quickly. We do have a height limitation on there. Unfortunately, it gets ignored. This is purely a public safety issue. It's a danger to the property owner, adjoining property owners, and entire communities. If we don't do something, this is a disaster waiting to happen. I think the report and the photos speak for themselves, and I'll move to approve. Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. No further comments or discussion. Please vote. motion here is unanimous all right thank you council we are now at our closed session portion of our agenda um i have an announcement i will make regarding item 14b um let's see and first do you want to go rebecca to say the call on the closed session items and then i'll make the announcement sure

We will now adjourn to closed session to discuss items 9 through 14B. All information required by the Brown Act is set forth on the agenda for today. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. And for agenda item 14B, public employee discipline to the city manager. The city manager has the right. to have the matter heard in open session. But if he does not desire open session, the hearing will proceed in closed session pursuant to government code section 54954.5. City manager has elected not to proceed in open session. Accordingly, we will proceed with agenda item 14B in closed session. So we are now adjourned to closed session and return at... City Council is taking a break from closed session to continue with our open session. And so we're going to do our first couple of agenda items, and then we will probably go back into closed session and continue our discussion. So I would like to, hi, I'm Mayor Patricia Doss, and I'll call our meeting to order. And I'm going to call on Council Member Mill, please, to lead us in the invocation.

Thank you, Mayor. Heavenly Father, we come before you this evening with grateful hearts, seeking your wisdom, guidance, and blessing upon our city and our nation. Lord, watch over the people of Riverside and all who call this community home. Bless our families, our neighborhoods, our businesses, and all those who work each day to make our city a better place. Grant this council wisdom, humility, and discernment as we carry out the responsibilities entrusted to us. We ask your special blessing upon our city employees whose dedication and service often go unseen, but whose work strengthens the foundation of our community. Give them strength, purpose, and protection in all they do. Lord, we lift up our first responders, our police officers, firefighters, paramedics, emergency personnel, and all who place themselves in harm's way for the safety of others. Surround them with your protection, grant them courage in moments of uncertainty, and bring them safely home to their loved ones. We also pray for the brave men and women of our armed services serving around the world. Watch over them as they stand guard in defense of our freedoms. Grant them safety, strength, and comfort, and bless the families who sacrifice alongside them. And Lord, tonight we offer a special prayer for the eight service members who lost their lives in a tragic crash at Edwards Air Force Base yesterday. We mourn this heartbreaking loss and ask that you receive these heroes in your eternal embrace. Please bring comfort, peace, and healing to their families, friends, fellow service members, and all who are grieving. May their sacrifice never be forgotten and their memory inspire us all to live lives worthy of the freedoms they help protect. Amen.

Amen. Can you please lead us in the pledge?

Please stand and remove your hat. Place your hand over your heart. I pledge allegiance to the flag

Thank you, Council Member Mill. Council, if it's OK with you, I would like to take item number 18 first. It's our first presentation, then we will return to public comment. And that's because we have some special guests in the audience who have been waiting so patiently for us. What did I say? Sorry, 16. Apologies. So we will take item 16 first, and then we'll return to our agenda. and we are going to present a proclamation to the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated A to Nu Omega Chapter and they are here today to receive a presentation and a proclamation on Juneteenth and I will read part of that proclamation and then I will ask Wanda Jones to please come forward and bring whoever you'd like down. So let me read a bit of the proclamation. Whereas Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery and the city of Riverside recognizes and promotes the history and accomplishments of African Americans in the United States. Whereas the year 2026 marks 407 years, 1619 to 2026 marks since Africans were brought to the shores of North America as enslaved people, whereas this year also commemorates the 161st anniversary of the start of Juneteenth and African American freedom, emphasizing education and achievement marked with celebrations, family gatherings, and festivals. Whereas the City of Riverside acknowledges the contributions that make people of African descent creative, brave, talented, steadfast, and determined to succeed despite their hardships. Whereas the City of Riverside recognizes and salutes the myriad of accomplishments and wishes to enlighten and inform communities throughout Southern California. Whereas, we're proud to recognize Juneteenth as an official holiday, honoring the centuries of struggles and triumphs that have brought us to this moment. Now, therefore, I, Patricia Dawson, Mayor of the City of Riverside, hereby recognize Friday, June 19th as Juneteenth, dated the 16th day of June, 2026. So I'd like to ask Wanda, please, if you can please come forward and say a few words for us and maybe introduce who's here with you today. And we can then take a picture. Welcome.

Thank you so very much. We appreciate this. Good evening. My name is Wanda Jones, the president of the Eta Nu Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated. And on behalf of the members, I would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the city of Riverside for this incredible proclamation and the recognition. We are deeply honored by this acknowledgement and sincerely thank the mayor, city council, and city leaders for recognizing the service, leadership, and impact of our chapter within this community. This proclamation is more than an honor. It is a reminder of the power of partnership between civic leadership and community organizations working together to create meaningful change. As members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, the first historically black Greek letter organization established by African-American college women, founded in 1908 on the campus of Howard University, We remain committed to serving all mankind through scholarship, sisterhood, leadership, and service. For generations, our organization has worked to uplift communities, advocate for social justice, support educational opportunities, and improve the quality of life for those we serve. Juneteenth commemorates a day of reflection, celebration, education, and remembrance. It reminds us not only of how far we have come, but also the responsibility we all share to continue pursuing equity, opportunity, and justice for generations. Our embrace of Juneteenth and the associated values is exemplified through the $35,000 in scholarships awarded by the Ada Nu Omega chapter on June 7th at our scholarship and graduate recognition luncheon. as well as the cotillion hosted for high school girls that focuses on mentorship, leadership, and service. And further, our acceptance of the charge of our founders is evidenced by the sponsorship of two undergraduate chapters in the Inland Empire, as well as our active leadership in a wide array of community programs to include Operation Christmas Blessing, where we gather clothes and sleeping bags for the homeless community. To the leaders of this city, thank you for your support and recognition. To our community members, thank you for allowing us the privilege of serving alongside you. And to my sisters of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, thank you for your continued dedication to our mission and for the countless hours you invest in making a difference every day. together may we continue to honor the legacy of those who came before us celebrate the progress we have achieved and work toward a future where opportunity justice and hope are accessible to all thank you again for this proclamation and celebrating juneteenth with us

Thank you.

Today I am joined by members of the Eta Nua Omega chapter. here, and we have Nellie Moore, who is the president of our philanthropic nonprofit arm, and Tamara Frazier, who oversees the initiative for our community programs. We have our first and second vice presidents, what is Delores Curry and Vanessa Hunter. as well as other members that are here and are joining us. So thank you all so much for this acknowledgement.

Thank you, Wanda. Thank you. Could we have you all come down?

Can Don go down with them to take the picture? If you didn't know, our city clerk is a sorority sister.

And we did know.

She wore her ivy leaves for you all today.

And our pink and green. It's subtle, but it's always there. And the pearls. Thank you.

Yeah, come on.

Thank you. Thank you.

I think Council Member Perry wanted to make an announcement regarding Item 17. Yes, Mayor.

There we go. Thank you, Mayor. We are going to continue my item, the Riverside Prosperous Report, the Magnolia Corridor Update. We're going to continue it to next week.

okay thank you council member to next week yeah um thank you we appreciate that um so council now we're going to go back to public comment item number 15 and this is to comment on the consent calendar in any matters within the jurisdiction city council so we will open public comment

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

Thank you. We have a couple of requests to speak in chambers. We will start with Errol Koschevitz.

Hi, guys.

Welcome back.

Oh, I love being here you guys. Can I use the overhead again? I'm going to go back to the year 2024. Now if you can bring it down a little bit back, a little bit down a little bit farther so I can see the top of the page. Okay, there you go. This is actually a vendors list that you guys took off of the website. Now, these are vendors that you provided $100,000 to. When I questioned the city about it back in 2024, you guys took it off the website. Now these are vendors you provided $100,000 for. Now I'm requesting the city to put this back up again so the residents can see how much money you're stealing. You guys have refused to do this for over two years. So I'm gonna be going through a few of these right now that you provided funds to. The first one is Riverside County Information Technology. This is a three month period, $153,000. i'm going to go down to the next one universal building and maintenance llc 151 000 now i'm going to go down another one riverside art museum 141 000 now i'm going to go down another one thomas coburn he's a lawyer in los angeles so we're hiring lawyers everywhere we don't even know where they were hiring from now i'm gonna go down the riverside downtown partnership we gave them a hundred thirty one thousand dollars now this is a three-month period now remember you guys took this down off the website i've requested for you guys to put that up you're not being transparent to the public so you do have a fake budget we already understand that we got that you know through my head right here go ahead a little bit up down a little bit further thank you Yeah, there we go. I want to go to Raincross Hospitality Management Corporation since we're having a lot of problems with Raincross right now. We provided them $114,000 back then I Requested for the purchase orders on this for everything Since then and you guys have refused to give me the purchase orders for this ulterior credit union $110,000 I understand we're providing funds to everybody but we have to have some accountability of these fundings guys and People got to be held accountable for what you guys have done. Let's go down a few more since it's my favorite place down there. Janet Goski Foundation, $101,000. Now, we have a lot of problems, guys. We need some accountability. And I want to say something to the city clerk right now. We need to have some accountability. You need to start providing me information, okay? Your job is to provide me information. And you're not really providing me the information that I'm asking for. You've lied. You have done ugly things.

Thank you. Pete Benavidez? Good evening, Mr. Benavidez.

Thank you. I'm going to focus on transparency. by being transparent. Most of you up there on the dais know that my experience in charter triggered me to apply to be the city's first inspector general in the history of our town. A few months ago, I received a call indicating that my application failed. And I was told that I didn't have a valid California driver's license. Well, heck, I haven't driven a car all my life. The other one, I had no paid work experience as a member of an inspector general department anywhere in the world. OK. In December of last year, before Christmas, I received a call from the director of the Riverside Chamber of Commerce. indicating to me that my application for leadership riverside was denied for the second time and i was informed that my application was denied because his board indicated to me that there was nothing they could do to help me when he asked me if i had a response i said no but i do have a comment in my life When a door closes, one shall soon open. Recently, I heard that the city clerk's office is moving from the seventh floor downstairs. As a CEO of a private corporation, I understand space utilization, and we need to shuffle the deck sometimes. But I'm concerned, and I'm going to ask you guys directly, are your plans, now that you have vacated space upstairs, are you going to place the Department of the Inspector General there? I'm just asking because I think it's a bad idea. I believe truly that that inspector general should be housed outside these city walls. DEI. About two years ago, I was asked by Human Resources to interview a possible DEI coordinator with the city of Riverside. I volunteered, did interviews, worked with a lot of good people. About a year ago, at the Budget Engagement Commission, we were told that there wasn't going to be a DEI coordinator after all. That was a waste of time. When I look at you, I try to make contact. I don't look for color, ethnicity, or gender. Instead of DEI, I think it's far more important, I would call it DOT. Diversity of thought.

and you folks um okay thank you mr benavidez i appreciate you being down here and i appreciate your honesty thank you so much um council we have another caller online so let's take our caller please hi hello good evening um this is ernie cornish again

I live in Ward 1. I'm commenting again on agenda item number 32. I know it's going to be later probably. But is that okay to do that at this time?

Actually, this is for general comment. Item 32 is a little bit later.

Gotcha. Okay. I mean, I don't have really anything to say other than the EV situation. So I'll just wait until that happens.

Okay. Thank you. All right, that's the only other request to speak on public comment. We'll close public comment, and we're going to keep moving on in our agenda. Council, we are now at our consent calendar, and I will ask if anybody has any items they wish to pull. Ward 1? Pass. Ward 2? Pass. Ward 3? Pass. Ward 4? Pass. Ward 5? Pass. Ward 6? Pass. Ward 7?

Pass. Move to approve. Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar. Please vote. Motion carries unanimous. Great, thank you. So we are now at our discussion calendar, discussion items. We're now at item 31. This is... Something that I asked to be brought forward because we had a lot of money in our public benefits fund and so we asked our community members to come together and help us identify what is the best way to spend these public benefits energy surcharge funds. So we will open public comment for this item, item 31. Hey, hang on a second, Tracy. Can we open public comment, please, for item 31?

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star 9. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda.

All right, with that, thank you, Ms. Sato. We would love to hear from you now. Please give us a presentation.

Thank you so much, Mayor. So good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and members of the council. My name is Tracy Sato. I am an assistant general manager with Riverside Public Utilities overseeing a group called Strategic Initiatives. I am extremely happy tonight to get to present this item for the public benefits and energy efficiency community working group outcomes and the proposed spending plan they had for the public benefits dollars that we had built up in our reserve. I will try and go through this presentation very quickly, as fast as I can, to get through 23 slides. So I apologize. So, very quickly, just so that you have some background, because this is really important, we have to charge the public benefits charge. It was required by law back in 1996, called AB 1890, and that established the requirement for public utilities to collect the public benefits charge, and this plays into some of the comments that we had with the working group later on. Over time, this program changed from just an energy efficiency program to a program that had to cover low income support from the utility, as well as having mandatory reporting. So we do report to the state on all of the different expenditures that we have under this program. And finally, we also have to, we do have to do energy efficiency and we have to align our targets with the state's goals to reduce energy use in the state. This bill had a lot of requirements and there were a lot of goals that were established for the public benefits charge. This included the goal that utilities provide cost effective or cost beneficial energy efficiency to customers, offer meaningful education around energy efficiency, reduce market barriers for these different programs in the energy efficiency realm, and to create a sustainable and competitive energy efficiency market. What this means for our customers is we charge 2.85% on their electric bill. All customers pay, residential, commercial, non-profits, everybody who pays an electric bill pays into the public benefits charge. A residential customer pays an average of $3 per month, while an average commercial customer pays $10 per month. And some are more, some are less. Obviously, it's dependent on their energy usage or their electricity usage. And we collect approximately $10 to $11 million each year in this program. And we do spend those dollars on a suite of programs that are provided every year. And we spend that funding in a very limited way. So we are required by law to spend it in four categories. So this is actually in law. It's not a regulation. It's in law that we have to provide cost-effective demand side management to promote energy efficiency and energy conservation. We have to provide, or we can provide funding with investment into renewable energy technology resources. We can do research, development, and demonstration programs around energy efficiency and renewable energies, energy programs, if there's something that's not being provided in the current markets that are out there. So it has to be emerging technology that's being researched at the time. And we have to provide services for low-income electricity customers, including but not limited to energy efficiency services, education, weatherization, and rate discounts. And so we use that funding in all of those areas. Just in the last 10 years, this is the spending profile that we've had. The vast majority of our funds, 61%, has been spent on energy efficiency programming. with another 30% being spent on low income programs. And that's our share in energy savings assistance programs, as well as a few others that we provide through this program. We have also spent a small amount, 7% on renewable energy. I will say in prior years, prior decade, before the last 10 years, we did spend a higher percentage on solar, but solar is now a market-ready technology. So that has gone down. And then we have spent a small amount, 2%, on research demonstration and development projects. So what this looks like over the entire program since 1998 when we started collecting these funds, you can see the blue dashed line is how much we have collected over the years. Those numbers are in millions. And then what we have expended each year is in the blue bars. And what you can see here is that over most of the years there were some that were higher, some that were lower, but in general we were spending the funding. And then something happened in 2020 called COVID, and a lot of our programs had to end. We weren't able to go into people's homes to do direct install programs, and we couldn't have our staff out there with our community members. While we did keep our low-income programs running and anything that could be applied for online, it still was not sufficient to spend all that money. So we did end up with $34 million in the reserve fund. This money cannot go to anything else. So we get $10 million every year that comes in. And if it doesn't get spent, it has to stay in that reserve account. And over those five years and six years, we built up a balance of about, it was $32 million when this started. It grew because we were short another $2 million in 2017. in the interim, went to 34, I think we're back down to 32, so in the reserve. So what this working group was asked to do was to look at how to spend that money. Not how we spend our 10 million that comes in, but we've got that, that's gonna be another program going forward. So we did know about this, staff knew about this, and we did present this to the RPU board in January of 2025, and we were asked to develop a spending plan, how we were gonna spend that money down. The mayor did request on April 22nd, following that, after she heard about this, because this is a great opportunity for our community, how could we get those dollars back out there, She requested that RPU staff form a community working group, and so we did that. We did form a community working group with our knowledgeable community members. They were invited to attend the meetings, and our first meeting was in June. and all of our working group members are listed here not everybody attended every single meeting but for their insight was invaluable into defining what these programs were going to be how the programs would be developed and how we would offer these programs so what you're seeing here is a large swath of experts throughout our community who provided their insight into this program We had folks from our RPU board. We also had folks from education, from business community, from realtors and housing, low income housing and low income support programs, residents, industry experts, and marketing experts. How could we market these programs better? How could we get that information out there? And I just wanna say, we may have a few here, I'm not sure, but they did a massive amount of work. Every one of these meetings was about two and a half hours long, and they had to absorb a ton of information. They were always told that they were advisory, and that is the case. What is presented here is advisory to the council. But the board did approve the program, or recommended that the council approve the program moving forward. But all final decisions do lie with the board and the council for the expenditures. I'm not gonna go over all of this, but there were four meetings and they did actually take longer with the meetings because they did spend a lot of time talking about the issues, asking a lot of questions and getting information. But we had everything from education about the programs all the way through discussions about how these programs should be designed and what the requirements would be around them. Our main themes were kind of set guardrails around what the working group thought was important that every program should embody or should take into consideration. Non-energy benefits. So energy efficiency provides comfort and safety. We needed to market that, talk about comfort and safety to our community. How electricity is used, targeting where our largest energy use is at and behavioral change. Keep investment in the city. Don't send the money to outside of the city for programs, but try and keep the money in the city, really focusing on solar and batteries that would be in the city instead of outside the city, and to keep the benefits for low-income customers and customer support in the different programs. I'm going to go over each one of these. The main thing on this slide is it lists all of the six programs that the working group provided as a recommendation with the goal of spending all $34 million that's here within two to six years. So that's the important thing here is to get through this expenditure within two to six years. So the first program that was recommended is a residential energy storage rebate program. Staff had actually started working on this program prior to the working group, so it made it through, and the working group confirmed that this is a good program for the utility. We would be putting $5 million, if this is approved, towards this program over five years, so about $1 million a year, probably more in the beginning and less in the end. to provide a $500 per kilowatt hour rebate for batteries, for residential batteries. And this is an amazing program. It'll be something that other utilities are doing, but we're right there with some of the highest benefits out to our customers. The goal of this program, this will cover about half the cost of a battery for a resident to put in a battery storage system. And a higher rebate would be provided for low income customers. The second program, and this is a very large program, but the working group felt very strongly about this, to provide solar and battery storage and possibly microgrid technology and deep energy efficiency savings to our community centers and libraries that serve as emergency centers, particularly as cooling centers or centers that need electricity in the event of a power outage. This would be a six-year program. We're already working with the Parks Department, and Pamela is here to support the work we've already started to look at. If this program gets approved, we would be able to do solar batteries and deep energy efficiency at the Nichols Park Community Center. which is currently being in consideration. And we would work with our libraries as well. The main point of this program is that by providing the solar and batteries, these are community centers that serve, particularly our customers who may be out of power or are low income, who don't have the ability to cool their homes during the summer, it's really important that they have a place to go, as well as providing potential charging in the event of a power outage for medical devices, phones, and other things that they may need to have power for during these emergency situations. Being able to support that, that was an important component for the working group members. The second program, because again, we're keeping with the theme of solar and battery energy storage, is that they suggested batteries and energy storage at the utility operations center and the city's emergency operations center. Because again, these locations need to be open and powered during emergencies. And for the utility operation center in particular, that electricity would then actually support customers. It wouldn't offset necessarily and just feed the building. It'll actually be provided to the customers unless we're in an emergency situation where they need to run our utility operation center to get the grid back up and running and be able to respond to emergencies. So that's for that, and obviously I think the Emergency Operations Center speaks for itself as to what purpose it serves in an emergency. Again, this would be a $5 million program. Hopefully we would be able to get that expended and those facilities installed within three years. The next program is one directly for customers, and it's $9 million towards a program to provide battery energy storage or a solar with battery energy storage for residential customers in a specific area of the city so that we can study. We would provide this with the caveat that RPU is going to be able to use that as a test area to look at demand response programs, technology that we can put on the grid to support integration of renewals. We know the building code is here. We need to be able to study an area with that. So that's $9 million with a three-year program with that. This program will take a little bit longer to set up because we do have to establish the program, get our research folks on board, but it will be about 400 customers that would be able to participate, and we'd be targeting one area of the city for this particular program, but again, it's for study, so sometimes they're gonna have to perform or let us use their battery at different times. The final, another program is again staying with our low income support. RPU already provides two programs, the energy savings assistance program and the mobile home and multi-family programs. These are fantastic energy savings programs for our low income and for our mobile home residents. what this program would do is add 2 million to those existing programs. These are direct install programs for the residents in those types of housing units or that are low income share customers and they qualify for energy savings, lighting, um, anything that's covered by the program for installation. It's free, no cost out of pocket. Um, so it's a great support program and it's been one of our very successful, successful programs over the past couple of years. The next program is our Riverside University's research grant, so we'd put a million dollars towards research grants over the next couple of years. This would be for all of our higher education, so not just one university, but all universities and RCC would be eligible for these programs. We would be looking for research and development around technology that supports energy efficiency or renewables or integration of renewables on our system. When we did present this to the RPU board, we were taking this forward. They did have some comments and thoughts for your consideration. We might modify programs or look at this. But they were a little, there was one member who was very concerned that we were maybe spending a little too much on solar and batteries. We're really focusing on batteries for the customers, but the group did approve and recommend approval of the programs as they are. They did request that if we are going to fund solar and batteries and improvements to city facilities that we want to ensure that the city facilities actually maintain the equipment because public benefit funds can't maintain equipment. That's not what it's allowed as far as a use goes. So that does mean if we put solar and batteries, there is going to be a cost for the maintenance, but hopefully that is all covered because of the savings they get on their electric bill by having the solar and batteries there. Also expanding or adding programs, programs that could qualify for the $12 million. And that would include really looking at our youth and our seniors. A lot of times daycare centers or senior housing and senior centers are an emergency center. for our children or for our seniors in the community. And so that could be a modification and take a portion of the $12 million to provide a rebate for those. And the board would ask that that be a potential consideration for this evening. And then there was a concern to make sure that the demand response research funding be limited and that the majority of that $9 million for that program actually go to customers and that is what is being presented and that is staff will take that comment into consideration and make sure that that is how the program is established. The working group did look at a number of programs. So I bring these up because we've heard these over the years as well. They rejected a battery replacement, a large utility scale battery replacement for our Springs Power Plant because it's one, it's not really serving individual customers or having an individual customer touch point. So they felt that a different program around batteries would be more appropriate. Demonstration facility, again, instead of just funding a demonstration facility, fund those community centers and have education within those locations. We did have a request to refund the public benefit charge numbers. We did review this with the attorney's office. That would be a very direct way. We could just give the $34 million back. We cannot do that. So it is not allowed by state law, and it is not allowed by charter to refund those dollars. Mostly it's state law does not allow us, is I think the key thing here. And we are not allowed to stop collecting them. So that is why it's really important that we have a spending plan to move this forward so that this does not happen and we can spend those dollars down back into the community. And then numerous recommendations for solar were considered, whether it was on parking structures, warehouses, the gauge canal, and these were either cost prohibitive or just simply could not be done physically because, for example, on the gauge canal, there's just not enough right-of-way to actually maintain that equipment or the equipment could damage the canal itself. Our programs have been very successful this year, so we may not have 34 million, so we may have to adjust some of the dollar amounts as we come back early next fiscal year with the supplemental appropriations for each of these programs. We have had a lot of success with our programs and we may not have 34 million so what is approved tonight we just ask that it be flexible so that we can adjust it as needed and which programs seem to be the ones that could absorb any reduction. before I get to the recommendation, next steps, we would be finalizing the spending plan. We will be coming back over the next six months to seven months with all of the rebate, all of these programs to do the program and the supplemental appropriation, get the funds put here and get them ready to spend. In fact, we'll have the residential energy storage rebate program going to, if this is approved, going to board at the end of July. It'd be coming to council in August. And then we have other ones lined up for August, late August and September to go through board and council in those months. And then we'd have a little bit of time. The other thing that's going to be happening is we still are bringing in that 10 to 11 million every year. So we are going to be going out this summer, because we did receive an energy efficiency and conservation block grant, to work with the community to identify what those programs should be every year. What should we be providing every year with that $10 million, making sure that we're getting that money spent. And again, out the door back to the community as we move forward. And so with that, I think I went fast, I'm not sure if I made my time, but the recommendation this evening is that the city council receive this presentation on the outcome of the public benefits funds community working group and the board recommendations and approve the preferred spending plan for the public benefits charge reserve fund. And I am ready for questions after public comment.

Thank you, Asada. Let me see if I have any public comments. I have some callers. Let's take our first caller, please.

I'm sorry. Once again, I'm out of line. And it's the next item. Sorry.

OK, thanks. All right, next caller, please.

Good evening. This is Aurora Chavez. I deal with seniors. And I think it would be a good thing to do workshops on energy efficiency, especially for their porch lights. That would be the smallest and the quickest way for them to understand what energy efficiency is. Hopefully, Riverside Public Utilities could do something like that so that people understand what they can do at their home to save energy. Hopefully, they'll maybe even have a lunch provided while they're telling us about energy efficiency. So hopefully you'll take that comment into consideration in going to all the senior complexes and all the wards, all the other facilities to be able to talk to seniors, provided that they know how to get the light bulbs for their porch lights and how that goes or maybe need assistance for that. That would be very helpful. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Chavez. Let's take our next caller, please. Hi, if you're there, you can go ahead and speak if you're unmuted. All right, we're going to move on to our next caller.

Good evening.

Hi, go ahead.

Good evening, City Council, Mayor Lockdowson, city staff, members of the audience, Scott Andrews, Ward 6. I'm in opposition of the conclusion of the study. This was a typical blue ribbon panel handpicked by the city council to do their dirty work. The roster reads like the usual suspects from the Riverside 100, the Chamber of Commerce, and other supporters of the council. This money is taken out of our utility bills in order to be given back to the community in a way that helps them reduce their energy usage or enhance the operation of their home or business, not to upgrade city facilities. There are several problems with the whole report. One is that it never mentions how much of this money over the years was given to businesses versus homeowners. That's a big deal in my view. I would bet that the majority went to businesses. I still remember one western municipal who had no program like this and at the time gave the city of Riverside a million dollars to go toward these types of programs in the water area. When I heard about this, I told one of my friends he should put in to redo his large yard and make it more water friendly. When he called and said he was told the money was already been allocated. As it turns out, two large projects had been done that year, one for Bourns and one for Kaiser Permanente. As luck would have it, as Kaiser is building their new wing, they tore out all those improvements. Another issue is that most of these programs are great for those who have the money to take advantage of them. It's not that all the money should go to low-income people because everybody contributes. But the way these programs are set up, it takes money to make money. So the money is spent mostly at the higher income range. These programs are also a benefit of a small few that the city chooses to become, quote, a list of approved vendors. These are usually friends of the city who make bank by installing all this stuff instead of letting people install their own or let their trusted repair person get vetted by the city. Once again, the city picking winners and losers. As for the main conclusion of this report, I see no value to the normal utility customer for using this stuff in facilities. Just a savings for the city, more money for the council, and their hand-picked businesses who will benefit from doing the job. There's also no mention of one of the most beneficial programs coming down the line, which is plug-in solar. This would allow anyone at any income level to generate a set amount of solar power, to generate a set amount of solar power and just plug it into their home without permits and other hassles of rooftop solar. And the most bang for the buck for all of those who contribute to the program. The bill is still pending in the assembly and will hopefully pass by the end of August. This will be the perfect timing for us to implement a program for all ratepayers to share in. In conclusion, I think you should just do a receiving file and do some public outreach concerning the plug-in solar and other programs that might benefit more of the people who have donated to this fund. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Let's take our next caller, please.

Good evening, Jason Hunter, Ward 1. I want to first of all thank the mayor for the creation of a working group on that. I think that's a smart idea. But I do question how were the individuals chosen and were any neighborhood groups, of which we have many fantastic neighborhood groups in Riverside, asked to participate in this working group? Because I think the residents are underrepresented. Number two, I think that we should at least get some numbers from RPU to see whether the long-term maintenance costs of the solar equipment cost more or less than the money saved by having the solar energy. I wouldn't necessarily assume that. And I'd like to know what the return on investment is, at a bare minimum. That shouldn't be that hard to calculate. And then third, this is a public benefits charge, public. Benefits, public, not a government benefits charge. And yet over 50% of the funds are being directed to either the city or UCR, which tells me it's not really a charge. It's really a tax, certainly not a fee. Maybe we should change that on the bill. It certainly currently says charge. We change it to a public benefits tax if this is how we're going to use it. I think truth in advertising matters. And I'd also like to see more of the money, as Mr. Andrews so eloquently stated, kind of directed towards You know, the folks who are paying the public benefits charge, which is RPU's customers, then going to benefit the government, again, we seem to really do a lot of that, lean on our utilities and suck kind of like tax money out of our utilities. In my opinion, inappropriately, we should be charging people for their electric and their water what the actual cost is. I know that this was approved by the legislature back in the 90s, et cetera, et cetera. It's just my preference. I'd like to see more of that money, maybe two-thirds, one-third, even maybe even higher, go towards helping people who are having problems paying their bills, energy efficiency, energy conservation, low income, et cetera, et cetera.

Thank you.

All right. Let's have our next caller, please. Alright, caller, we're going to move on if you're not unmuting. All right. We're going to go ahead and close public comment, and we will move on and come back to council. And thank you, Ms. Sato. We appreciate the report, and I appreciate all the work that went into this, as well as the selection of the group members. Thank you. Let me go to Council Member Cervantes.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for your leadership as well as to the working group and everyone involved with this. Certainly, I appreciate also some of the remarks made from some of our callers. And looking at this and my most pressing comments I'll just stick to, I see we have a few folks lined up. I want to echo that there was a comment just made about assuring that we put a majority of funds to help support residents. We're always out in the community, but I was out a little bit more extra prior to these elections. In different parts across the city, talking to folks, and one of the number one things I heard from residents was the cost of living and utilities was mentioned. So I do believe, and some of those were also in some of our mobile home park communities, so I'm really happy to see the mobile home and multifamily program listed here. I see 2 million listed there, and I see as well as the energy storage rebate program, 5 million residential. And I want to echo, I think, if we could see, I agree with the flexibility of funds, and I think that being open to moving things around is important. And I think communication out on what's going to be available to residents is going to be very pivotal here, and I really do think we're going to have to consider whether it's working across the wards on like a door-to-door kind of campaign effort, because Unfortunately, sometimes social media is not enough. Mailers in the mail are not enough. Like, we really got to make sure we're meeting people where they are. And that, frankly, is at their front doorstep. So just want to share that my office is prepared to help to do some of that work where we can, of course. i think that's going to be really pivotal and then i did love to see the community emergency centers component i want to flag centro de ninos we don't have really any child care facilities that we have that are part of our city so that one i know there has been some challenges as they look to also make sure funding can keep doors open and would love to see how they could be considered as one of those sites and centers that we provide that help and support to but i i do think i little bit of work could be done and i don't know if it makes sense as we as you're working to do the next step um to find out trying to finalize some of these maybe certain recommendations come back to land use and then if we need to you know have council weigh in and then it gets finalized or if it just comes directly back to us but I think moving as quickly as we can to get the money out and make adjustments and whatnot would be great. But just want to commend you. And I really actually did appreciate you sharing the list of why certain things couldn't pan out because those have been several thoughts or ideas brought to us from community leaders, residents, researchers. So I really appreciate that actually being highlighted as to why we couldn't do it, including why we can't just refund residents directly, which I wish we could do, of course, too. But thank you for this. I'm happy to move to approve. But of course, we'd love to hear some of my colleagues' thoughts as well.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Condor?

Thanks, Trace. Hey, could you get back to slide six real quick? Sure. Get your finger. Let's get going here. I was just curious about a certain. Oops, there we go. In the 1213, when that spike went up on the edge, what was that?

So during that period we had to, the RPU at that time, I was not here so there's no we at that point, but RPU had to infuse some money into the program because at that time we were mandated as a utility to be providing solar rebates to customers. So providing, and so RPU had to find some funding and put some money into the program at that time. And that's why that money was infused in.

I think the programs are all good. The only thing I'd like to see is I know that our students that start going to school struggle, struggle, struggle, and the apartments that they have to get into are expensive. It would be nice if there was some type of a student thing we could do to help them out, but the programs you picked are all pretty good, so I appreciate that.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Mill.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Mayor, for your leadership on this. Thank you guys for putting this together. And while I appreciate all the investments in the resiliency and solar and battery storage, I agree with some of the comments that were made. I'd like to see a greater share of the funds being directed towards our residents, in particular our low-income and fixed-income residents. I am very happy to see, again, we're expanding the mobile home programs. But I'm wondering, I'm just going to ask you, I'm thinking about is there a way to create a utility bill relief fund with this funding? And some ideas I have for that, such as one-time bill credits. Because we all know that there's going to be those week or two that come in the summer. Absolutely. where people are going to have to choose between surviving in their house because it's unbearably hot and food. And that's a sad, I mean, so I'm looking at perhaps creating a utility bill relief fund that has one-time bill credits for when we have extreme heat events. Emergency utility assistance for our seniors on fixed incomes. Shut off prevention programs. That's kind of where I would like to see some of the money. I know we're doing some things, but I'd like to see us do more.

so um just to to give a little bit of background if i could respond to that because um so in addition to these 34 million we do have we we get 10 to 11 million dollars that we put into programming every single year um so in fact just last council meeting um the council approved of the extension of our mobile home multi-family program for 1.6 million within that was within the the regular budget that we had this will add 2 million to that to that existing program plus what we already have in the energy savings assistance program, which is specifically targeted to low-income customers. We do offer our share program every year. That program provides an on-bill rebate for low-income customers at 250% of a poverty, federal poverty level, which is very high. And that provides an on-bill assistance of 20, I think it's around $24 a month on electric. I'm sorry. 28, I'm sorry, I'm being corrected by the experts back here. $28 a month for electric and we also have a rebate for water and Public Works has provided some assistance for waste. So for those low-income customers. And that provides deposit assistance for low-income customers, emergency shutoff assistance in the event that they are green-tagged. We don't want our customers to have power shut off during those events. But we could definitely take some of these programs and take that as a recommendation from the council to put more into those programs. We also have additional programs that we provide, whether it's used EV programs Other assistance where we provide a higher assistance level for our low-income customers on a lot of our programs. And to the extent of, for example, the senior housing, we do go out to a lot of our mobile home parks, our senior housing, the Janet Goski Center. We are out there twice a month to provide education and to sign customers up, particularly for our fixed-income customers. and low-income customers. We want to get them into these programs and provide that education. So those programs are not going away. Those programs are going to continue. So even though we have these programs, those programs are going to continue. But we could adjust some of these dollars and make sure that we're enhancing those programs and keeping them funded.

I appreciate all that we do do. Yeah. affordability we can we can bring more into it as council member cervantes uh pointed out you know people are talking about affordability uh right now and and and i i'm grateful for all that we do um i i just believe that there's potential to to do more so so thank you yes we will definitely take that in there and that's a that is really at the heart of a lot of our staff is how do we help our community thank you thank you council member uh council member perry

All right, just a couple questions. I'm looking at the working group, and I'm not going to be able to say this much longer, but as I look at this group, I don't see anybody west of Van Buren. So how are these individuals selected?

We actually had a longer list to begin with where we were trying to reach out to any of, for example, David Hahn from Habitat for Humanity, as many of these folks who were on here who served the entire community and served the region. We were always trying to make sure that we were finding folks who served the entire community. And we had a longer list. It had to be narrowed down to keep the working group manageable in size. But it was just who's been involved and who would be able to make it to four meetings on this.

And there's $34 million that's going into this program. Now, is there a website that the public can go to to see the expenditures and see how this money is being spent?

We are planning to do a dashboard with this. So as we go forward, we already have a website with all of our programs that lists all of our programs. But as these go out, we can definitely keep a dashboard. We also are recommending as part of this that we're gonna come back every year and either make adjustments if something isn't working so that we can adjust these programs to make sure that the dollars are getting spent and we aren't building any more into this reserve.

Sure. And battery storage is mentioned a handful of times throughout this report. Is there safety infrastructure that goes with the battery storage? And I just mentioned that because from electric cars to large battery storage, there's been fires up and down the state where they've had a very difficult time extinguishing those fires. So is there some type of infrastructure that would go with the battery storage to aid the fire departments?

So if we do that, for example, if we do battery storage on any of the city facilities, we can work that into the design of the program. For home battery storage, those are the battery storage systems that people are installing already. in their garages and using them. But we don't have anything specific for that. A lot of the major fires that have lasted for days are utility scale battery storage facilities. So they're solely for, utility use, they're large scale, they're very, very large batteries, and most of them have been older technologies that have been improved upon that don't, they are not deployed anymore in that configuration.

Sure. And I'll agree with my colleagues up here. Affordability is a big, big deal right now. Even before affordability was the buzzword, we still have plenty of low income and seniors in particular that are in need of assistance. So if we could

You mentioned the SHARE program.

I think it's probably a good time to be looking at increasing that number or that the payments that are available on a monthly basis, I think, would be a tremendous benefit. When I was doing research on this, I was messing around with Google. I actually came across a program that the San Diego Gas and Electric Company offers, which is a whole house generator system. And it looks like it's obviously it's fixed backup power. It's reliable. But when we're looking at our low income and, again, our seniors, this could be a particular great benefit for them, whether it's electric shutoffs that go citywide, natural disasters, wildfires. Being able to have a piece of equipment like that would be, I think, would do wonders for our low, actually everyone, but in particular our low income and our senior community.

Absolutely, that's actually part of the intent of the battery energy storage system rebate. And again, our low income customers, if any of them are low income to have that battery available to them, it will almost cover the entire cost. And that also includes the upgrades that they may need, the electrical upgrades to hook that system up. is included in there. And then again, for customers that are not low income, it's $500, covers about half the cost of a battery storage system. So that is one. The program that is offered by San Diego Gas and Electric, Pacific Gas and Electric, and Southern California Edison for battery generators is specifically because they have to do the public safety power shutoffs during the high wind events. we typically do not do that we have a higher level than they do but we do monitor our equipment we're smaller we have a smaller territory so we can be out there monitoring our equipment very closely so it's part of the reason why we don't we don't do that but but we can definitely look into a program one of them is also just a battery backup for that customers could maintain for their medical equipment is is another program that we we could consider as well to add to that But we'll take that into consideration and possibly bring that back.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Hemingway.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Tracy, for this, to the entire group for all the work. And I agree with all that's been said already. I think I would just ask one thing, because conceptually with the buckets kind of where they are, it sounds like there may be some fluidity to it as we see certain needs increase or adjust. Maybe we hear it from the community. we can shift these funds a bit yes is there a plan to go out now and around through the various community spaces to educate folks about all these different options and maybe through the community groups we heard folks say hey there's a lot of community groups that could weigh in or at least benefit from hearing about how they get

neighbors and community members could utilize these funds are do we have a plan for that rather than just posting on a website or sending a mailer 100 we um we are actually launching into um a a fairly significant um outreach campaign um for the 10 million dollars and 10 11 million dollars for those programs but we can include these programs we're also going to include a little bit of other utility questions we're going to be partnering with the general plan and cap um events to make sure that we're getting out in the community but we can definitely add in going out to um any of the working groups we have a consultant on board that's helping us develop all of our outreach um i i'm thinking on my feet right now and i'm thinking we still continue forward with the development as much as we can and then even if we put some money into a program but it decides to be changed you know there's a decision to make a change we can definitely come back and make that even though it's a supplemental these are not set in stone in any way uh moving forward so again we want the money to be being used so our intent was always that we're going to be monitoring it if it's not working we are going to come back and ask that that money be moved to a different program

Perfect. And I think partnering with some of these sort of standing community groups that are established there would be helpful. And then as we are educating, you may hear back from the community and we make those adjustments then because really the key is getting into the hands of the community. So I appreciate that work. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Tracy. I heard a motion to approve from Council Member Cervantes. Yes. All right, with a second or one. All right, thank you, please vote.

Motion carries unanimous.

Thank you, thank you very much, Tracy. Thank you. Okay. I just got a notification that looks like we may not need to go into closed session again. So I think what we're going to do is move on to item number 32, council. All right. So item number 32, this is to approve purchase of 45 electric vehicle chargers from Chevy for about $2 million. And we will open public comment for this item.

Public comment is now open for this item, available in both English and Spanish. Call 951-826-8686 and follow the prompts to access the meeting in either language. To request to speak, press star nine. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID for both languages can be found on the agenda. All right, thank you.

And without, I'd like to ask Lee Withers, please, to give us a staff report on this item.

Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayor and city council. I'm Lee Withers, general services director. And this evening I'm presenting an item on the purchase of up to 45 EV chargers from Chevy of Riverside, California. Chevy is an international provider of EV charging technology headquartered in South Korea, who is interested in expanding into the United States. Chevy identified Riverside as a strategic location for its U.S. entry, and in November 2025, the city council approved a non-binding MOU between the city and Chevy to expand local EV infrastructure and advance the city's sustainability goals. As part of the short-term and long-term collaboration objectives of the MOU, the City agreed to present to Council for consideration the acquisition of up to 45 EV chargers from Chevy. The Chevy chargers are DC fast chargers, also sometimes known as level three chargers. They're user-friendly, provide rapid charging, and are ideal for Riverside to increase its publicly accessible EV charging network. Additionally, Chevy is now a local company, having recently celebrated the opening of their Riverside location last month. CD director Miranda Evans has presented several times on the economic development impact of Chevy's Riverside operation, and we look forward to advancing this ED project with her and the CED team. Staff identified a number of potential locations that present opportunity to expand the city's public EV charger inventory. The column on the right, the maximum number of chargers that a site can support, is based on RPU's assessment of available electrical capacity in that area. These are listed in staff suggested order of installation, though the order may adjust as we get into engineering and that part of the project progresses. In addition to these city locations, the county has expressed interest in Chevy DC fast chargers as an option for their needed corridor stations to be located within one mile of a major freeway and equipped with DC fast chargers to quickly meet charging demand. All of the locations require both offsite and onsite infrastructure improvements. And RPU has done a high level analysis of the offsite infrastructure needs estimated at between five and $12 million. General services staff are currently working with purchasing to finalize an RFP for engineering services to determine onsite infrastructure needs at each location. And accuracy of cost estimating will increase as we progress through engineering. Engineered drawings will also make us competitive for grants and will help inform final installation locations for these EV chargers. Tonight City Council is being asked to approve a supplemental appropriation from the General Fund Infrastructure Reserve Account to pay for the purchase of the EV chargers. The purchase of the chargers is eligible for a rebate from RPU's Low Carbon Fuel Standard Rebate Program, which will be used to reimburse the General Fund Infrastructure Reserve Account. RPU has participated in the LCFS program since 2018 and uses the credits that it earns to benefit current and future EV users such as through the expansion of the city's ev charger network rpu has already determined that this purchase is eligible for their rebate program and in order to receive the rebate the city must complete installation of the chargers within three years of the purchase date the rebate funds will then reimburse general fund infrastructure reserves as the chargers are installed and brought into service additionally lcfs funds may be available to rebate a portion of the needed infrastructure improvements Purchasing the EV chargers from Chevy is an important step toward expanding our city's EV charger network. Next steps in this effort include issuing an engineering RFP so that we can be shovel ready, returning to council with bid award recommendations for construction, continuing to seek grant opportunities to support infrastructure investment, and continuing to negotiate with Chevy on warranty items, O&M, and profit sharing agreements. The fiscal impact of this item is just over 1.9 million, including sales tax. Again, that will be from general fund infrastructure reserves later rebated by RPU's LCFS program. Cost of offsite and onsite infrastructure improvements will be brought separately to council for award with those items. We look forward to placing our order with Chevy and moving this item forward. Recommendations tonight are that by five affirmative votes, council waives formal procurement in accordance with purchasing resolution 24101 and approve the purchase of up to 45 EV chargers from Chevy in the amount of $1,957,500. By at least five affirmative votes, authorize the CFO or designee to record the supplemental appropriation. and inter fund transfer in the same amount from the general fund infrastructure reserve account to the capital outlay electric vehicle charging stations project revenue and expenditure accounts and authorize the city manager or designee to execute any purchase orders agreements or other documents required to effectuate this purpose Mayor, that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer questions. Present in Chambers tonight are CEDD Director Miranda Evans, Utilities AGM Tracy Sato, and online we have H.J. Kim from Chevy to also support this item. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Withers. Let me see if we have any public comment on this item. We have five callers, so let's take our first caller, please.

Hello, good evening. This is Ernie once again. I finally got to speak on this, so I'm excited. Two problems with these chargers. We have, you're putting in fast chargers, which anything made before 2020 doesn't support. We are type two drivers and we do not have any chargers in this city except for one at the convention center. The rest are locked up behind closed doors on the weekends, so there is no use for those chargers. I'm looking at the 10 proposed sites right now for these chargers, and 90% of them are behind closed doors on the weekends. Weekends, you're not going to be able to access any of these chargers, which is kind of crazy, because these chargers should be public access points, and these are not. I know these garages. I've been at these garages on Sunday morning to try to get into them. They have gates down. They do not allow you in. So, therefore, these sites are totally need to be remapped. The other thing is we need two chargers in the city. I have one charger and a mile from my house I have to walk home and walk back to my car because we have zero on the east side. Ward 1 has one charger, and that's right there at the convention center. And one of them is broke right now, and it's been broke for over a month, and the city has not fixed it. So moving forward, we would love to have these chargers, but we need type 2 as well, not type 3, type 2 and type 3. Right now, we have tons of Tesla chargers on the top of a rooftop that no one can use except for Tesla. or someone that pays $500 for a converter. I can't even buy a converter for my car because my car is not capable of doing that. So therefore, Type 2 chargers are the most important chargers that you guys ripped out of the city during the Trump administration's first year back in progress. And now you guys want to put in these that are foreign in another app to download. I'm very disappointed to hear that these are type three. Very disappointed that these locations are locked on the weekend. Thank you. I hope you reconsider some of these things.

Thank you. Thanks for your patience and calling back. All right. Next caller, please.

Good evening, Mayor.

So this is H.J.

Yeah. Member of Good evening, members of the City Council and the distinguished guests. My name is Hyunjong Kim, H.J. Kim. I represent Chavi U.S. Business Operations. First of all, I accept my apology. I'm not being able to attend the in-person meeting today, but I really appreciate your understanding and allowing me to join Chavi by Zoom. I would I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to Mayor Locke Darson and her economic development team and LPU for their leadership, support, and continued effort to welcome and support Chabin Riverside. It is a great honor for me to speak before you on behalf of Chabin. Chabin is one of the Korean leading electronic vehicle charging company. We have been recognized not only for our advanced technology, but also for our reliability, dedication, and commitment to the community we serve. Last month, successfully, Chevy completed its IPO in Korean stock market, which marks an important milestone in our company's growth. Through this IPO, I believe, we believe, We have strengthened our financial foundation. We are now in a stronger position to invest in Riverside, contribute to the local community, and create new job opportunities. Now we are looking forward to our next chapter of growth here in Riverside, the city of Riverside. We have established our U.S. headquarters in the riverside and have also set up our warehouse here. Looking ahead, our goal is to establish a manufacturing facility within the next three years. We are currently preparing for investment packages of more than 20 million U.S. dollars over the next three to five years, along with an appropriate hiring plan to support that growth in the riverside. While the final scale and the timing will depend on the market condition, but our plan is centered around the city of Riverside. We believe that this vision can become a reality with continued support and the partnership with the city of Riverside community. Riverside also, as you know, has a meaningful historical connection with Korea, and with that makes our presence here even more special. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to be part of this community. As we grow, we hope to contribute to Riverside economic development, create a new job opportunity, and build more on the successful story of a Korean company thriving here in the Riverside. Thank you. Thank you again for your support and partnership. And first, thank you.

Thank you, HJ. Let's go to our next caller, please.

Good evening again, City Council, Mayor Lockhart-Hawkins, City staff members and audience, Scott Andrews, Ward 6. I wasn't going to comment on this because I looked at the presentation and didn't really see what I wanted to see. And then when she did her presentation, there's a chart that's not in the presentation online. It's on the report. So the chart shows where they want to put all these chargers. And once again, there's not even one charger in the West End. Not even one. We have two community centers. We have two libraries. We have a senior center. We have a police department. We have fire departments. It's incredible that you guys just completely locked the West End out of everything. I mean, can we maybe just have two? I mean, if you took the 45 and divided by seven, right, you'd have at least five in each one. And I understand you want to have the chargers where the cars are, but holy cow, I just can't believe that you guys do this every time, that there's nothing for the West End and almost everything for downtown and other places.

Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Andrews. Let's have another caller, please.

Hello. Good evening. Once again, Jason Hunter, Ward 1. Number one, it's always a red flag when I see that we're waiving our procurement standards. I looked in the report and I don't really see an explanation. I mean, I think that this has all the markings of a gift of public funds that we're not going out and trying to see whether or not we can purchase these competitively because we invited this company here and now, you know, I guess we'll pay anything for these charges. I don't know whether this is competitive or not, or even being close to being competitive. It's not really my area of expertise, but number two is these need to be available, these chargers, to the public. They can't be locked inside a city facility on the weekends. That's outrageous. They should all be available directly to the public. Once again, I don't know a ton about electric charging, but it seems to me like that discussion over whether we need type 2 or type 3 charges is one that needs to take place. Number three is I heard at some point in time that we were considering talking about profit-sharing agreements. What the heck? We're not in the for-profit business, folks. That just is a huge, huge red flag to me that somebody even mentioned that. But the last thing, and I think the most important, is I see a lot of costs associated with these charges. You've got to find the sites and engineer the sites and got to do permitting and utility infrastructure upgrades, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And these could be really, really, really substantial costs. that the general fund is going to have to pay for. Maybe some utility money can be used, but I doubt all of it. So where is that general fund money going to come from? In the financial straits that the general fund supposedly is in, why would we lock ourselves into this giant purchase of these chargers when we don't know the cost for final installation

And we don't know where we're going to find that money, or at least we're not telling the public how we're going to find that money to fund all this.

This seems like putting the cart before the horse. when we could see multiple times the cost of these chargers in the actual site improvement costs that come later. This is not a good decision. This is not how you make decisions. Okay, this can be delayed until we get a better estimate of whether we can afford to put 45 chargers all around the city. All right, thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Let's have our next caller, please.

Hi, this is Keith Nelson. I wasn't even going to call him this. I understand I'm an engineer, and I hope someone kind of writes these questions down and asks for clarification. We've been using some terms that are not correct. A Type 3 EV charger is an older European standard with shutters. There's no cars in the U.S. that use Type 3 EV chargers. Now, some people mistakenly call the Tesla NACS connector a Type 3. These are odd terms. I think it just needs a clarification. I'm not being negative on this. I just want to know what you're putting in. What is normally referred to as Level 1 and Level 2 AC charging, which uses the J1772 Type 1 connector, and the DC fast charging, which uses the CCS Combo 1 connector, So now the, and I hope I'm not being too engineerish, the NACS connector, which is on Tesla chargers, does have connectors to the CCS1. However, that's not the preferred way to go. You'd rather have the CCS combo one. So I just think maybe I'm too engineerish or someone was using wrong terms, but I strongly doubt you're putting in type three chargers, or I hope not. So maybe some of the councilmen could just get some clarification from the technical people. Are these level one and level two AC charging? Are these DC fast charging? And are they CCS combo or J1772? Or are they only Tesla chargers? Thank you.

Thank you. I have one more request to speak, and then I'd like Ms. Withers to please respond to some of those questions. Steve Johnson. Welcome, Mr. Johnson.

Thank you.

I wasn't going to comment on this either. I just did the math. It's $43,500 apiece. I am an electrical contractor. Without knowing each site, the engineering, cutting concrete, trenching, permits, permit fees, design plans, you're kind of just buying all this stuff and then figuring out how to install it later. There's a giant cost in doing that. So just take that into consideration. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Another caller. Let's take our next caller, please. All right. We have no more requests to speak, so we will close public comment and move on to council. Council Member Robillard, oh wait, let me have Director Withers please address some of the comments that were made just to correct the record, make sure we're Certainly.

These are DC fast chargers. Apologies for the confusion. They're DC fast chargers, not level three as the caller described. Okay. Thank you. And then there was a question on potential city locations. These are not the final list of locations. There is still more work to be done to identify potential areas that would be a good fit for the EV chargers. We will certainly look at the west end of town to make sure that that gets looked at. I'm not aware of chargers that would not be accessible to the public. Riverside Convention Center is not gated. Orange Terrace Community Park is open. So I'm not sure what specifically that question was referring to, Mayor.

All right, thank you. And last question. We had a couple comments regarding site prep and expense associated with that. I'm assuming you've done, these are up all over Korea, I know. So I'm assuming you did a little bit of estimate, at least back a napkin. Do you want to address that for just a minute?

Back of napkin, generally, it could be $150,000 for installation for each charger. It's really going to vary by site, and RPU's infrastructure costs are not included in that. But that's our back of napkin sort of high-level estimate. But again, hiring an engineer to help us understand exactly what's needed is going to help us understand those costs.

Okay. Great. And my last question, then I'll come back to council. The Chevy is located at their international headquarters here in Riverside. They are the second largest manufacturer in South Korea of this type of charger. I'm assuming we're going to get point of sale sales tax. That may not be a question for you. It may be a question for Edward. I don't know. But we are going to get revenues off of the sales tax. Is that right?

I'm going to look to Edward to help me with that.

Edward Rodriguez, assistant city manager. So the point of sale will depend on if they're manufacturing here. If they happen to manufacture over there and bring them across the pond, that's a different situation, but they would have to manufacture in the city in order for us.

I think they are. I think that's the case. That was at least what we were gunning for, so... All right. I'll stop there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Lee. I'm going to go to council now. Council Member Robillard, you want to address that last one?

Yes. We're paying sales tax on this purchase order, so I'm assuming we're paying sales tax on the rest of the chargers that we are purchasing.

I meant the revenues coming back to us when they sell it to other people. Oh, yes.

That's what I was talking about. So a couple of things as someone who owns a Tesla, who owns an EV and has experienced the woes of not being near a Tesla EV charger or having to use a non-Tesla EV charger, how slow and unpredictable and broken they often are. The really attractive thing about Chevy chargers is they have their documented reliability. They're at 99% reliability. In Korea, they have to publish all their live readings on what is up, what is down, and their chargers are always up. They are competing against the LGs and the Samsungs of the world and are consistently outperforming them, and that is what made them so successful is because of their reliability. That's kind of the biggest, they call it the iPhone of EV chargers. Secondly, the commenters are right that we do not have almost any EV charger access across the city. There is parking lot EV chargers where you can park, and if you're in there for an hour at shopping or something like that, you might get like five miles of battery life added to your EV. It's very, very slow, and those are also mostly broken. there's a huge need citywide for more charger options. What's nice about these is they use both standards, they use the NACS standard as well as the other one. And so these are DC fast chargers at 180 kilowatts. They can charge your electric vehicle in 30 minutes to an hour to fully charge. And so these are what is becoming, a lot of people are realizing is more necessary for market because If you have a charger that's only going to give you five miles in an hour, what's the point of having it? You need a fast charger to be practical. These are all market conditions that are driving this. We also have state mandates that are demanding electrification of our fleets. We have no infrastructure in place right now for fleet charging. Chevy has up to 600 kilowatt charging, which is very helpful as we're looking at heavier duty vehicles that need to use these chargers. And the infrastructure costs associated with putting these in is significant. You're doing this kind of electrical work, it's a lot of copper, it's a lot of concrete, trenching, all the things that Steve Johnson knows about. But there's also the infrastructure upgrades that RPU has to do to get that power to the location. But what we're seeing is, you know, you need to upgrade this infrastructure anyways. And so it's kind of a good incentive to get this infrastructure upgraded in the first place. We have a lot of aging electrical infrastructure and to get grants and go through this process is really going to help us. not just modernize electrical infrastructure for our charger, it modernizes all the electrical infrastructure for every resident and every business that is along that line there. And so there's a lot of good things that come with this, not least of which is having a high-tech manufacturer inner city, point of sale inner city. And when we talk about providing opportunities for residents, this is doing exactly that. And so I'm very proud to support that, and I move to... staff recommendation All right.

We have a motion and a second or three ward to council over Falcone.

Thank you mayor I'll be brief because I will say the all the I'll Defer comments related to electrical cars to my colleague comes from a river because that's not my specialty nor my interest But I do want to talk about this particular slide Lee that we're on right here, you know We had callers calling that say there's no options in Ward one We have callers that call and say there's no options in Ward six. I We're damned either way, it seems, when it comes to locations, but I emphasize potential locations here, and I do, despite the length of time, do want to go through each site here because there has been, I think, some incorrect information shared. Casablanca Library, that is not gated off. New East Side Library, that is not gated off. Orange Terrace Community Park, not gated off. City Hall Parking Structure 7, it's not gated, but there is, of course, a fee to park in that parking structure, so that one, of course, would be a bit of a challenge. Corporation Yard for the Fuel Island, not gated. Convention Center, not gated. City Hall Parking Garage, yes, it does have a gate. City Hall surface lot, not gated. Museum of Riverside, not gated. Airport, not gated. So you have 74 maximum options here. Of those, 10 of them would be behind gates. So you have 64 options there, if we were to even go with this list, which we've shared its potential. uh the accessibility is absolutely there um in terms of location across the city it's not as diverse as it could be as has been shared um but i think that there's um there's ample access uh irrespective of geographic location in the city so i want to just i wanted to take the time to clarify that because i think that's important um and and that's all i have to say mayor thank you

Thank you. And before I go to Council Member Perry, my understanding, Lee, is that in order to be eligible for the rebates, these are located in disadvantaged communities, correct? Correct.

Correct. They need to serve disadvantaged communities, correct.

All right. Thank you. Council Member Perry?

Thank you.

Budget question, because we're looking at a supplemental appropriation, and we're looking just shy of $2 million. Okay. Can our general fund absorb that? I know we're going to talk budget next week. I'm curious though, are we looking at it coming out of the first year budget or are we looking at it coming out of the second year budget where there's some red flags or a combination of both? How is this going to work?

So as I understand it, we're using infrastructure reserves to purchase the 45 chargers and would theoretically be reimbursed with some grant funding from RPU down the way. So theoretically then it would be a net wash, but we would fund it initially with infrastructure reserves, which we have available for this project.

Okay, thank you. And we received a few emails, and it's been alluded to for a couple of calls we got. Can you kind of go over this competitive procurement process and how we're able to waive it?

Yes, and I may look to Finance Director Julie Neems to assist me with this. In order to advance this item, we are asking Council to waive formal procurement. The EV chargers are manufactured by a number of companies, so there may have been other options, and that's why we're asking Council to waive competitive procurement for this.

All right. And again, going back to site locations, and my constituent took the words right smack out of my mouth. And I know it says potential city locations, but when we do something like this, people start looking. I mean, I started writing down ward numbers by each of the locations. And again, six and seven aren't mentioned. And again, I won't. I don't get very many more opportunities to say this, but there's nothing west of Van Buren. So, you know, I don't know what's going to be the final decision made on locations, but we also need to be, when we do these presentations, we need to think of the impact that these visuals have on not only us sitting on the dais, but an impact it has on the community and the constituents that we represent. So just, if that could be kept in mind, not only for this proposal, but others coming in the future.

right thank you council member Hemingway I think he was just said I would just say I'm glad it says potential locations and we would just ask the some libraries and some community centers in in seven and six and five and so we look for those as well thanks all right thank you okay thank you miss Withers we have a motion and a second council please vote

motion carries six affirmative votes one no vote word six okay thank you all right we are now at the communications portion of our agenda item number 33 i will call on our city attorney please to report out on closed session discussions

On item number nine, the pre-litigation tort claim of Susan Freeman. In closed session, city council approved a settlement agreement that provides a mutual release and waiver with claimant Ms. Freeman in which she released all claims against the city in exchange for the city waiving all claims against her with no monetary payment. It was a unanimous vote except for one abstention by council member Condor. As for the other items that need to be reported out, I will defer to Mayor Pro Tem Robilar.

Council met and closed session on Agenda Item 14B and Item 10, Discipline of the City Manager. The City and the City Manager have mutually agreed to a leadership transition. Today, the City Manager tendered his voluntary resignation effective July 5, 2026. City Council accepted the resignation and approved an agreement with the City Manager that he will be placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately until the effective date of resignation. As part of the agreement to accept City Manager's resignation, the City has agreed to pay severance to the City Manager in a lump sum equivalent to nine months regular salary and 401 contributions and one month of health benefits. The agreement provides there are no pending claims or actions between the City and the City Manager. Both parties release each other from any claims during City Manager's employment with the City. The Council voted in favor of the agreement was unanimous. We thank the city manager for his service to the city of Riverside and wish him well in his future endeavors.

All right. Thank you, council member. Thank you, city attorney. Next item on the agenda, item 34. Council members, any items for future agenda? No? All right. Thank you, everybody. Our next city council meeting is Tuesday, June 23rd. Thank you. We're adjourned.