City - Regular Meeting

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Welcome, welcome, good evening, everyone. This is the City Council meeting of the City of Pacific Grove. It's Wednesday, June 17th, 2026. Exactly, 6 p.m., Council Chambers, 304-71, Pacific Grove, California. This is the City Council meeting to order a note for the record that we have all seven members present, and I will ask my colleague, Councilmember Garfield, to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you very much. At this time, we'll go to item 1, approval of the agenda. Two items are going to be pulled tonight. That's 13A and 13B. So we're not going to be hearing 13A or 13B tonight. So can I get a motion to approve the agenda without those items?

Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Rao, second by Garfield. We'll take a voice vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. We'll take the agenda and we will not hear 13A and 13B this evening. We'll move on to item three, council and staff announcements and a report on, I'm sorry, we'll go to council announcements. Councilwoman Garfield looks like she has a report.

I do thank you very much, I wanted to thank give a shout out to the Chamber of Commerce for hosting a weaving party down downtown. There were quite a few not quite a few there weren't enough people there, it would be great if more people showed up next time. Also shout out to PG cares, who brought a few volunteers as well, and so the planters the tree wells on lighthouse are look a bit better, so thank you to everybody who showed up.

Thank you very much. Any further council announcements? Councilman O'Donnell.

Thank you, Mayor. And I would actually like to do a shout out to the CSOs. I've heard a lot of great feedback on people appreciating the numbers of the great work the CSOs have been doing out there. Tickets for feeding the wildlife and a lot of the things that the residents have had issues and concerns with. And they're really noticing and very appreciative of the great work they're doing. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Now I'll turn to the city attorney. Item 3A, report on closed session, if there is any.

Thank you, Mayor. With respect to the one item on closed session, an update was given to council and council provided direction to staff, but no reportable action was taken.

Thank you. And I'll turn to city manager, Mr. Mogenson, for staff announcements.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First announcement is going to come from director and deputy city manager, Dan Goh.

Council members, Mayor Smith, it's been a month since you approved the stop sign at Lighthouse Congress in Central. And I just want to let everybody know that I told you we'd put it in after a month of those signs being out there informing everybody. So tomorrow we're going to be installing the stop sign out there. We're going to keep the traffic signs out there that instead of saying proposed stop sign coming soon, it's going to say stop sign ahead. So everybody will know we'll probably keep those out there for a month. Make sure everybody gets acclimated to the new traffic control device, Sergio. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor, if I can give one more foreshadow for the council and community. On our next meeting on July 15th, we're going to bring an item that is going to talk about, again, our fiscal sustainability. So we'll go a little bit deeper into how we can, you know, the item you're going to see tonight, I won't get into that yet, but you'll see that we still have some challenges to reach. So we're going to start next month to be able to meet all those challenges with this next year. So we'll get a little deeper with it all. So come and enjoy that. discussion. Thank you, Ms. Hallaby.

got one staff announcement on behalf of the recreation department they just want to quickly highlight their aquatic programs that they're offering this summer which include parent and taught swim lessons youth group swim lessons youth private swim lessons and a very exciting adult program which is water aerobics which is something that's new and for the first time being offered this year and then rec swim on friday afternoons saturday mornings and saturday afternoons and more information can be found at city of pacific grove.org forward slash recreation thank you

thank you so much any further staff announcements mr morganson no further announcements okay thank you okay we'll go ahead and take it to the general public comment item four this is uh deals with matters the subject to our jurisdiction in the city and the council but they're not on the agenda tonight on the regular agenda tonight so any members of the public that wish to speak come forward and i'll take chambers first thank you

Good evening, council. I identify as one of those people that you often refer to as the vocal minority. Often, members have quoted that they inherited the cannabis lottery that just occurred this week, and that it was inherited from a previous council. Ordinance 2512 and resolution 2516, which established the lottery process, which just occurred, was approved by this council less than a year ago. The attempts to deflect, claiming that the voters approved Measure N and therefore a lottery process of taping together plastic eggs in an eight to one lottery drawing was not what voters wanted. And there's a lack of accountability here. To quote, I don't hate the player, hate the game. Right, but you guys made the game. And Nick, I know you're not involved in any of this, so us local minority are here to keep the shenanigans in check. And speaking of the shenanigans regarding the lottery we witnessed on Monday, or should I say some of us witnessed, I urge the city staff to post the recording from the canvas lottery drawing and return the lottery webpage back to the internet and make the recording or the video recording available to the public. Those that were not here live or on the Zoom stream to witness what happened in a replay of what we shall call the breaking of the egg. A spinner cage was used for the lottery. A manufacturer recommended folding up slips of paper evenly and tumbling them in a cage. When the audience arrived for the drawing, a process of taping up these plastic Easter eggs was introduced as part of the protocol. The winner was supposedly going to be randomly selected by hand. Instead, the luck of the draw of the game became a tumbling of this Easter egg, but we can all watch the video later. secondly now that that's over for the second event of the night i just want to say we do support our law enforcement with our annual increase i think it's fair to say that our new chief is far more present and available and proactive than the last I think it's also fair to say that we asked for maybe just 5% more data on the operations that residents have asked for. Under the new master fee schedule, it can be really difficult to make Freedom of Information Act requests now that it's billed at staff costs and it's unclear what can be free. And so I really applaud the new partnership, apparently with the Carmel Pine Cone to post citations for municipal code 10-10-10. It's the easiest to remember and probably our best, which is feeding wildlife. And I really also appreciate generally the crime scene numbers that are posted every single month. Another data point that I think residents would be highly interested in seeing the introduction of is, especially as bike officers are put on the recreation trail, is 140823. That's a mile an hour. Thank you very much.

Good evening. Nice to see all of you tonight. And my name is Vince Tuminello. I'm a longtime PG resident. And I'm here to bring something to your attention. I was at the meeting on Monday and saw it. And I even posted a little snippet on the Pacific Grove Facebook page about it. If you haven't seen that, you might see it, see a long list of comments from the community. I'm really here tonight to address what happened at the last council meeting when tonight there's only two people for oral communication. But last time there was twice as many. It was four people who got up and spoke and before they were allowed to address open oral communication like I'm doing now, they were limited from three minutes to two minutes. and i want to entreat the mayor and the council people who someday would like to be mayor and that includes most of you i would bet that um we show a courtesy to the community to help protect our democracy according to the brown act We're supposed to be able to come at your discretion, hopefully, not that you could eliminate it, but that maybe you could change the timing a little bit on nights when there's a lot of people who want to speak, like the skate park issue or... the pot shop issue originally and so on and so forth but last week there was only four people who wanted to speak i think it was abhorrent so i want to entreat you to not limit the speech to only two minutes when people are in such few in number and feel in their heart that they have something important they want to share with the council and the mayor and the city manager and the rest of the staff i spoke with the other three people who's tried to speak besides myself and they all felt discouraged that they prepared three minute presentations and then when you take it and chop it down to two minutes you don't have a chance to really make your point so i want to politely ask you all especially the mayor and the pro-mayor pro tem and others who someday may be mayor that you only limited to two minutes when it's really necessary because i could ask you why don't you limit your conversation to two or three minutes why do some of you go on for 10 or 15 minutes why do we have so many award ceremonies and things like that at the beginning of the meeting they extend the meeting quite long and then of course there's always the issue that i know nobody likes a really long meeting and i don't blame you for that but i think you got to cover all the bases so maybe what's good for the goose is good for the gander maybe some of you could consider not speaking debating so long just vote on it say a few words vote on it get it over with and we can move on if it's so critical to some of you that we don't extend the meeting and thank you so much for listening to me have a nice night yes you're welcome thank you

All right, next.

Anyone else in chambers?

Okay.

If there's anyone else, just get ready.

My name is Richard Davis, and I'd like to remind you of the oath you've taken. First city. Should I stand over here? I'd like to remind you of the oath you took on this book here, and I seriously doubt if any of you fully even read it, the Constitution of the United States. On June 3rd, the flag raising, everybody present saw a member of the task force hold up a sign in front of my truck where I was legally parked. The mayor didn't do anything about it. Tina didn't. Nobody else spoke. Obviously, everybody saw it. I went to the police commander and asked him, Anderson, is it legal to block my sign? And he said in kind of a smart aleck way, they've got a sign, you've got a sign, they've got a sign. Well, I don't consider it a sign when it's obviously just meant to block my sign and take away my... constitutional rights to free speech all right i think you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves to be quite honest with you and i think you need to reread the constitution this other gentleman brought the brown act which you've been in great violation of over the years and i just want to emphasize how disappointed i am in all of you and by the way that dei task force nobody goes to the meetings Nobody, not even on the computer, they don't. And I don't even know why we have one. 458 cities dropped it last year. There's far less than 50 now in the whole state of California. I think it's worthless. I think it's a waste of taxpayers' dollars. I don't see one thing that that task force has accomplished that benefits our city. So please read the Constitution.

All right. Good evening, Mayor Smith, Council members. I'm Jeannie Anton, and I'm here to just give you an update on the Chicago Hall project. Our architect, Hunter Eldridge, has met with my team several times to go over the plans. We have a proposed kitchen design, a restroom design, and all the electrical plumbing details are being worked out. We also are using the same landscape designer who is working with the Chinese pavilion folks, so we will have a coordinated look when both projects are finished. Our goal is to have these proposed plans available on the Heritage Society website soon so the public can see them. i do want to say that we are not going to change the outside of the building i keep hearing rumors about that the minor changes will be interior except for the addition of the ada accessible ramp on the 17th street side and bringing the porch up to code The Heritage Society is still working hard to make this a successful project. Several new grants are being explored and we plan to participate again in Monterey County Gives. And of course, we are gratefully thankful for the generous donations from our community members. We've had over 300 individual donations so far, totaling over $830,000. I also want to announce that our next fundraising dinner will be on Wednesday, July 29 at Fandango. We want to thank Marietta Bain for joining with us and I hope you and the public will mark your calendars now and join us for a delicious meal on July 29. Thank you. Thank you very much.

David Erickson again. Yep. Third meeting in a row. But I'm not here to harp about the cannabis issues. So you guys don't have to sit here me and talk about that. I think that we all made our points before the lottery. The lottery is what it is. Hopefully we figure out everything that people are having issues with. But I know that your guys's job is not easy. And I do know that I go online. i put stuff online i've been doing it more often i do started doing more research doing background stuff and uh it's like the three amigos you know i've been trying to be if i see something that doesn't look right i've been trying to voice it you know stand up for it and try to and it doesn't matter if it was the cannabis or any issue that we're going to have here in pacific grove i'm trying to be a little more involved as a community member and be part of that. But I know that your guys' jobs are difficult and decisions that you have to make to get you to those spots. So I did want to appreciate everything that you guys have done and keep doing it. I'm gonna be here fighting for what we think is right. But overall, I think that we all have the great idea of keeping our great city how it is. So I appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Anyone online?

I do have one caller online there. Mike Gibbs, you have the floor.

Thank you, Senator. Mayor and City Council, this is Mike Gibbs. I'm talking on behalf of Pacific Grove Cares. And first, I want to thank Council Member Garfield for mentioning the weed and trash pickup and being there personally, along with the city manager and the assistant city manager and the head of the Chamber of Commerce all there. And we had a chance to meet Oliver, who did Yeoman's work up and down Lighthouse on that particular day, picking up quite a bit of trash and collecting it from the Pacific Grove volunteers and other people that were out there. So thank you for that. And we will be there for additional pickups. We have something called the Pacific Grove Cares has something called a pickup posse. And for almost a year now, various members or volunteers are assigned to different parts of the city, including Forest Lighthouse Central. We specifically focus on making a walk around Chicago Hall. every couple of weeks or so, picking up trash and accumulated debris in those areas. So we're out there working for you. And if you haven't been by the Pacific Grove Community Center out there behind Robert Town, drive by if you haven't had a chance to do that. We have put in over 200 plants, eight to 10 trees, including three beautiful Japanese maples, some pots that are being watered by hand in the courtyard there. And I have to thank Dan Goh and the Public Works Department. The flagpole has been repainted. There's a flag at the top of the light as per code. The benches have been replaced and are now spick and span looking really nice. And the community center is an iconic building. And it's great to see it coming back and living the way that it should be for the people of Pacific Grove and being available for all kinds of events going into the future. So just want to thank the city support as a representative of Pacific Grove Cares. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

No further hands are raised, Mayor.

Okay, let me go ahead and close general public comment and take it up to item five, the consent agenda, or the consent agenda, that is, which contains item five. The consent agenda deals with routine and non-controversial matters, may include actions on resolutions, ordinances, or other public hearings for which testimony is not anticipated. So in that, does anyone on the council wish to pull an item? Does anyone in the public wish to pull an item?

Thanks, Mayor. One in person, but we're online, Mayor.

All right. Go ahead, and I'll entertain a motion on consent.

I'm sorry.

Yep.

I have a hand raised. Inga Lawrence and Donna?

Thank you. I would like to pull 9B, please. Okay.

All right. Thank you very much. So we're going to pull item 9B. I'll entertain a motion on consent, and we're going to move 9B to the end of the agenda.

So moved.

Second. All right, motion by route second by Amelia on consent and with that nine be pulled and moved to the end of the agenda. We'll go ahead and take the vote now all in favor say aye aye any opposed hearing none passes unanimously. Thank you very much. A lot of activity there on consent. We'll go ahead and hear item 11 a And that is 8251-2561 reporting so we're going to hear from several staff members tonight, and I see a lot of staff members in the audience, thank you for being here. and spending your evening here with us at least a portion of it, we don't expect you to stay until the very end of the meeting, although okay go ahead item 11a.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members, staff, and members of the public. This is a public hearing to discuss vacancies, recruitment, and retention efforts. This presentation is for informational purposes only. The information reflects the vacancies for the 2025 calendar year.

Okay, so what is AB2561? AB2561 was introduced to address job vacancies in local government agencies.

Oh, sorry.

One moment. There we go. Okay. All right. All right. I'll start from the top. AB 2561 was introduced to address job vacancies and local government agencies. And the impact of those vacancies can have on public services, employee workload, recruitment and retention. A vacancy occurs when an employee separates from employment with the city and is no longer on the city's payroll for purposes of this presentation, we may use the term vacancy and separation when discussing positions that have become unfilled. Among other requirements, AB 2561 requires public agencies to hold a public hearing once a year before the agency's governing body. During this hearing, the agency must present information on the status of the vacancies, recruitment efforts, and retention efforts. The agency must also identify whether any changes to policies, procedures, or recruitment activities are needed to address obstacles in the hiring process.

Looking back on 2025 the city had 15 resignations five retirements and for involuntary separations for a total of 24 employment separations this represents all three bargaining groups GA me a MP away, as well as unrepresented management employees.

Okay, so we're going to take a quick look at separations by each of the departments. The first one going from the left to the right is ASD, Administrative Services Department. They had two vacancies in 2025. The next one is CDD or Community Development Department. They had three vacancies. The next one is CMO or city manager's office. There was zero vacancies. The next one is LIB for library and there were two vacancies. And the next one is PD police department with 11 vacancies. The next one is public works. PW, they had five vacancies. And the last one is the recreation department rec. They had one vacancy.

next this slide is a look at the vacancies by bargaining groups please note these numbers do not reflect part-time seasonal employees regular or sometimes referred to sorry only regular or sometimes referred to as permanent employees annual average vacancy rate for employee groups are as follows GA, 9.68%. MEA, 12.67%. POA, 17.92%. Nonrepresented Management and Confidential, 10.93%. Department Heads, 11.46%. Averaging for the annual for city vacancies is 12.53%. So let's compare it to 2024. The city experienced an overall increase in vacancy rates. This was due in part to turnover in the police department, as well as the city holding some positions vacant for cost savings or reorganizing positions to better align with operational needs. The creation of three new positions, urban forester, CIP manager, and deputy city manager also contributed to the vacancy rate while recruitments were underway.

Okay, so looking closer into the bargaining groups, starting with the General Employee Association or GA, there were a total of 13 separations in 2025. Out of the 13 by resigned for unknown reasons, employees can give a notice of resignation and not give a reason and sometimes they do it because they want it to be confidential. To resign to relocate to left to work in the private sector, one left to work in another public agency to retired and one was released.

Looking at me a employee management employee associate and vacancies was a 12 to specific designation reasons for both our personal reasons.

Okay, moving on to the police officer association, there are a total of eight separations for 2025 and the police officer association out of the eight to retired. To release on impression to decided it was not a job match one left to work in the private sector and then one left to work for another city as a lateral police officer.

Next, we review recruitment and retention efforts for 2025 and going forward.

Okay, so we'll look at an overview of the recruitment process. As you can see, there are many steps to get to job placement. This is a general overview for hiring a staff and steps can vary just depending on the position. Human Resources works with the hiring manager to look at the steps, look at the recruitment plan and then forge go go forward, execute that plan. For police staff positions, specific post-hiring guidelines and processes must take place, including a very thorough investigative background check and various physical assessments. This can take up to six months for the background to be completed, as, of course, there are many requirements.

recruitment challenges the city continues to face several workforce recruitment challenges that impact its ability to attract and retain qualified candidates limited awareness of public sector careers many potential applicants may not actively consider local government employment or may be unfamiliar with the career opportunities available in municipal service complexity of the hiring process applicants may not fully understand the recruitment and selection process including application requirements timelines and hiring process competitive labor markets the city competes with neighboring agencies and private sector employers that may offer higher salaries enhanced benefits or other incentives workforce demographic trends retirements evolving workforce expectations and a shrinking pool of qualified candidates in certain professions continue to create recruitment challenges throughout the public sector this is especially true for police and finance professionals Housing affordability and cost of living the cost of housing and living on the monitoring peninsula may limit the city's ability to attract candidates from outside the region.

Okay, strategies to address recruitment challenges. To strengthen the recruitment efforts and improve workforce outcomes, the city's pursuing the following strategies. Expand outreach and recruitment efforts. We've increased awareness of public sector career opportunities through social media campaigns, professional networking platforms, career fairs, and community engagement. We've developed and promoted an employee referral program to leverage existing staff networks and track qualified candidates. improve applicant experience and transparency we've updated the city's website to provide clear comprehensive information regarding employment opportunities and recruitment timelines we have increased communication with applicants throughout the hiring process to provide timely updates and to manage expectations and we will be exploring adding text messaging to applicants for an even more timely response We've developed a specific webpage for certain departments, such as recreation applicants, so they can easily see what the process is when you're a minor, getting a job permit and all the things that you need to do for your first job. So we've outlined that for those folks. We also keep a summary of benefits on our webpage. It's a separate webpage for applicants to view the benefits package easily. We have a comprehensive information available on that webpage. streamline recruitment and hiring processes. We continue to evaluate opportunities to reduce recruitment timelines while maintaining compliance with merit based hiring practices and applicable regulations. One of the most recent efficiencies is our ability to conduct employment references electronically. maintain competitive compensation and benefits. While we regularly review salary and benefits, we have to balance compensation adjustments with the city's long-term fiscal sustainability and budgetary objectives. So this is definitely a balancing act right here. Strengthen employee retention, invest in employee training, leadership development, succession planning, and career growth opportunities. foster workplace culture that supports employee engagement, recognition and organizational effectiveness. Addressing workforce recruitment and retention challenges requires a comprehensive approach that combines a competitive compensation, efficient hiring practices, expanded outreach, workforce development and positive employee experiences. These efforts support a city's ability to recruit and retain quality workforce while maintaining a high quality services for the Pacific Grove community.

on this slide you will see the following retention efforts training and education opportunities each department includes a budget line to support employee training and development employee groups also have an education room an education reimbursement program to help them pursue educational goals as part of members of the cjpia they offer staff online and in-person group training at no additional cost to the city In addition, the city holds an annual citywide training day to provide shared learning opportunities across the organization. Police staff have additional training opportunities through California Post. Leadership development. The city supports leadership development through bi-weekly meetings with the leadership team. In addition, as members of the CJPIA, they provide leadership staff access to trainings and leadership academies, generally at no cost. Employee engagement, the city offers a variety of employee engagement activities throughout the year to the primary annual events are the health and wellness fair. And citywide training day, in addition, the city sponsor seasonal activities, including picnic in the park in the spring. fun shirt fries and lunch activities during the summer and walk tober which is a departmental walking challenge in the fall. The city also recognizes employee contributions to several recognition programs, including department employee of the year, the city managers beacon award and employee service recognition, the police department also recognizes play staff with annual departmental words. temporary on-call program for police officers. In addition to vacancies within the police department, staffing levels are further impacted by several employees on protective leave or light duty work, which created increased overtime demands. To recognize the additional workload and personal sacrifices made by the officers, including missed family time, holidays, and the physical and emotional demands of police work, the city offered a temporary on-call program in 2025. the program was paused at the beginning of 2026 once adequate staffing levels were restored alternative and flexible work schedules the city supports employee work-life balance by offering flexible and intolerant alternative work schedules where operational fees were operationally feasible these options may include 980s and 410s workweek schedules positive workplace The city is committed to building a positive workplace culture that supports employee engagement recognition and organizational effectiveness. This past year, with input from staff we develop organizational values of service caring. Collaboration and integrity, our next step is to create programs that reinforce these values and recognize the positive culture already taking place through the organization.

Okay, the city recognizes that attracting and retaining a skilled workforce is essential to delivering high quality public services through targeted recruitment initiatives, process improvements and ongoing evaluation of compensation and workforce practices. The city is committed to building a sustainable and effective workforce that meets the needs of the community. And this concludes our report. Thank you.

Thank you. And is that from the staff report? Okay, we'll go ahead and go out to the public for public comment.

Mr Mayor, I can really quickly. Yes, we want to let the bargaining units go one at a time. They each get an opportunity and then do public comment. Okay, that's kind of okay.

That was my question. Okay, let's have the units come up first before we take public comment. And just announce your who you're representing tonight. And then go ahead.

My name is Nathan Porches.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor, council members, and city staff. My name is Nathan Porches, and I'm speaking tonight as the Vice President of the General Employees Association. First, I would like to thank the city for holding this public hearing. The issues of recruitment and retention are critical to the long-term success of our organization and services that we provide. to the residents of Pacific Grove. As representatives of the employees who keep the city operations running every day, we see firsthand effects of staffing vacancies. Vacancies impact more than positions that remain unfilled. They affect the employees who take on the additional responsibilities, cover shifts, absorb increased workloads, and work diligently to maintain the services levels for our community. While recruitment is important, retention deserves equal attention. Every time an inexperienced employee leaves, the city loses valuable institutional knowledge, professional expertise, and continuity of service. Replacing an employee often requires months of recruitment, onboarding, and training before an organization returns to full effectiveness. The labor market for local government employees is highly competitive. Pacific Grove competes with neighboring agencies throughout Monterey County and the region for qualified employees. Perspective and current employees compare compensation, benefits, and professional work development opportunities and overall working conditions when deciding where to work and whether to remain within an organization. In many cases, recruitment difficulties are symptoms of a broader retention challenges. When an employee can earn significantly higher compensation at a neighbor agency or similar work, attracting qualified applicants becomes more difficult and retaining experienced staff becomes more challenging. Understanding that reality is an important part of developing long term workforce solutions. The GEA believes recruitment and retention challenges cannot be fully addressed without examining the factors that influence the employees' decisions to join and stay with the city. Competitive compensation, sustainable workloads and opportunities for growth, and a workplace culture that values employees all play important roles in maintaining a stable workforce. We encourage the city council to view employee retention as an investment rather than an expense. Retaining experienced employees reduces recruitment costs, preserves institutional knowledge, improves operational efficiency, and ultimately benefits the residents we serve. As the council reviews vacancy data, application numbers, and time to fill metrics, we ask that equal consideration be given to the reasons employees choose to leave and the actions that can be taken to encourage them to stay. employees represented represented by the employees general employees association are committed to serving pacific groves community we look forward to continuing work to work collaboratively with city leadership to identify solutions and strengthen recruitment efforts improve retention and ensure the city remains an employer of choice thank you for your time and consideration thank you very much

Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Garrett McCown. I'm the president of the General Employees Association and associate planner for the City of Pacific Grove. On behalf of the GEA members, we want to thank you for the opportunity to speak about the city's vacancy rate and retention efforts. I'd like to humanize and give context to Nathan's presentation by giving a little bit of my experience working for the City of Pacific Grove. But first, I'd like to say that I really do enjoy working for the city. I enjoy working with staff and the community. They're great people. And I'm grateful to be able to build my career, continue my skill development and cultivate professional relationships within the city of Pacific Grove. so i've been working for the city for the past eight years my first five years were in the public works department as a maintenance worker and then i was promoted to the community development department as an assistant planner for three years the community the community development department has seen a tremendous amount of turnover in fact for the entire three years i've been in this department we have never been fully staffed The director's position has turned over three times and that does not include the interim directors in between. The principal planner position has been vacant for the three years i've been in this department and i'm not sure when the last time the department had a principal planner. When I first started in the community development department, we had two associates and I was the assistant. There was no senior planner. Since then, one associate planner retired. Another associate planner promoted to senior planner. I promoted to an associate planner. We hired another associate who lasted approximately three months. They left for another opportunity. The senior planner was on board for two years and then left for another opportunity. We hired another associate. They were associate planner for approximately six months, then promoted to senior planner for approximately a week or two, and then left for another opportunity. As of today, the planning team consists of myself and Mr. John Biggs, who's the CDD director. John and I have an everlasting workload ahead of us until the city can recruit and retain employees. In conclusion, I would like to reiterate the issues of recruitment and retention. These are critical to the long-term success of our organization and the services we provide to the residents of Pacific Grove. as proof in the cd's current situation as i just described the gea believes that recruitment and retention challenges cannot be fully addressed without examining the factors that influence employees decisions to join and stay with the city competitive compensation sustainable workloads opportunities for growth and workplace culture that values employees all play an important role in maintaining a stable workforce the general employees association strongly urges the city council to view employee retention as an investment rather than an expense the vacancy rates presented this evening may seem small however it has a compounding effect on the day-to-day operations and mental well-being of the employees Lastly, the employees represented by the General Employees Association are committed to serving Pacific Grove community. We look forward to continue working collaboratively with the city leadership and to identify solutions that strengthen recruitment efforts, improve retention and ensure the city remains an employer of choice. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Mayor, council members, my name is Philip Anderson. Thank you, Garrett. That was a wonderful speech you made because he hit the nail on the head. It's not an easy answer.

Go ahead.

but we're mea okay got it okay i'm sorry sorry i was kind of waiting for that because we had two in a row that were the same okay i'm sorry um i wish i had an easy answer for the city in retaining and keeping people here and hiring people um all businesses all governments have challenges um That's just a part of the life we live right now. But when I came on board, the job that I took on here at the city, the person who was here before me wasn't able to do their job, so they left. And it's been quite an ordeal trying to get the department back or the division back together, the housing division. And... My director, John Biggs, is fantastic. Our staff is fantastic. They need to be commended for the hard work that they do because we are understaffed. And we're not the only department that has that situation. I think Mary has my notes. I didn't want to read this because I feel like I want to talk to you instead of reading something to you because it is so important that the city thrive and be what it is. It's a beautiful city. We've got great tourism. We've got great people who work for it and we need to keep it that way. We need to have people that respect the environment like our city does. Everyone that works in our department, everyone that works in the city, all the departments are nothing but respectful to each other. We have a great group of people and it's been very difficult to have this process of bargaining for benefits and for cost of living raises. It's been really difficult, stressful, and it's part of the process, I know, but it does take away from our daily workload. We're stressed out over it. And we would like to be able to have a, I don't know, Like I said, I want to just talk about it and give you some answers. I wish I had an answer that we could, you know, get everybody here that needs to be here, everybody be able to live in the Pacific Grove, the city that we work for, but very few people are able to. They can't afford it. I moved here from Maui, Hawaii, and I'm telling you that the cost of living here is equal. it and it's hard to find a place to live so recruiting people is going to be difficult when they don't they have to drive you know an hour to live here or to work here and do all this work for and not even be able to enjoy it as a resident of the city so that's something to consider when you're um talking about retention and hiring people, but I think I've spent enough time. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members, the public and our staff. My name is Mary Wyant, and I am the Youth Services Librarian, and I'm representing the treasurer for MEA. I'm here tonight to just mention something very briefly. I have been working for the City for eight years. And I love my job. It is the best job ever. I'm very grateful because I am one of very, very few people, certainly within MEA, who is able to live here as well. So I am one of, I'm definitely the minority who can work and live in the same spot. I want to specifically address the presentation in one of the slides about recruitment challenges, which goes right there to housing affordability and cost of living. As I mentioned, I'm fortunate to be able to, well, the bank owns my home, but I own a home here. And if I were the only sole provider and I didn't have another income coming in, I wouldn't. So I'm grateful that I have a partner and together we're able to afford a house here. And I wish that of everyone who wanted to live there because it's amazing. I also want to address the fact how in terms of our vacancy in, you probably recall from the slide, in 2024, there was a 5% vacancy. It is now bumped up to 12.67 in 2025. That is significant. That means that every position that's not filled, someone has to step in. and that detracts from their work environment and it just creates a burden that hopefully is going to change. The other point I wanted to bring up was in 2025, the two MEA members that had left, they left for personal reasons. we can't be privy, I mean, we can surmise what those personal reasons were, but keep that in mind, they kept it personal. One other point I wanna make is about, I guess me personally, if you don't mind, I have two college aid students uh excuse me children and one is living in colorado and as much as we love our daughter um we know that she can't come back and live here um even off a nursing uh position her job and so we are encouraging her sadly, to remain in Colorado because Pacific Grove is so, so expensive. And I think when we talk about working here, it would be wonderful if we did the third point about a recruitment challenge was the cost of living. And it would be wonderful to have a COLA to kind of offset, at least support those of us who live and work in the area. So that's a personal note about that. And I just want to thank you very much for your time. I'm just going to read something in closing. And this is something that we feel very strongly about because obviously we want our goal is to have 100 percent workforce, whether that's achievable or not. But what we need for that to happen is strong and competitive salaries. That includes a benefit package and passion employees who want to be here. So thank you very much for your time.

Thank you very much. A couple more.

mayors and members of city council my name is paul nagamena i'm president of the pacific grove poa this is fitzgerald brown vice president and robert redledge he's our secretary i'll be opening with some statements they're going to follow up with a powerpoint okay yeah you get powerpoints ready okay So my name is Paul Nagmini. I'm speaking tonight as president of the Pacific Grove Police Officers Association. For months, city leadership has attempted to minimize the staffing crisis facing the Pacific Grove Police Department. While reports and presentations have been provided to the council, the numbers presented often fail to accurately reflect the reality experienced by the officers working the streets every day. When the city discusses staffing levels, It frequently relies on authorized positions rather than deployable officers. There's a significant difference between a position on paper and an officer available to answer calls for service. Vacancies, injuries, training assignments, administrative assignments, leave usage, mandatory training requirements, all impact the number of officers available to protect this community on any given shift. The result of that burden falls on the officers who remain. Officers who are routinely working with reduced staffing levels, covering larger workloads, responding calls, sorry, responding from call to call without adequate recovery time and sacrificing opportunities for training, proactive policing and community engagement. The cumulative effect of chronic understaffing is not theoretical. It affects morale, officer wellness, retention, recruitment, and ultimately public safety. Yet despite repeated concerns raised by the POA and members of the department, city leadership continues to downplay these impacts. Rather than acknowledge the challenges and working collaboratively towards solutions, the city has often chosen to dismiss the concerns of the employees tasked with protecting the community. Equally concerning is apparent lack of competency demonstrated by staff when addressing public safety issues and labor concerns. Timing and information has been presented that does not accurately reflect operational realities. Decisions affecting police services have been made without sufficient understanding of how those decisions impact staffing, officer workload, recruitment efforts, and the department's ability to provide effective service. Members of the POA are committed professionals. They continue to answer calls, investigate crimes, assist residents, and protect this community despite increasing difficult working conditions. They deserve more than being told the problem does not exist. They deserve honest assessments, competent leadership, and meaningful action.

All right.

Again, my name is Robert Rutledge. I am the POA Secretary. If we can pull up the PowerPoint, that would be greatly appreciated. You can go to the first slide. So I'm gonna talk about allotted police officers. It talks about deployment, right? So the city allows 20 full police salon officers for the entire department. Those are the officers that are gonna go out and handle calls for service, direct scene driving around, conducting traffic stops, And a part of these 20 is gonna be four sergeants, four corporals, eight officers, two detectives, one traffic officer, and one resource officer. That creates the whole 20 police officers for the entire department that you will see on a daily basis. Next slide, please. What counts as a full duty officer or a fully deployed officer has to meet three requirements. A solo officer who has completed and graduated from a California Post Basic Academy. Typically it is about six months. Once they have completed that six month academy, they then have to successfully complete the Pacific Grove Police Department's field training program. That can range anywhere between a minimum of 10 weeks or even more. In addition to that, once they complete that field training program, then they are a solo officer that does not need to be watched by a field training officer. That way they can actually be effective in performing their duties in and out of the department. So a full duty officer includes someone who's not on light duty, an officer that is not out on extended leave as well. Next slide, please. Put together a quick little bar graph showing blue with 20 allotted officers for last year of every month. So 2025, beginning in January. At the beginning of January, meeting all three requirements that I just previously did in the previous slide, we only had 15 officers that were fully able to deploy out into the field and provide adequate services to the community. And as you can see, as the year progressed, there are less and less fully duty officers able to provide appropriate care and safety for the community. In regards to percentages in regards to January, we're at 25% below the 20 allotted officers. And as the year again progressed, if you look further towards September, October, we're at 60% below. So we're only looking working with a 40% staffing level. That is not safe for the community because on a typical shift with that 60 less officers there's only a one supervisor and one officer for the entire city during a 12-hour shift which is again unsafe for the community and unsafe for the police officers that are performing their jobs then we started to see in november and december a little increase however If you look at December, it was at about 11 fully duty officers that were able to be deployed at once for a shift or throughout the entire month. Next slide, please. Now, looking at December where I said there was 11 officers that were available, our current staffing levels as in this month hasn't changed. We are still lacking 45%. We're still at the same 11 officers that are able to deploy. That is six months. It is not adequate for the community and safe for the community. And it's also not safe for the officers because now they have to do more overtime. They have to give up time away from their families. The more stress, the more calls for service they have to do. It is not acceptable. So we're having less, we have less than four officers. We do not have detectives. We're lacking a corporal, one traffic officer and one school resource officer. So thank you for your time.

All right, thank you very much, council.

Gentlemen. Do we have any other units? Are we good? Okay, we'll go to public comment. Thank you very much to the units for spending your night here with us and describing the circumstances.

All right, we have one hand raised on line.

Yeah, we're going to her.

Inga Lawrence and Dahmer.

Thank you. I have certainly heard the plea here and I've certainly been experiencing this for the last 40 years. And yes, all of their lack of resources and lack of personnel has also been the lack of service in the city of Pacific Grove. And it's interesting that Many of them seem to think that throwing more money at this is going to make it better. Unfortunately, people like me, residents of Pacific Grove forever, don't have resources to throw at them. We don't have more money. Our city officials have spent it. And all these different things many of the retentions it's interesting many of those that have left i'm i really in the cdd department the last person i regretted leaving was anastasia aziz and that was several cdd directors ago and i've been um not happy with who's been retained and then left thank goodness It's an interesting thing because, you know, we just don't have the money to keep throwing. I'm a low income senior. I've lived here forever. I'm hanging on just like you. No, everybody can't come back and live here. Unfortunately, we've been bought out by Bay Area millionaires that come down and buy our homes. And don't even live here. We do have a problem. They don't vote. They don't participate in our local government. And here we are trying to hang on and take care of things. And the investment in people, especially in the CDD that then they leave, excuse me, I don't think that's a good investment. We've had a few arrogant people there just incredibly that just then they leave. And yes, I've watched Garrett McGowan grow up in the CDD and actually he's getting there, kind of. But as far as thinking that things are gonna change, he didn't even mention Anna Bornstein, which was a member of the ARB who then applied and a resident of BG who then applied because of her qualifications and got a job. She's an excellent planner.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the comments.

Christy Italiano-Thomas.

Well, obviously, you all know that we're in a complete housing crisis. You know that we are a destination location. When I came here in 1980 to work for a commuter airlines at that time in the 80s, the cost of living was nowhere in proportion. with the wages i worked for an airlines and then i also had to bartend on my days off here um because it's beautiful and it's it's quadrupled as a 365 day a year destination location um in all of my years in different positions i've never not worked with people that didn't commute um from the neighboring cities so um i think it's an unrealistic expectation to think that every employee in pg can live in pg um we've depleted so much local housing 65 of the peninsula is renters but pg allowed uh short-term rentals and then of course we have all of the homeowners so um in the in the real world most of the people that I know don't make anywhere near the salaries that the cities do, much less the benefits. So we just cannot keep up with this inflation. And constantly to say that you have to, or comparing yourself to the neighboring cities when we're half the size of, say, Marina, and we're not San Jose, this and that, and it's a trade-off. I mean, my sons are the 38 39 they couldn't stay here they're born and raised they you know one's paying four thousand rent thank god he makes good money the other one had to had to leave uh i know so many young people that they're leaving this is you know not every young person wants to stay here they want to move and i would be very interested when that gentleman was saying how all the people got other positions did that mean other positions um in on the peninsula or you know that they're leaving town it's obviously a sacrifice and a trade-off to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world it's like you know when i was younger yeah could live in Dale with nine roommates. So again, this is why so many young people move away. And on the housing, I don't, this city has done absolutely nothing to partner with nonprofits for low income or affordable housing. We have no workforce housing like Monterey does. And in every high end product, there was never, nobody wants to be bothered with the paperwork to do any inclusionary housing. you know nothing's going to change for for housing here so you know but but can keep using the excuse to give raise after raise after raise when you just don't have it or if that's your priority for uh city salaries then you have to quit squandering on non-essentials sorry anyone else

I know their hands are raised. This is a report item, so we've received the report clearly, and I'll allow people to make one comment, but I'll just give my now. I think that And if you would like to comment, let me know up here at the Council level. But I would just like to say that, you know, we're always trying to do what's best for our employees and what's best for retention. But as everybody knows, there are a lot of economic upheavals, housing crisis. you know we're just not we have to balance the budget we have to you know we get certain amount of revenue and certain amount of expenses and i think this all turns on that every single thing that i think i heard was related to expenses costs and i i personally feel that it is an investment but it looks like you know we also have to make difficult decisions So it's tough to be up here, but we're up here. We took the challenge, and it is going to be a challenge to figure out in this kind of environment. So it hasn't always been this way, but now this is where we are. So I vow to do my best to what's best for the staff and the city. So anyone else like to speak? Lori?

Thank you very much. And I do want to thank everyone for coming up and speaking. Often when we're sitting up here, it's hard for us to know kind of more of the behind the scenes stuff because we're policy and that's different than the staff level. So it's really helpful to understand the challenges you're facing. But unfortunately, as the mayor stated, we're kind of forced to deal with the realities of the money we have to work with. If it was up to us, I'm sure most of us would be more than happy to do anything we can to show how much we value our staff, which we do. So thank you for understanding that as much, how often we don't get to do what we want to do, but often end up doing what we have to do. But I appreciate understanding where everybody's coming from and what the challenges are so we can look for potential solutions for that. So thank you.

Thanks. Anyone else? All right. So we'll receive the report. I'll go ahead with you.

I just want to underscore, appreciate your comments as well. These are complicated, complex issues. I appreciate Leticia and Stephanie bringing to our attention the programs and their efforts and acknowledgement that retention and recruitment are important for all of us. We have a lot of agreement about that. We want to make Pacific Grove the best place to work to the best of our ability. And I appreciate hearing from folks where they're feeling like we may be dropping the ball a bit. So thank you. Thank you for your time and thanks for your input.

Thank you.

Yeah, Joe.

I want to thank everybody for coming. And I want you to know. I individually appreciate all your work you do. I really do. And I've met with some of you several years ago. So I really do appreciate it. And we're going to do the best we can.

All right, we're going to receive the report. Thank you for the extensive report. It was very well done. Very clear. Thank you so much. And we're going to move on to item 11 C, I believe. RBB. It's B, I apologize. Ms. Livian, this is the POA salary schedule.

Correct.

Okay, go ahead.

All right, thank you, everyone. Good evening, Mayor, council members, staff, and members of the public. In 2024, council approved an MOU with the Police Officers Association that included a 3% cost of living adjustment for 2024, 2025, and 2026. The 2026 adjustment is the final installment of the approved COLAs. To implement this administrative change and to update the city salary schedule, council must approve the amended salary schedule by ordinance. Tonight, staff is requesting approval of an ordinance amending the salary schedule to incorporate the previously approved salary increase for POA. This concludes my report.

Thank you very much. This is already under contract, so we'll go out to the public.

More public comment online.

All right, we'll bring it back to the council for action. I'll entertain a motion on this. We've already negotiated a motion on this. Number one and number two. Thank you, we've had a motion one and two by Emilio. Do you have a second?

Second.

Second by Rao. Any further discussion up here? Hearing none, we'll take a voice vote. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Seeing none, passes unanimously. Thank you very much for the brief report.

Thank you.

And you're still here for, oh, that's Mr. Marsh. Okay, I'll let you go. We'll let Mr. Marsh take the floor. And Ms. Medawar, 11 C.

good evening council and fellow council members um so tonight we're presenting a update um as you know last year we presented our first ever two-year budget for the city and so this year we're doing an update to that basically um the nice thing you'll see this is one of the advantages of doing a two-year budget is that the second year i have to really commend staff a lot they worked with us very closely and we ended up having pretty much a minimal amount of change And Jessica, who's my assistant finance director over here, is going to walk us through the presentation. But you'll see overall not many, not major, any major changes coming up for next year as well, too. But yeah, so I was just gonna say overall, you'll see on there, there's no really major personnel changes at all. A couple of reclassifications. We did some slight shifting of a SUO project as well too, because they've already started it. And some of our revenues are coming in a little bit better than we thought. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Jessica.

Good evening, mayors and council members and members of the public. So I will present to you this evening the 26-27 budget update. Council probably remembers we brought a two-year budget proposal to you last year, and that was for both school year 25-26 and fiscal year 26-27. And the reason we're proposing an update this evening is for a couple reasons. One, obviously we know more information now than we did a year ago, so we wanna give you the most accurate estimates. And two, at the time that we adopted the budget, we only opted the fiscal year 25-26 budget, so we wanna ensure that the 26-27 budget is adopted this evening. So we'll go over a couple of things on the presentation. One, we'll look at the overall city budget and the breakdown of the budget by fund. Two, we'll do a deep dive into the general fund budget. So we'll look at the general fund revenues. Three, we'll look at the general fund expenditures. Four, we'll look at the summary of major changes. And this will just be the major changes between the original 26-27 budget and this updated version. And then five, we'll look at an updated staff plan. And six, we'll look at the updated general fund five year forecast. So this is the overall city budget broken down by fund type. And you can see that we're anticipating 34.4 million in general fund revenues and 36 million in general fund expenditures with an operating deficit of 1.6 million. I do wanna point out when we originally bought the two year budget to council, we were projecting a 2.6 million operating deficit at that time. So we are seeing a little bit of an improvement due to updated revenues, but we'll get more into those details later. Unfortunately, we are still seeing deficits though. And then in looking at the enterprise funds, we're anticipating 6.3 million in revenue and 11.9 million in expenditures and a 5.6 million deficit. I wanna point out that the expenditures for the enterprise funds are a little bit higher than usual, and that's due to a one-time sewer project. And so that negative, or excuse me, the operating deficit will be paid out of existing fund balances within those enterprise funds. And then for the internal service funds, we're projecting 2.3 in revenues and a balance 2.3 in expenders. And capital projects and special revenue other projects, we're also projecting small deficits in those areas. But again, those deficits will be funded through existing fund balances on those funds. So before we do a deep dive into the general fund, I just want to briefly touch on the two year capital expenditures that we're anticipating. So we're anticipating about 17 million in capital expenditures and 4.42 million of that is in transportation or streets and roads. 11 million, which makes up 66% of that is in sewer stormwater. And again, that's because of that large one-time project that we're seeing. And then 2.25 million is in capital other projects.

Just to add on to that real quick, part of it was updated too. We had some carryovers from 24-25. So that kind of makes the two-year budget a little bit higher, so.

And going into a little bit more details on the 2627 general fund budget looking at the revenues. we're anticipating about 34.4 million and revenues for fiscal year 2627 and the majority of that is obviously in our property taxes we're estimating about 11.6 million or 34% of our revenue from property taxes. and 7.6 million or 22 percent from hotel taxes and that's where we saw um the majority of the increases were in those two areas but we can go over some more details on that and then sales and use tax we're estimating 6 million at about 18 and then utility user tax 2.2 million other taxes at 2.3 licenses and permits at 1.1 charges for service at 2.2 and other revenues at 1.4 million And then, looking at the general fund expenditures we wanted to present it to you and a couple different ways, so you can see what the breakdown is of the total expenditures so. We are anticipating about 36 million in general fund expenditures and we have to pie charts here for you to look at to break down. what makes up those expenditures. So the first one is expenses by department, and you can see here that by department, police is 30% of the budget, fire is 18%, administration is 17%, and administration makes up multiple departments within the city. So it makes up the council, city manager, HR, finance, and IT department. And then we move on to public works at 16%, recreation at 11, and development at eight. And then if you look at the next slide on the right, that's expenses by major category. So 43% of that $36 million budget is made up by personnel expenditures, 31% is made up from operating, 18% is debt and pension, and 8% is capital or other. So here is a summary of the major changes. And again, this is just the changes from the original 26-27 budget that we presented to this amended budget. So you can see the top two revenues there are what we discussed earlier. Those are really the driving changes for why we're seeing a little bit of an improvement on our operating deficit. We're anticipating 269,000 more in property taxes. And this is just based upon revised estimates from HDL. They're able to get more granular data on estimates on property taxes. And then we're anticipating an additional 703,000 on TOT revenue. And this is mainly due to the new Kempton Hotel. For general fund expenses, obviously we tightened the belts on that and did not increase expenses. There's minimal changes here. So overall, we're in the middle of MOU negotiations. And so we don't know what will happen there yet, but we're hoping for some salary cost savings. And there's some additional expenses in cdd study, but mostly the additional expenses are related to the Monterey fire contract and then there's another reduction in expenses that departments assisted with in cutting their meetings trainings and travel budget. And then moving on to the right are the enterprise funds. And overall, the Gulf enterprise funds we're anticipating will increase its net revenues by about 174,000. And this is due to updated contract with CORSCO. That updated contract CORSCO took over the water costs. So the city is not incurring those costs anymore and we should see an improvement in the Gulf enterprise fund. And then the Sewer Enterprise Fund, although the net expenses for fiscal year 26-27 are showing a reduction of 900,000, that was really that sewer project timeline got moved up. In the mid-year, 25-26 mid-year amendment, we actually increased the sewer costs, and so we're reducing them in 26-27 so that the project timeline can move up. Otherwise, Public Works needs an additional 400,000 for Sewer Collection System Master Plan. And then for the special revenue funds, the museum improvement fund is requesting an additional 40,000 for the fence replacement.

I just want to mention real quickly on the master plan. That's really important for us as well too, because kind of as Jessica shown in the previous slide, our sewer fund is going to be getting the reserves down to only about a million dollars. And we really need to look to start to build those back up. So I just want to add that as a highlight.

proposed staffing reclassification. So overall, our approved staffing for the budget did not change. We have the same amount of staff. But there were some small changes within departments for operational needs. And so we asked departments that if they were gonna make those changes, if there was any cost increase, that they offset that through budget cuts in other areas within their departments. And so departments went ahead and did that. And so there's no cost increase to these staff changes. And then this is a look at the updated general fund five year forecast. So overall, there's a bit of an improvement on the five year forecast from what we presented to council earlier. Excuse me. And that the projected ending reserves are a little bit higher and our reserve levels are a little bit higher. due to better performance in 2425 than anticipated, and also due to the fact that we were able to reduce the deficit by a bit. But overall, if you look at that middle number, that net change for fiscal year, Unfortunately, we are looking at operating deficits for five years. And so we are meeting our reserve requirement of 25% into fiscal year 2728. But we anticipate falling below that 25% in fiscal year 2829.

And I just want to kind of point out as well to we kind of took a mid level approach to this is you know I think most people will know our inflation is kind of running much higher currently in the last couple months. So we're really going to continue to watch that as well, too, and see if that affects this going forward in the future as well, so.

And then, this is just a look at the GAN limit, excuse me, the GAN limit is the cap on city spending of tax revenue, and so you can see that. Our budgeted tax revenue is that about 29 million in our GAN limit that 55 million so we're well below the GAN limit.

And on the game limit, so this is something was kind of pointed out new this year, we actually have to have at least 15 days notice on the game limit. So that's why you're not going to normally we present the game limit and the budget at the same time, but what you're going to see is we'll we'll present it in July, basically, as a result, so we just want to give counsel that update.

that concludes all the financial data so the recommendations at this time are that council receives the report and provides staff feedback regarding the proposed update to the budget for fiscal year 26-27 approves the resolution authorizing continued operations under the current fiscal year 25-26 budget request the city attorney to read the title of the ordinance motion to waive further reading of the ordinance Introduce and hold the first reading of an ordinance to adopt the fiscal year 2627 update and direct that publication of the ordinance will be satisfied.

and these are similar to last year when we did the budget there is one change it's a little bit different and it's number two and i just want to explain that very briefly normally our cycle would be we'd bring it the second meeting in may and then have council do the second reading or yeah the second meeting in june um because of mou negotiations this year we kind of waited a little bit to bring it to council so that's why we're just having to have council approve that additional carryover resolution um the second reading will basically bring the budget into effect for 27-28 in July.

Okay, thank you. Does that conclude the report? Yes. Thank you very much for the report. Now we're going to take it to the public right now. We may have some questions later. Let's see if we've got any comment online.

No hands raised online.

All right, seeing no one. Sorry. Inga.

Inga Lawrence and Doimer.

Mayor and council, obviously the city is just spending too much money. We don't have it. I'll leave it with you.

All right, thank you.

No further hands.

all right we'll go ahead and close public comment on this item uh bring it back to the council for discussion i'm just going to note that the recommended actions on our agenda are the ones we're going to take one two and three of these the ones on the screen include some things that we don't no longer do so we'll go off of the staff report on the uh recommendations So at this time, I think it's a I'll just say up front, I appreciate the efforts to outline this for a long period of time. And I remember a time when the the the shortfall was a lot worse as you went out to like twenty nine. So I see a light. There's light there. You know, I think a few years ago there was some huge numbers. um and we've i think the city's added some pieces that we're we're able to use so that's been it's been positive in that in that area but uh thank you for doing this budget and uh it's very it was extremely clear great report um and i i'm ready to go with it i want to hear whatever else has to say yes go ahead

So I appreciate that the slide is slowing, but it's still a slide.

It is, yes.

And there's a lot of unknowns. We don't know what's going to happen with inflation, which impacts people's discretionary spending, which impacts our tourism, which impacts all sorts of things. So that's a pretty variable. But wanted to know, Historically, our property taxes have increased about 4% per year. Is that still the case or are you seeing a slowing of that as well?

So that's a great question. Typically, it has been between about four to five percent. We did have a little bit of a pickup this year, thank goodness, because of Kempton. Basically, you know, they, in essence, their assessed value went up significantly, you know, with the building of the new hotel, basically. And actually going out in the future, we've ratcheted it down to more about a four to four and a half percent level. One of the nice things we did this year, we were able to kind of kind of tweak our budget a little bit. Jessica talked about this a little bit. We had already used HDL to assist us with like sales tax and transient tax projections. We actually brought them in this year to also assist us now with property taxes as well too. And they really provide some great detailed reports. It really gives us a much better long-term analysis as to where we think property taxes are going, so.

Were they able to comment on the law that was passed a few years ago that allowed people to bring their property tax basis from other counties

Yeah, well, what they do, and I forget the exact code, they didn't exactly address that one, but it's more the one where, you know, the Prop 13 limit, basically how you have much lower bases. We still have a significant number of people here that have been here a long time. And so as a result, they have a very low property tax base. So they give us a report on that basically every year, kind of showing the impact of what that is. But on your specific questions, no, we can look at that in the future to see if they can provide that, so.

The reason I'm asking about it is that our highest value homes are often sold to people who are moving here from the Bay Area. And often they have lived in their home in Saratoga, for instance, for 30 years. And so they have very low tax bases in Saratoga, which they then bring here. And previously, that would have a step up in the taxes, and now it's not. So at our highest end homes, that's an unfortunate event. And my last question is, how are you treating the ATC hotel? Is that in here at all?

So that's a great question. So in the initial five year forecast, I don't know if council members this, we did put a fifth year estimate. Just because of a lot of uncertainties regarding that project, we've actually pulled that out because we just thought, we'll we'll be better prepared to put that once in once basically you know it starts construction and stuff like that but there's just a lot of uncertainties currently going on with that project and so for the time being we'd rather just have it out of there we can obviously that's the great thing about doing a five-year plan we will constantly evaluate you know all the assumptions that we use to going into it and so if they're making great progress going forward in the future we can definitely look to you know update the forecast to reflect that so

I appreciate knowing what's in this. Thanks. Thank you.

Go ahead, James.

Thank you, and thank you for preparing all of this. I know a lot goes behind the scenes. Actually, I find it really ironic that the focus priority area is financial sustainability, and then we're saying $1.2 million, we're going to be in the red. So it's part of the whole package. I just wanted to know from just on the ATC item, right? So if the ATC item does not materialize for whatever reason, are we, or with or without it, are we saying that this is a structural deficit?

Well, so as Council knows, because we've made a number of presentations on this as far as the sustainability that you've talked about earlier, we're kind of facing two types of deficits here at the city. One is more an operational deficit, which Jessica talked about tonight within the five-year plan. The other is actually an infrastructure funding kind of deficit. And I don't know if Council remembers this, but we have basically about a $21 million funding deficit for infrastructure. So it's really a two-part deficit that we're facing. I mean, when we do a five year forecast, obviously we do our best, but it's an estimate, you know, it could come in better, it could come in worse. But I think the important thing for everybody to understand, that's not the only deficit we're facing, what we're projecting, we're only showing the operating side. If you factor in a couple other things too, if you factor in infrastructure and then, you know, or pension obligations as well too, we've gotta continue to fund both of those because the key thing on both of those is the sooner we can fund those, the less costly it's gonna be to the city over the long term.

yes and uh construction if i could add a little bit though you mentioned the fiscal sustainability part of it and at the beginning of this meeting i'm i mentioned in july we're going to come back and talk a little bit deeper and the fiscal sustainability part of it is you know we want to start working on a balanced budget for next year so it's going to mean some difficult discussions and we need to start those earlier than later so that's how that's all going to come together so i would anticipate by next year that the city would be adopting a very different five-year forecast

because you have to, at some point in time, true it up.

You can't keep cutting it out.

Okay, good to know. And thanks for the friendly heads up, I guess. But the other thing I wanted to know, just for my benefit, is obviously over the course of time, it looks like we're dipping into the reserves. So is there like a floor for the reserve? Are we going under the floor or?

Well, and just to kind of remind council about this, when we adopted the two year budget last year, basically we set a new standard basically for the general fund of 25%. And we really tried to focus on that in doing the five year forecast. So our stressing point is we don't wanna see that drop below 25%. It kind of goes back to one of the council members point earlier We are basically a very tourism driven city. I mean, we're highly reliant upon transient occupancy taxes and our sales taxes are dependent upon that as well too. So it's important that we have healthy reserves to buffer us during times of downturn in essence. So we definitely do not wanna see that go below 25% because we need it not only for that, but if we, for example, the recent, like the peer project, that we're looking to do the rehab on the peer project, a lot of times with those grant projects, we need to have matching funds available to be able to qualify for those. And really, we don't have really resources and matching funds, pretty much other than our general fund. So that's why for those reasons, it's really important for us to maintain a healthy fund balance.

So you can make tourists buy twice the number of solar panels?

We would love to, but unfortunately, no.

I think the last question I have is just the sewer fund, right? Like there seems to be quite a lot going into that. So does that end in 26, 27? Or are we like forecasting that in the future too?

there will definitely be more improvements that need to be. We have an aging sewer system here in the city. To give you an example, Monterey One Water recently is proposing some significant rate increases because they have a lot of deferred infrastructure in their operations. And I mean, we don't obviously have the sewer plant with us, but we have aging pipelines and stuff like that. And so that's part of what that master collection system study is going to be. It's going to basically relook at all of our aging sewer infrastructure and come up with some recommendations. What I'm going to be posing probably as an interim step is probably at least a financial update to the sewer fees. I mean, it has to go for a Prop 218 vote basically, but because the study is going to probably take about a year or so to complete, I want to at least have an interim update to kind of bring up our fees somewhat. because they haven't been increased in the last couple of years. But yes, we have a lot of infrastructure needs for sewer that need to be funded.

Okay, appreciate all the details here. Looking forward to the next steps here. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rao.

Regarding the sales tax, do we have any idea what percentage the tourists pay versus the folks that live here?

It's hard to know, but what I can tell you is this, is that we have two different sources of sales tax. So we have what's called the Bradley Burn sales tax, that's the base 1%, and then we have what's called the transaction and use tax, basically. We get far more from the transaction and use tax because what happens with that is, let's say someone buys a car that's a resident here in Pacific Grove. So because they, let's say they bought in Monterey, the bradley burns tax would go to monterey but because we have the transaction use tax because that person lives here and drives a car back here we get that one percent so we get much more from that transient use tax um than we do from the base but yeah unfortunately we don't necessarily get a breakout of that but i can answer it maybe in an indirect way a little bit if you look at um all the different restaurants you know that we have here in downtown obviously a significant influx of the sales taxes that they're getting is from tourism.

Okay. So it would be possible to take as an example all the credit card transactions that we get, and is that something that HDL can break down?

You know, what I'll do, let me talk to them afterwards and see what I can find out as far as additional information, and I can provide the city manager to give it. That may take a little bit of work to do, but we're happy to look into that.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you anyone else wishing to come okay just real quick, thank you very much for the presentation really appreciate it and just give me a reminder. Fred that I thought on our projected reserve level, we had i'm glad we're it seems like we're we're trending down, obviously, but didn't we. to project instead of the 35%, we wanted 25%?

I'll remind council of kind of the steps that we did last year for it. So previously, the general fund established reserve level was at 35%, but what we did, we made several changes to our reserve policy, just kind of as a reminder. we did lower it from 35 to 25 but what we also did at the same time as well too because it's important for the city to start building up reserves for its capital projects and for you know starting to pay down its pension obligation so we took a million dollars you know from that reduction and funded million dollar reserves for both of those items and then basically what we Council established a secondary policy saying that anytime if it has a surplus in the general fund, one-third will go for helping to reduce the pension obligation and one-third for funding additional capital projects. Okay, thank you.

At this time, I'll move the recommended actions. Do I have a second? Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Further discussion, anybody? um and i'll just make this comment like the picture gets less rosy for us even though we're in the red and then we're we have all this stuff we got to do too um in addition to that so that's putting us even further uh into a tough situation so um i appreciate all the efforts that you guys are making to where we really are trying to attack this problem i want people to know that we're attacking the pension issue we're we're really doing everything we can to to try to get at these issues and so um and we're gonna work them up from all angles you know we can't we can't reduce our uh reserves down to nothing so we you know I'm happy that it's not nothing in five years, but I also realize that there could be a huge expense that we weren't expecting that could take money out of that. So we just have to really buckle down right now. So anyway, with that, any further discussion? If not, we'll take a voice vote.

Okay, no further discussion. All in favor say aye.

Any opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. And thank you again for an excellent report. Very, very good report. Thank you, Mr. Marsh. Thank you, Ms. Medawar. Right. Okay, so now I think we're. back to my agenda. go back to my agenda here jumbled around Okay, so we are now 13 see. Yes, Mr mogensen 13 see.

Thank you, Mr Mayor and while Sandra is pulling it up, I also just want to make a quick comment that was maybe captured in the last presentation and that's it. You know, this year, the way we we went from 2.5 to 1.6 is all departments once again contributed to that. So we've been continuously refining our expenses as part of our again fiscal sustainability plan. So with that, I'm going to transition now to the other side of the fiscal sustainability plan that's potential for revenue. So here it comes. So one of the components of our fiscal sustainability goals is to start to look at ways we can generate different revenue or at least offset costs that we're currently incurring. So Sandra, would you start the next slide, please? So to kind of frame this, every year Pacific Grove sees tens of thousands of visitors. And I'm not gonna read the list there in front of you, but if you quickly scan through that list, you'll notice that all but perhaps downtown, really has any kind of a place where people could spend money that they come here to visit so for the most part we're a city of beauty where everybody comes to take you know walks enjoy our tide poles um enjoy that all pacific grove has to offer but there's not a lot of chance to really capture any revenue from that however all of those tens of thousands of people also bring more service demands and also more maintenance and infrastructure needs. So this is kind of a representative list, again, of not all inclusive, but some of the costs that we incur from all these visitors. And that's to police just in general patrolling the streets. CSOs, as you talked about earlier tonight, they're doing much more. with down on the coastal trails. There's the DG maintenance that every time it rains and somebody rides a bike through it, it starts to erode it and we have to fix that. Fence repairs, I see the guys down there all the time fixing those. The streets in general are getting a lot more use than they would otherwise, so we have to resurface them more often. You have a Lovers Point Park, the restrooms, Perkins Park, which we have a great volunteer organization that also pitches in, but we have an employee who's assigned just to that. We also have our turnouts and general coastal access. And again, once again, there's not many opportunities to capture any revenue from from these visitors. Next slide. So this is just kind of an overview of all the different locations around the coast. We have approximately 2.3 miles. of coastline that we take care of again that um this is this is from the general taxpayer money from the city of pacific grove um so i guess generally you know they it pretty much does reside around the coast except for the exceptions probably of the butterfly sanctuary uh kind of downtown you know lighthouse district within there that includes also our museum and our library And then a lot of people you'll see in the weekends walking around backpacks enjoying just the Victorians, you know, just their own little walking tour. So that's all throughout town there. Next slide. Just an example of some of the services that we see our folks down there all the time doing. Next slide. And again it's well that's fine, but you can see they're fixing the fence here last year we had a washout I guess it was two years ago it took us a while to get to actually get that done once we got our CDP approved and stuff. But we are seeing coastal erosion that we have to maintain there's some asphalt here, we have another picture that is actually fixed, but this is what it looked like before before we had to fix it. Next slide. So what are the highest demands areas that we really see? And I guess in terms of parking and the parking we have to manage, I'd say the highest is probably Ocean View Boulevard. And it can be anywhere from Otter Point. Sometimes it's closer to Perkins Park, all the way to Hopkins on the weekends. And actually just today, today's a Wednesday. and I drove the coaster at lunch, and it was solid parking between, I wanna say, Perkins Park all the way to Hopkins. And there was some available on the south side of Ocean View Boulevard as you got kind of more by Parrot Park, but for the most part, it was all full. Also East Central, and that's kind of the entrance to the city, that parking, again, today was full, and it usually is on the weekends. And then Downtown Pacific, often today, there was no parking down there. So ways that we do manage it is we do have some paid parking just around the ATC Hotel. And one of the items that is going to still be talked about tonight has to do with that paid parking. We also have some timed parking areas around the city as well. And those are primarily kind of in the entrance over there next to ATC, also around Lovers Point in downtown for the most part. And then we just have open parking. Next slide. so area that we really want to at least start on we'll call this phase one focus is a section of ocean view boulevard and you'll see two red hash marks on the screen and what those are really giving you a boundary for is where the time parking doesn't exist so you probably anybody who's here has recognized on the weekends that you see a lot of people who are parking along the section and they enjoy our coastal trail perhaps they walk down have a coffee or eat the snack shack but primarily they usually go over to the aquarium or to canary row so because, as soon as you cross into Monterey or you get close to the etc, you have to pay for parking. So we become kind of a location for a lot of people who park in this area for free and that can go up into the neighborhoods as well, but as you get closer to the etc there's actually some resident permit parking. So one of the opportunities that we see here is to perhaps to take a look at expanding paid parking. And we think this could help us in a few different ways. One is, next slide. Probably have some better information. Yeah, we'll get to this in a second. But the ways we think this could help us is one, to control how long people park there. So the idea of the coast is for everybody to have access to it. And if people park there for eight, 10 hours at a time, people don't get the option for access. There's no turnover throughout the day. It's also just as we talked about all those service demands that we have, that we currently have no way to capture any funding that actually goes back into that area. And we do currently put a lot of costs into that. So in a lot of ways, what we're here to talk about is a trade-off of costs we're already incurring so that we could better use some of our funds and save it and reallocate to other places around the city. So what we wanna talk about tonight or get some feedback from the council is exploring this phase one, we're calling it, And what we'd like to do is do kind of a feasibility, or I'm sorry, feasibility analysis of it, come back with a bunch of information for you, and then you guys can make a decision if you wanna go forward or not. Some of the measures that we think we would start looking at, and this is not all included, because I'm sure as we get into it, we're gonna learn there's other stuff we wanna also look deeper at. But the first one is a coastal development permit. So we know we're gonna have to deal with the Coastal Commission. and um we're gonna have to go talk to them about that so we'll do that first we also need to figure out what the level of environmental review might necessitate for such a cdp uh we're gonna need to do quite a bit of a community and neighborhood outreach um the next bullet here is another important point and that if you know we know that if we put in any kind of paid parking there we're going to push people to park in the neighborhood so what that means is we're going to have to establish parking permit districts for the neighborhood right there We also know that in order to facilitate a program like this has cost us some money. So we wanna try and figure out what those costs might be. And then last, look at what the potential revenue might be and what the net is above those costs. Again, whether this is a worthwhile effort for the city to entertain. So with that, I'd like to leave it open for your discussion and questions. And ultimately, if you authorize us to go forward, we'll start working on this feasibility and come back to you later this year.

Thank you very much. Does that conclude the report? Okay. I will go ahead and go out to the public for comment on this item. Go ahead. Take the house. No problem. Go ahead.

But at the same time, I do fear on the side of the citizens of Pacific Grove, with the parking permits, being able to have their cells parked where they need to, or even accessibility to Lighthouse as a citizen, or as a PG person, not as a outcomer. Does the permit allow you to park on the main street there, or do you still have to pay for it? I mean, there's a lot of different nuances, but just looking out for the citizen side of it, making sure that we're taking into consideration we don't want to turn people away from going downtown in order to enjoy a dinner out, although I walk most of the time, so thanks.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Sally Moore here. And just a couple of thoughts.

Thank you.

Better?

Yes.

Okay. I remember this was looked at a number of years ago, and I think the Coastal Commission at that point had said no, but if there was any money that it would go into coastal reconstruction or protection. Another thought would be many years ago in the Reader's Digest, they pointed out that Pacific Grove has a satellite that goes across and can read license plates. And if people are parked too long, they get a ticket. And I think that we could also give tickets to these people that are parked downtown on these huge trucks that stick right out into the street. So perhaps we can get funds there. They should be ticketed. So those are my thoughts. Thanks.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say as we talk about the unfunded pension liabilities and all the other liabilities going forward, I really like when staff wrote in the agenda packet that this goes somewhere this doesn't just go to the general fund these go to projects where law enforcement and the bathrooms are kind of focused on um and just so i really like that we're bringing in revenue we're putting it somewhere and hopefully keeping it there because the bathrooms are lovers point could obviously use a lot of work online yes thank you um inga lawrence and doymer you have the floor

Thank you, Sandra. Mayor and Council, I would point out that staff seems to want to reinvent the wheel here. This first started when the Monterey Bay Aquarium first opened in 1984 with no parking plan or garage. Contrary to Chief Day trying to tell me In a letter that I have only participated in Slope Ocean View Boulevard residential permit parking program since 2020, I instigated the PG's first residential permit back in 1984 because of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and not even being able to back my car out of my driveway. It worked. for free for 20 some odd years. But the city attorney and manager back in 1984 neglected to get Coastal California Commission approval, unbeknownst to me, until city manager Tom Fruity wanted his ATC parking meter project, which was a trial, early in 2000, he wanted it finalized. We lost our permit parking for a couple of years while the city and very vocal resident association worked it out. I gave my testimony at that CCC hearing and we won. Thanks to Mark Stone too. So the city is revisiting this which they have all the information they need if they just look back 40 years. And they need to because the Coastal Commission made agreements with the city because that is a very important public access on Ocean View Boulevard. I don't think you understand you do not need to spend all this staff time and everything else revisiting some of this because it's already really been documented. adjudicated and done. And I suggest the city go back and look at that, please. Thank you very much, I live here.

Thank you. Mr. Italiano Thomas.

I get concerned after all the talk tonight that it would take more staff than to do a neighborhood parking and program. And so that's more staff, more salary expenditure and mostly concerned if it costs to residents because most of us, so many of us are parking on the street where we live because we don't have garages. The other thing is I kind of disagree with people parking deep in PG and going to the aquarium because there is two huge parking garages right down there in New Monterey. And many locals park along Ocean. If they don't live close enough to walk down there, there's so many walking groups. I'm in one of those. So we're walking every Monday into Monterey on the trail or to Pacific Grove, and a lot of them meet and park there, along there. And the other thing is, when you talk about you need to spend some money to make money, If you want to eliminate so many cars parking, maybe you should be focusing on bringing the trolley to actually come into PG instead of stopping in Monterey. Thank you.

Thank you. No further hands are raised, Mayor.

Thank you. We're going to go ahead and close public comment. And I'm also, I apologize, but I'm going to need a break. So we're going to come back at 8.05 and finish the last two items. Thank you very much. Break till 8.05.

Recording stopped.

recording in progress okay are we back sandra are we back okay we're back okay excellent uh it's 804 starting the meeting again here we we closed public comment we're on item 13c and we're bringing it back to the council for discussion and action relating to the feasibility of paid parking on Ocean View Boulevard. Who would like to kick it off? Council Member Rao.

Thank you, Your Honor. I just wanted to address a couple of the folks that that had comments and, you know, you look at things over a 40 year period of time because things change. And where we had the Coastal Commission that didn't allow parking, but in Seal Beach, they were able to make the case to have paid parking. i would like to say thank you to mr mugginson uh he's already making a list of the unintended consequences that we want to make sure that we don't fix one thing and break three and so i think that's really important we need to protect the residents especially the renters who probably do not have driveways and do not have a way to park and so i think we need to look at that as well This is a really great place to live and it's a really great place to come and visit and. To help us reduce their impact on the city, it shouldn't fall to the burden of the residents to have to do that. And I think one of the major outcomes should be that we're looking not only to look at the revenue piece of it, but also how do we drive people's behavior? And I have seen, you know, I've been down at the aquarium and I've seen people parking on Ocean View and making the walk to the aquarium. You know, the aquarium, those paid parkings on the weekends are anywhere between 25 and 50 bucks. So, you know, if you could park in Fiji and walk a half a block or for free or, you know, go to a $25 lot, what are you going to do? So I think that's important. And I do think that there is a case to be made that if we can turn the parking every four hours, it makes our coastline more accessible as opposed to the people that camp out there for longer periods of time. So I do support us looking at the feasibility of the boat parking expansion with a very watchful eye on the impact that it's gonna have to the residents and to make sure that we're mitigating any of the unintended consequences that may happen. I think there's a lot to be said for how we do it and do it in a way that makes the least amount of impact, but I do think that it is worth the study. We are gonna look at budget cuts coming up here quickly But if we could raise revenue to offset some of those things, I think we absolutely should. So thank you, Mr. Mogeson, for bringing this. And let's see if we can figure out a way to make this work for everybody.

Thank you, Council Member McDonnell. Thank you so much. And Council Member Marlamatter.

Yeah, and I appreciate that. The goal here really is to recognize where... we are having expenses that aren't being recouped by some of what is creating some of the expenses. So knowing that road usage is causing the need for us to accelerate, for example, our resurfacing. So one of the things I think it'll be important to look at is will the Coastal Commission now allow some recognition that because we as citizens are tasked with keeping this accessible to the public, and that includes cleaning our parks and everything else that comes, that the citizens who live here are largely paying for. Granted, the tourists do pay for that as well through TOT, but largely it falls to the residents. And while we welcome the visitors, it's hard for such a small community to cover that bigger impact when we don't have a lot of the retail and the revenue that comes in that some of the other cities have that have that high tourist load. One of the things I think as some of the speakers have said is really important is to ensure that we have a solid program in place for the residents because as people have mentioned throughout the night residents pay a lot to live here they love it here and we don't want to in any way prevent the locals from being able to use and enjoy their own city um i'm an example i'm often going down to the coast to do various volunteer work and things and so so we just want to make sure that there are no unintended consequences as council member ralph said to our community um whether that be having whatever parking meters end up being utilized, being able to give free parking to residents with a code and other ways where we can make sure that it is not an impact to the residents, but also brings on that revenue to make sure that we can meet our commitment to keep our roads intact, our parks clean and inviting for the residents and for the visitors. So I think that just to kind of reassure everyone that we are really looking to make sure this doesn't have a negative detrimental impact on the residents and just helps the tourist help us cover the cost of making sure this is an enduring place to enjoy. We will have costs, unfortunately, from sea level rise as we have more coastal erosion. So we're gonna be looking at a lot of expenses down the future. And so the more wear and tear also accelerates that. So I think it's prudent at a time when we're having fiscal challenges to look at where our costs have incurred, who are contributing to that, and how we recoup the costs of mitigating those issues. So thank you for for bringing this forward for something for council to discuss. I think it definitely makes sense to investigate what our options are because I think the climate may have changed in the intervening years. And so I think it's an opportunity for us to really look at what are our options, but I will 100% advocate for making sure that this is a program that works for all of the residents. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moreland.

um yeah so based off the past reports we had we absolutely need to be looking at creative ideas like this for revenues coming in so i really appreciate this report and i do hope there'll be more opportunities to investigate these kinds of um creative ideas um we're not the only city so we have monterey's already done this carmel is having discussions about this We're literally just coming up to what's already in the peninsula. I do have a question, though. Do you anticipate that there'll be any Like consultant needs for this or is this something that the staff can do in house or when you're in for feasibility your initial

But council member, I think that there probably will be some overlap with things. For example, again, the item that was pulled tonight about ParkMobile, we would definitely consult with them because they're gonna have a lot of expertise in this. There's other consultants that we know help manage parking in general. They could help us to put together plans if we need to. So as we get into this and work through it, we'll probably learn more. maybe from other cities who have gone before us and we'll learn you know about other potential help we'll need but we'll try and do as much as we can in-house to keep this it is what we want this to be an exercise of bringing you all the information before we start spending any money

sorry the last one the quick thing um so it was mentioned earlier like this is something that's gone on for the last like 40 years when you come back to your report would you really give us just like a high level of like i know sometimes it's hard to find those records but like if it's not we don't take a lot of your time but if it's something easily accessible to say like this was first kind of come at this time and here's kind of why i know you've hinted a little bit of that would be helpful just a general overview because again if it's 40 plus years

we certainly can and something i didn't go too deep in is that um uh director biggs pointed out that in our coast our local coaster plan it all it already kind of speaks about paid parking about if we were to pursue this so they want to see it reinvested back into the coastal environment so i think we're already on the right direction just from that standpoint

we are going to hear a little bit about park mobile tonight as well so that will dovetail nicely thank you council member council member mayor pro tem amelia thank you um i i think this is a great idea it's going to be best for the city of pacific grove for following this through and i'll use one example um my mother lives in monterey periodically we'll go down to canary row and have dinner down there but it's paid parking on camry row and then if you go up further say you go into residential area you have to have a residential permit so you're kind of stuck you have to pay so i think this feasibility study is a great thing to do and i think it's going to be best for our city by it that's it thank you go ahead councilmember paduri

Thank you. I agree with what has been discussed by my fellow council members. This is a much needed item to begin with. So I think I'm. I think hopefully this is a precursor for other parking areas in town that we can establish something. The central avenue is one area that comes to mind. So hopefully this will allow us to do things over there too. And I think it's completely valid, like looking at historically to see what has gone, like if there are any legal implications of this from 40 years ago, we should at least check the boxes to see, are we going down the same route or not? So, and I think it's obviously it's a 40 year timeline where We need to make the coastal like equitable for everybody. I know there are free spots, but what if the free spot is taken for the entire day? I mean, so obviously you're not making it equitable. So the other thing too is like times have changed and we're actually having a discussion here following this saying, parking meter or parking station or pay by app i mean do these instruments or methods change the uh how the ruling was done 20 years ago i mean so i do want us to be creative while approaching the coastal development uh kind of like thing and i'm curious to know whether this will be a a new permit or will be an amendment to a permit that we already have, items like that. So maybe some homework is required before, We get to the whole kind of nuanced kind of discussion with the Coastal Development Commission, but I'm fully on board with this. And I look forward to seeing this applied in other areas of the town too, because we do need, I think one of the things that, in fact, like when I used to come to PG, I mean, we used to take advantage of the free parking ourselves. And so it's like one of those things where like, you just go a few steps more and like, hey, there's free parking. So I think it's the same concept that applies for everybody. So anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how this kind of like goes about. Thanks.

Matt, do you need a formal motion here? I think I kind of hear a lot of the same things, except there was one addition that I did like central looking at central, not just ocean view, looking at like main corridors, thoroughfares like that might be good. But do you have enough direction? Do you feel you have direction tonight?

I believe I do. Okay. I think so too. All right.

Anything else? We're just gonna, I don't think we need a motion. I think that was what I was trying to accomplish.

Okay, go for it.

Yeah, no, it's fine.

Go for it.

I think a motion is just cleaner in the record. Okay, no problem. Go ahead.

All right. i'd like to make the motion for recommendation one to authorize the staff to explore the feasibility of expanding paid parking on ocean view and report back for further consideration and direction amendment to add other and other corridors as felt necessary by staff yeah okay i'll second that and uh any further discussion all right we'll go ahead and take a voice for all in favor say aye aye any opposed

And then passes unanimously.

Thank you very much. Good discussion on that one. And for the final item of the night, we'll recognize our chief of police, Casey Day, to talk about Park Mobile, which is a good segue.

Council members of the community before you this evening is a recommendation to approve an agreement with Park Mobile LLC for the implementation of a mobile parking payment system. This is specific to the city's existing 101 parking meters located adjacent to the ATC. And then alternatively, the council may discuss and provide other direction related to this item. Before I start, just... You have a very exhaustive agenda report in front of you. This is going to be more of a brass brass tacks, just kind of a bridge report. I do have Dana Marie from Park Mobile joining us remotely if there's any uber technical questions and then Jessica from finance to help with any financial questions. So we're going to dive right in. What is ParkMobile? So ParkMobile is really just a mobile parking payment platform. This is a way for motorists who are looking for parking or trying to pay for parking to have ease of use, really. So they're going to use their smartphone either through an app or the browser, phone call, text message. There's also options for customers to do the app altogether and just use a Qask, which the city is looking at for maybe a future implementation but um right now down there near atc we have these 101 parking meters that accept coins and then they have like a credit card reader attached to them so um let's pull out the little it's something that you know you probably will have seen on open meters 10 years ago but maybe not so much today throughout the state of california As you can see here, Park Mobile is well established. It's kind of a household brand name. I first used Park Mobile years ago in the city of San Francisco. I've used it personally as far away as like Washington, D.C., but here's just a little bit about the company operating in California. You can see seven plus million users, 55 million lifetime transactions. They've been operating in California for 10 years. And there are just a number of municipalities and universities and other entities that deploy ParkMobile. So these are just some figures that ParkMobile came up during the vetting and research phase. If you look down to the bottom right, January 2026, so that's January of this year, ParkMobile identified over 151,000 subscribers to the app within a small radius to the city of Pacific Grove. So the 101 operating or parking meters that I spoke about earlier that's on ocean view boulevard again closest to the atc at the border with monterey down near the aquarium. so i'm just going to briefly hit current operations and current operations really kind of involve an outdated process so here's some photos on the left of what our current parking meters look like as compared to the right side of the screen which are the city of monterey's um there to the right is like an old coin collection dolly that weighs a million pounds from like 1982. so the cso's will take that car down to ocean view boulevard they'll collect the coins they will bring it back to the finance department where we have very sophisticated extraction methods to package and prepare the coins for deposit. Currently, it should be noted and I think important to the council and the community that Jessica kind of helped me vet out this figure, but out of total, We meant coin and cash payments that go into these 101 parking meters down in this area, it only represents about 7% of total transactions so it's very, very low. Again, down to brass tacks what's the cost of the city really there is none there's no cost for the signage no cost for shipping and there's no upfront costs for the software. so the question in the room is you know what how does park mobile exist how do they make their money right so our parking fees as you know are already structured and set uh through the council as part of our fee schedule so um i think recently those parking fees went up to 225 so that's what is in the figure that you're looking at uh showing the current cost for about an hour of parking at 2.25 cents So the transaction fee of the customer transaction fee for every transaction that a parker starts or uses to park their car, they're going to pay 40 cents and that 40 cents is what goes to park mobile. So they are a transaction based organization or company. That's how they make their money. That fee doesn't change. It's non-negotiable. Actually, the city is currently benefiting. Their standard fee is 45 cents per transaction. However, because of our relationship as an Omnia partner, contract partner, we get a reduced fee for our customer base of 40 cents. The other of kind of the financial piece, I'm going to try to explain this in a way that is easily understandable. But for those that may not know what a merchant of record is, in simple terms, this is really the entity that handles the administrative burden of invoices, of reimbursing or refunding to customers in instances where there is an issue. So they're responsible for all those kind of customer payment components. And so when we really took a look at where the city would benefit, whether we used ParkMobile for the merchant of record or used city staff, it was pretty clear that the way to go was to actually use ParkMobile for merchant of record services. It just alleviates liability. It's what they do. It's the subject matter expert in that product. We do pay 3% plus 20% of every transaction that does not include the 40 cents it's just based on our parking rates, but that is also another way in which park mobile will will make money. All right, so a couple things remaining in the presentation and then i'll close out for any questions I kind of led on to this a minute ago procurement. The city of Pacific groves and existing on the partners client on the partners as a nationally recognized cooperative purchase purchasing organization. What does that mean for us, it means that we can execute a contract and deploy their services. While being compliant with public procurement standards and also the requirements of our own municipal code governing competitive bidding. As is normal courses of business for us, the agreement will be executed using the city standard agreement template, which has been reviewed and approved by the city's risk pool CA GPIA and also reviewed by the city attorney. There were in this proposed contract some negotiated red lines. Those have come to fruition. They have been accepted by both parties and reviewed by the city attorney. So in conclusion, really this is a project that is, it's gonna boost efficiency for the city. It's going to serve as a product or a methodology that really increases convenience for our community members and our visitors. We all know PG welcomes thousands and thousands of tourists throughout the year. We're not reinventing the wheel here. This is what the standard kind of product protocol is for parking throughout the state of California and also in these heavy tourist areas throughout our nation. So the proposal provides the city with an opportunity to modernize the parking infrastructure. The analytics alone and the data that we're gonna receive through utilizing ParkMobile is gonna give the city a lot of information.

and some of that information can pertain to whether or not our parking fees are set correctly.

And just give us data that will benefit us.

Thank you very much.

So with that, that concludes my presentation. As I said, I have Jessica from Finance, I have Dana Marie from Park Mobile, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right, thank you, Chief. When we got to the public, we had one caller that pulled the item. See what she has to say on this issue.

Thank you, Mayor. Inga Lawrence and Imer.

Thanks, Sandra. Don't let Mayor Nick fall asleep yet. And Chief Day, I appreciate your using my expression of we don't need to reinvent the wheel. This kind of project was kind of put out there by one of our little she's definitely moved on young little girl voice proponents that did a bunch of other things that the city lost about $70,000 on and I can't tell you exactly the date right now but I can tell you on this I'm asking you because this is for the ATC parking meters and of course we've discussed those just previously does this mean because the city has already sold that street to the developers And supposedly development is going to happen whether extended permits or whatever that have been going on and with the Coastal Commission. But I'm saying, so how long is this going to be for actually? A year? If the ATC is really going to be demolishing, closing the street and doing all of this stuff? Or how long is this going to be? Because I have a feeling here that the investors are not on board and the plans have not yet hit the really Coastal Commission and the city. So I'm asking you, How long is this going to be for, do you even think? Or are you just trying to set it up to get more approval for more paid parking along other areas of our traditionally open coast? So, just questions, Chief Day and staff. Thank you very much.

Anyone else out there?

No other hands on line.

All right. Go ahead and close public comment on the item. And I'll turn to Mr. Mogenson to answer one question on the length of the contract.

uh just that's a be a good thing to touch on sure thank you mr mayor um so the atc project um has there are certain triggers um and one of those triggers is the street gets vacated at some point in time right um i believe there was i can't remember the exact number but i want to say it was 17 parking stalls or parking meters that will go away when that happens but the rest of the 101 will remain so we'll end up with 85 or something like that

thank you very much for answering that so um i'll just this is an obvious to me is very easy decision with all the upgrades we're going to get with park mobile and all the utility we're going to receive as a city and i would say probably increased collection um based on the efficiency of it as we've all used it in monterey so um i'm very much in favor of this i'm you know ready to go with this whenever my colleagues are ready to go with me uh councilmember garfield

Thank you, your honor so having used this before elsewhere at one of the things that's really nice about it is that you can get notified when you're about to run out of. The amount that you put in, and so you don't risk getting a ticket, but often you wouldn't get one anyway, so you have to kind of roll the dice as to whether you're going to run out of the aquarium and. put more quarters in um does this will this system allow somebody to get notified and add uh to their previous What would you call it? Time.

Yes, ma'am. That's exactly what it does. So, you know, that's really the benefit across the board to the enforcement and the convenience factor, right? Because people do not want to leave their hair appointment. They don't want to leave lunch to go feed clones back into the meter. And so what's good for the goose is good for the gander. They're able to pick up their phone and add more time.

okay thank you i think that is a good convenience and i think we'll get more funds out of it so it's it's we're replacing an obsolete dated ineffective system with something that we all know how to use it's very well defined and it works i think that's pretty clear pretty good yeah

all right councilman thank you uh i'm surprised uh your one element that sophisticated coin kind of collection uh but the um i just wanted to make a remark i didn't want to i wasn't planning to comment but uh noting that we heard from several associations today that were understaffed this is one of the ways that the city is making things efficient for you and this is hopefully help help you like reduce time to put that time in some other efforts So I just wanted everybody to at least recognize that fact that the city is not, the city is, I would say, not fully doing things to make sure that the staff is aligned to everything. Thank you.

Agreed, thank you. Council Member McDonnell.

thank you and a quick follow-on to that because the flip side of that is that the the cso team would also be notified when those parking spaces are expiring so that makes it a lot easier for them to find out you know where there are ones and that does help with the turnover and more access so i would think that would be something else the coastal commission would potentially appreciate as well but but it used to be that people used to go into the atc to try and get coins to feed those meters and now that's not there for them to get those coins so that's one of the biggest challenges is getting the coins and i recognize you can use the credit card now on the parking meters but this does just make it easier in a lot of ways we're not taking away the access for people who do need to use coins until we have a kiosk which would also give them options to pay that didn't require credit. So I think it's a really well thought out process, and it just facilitates for both the tourists, the residents, and the enforcement opportunities, so thank you. Mayor Patel?

Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to go ahead and accept this. Recommendation one? Recommendation one, yeah.

I'll second. all right much more i'm really a second my route did you have a point council member okay all right i thought you looked at me okay all right we'll go ahead and take a voice vote on this all in favor say aye any opposed hearing none passing unanimously thank you chief well done nice report thanks everyone for hanging around thank you miss bedouin for hanging around uh and uh for all of those of you that are still online thank you for hanging with us and all of those here uh we wish you a good night have have a great evening good night meetings adjourned I didn't know if you were just being sheepish over there.