City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. I know, I was just like, I don't know.

I'm probably saying.

For how many meetings? How many meetings you've been on? How many? No, we're not even on one. Yeah, we're not. Yeah. And then the . Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you.

City Clerk, are we ready to go? Yes.

Okay.

Okay, so we're going to start our regular meeting. City Council for the City of Hollister, today is the 8th of September, and we're meeting today on a Tuesday because, as you know, yesterday was a holiday, so we move it a day over when it lands on a holiday. 630. So thank you all for coming who are here in the chamber. Welcome to everybody who's on Zoom. Let's go ahead and get started with roll call.

Council Member Pache.

Present.

Dr. Resendez.

Here.

Council Member Morales. Here. Vice Mayor DeAnda. Here. Mayor Stevens.

Here. Here. Okay, thank you for that. Council Member Morales, would you be willing to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you, council member. And then I'm going to check with our city manager and or attorney. Anything to report from last closed session?

No, there's nothing to report.

We have the... The city council opted into the fire truck price fixing antitrust litigation by a unanimous vote of those present at the last closed session.

Okay, so I'm wondering if maybe we could give a quick little update of what that meant from one of you two. So just really quick, really brief.

It is actually one of the items in the agenda. We had discussed the possibility of joining a class action lawsuit against manufacturers of fire equipment, and so the council discussed it and indicated that we should pursue it, and it is here today for a discussion.

Okay, that's right. Okay, thank you. We'll get a little more information at that time. Okay, so we're gonna move into special orders of the day before proceeding to public, the open public comment session. So today we want to highlight Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and we have a proclamation. So tonight we're recognizing September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and the important work of Jacob's Heart Children's Cancer Support Services. For nearly 30 years, Jacob's Heart has provided compassionate and practical support to children with cancer and other serious illnesses and their families throughout our community. On behalf of the city of Hollister, I'm proud to recognize Jacob's Heart for its continued service and proclaim September 2026 as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I'd like to invite Alyssa Gil Ojeda from Jacob's Heart to come forward and accept the proclamation. And Ms. Gil Ojeda, would you like to say a few words? Okay, go ahead.

Hi, everyone. My name is Alyssa, and I'm the outreach specialist at Jacob's Heart. I've been at Jacob's Heart for almost five years now, and I can say that year after year, our number of children that we keep on service is just growing. So right now we're currently serving 441 families, which comes out to over 1,900 individuals. So those are families in this community right now who are going through it. They have a child under the age of 21. Maybe they need things like help with transportation. Maybe it's you need groceries to your doorstep on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We'll help and do that for you. Let's say you can't pay your PG&E or your rent or your car payment or anything like that. We will help you do that. Realistically, what Jacob's Heart is, is we're the support that is outside of the hospital. We're that social, emotional, practical, financial. So really providing that safety net for families so they're not focused on surviving. They're just focused on the quality of care of their child. So if it's giving a sibling the attention that they need because they're The attention is often put on the child who's sick. We do that. You know, we've had someone donate a rock tumbling kit. One of our teens who was really struggling ended up finding that rock tumbling kit at the family center and asked if we can do a project. For a whole month, she would come in after school on Fridays, check on her rocks, check in with us. And realistically, that was the attention that she needed. And so that's really what Jacob's Heart is there for, giving everyone a space where they need it and also giving them that connection to other families who understand what it is to go through cancer, as well as help families who have lost a child to cancer. I would like to say thank you so much for recognizing September's Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Without supporters like you, what are we doing? You know, you guys are the ones who are really here, who are advocating, showing that support, and we can't thank you enough for that. And thank you so much.

well yes let's give her one round of blood and please please don't leave the podium yet um please don't so first of all i just want to thank you so much for your work and i will i think i can speak on behalf of the entire community when i say first of all we know that our most vulnerable are often our children and especially when we think about a child who is sick there is nothing more important than taking care of that child and that child's family So thank you so much for everything that you do and for thinking about those things that often fall through the cracks. As you may know, many people in our community know I am a social worker by profession. And so this is right in my wheelhouse. So like an extra thank you on behalf of me as a social worker, because I know that the work that you're doing is incredibly important. I would like to come down and present. And if you'd like, our manager will take pictures and then we can send it to you. But let me come and present this to you.

Yeah, all right. Well, thank you.

Okay, and once again, thanks to everyone that's associated with Jacob's heart, what an important organization. Okay, so we're going to move into the public input, public comment, open public comments section of our agenda. So this is a time for anyone in the audience to speak about any item that is within the purview of the city council, but it does not appear on today's agenda. Speaker cards are available in the back to fill out. You fill it out, bring it to our clerk up here in the front. and um and then when you uh when it's when it's your turn they will call your name come to the podium state your name and your city for the records and speak to the city council if you're joining us by zoom please click on the bottom of your screen to raise your hand if you're on zoom with your phone Use the asterisk and the nine. Each speaker will be limited to three minutes with a maximum of 30 minutes per subject. Please note that state law prohibits the City Council from speaking on any item that does not appear on the agenda. Do we have any speakers for this section?

Yes, Mayor. Judy Jansen.

Hello, Judy Ganson, City Pollister. And at the last meeting, Stacey McGrady happened to mention something about the back end parking down on San Benito Street. I live in the 400 building facing San Benito Street on the third floor. And I find it very entertaining to watch people trying to back in. And it takes them sometimes three and four times. And I didn't live here at the time that it was decided to have back in parking. So I have no idea why it was done. But I have friends that won't come downtown because they have to back in. And I've also seen people after many times trying just drive away. So anyhow, I just thought it's something that you might want to think about. Why is it back in parking? You know, it takes longer for somebody to back in than it would for them to back out if they're pointed in. So anyhow, that's just my thoughts.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Janssen. Other speakers?

I have no more speakers.

Okay, so thank you for that. And then Ms. Jansen, feel free to reach out to anybody on the council or city manager to get more information about your issue. Okay, so we're going to move on to the consent agenda. So do any members of the council have any brief questions or comments on any item that appears on the consent agenda?

I have a brief question about...

Okay, hold on a second. Can you hold on? Let me just check over here. Okay, go ahead. Which item are we looking at?

It's on 7.10. The one about risk resolution accepting the improvements in the public right of way and other areas designated for public use within the project almond clearest park subdivision. So, you know, as we read through consent. I kind of dug in on this one because it talked about the roundabout on San Felipe at Burt and I kind of dug in on it and found a Benito Link article by our own No Magana is not here. It's like late 2019, early 2020. And it says in a 4-0 vote, the amendments included removing a requirement to build a roundabout at San Felipe and Burt. But clearly there's this roundabout at San Felipe and Burt. And I was just wondering, do we know, like, was it Amazon who put that in? I'm just curious as to who ended up putting in the roundabout at Burt and San Felipe.

Jeff, would you like to address that?

Yes, that was the Amazon project.

Okay, that was literally it. I thought Amazon had put that in. It's definitely functioning. It works. And roundabouts are kind of the way of the future. Thanks. That's all I have.

Okay. Any other questions or comments on the consent? Okay. Do we have any public speakers on anything on the consent agenda?

No, Mayor.

Okay. Okay. So I'm going to bring it back to the council for a motion.

Mayor Stephens, I'll move to adopt.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so consent agenda passes. So we will move on then to our item number eight, public hearing, a resolution authorizing the city of Hollister's continued participation in the statewide community infrastructure program, also known as SCIP, S-C-I-P. Staff report, please.

Okay, the statewide community infrastructure program is a state-run program that can finance development-related fees and has been expanded to include financing of public capital improvements constructed by developers and public services necessary to support development in the city by establishing assessment districts or community facility districts and the issuance of bonds. Skip represents an economic development tool that when utilized can increase new development within the city. And in particular, there's been interest expressed from commercial and industrial developers. The city previously joined skip program in 2016. And tonight we are considering a resolution to continue and expand the city's participation in the program. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce James Hamill, Managing Director of the California Statewide Communities Development Authority, who joins us online. James will lead us in a short presentation of the program. And we are both available for any questions following the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Members of Council. My name is James Hamill. I'm a Managing Director with CSEDA. If you can go to the next slide. The next slide.

Can you just give me one second? I'm just going to ask the clerk, is there any way to get the screen, the box on the bottom? It might be covering up some of the people that are on Zoom's ability to look at the screen.

We do have somebody in the audience that requires it for ADA.

Okay. Is there a way to do it in a way that does not obstruct others' ability? Because they're going to miss the whole bottom part of the...

But she still needs to be able to read the whole thing.

Yeah.

Does that work?

Okay, well, let's see how the other slides go, but I just wanna make sure that it does not obstruct what, okay, thank you. Okay, go ahead, Mr. Hemel.

Perfect. Thank you so much. So just real briefly, CACDA, California Statewide Communities Development Authority, we are a joint powers authority that's made up of 530 plus cities and counties and districts statewide, including the city of Hollister. You joined our JPA back in 1993, so you've been a longtime member. And as Jeff pointed out, in 2016, you became a participant in the SCIF program. The reason we're back here tonight is the resolution the council adopted in 2016 was limited to commercial development only and did not allow the formation of CFDs or community facilities districts, which we started offering in 2020. So it was after you joined the program in 2016. Those are the two updates. Nothing really changes in terms of what the program does or how it works. So I'll briefly go through the program as a whole. So we have two programs. One is a pool program, which we do three times a year. We do it in the spring, the fall, and at the very end of the year. where we pull various projects across the state all the way from Southern California to Northern California, typically 15 to 20 projects and new bond issuance to finance impact fees and public improvements. The reason for this program, which we started in 2003, is to bring economies of scale to middle and smaller size projects, which typically would not have access to this capital to finance either those fees or public improvements. We have, since the inception of the program, we've got a rating on the program. So we get very good interest rates typically right now, which is obviously subject to change. We're about four and three quarters to 5% fixed for 30 years. The program also has the ability to do standalone CFDs and standalone issuances for larger projects. So if a project is bigger than $5 million, we can assist the city in doing that project to assist with staff time and not having to do the burden of doing these types of financings. Next slide, please. So this gives you just an overview of the agencies who are participating in SCIP. As I mentioned, we have a total of 530 members. Out of that, 155 are participating in the SCIP program. The closest member to you would be San Juan Bautista. But as you can see, there's a large cluster from the map in Northern California. within a large cluster in Southern California, typically in areas where you have development going on and looking to use this mechanism as a financing tool for development. Next slide, please. And next slide. So just a little bit of the nuts and bolts for the program. So basically, the way it works is you're already a member, but this is just updating your resolution. And what we, CACDA, do is we're a governmental entity like yourself, and we do the formation of districts for either the assessment district or the community facilities district. We do the bond issuance, and we do all the post-sale administration. Any compliance, any delinquencies on these because these are an assessment or a special tax that is put on the county tax roll, we handle that. The city does not get involved in any of that. Now, that does not mean that you lose control of this and everything just comes to us and you have no control. You applications come to us, we review them, and then we bring it back to your staff at the city to ensure that it meets the qualifications and you want the project to go through this. So ultimately, you as a city have the final say in terms of an application moving forward. Next slide, please. So the types of things that can be funded under the program, this will be the last slide, and I'm happy to answer any questions, is we have, as mentioned, impact fees can be financed where a developer pays those impact fees, and then they're reimbursed with the bonds when we issue them. Or if they want to fund their impact fees through the bond issuance, Those fees will go directly to the city, and you will get those funds once we issue bonds. And the other mechanism is that they can fund public improvements. So if there is a project that needs to put in roads, sewer, water connections, this is a mechanism that can be used to finance those types of improvements through a bond issuance under the SCIP umbrella. So with that, that's the short presentation I had. I'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have.

Okay, thank you for that presentation. Let me just check in. Any questions? Dr. Resendez, go ahead.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Anzum. Okay, so I'm just trying to wrap my head around this. So I understand... Basically, what you're saying is that you finance developers in order to afford to be able to build small to medium, sometimes large on a standalone basis projects. So you're helping them out with impact fees. So I understand that. So what the only changes that you're doing now from what you said is that it's including ADs and CFDs. And that's why we're bringing this back to City Council?

And the resolution that the City Council adopted in 2016 only allowed this to be used for commercial development, not residential development. So this resolution would allow commercial and residential and add on the community facility district or CFDs because that was added in 2020. Okay.

Makes sense to me. I think that's it for now. Oh, my other question is, do we have a lot of developers utilizing this? I know that we're a partner. We've been a partner for a while. But do we have a lot of applications being submitted and approved through you guys? What are the numbers or what's the data to show on that?

So typically because of the restriction within the resolution, we didn't get applications because it was only for commercial development. I have to say probably over the last year, year and a half, we've had inquiries from at least four, maybe five developers who are interested in it, which is why... We're here tonight and we presented this original interior city manager because this would help their project move forward. It's a valuable tool to them. And I think once the development world knows that this is available, then we will get and see more applications coming in.

Okay. And in other cities that are relatively the same size as us, can you just tell me what their numbers look like compared to ours?

Yes, I would say relative in size. We typically get between, I would say, 7 to 10 applications a year. And they're all on different cycles in terms of when they're funding based upon the development. But I would say the average for a city year size would be 7 to 10 applications a year.

Okay. And typically, I would imagine those also include residential. They're not limited to just commercial, industrial. Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Okay, I would add to that point that I'm I don't think the city of Hollister has done a good job of kind of offering this out and making it known to our development community.

Okay, my smear any questions.

yeah I just have one quick question it's a little broad, but I was wondering, can you tell us the benefits of or have you do you know of any of the positive outcomes of cities utilizing this partnership, can you just touch on that.

Yeah, there's a couple of things. So number one is it really expedites typically development, whether it can be commercial, it can be residential, because when this tool is available and they're able to finance their impact fees and or improvements, they could do it in a faster timeline than having to come out of pocket and pay cash for it because typically developers and development groups don't have that type of cash laying around. So it can expedite development. Number two, from a city perspective, it takes the onus off of your staff in terms of doing one of these on your own. If it's a larger one, The smaller ones typically wouldn't be done because it wouldn't make sense from a cost standpoint. But number two is that we are the ones who put this on the county tax roll every year. It has our name on it. It has our phone number on it. So then the city is not getting phone calls from homeowners on what is this? Why do I have to pay this? Can I just pay this off? Those all come to us. And if there's any delinquencies, we handle those from our perspective too. So it really takes us an important off the cities, but I would say the biggest benefit up front is the expeditious matter that you get development to come in the door.

Okay. Thank you. Last question. What type of commercial buildings have you, do you know of that other jurisdictions have approved and partnered with you guys?

So those are typically, well, there's been a range. And the most recent ones are typically larger scale, industrial, commercial, more commercial where you have multi-tenants. So we did one recently down in the city of Fresno. where they were putting in a Target and they were putting in a bunch of fast food locations and that required a lot of infrastructure to build that out. So mostly for the commercial side, you see more of the financing for the improvements because there's significant improvements whenever putting one of those in. In the past, we've done some kind of standalone industrial buildings. We haven't seen much of those lately, but I would say it's mostly, you know, mixed use and, you know, larger model type of structures that are being used for the commercial side.

Thank you so much. Okay. Council Member Morales. Council Member Pichet?

So are municipalities using it? Are we on the hook for promoting this? Or is this on the development community to know about so they can get more funding for impact fees and all the things that SCIP is used for? Because I could see us using this as a tool to get more local jobs, more, you know, industrial commercial projects up to San Felipe corridor. So, yeah, we'd want to probably use this as a tool to help, you know, achieve those goals. But is it really on us to, you know, it comes to like a residential development? Is it like on us to promote this?

i think the answer there lies in the fact of what is our intention as a city do we want to grow our revenues and do we want to grow it through new development which is the right way i think to grow in terms of generating more revenue for the general fund and so yes i would think that we would want to make sure that this is offered up as projects come in and in either through the planning process or shortly thereafter

Yeah, it's a great point that Jeff pointed out. One of the things from the residential side, since this program has been around for 23 plus years, most of the middle, even small and larger residential development groups know about this program. They actually, in a lot of cases, if a city is not a member, they will go to that city and say, you need to join this program or we can't do this project. So on the residential side, we will promote that. But what we see in a lot of cases, to Jeff's point, is the planning departments will know that this is available. And if a developer or developers come in, they will say that this program is made available through the city and promoted that way. So it's not on the city. We do our own promotion, obviously, but we also do things jointly with cities to promote the program whenever, because each city is different what they want and don't want in terms of development in their city.

Thank you.

Okay. So just a couple of comments and I think a question. Let me just see how my question gets answered. So first of all, this is a discretionary tool that's available, right? It's not anything that... under certain circumstances, somebody would have to access. It's just something like, this is available to you. If you need it, at your discretion, develop, Mr. and Mrs. Developer, right? Correct. Okay, so it's just a help. It's a tool in your toolbox.

Yeah, it's a tool in your toolbox. That's what we...

It's a tool. And then... The way that I would imagine how it could be helpful, I'm trying to gain a picture in my own mind as well as convey to the public, is that if a developer, a particular smaller developer, came to the plan department, began meeting, and then ran into a glitch because, maybe because something was too expensive, this could be offered to that prospective developer, especially as we encourage them to promote projects that we really wanna see. Right?

Yes.

Okay. And then I'm just wondering if you could just speak a little bit more and give a little bit more information about this idea of economies of scale and how do you see that playing out? Are you speaking in terms of you might have multiple small developers that... in the long run would benefit together as a group, or in what way are you seeing economies of scale come through this tool? So can you just speak a little bit more about that?

That's a great question. So typically, if you had to finance impact fees in the amount of $500,000 to $1 million to even $3 million, you would not be able to get this type of financing because it would just be too expensive to pay all the professionals, the lawyers, the underwriters, everyone associated with this. Typically, those types of projects, which are smaller to middle-sized projects, didn't have access to this financing. What we have done is three times a year, and we put it on our website. Here's the application period. Here's the deadlines. Here's when you need to get in. We gather up between 15 to 20 applications from different projects. They can be in San Diego. They can be in Sacramento, they can be in Modesto. And we take those and put those all together into what we call the skip pool. So basically then between those 15 to 20 projects, all those costs for the lawyers, the underwriters, the trustees, the engineers, so on and so forth, is shared across all those 15 to 20 projects. So they're not paying the full boat each project for all those professionals. So that's where the economies of scale have come in because that cost is spread across 15 to 20 different projects as a whole.

Okay, that makes sense. Okay, that's all I have. So I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing so we can hear from our public if there's any comments. So I'm going to start the public hearing at 7.02. Do we have any speakers?

Yes, Carson Clower.

Thank you. And good evening, Council. I wasn't planning on speaking on this because it's not really what I'm here for. But as the old guy in the room, I remember this conversation. And there was a specific reason why it was done for commercial industrial and not for residential at the time. I'm not going to tell you what to do because maybe some things have changed. The ideas have changed. But for most of the projects in town, when a home buyer buys a house, they're essentially paying for their share of the cost of the infrastructure, the impact fees. That's kind of baked in. The West of Fairview project, I believe, has something like this because it was approved as a development agreement in 2001 or whatever. But the concern at the time, or at least my concern, was that When people come and buy a house, if it has this on their property taxes, when they buy it, they don't really understand exactly what it is. So you're going to have not only your principal interest, property taxes, all the regular stuff, your insurance, but then you're also going to have another line item for the infrastructure of the project, maybe for the impact fees, which I actually haven't seen that yet. So that could be... 150,000 per house, like when you look at the numbers for a project. And my concern is that when you put that onto the property taxes, it's going to decrease the ability or the want to pay for bonds for things that we may actually need, whether it's a high school or GAV or something else or the hospital. Everybody looks at their property taxes and they don't go, okay, line item by line item. They say, oh, dang, my number is this and it's big. And I think... 90% of people think they pay too much in property taxes, and this would essentially ensure that people who buy houses in projects like these have more line items on there, which makes their property tax bigger. My thought was that if you are a business person, you're running a business out by the airport or whatever, you have the wherewithal to understand what you're getting into when you go build your project or you're paying a property, you buy a property. It's not super straightforward for the regular person who's coming to buy a house. So that, that was the concern at the time. Thanks.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Clower. By the way, because you went to high school with my two boys, you are not the old guy in the room. Sorry, you are a young guy, but okay. That's an aside. Other speakers?

I have no more speakers.

Okay, thank you for that. So I'm going to close the public hearing at 7.05, and I'm going to bring it back to...

the council for any other comments questions um go ahead council member morales yes uh thank you for that information can you james can you tell us what would be the average amount that a homeowner would see on their property tracks um if a home was anywhere from 500 to 900 thousand dollars

So typically the way it works is it's a percentage of the entire amount that's going to be assessed. So for this program, the maximum, and we never go up to the maximum, is 2% because we want to leave room, as that gentleman pointed out, For other types of improvements at the city school district or others may need to put in a special tax so typically it's around 1.5% to 1.6% of the entire assessed amount that's going to be on the property. Now developers. will look around and make sure that is in line with everything else that is going on in the community. Because if they have a house that's at a higher tax rate than the house that is five doors down, that house is not going to sell. So and then every one of our residential developers is required to make a disclosure in bold about what this is and make it to the homeowner when they're buying the home. The homeowner has also the ability to pay this off. So if they don't want this for the next, it's a 30-year financing, they have the ability to come in and pay it off if they don't want to pay that tax over time.

Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Council member.

So I just kind of another question popped into my head. So I thought this was a tool for homeowners to, you know, potentially qualify for a home or, you know, a business to overcome some upfront costs to getting into a project. But for the homeowner side, because Carson kind of jogs something in my mind while he was talking. I thought this was a tool to reduce the upfront cost to get into a home and then spread that lowered upfront cost over the property tax portion of twice a year and spread it over the long haul, like 15 to 30 years. Is that accurate?

That would be accurate because here's the way this works is that it is a 30-year financing. So it does spread that cost over 30 years, number one. Number two is if you are a developer, A, and you're coming in to build a home or homes and you have to pay these impact fees or public infrastructure, you're going to have to borrow money. at a conventional rate, which is typically in today's market, when you're building on raw land, could be eight, nine or 10%. Whereas when you're financing it through this mechanism that is offered, it's four and three quarters to 5%. So you're getting half, almost half off in terms of interest rate here. So that savings is already passed along to the homeowner when they're buying that property instead of a higher interest rate, which will be baked into the price of the home. Because they had to pay that amount when they were carrying that cost associated with those public improvements.

Okay. So it's lower and then they can, the homeowner has the option to pay it off early with no penalty. Is that kind of what I'm hearing?

That's correct. Okay.

Yes. And to that point, it's also a benefit in that by putting the cost into the tax side, it means your mortgage for actually purchasing the house is lower. And so hopefully that helps you qualify as a benefit as well.

Thank you. Okay, any other questions or comments. Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

I just, I have a clarifying question because I think Council Member Foucher talked about the total cost of the home and I heard James talk about costs on the property tax bill. So is it both? Potentially could be both?

Well, the price of a home is really only market driven. So it's hard to say that they're going to offer a lower price based upon that. It's just that to the point that I raised earlier that that costs for that developer put in allows them potentially to have a lower price associated with it. But markets are always going to drive what an actual home price is.

Yeah, so potentially if, let's say, it costs $200,000, but the house next door is valued at $900,000, they're not going to sell at $200,000. I mean, it's going to go based on market price, and they're going to have to pay anywhere from an additional $13,500 on the property tax

year potentially correct so we're just passing on the cost to residents yeah each each project will have to look at what it's individualized to say what is the you know cost that you can pass on in the model that you're building so you know again it's a tool it's not for every project

So one of the concepts that we discussed in the council before is someone always pays. So whether it is that the cost of the street improvements are part of the cost of the home, let's say was 200,000. So now the home that cost a million is 1.2. or the developer still sells the home at $1 million, but the individuals who purchased the home are on the hook for that $200. So let's be clear, someone always pays, whether it's in the front or in the back, but someone always pays. I want to highlight the fact that when we first discussed this project officially with our colleagues from the state, we had a, coincidentally, we had a developer here in the office and city hall who has been trying to develop commercial sites. So this is 100% commercial. in that project it's been with the city i want to say for about seven years and why we're stuck is because of the street improvements this tool gets us unstuck for that particular project but again someone always pays let's just be very very clear okay go ahead dr send us thank you so

I understand that concept, but as we have it now for residential, who's paying for the CFDs, for the impact fees? It's the developer that's paying, right? Okay.

For the CFDs, we have residents who pay for the maintenance.

Right. And then the upfront impact fees is the developer. Okay. Okay, and if we were to adopt this program, what we're saying is that potentially those impact fees can get put back on the homeowner? Is that what you're saying? No, I don't believe so. No, okay. All right, all right. So, yeah, I'm getting a little bit confused up here. To me, it sounds like... that the cost savings is going to be in the lower interest rate that the developer is getting, right? So potentially he said 8% to 4%. So that's a cost saving. It's driven by the market regardless. Somebody is going to pay the CFDs, the impact fees regardless. I don't really understand what the concern is or what the negative is of offering another tool to the development community here. Am I missing something?

Yeah, and being able to finance the project costs like this, you freeze it. And so you don't deal with escalating costs as well over the time of building out the project.

So I think, well, to the speaker's point, right? One concern you brought up was that essentially there's going to be another line item on their bill, right? I understand that. That's a frustration of the public. So they're going to be upset about that. But regardless, that's... It's still getting paid. It's still going to get, that item's going to be there. It might be looking a little bit different. And if we have this tool, it's going to help the developers. And it's also going to help that customer that can go to this company to, let's say, settle that bill or to ask questions. And it's going to lift the burden off of us as well and the county. right? I just think that it's a little intimidating maybe when you have all these line items and you're trying to pass another bond and then they're frustrated with that. I understand that, but I don't really see the negative in this.

And I think the thing to remember, it's discretionary. It's just a tool. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, Councilman Morales, and then you're next up.

No, completely understand somebody will pay and I think things will eventually get covered. However, I think my concern, at least for residential only, is that, you know, I think buying a home is overwhelming. It's like a stack this big of paperwork. I think people are, you know, people read it, somebody will tell you about it, but then I think it doesn't really sink in until later. I think when somebody looks at their property tax, It is pretty high right now. I think what I've heard residents say is right now there's an affordability issue. And I think if there's homeowners and looking in the future, if somebody is on a fixed income, Not wishing, we're not fortune tellers, right? But if somebody buys a home and there's fixed income, they're still responsible for that property tax increase. $13,500 is a lot of money on top of anything else that's coming in terms of paying, and people are already struggling. So I think unless it is super clear about the disclosures and that they're getting that, which even if we tell them, it might not resonate. I understand that it's a tool, But it does have a negative impact to somebody. And I'm just concerned that it's the individual and not a developer, right, who has maybe more of a means to be able to pay it. That's my only concern is if we do have disclosures, it does have a negative impact on the homeowner. It does increase property tax, which it's a lot. And Again, even if it's full disclosure, it still has an evidence. So that's my only concern is I'm fine with everything. I think my only concern is that residential piece because of the property tax implications.

Okay. Council Member Pichet, go ahead.

Yeah, I just had one more question for, I was, maybe it's for James Hamill or potentially Mr. Kreischer, director. One benefit for the city, could it be that, you know, when it comes to impact fees and any other fees that this could pay for that the city gets, I mean, we work for the community and we work for the city. We, you know, financial health of the city is part of our job. So would the city potentially get paid faster with these types of funding options? Is that a potential positive benefit for these skip loans? Yeah. Okay. So it's good for us. Okay. Okay.

Okay, Dr. Sanders, go ahead.

Last thoughts. Thank you. So yeah, and then to the point of, they have the option to pay it off, people are not going to just pay it off. Like we know that, right? It's very intimidating, overwhelming to purchase a house. But I am wondering one thing, like, what's in it for you? Like, how are you guys making money? There's no additional costs that's being passed on to the customer, right? I would assume that you're investing the money. And that's how you're making money.

For CACDA?

Yes.

Yeah, so we charge a fee up front and then... Oh, okay.

So you're charging a fee to the developer up front to utilize your service.

The developer up front. And then there is a small 10 basis point administration fee that's caused, that we charge because we have to put this on the tax roll every year and work with the county and then also work on any potential delinquencies or any issues with the special tax.

Okay, and... I'm just going to assume that the developer will not pass on that extra cost to the residents, but we can't make that assumption because they actually can if they wanted to. All right. Thank you for clarifying that.

Okay. Any other? Okay. Okay. Not seeing any. So I'm going to then move on to ask for an action or just see what the council would like to do to move forward on this item.

I'll move to adopt, Mayor Stephens.

A second?

I second.

Okay. I think I'm going to ask for a roll call vote on this one.

Dr. Resendez?

Aye.

Council Member Morales? No. Vice Mayor DeAnda? Yes. Mayor Stephens? Yes. And Council Member Pache? Aye. Thank you.

Okay, so it passes four to one. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hemel. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate the information. So we're going to move on to item 8.3, a resolution vacating the right-of-way portion of Nash Road between West Street and Monterey Street. Staff report, please.

Actually, Mayor, 8.2. Did I skip over one?

Sorry, I apologize for that. Let me see. All right, I just got ahead of myself. Sorry about that, turned the page before I was ready. Okay, so we're gonna continue the public hearing and consideration of resolution approving the initiation of the general plan amendment and pre-zone for three project sites. So just as a reminder for those of you who may have been listening at the previous council, we opened the public hearing. We didn't have the necessary four participants at the dais to be able to move forward on this item. We just opened the public hearing as a way to begin this process. So the hearing remains open and we are continuing with that. So I guess we will take the staff report now and then we will continue with the public hearing.

Okay, a brief overview of annexation. Annexation is the legal process by which a city or other local government changes its boundaries to bring adjacent unincorporated territory into the city limits. Annexation of parcels adjacent to the city and within the sphere of influence allows for the orderly expansion of a city and ensures that the city is able to provide the necessary services such as our utilities sewer water and police and fire okay as part of the general plan process the city determined how land within the sphere of influence fits into the city's overall land use framework, and to ensure that the eventual annexation of these properties can be served by infrastructure and municipal services. Staff has received three requests for a general plan amendment and pre-zone to allow annexation of the properties. These requests are the general plan amendment and pre-zone 26-1 and this property in the staff report. There's maps and things. We'll get to that later in the presentation. But that's at the south end of town on Highway 25, just off Highway 25. The general plan amendment and pre-zone 2026-2, and that is an industrial property on San Felipe on your way out towards the airport. and General Plan Amendment 2026-3 and pre-zoned 2026-3 is the continuation of the Clearest Park, which is out north of the airport along by the Amazon big facility up there. The most common types of boundary changes annexations, applicant initiated to develop a property in the future, which First 2 things you have to decide is, is it in the existing sphere of influence, or is it outside the existing sphere of influence? And then the other type of annexation versus an applicant driven is for the city to initiate an annexation. So. For this process, our staff approaches to bundle up similar annexations together and bring them forward for city council consideration so today's bundles all three requests are in the existing sphere of influence. Now, zoning determines how land may be used and developed, and zoning determinations by the City Council can establish the areas for residential, commercial, industrial, and various uses, right? And the zoning regulations can set about things like standards such as building heights, setbacks, density, and lot coverage, parking, etc., For annexation, the city establishes a pre-zone that becomes effective only if LAFCO approves the annexation. The pre-zone must be consistent with the general plan land use designation. City Council has the final authority on general plan designations and zoning as these decisions can have long-term effects on the community, including where housing and businesses are built. Such things as economic development, neighborhood character, traffic, infrastructure demand, public services, environmental conditions, etc. Combined, these are one of the most consequential tools for shaping a city's physical and economic future. Next, we have a little flowchart of the process. So again, being city council driven.

Can we take out the little black thing up at the top? I mean, again, it's been it's obstructing part of the presentation. Okay, just go ahead and continue. Thank you.

Yeah. So I don't think I need to walk through the chart, but essentially the flow is City Council, you know, again, we're looking for consistency between zoning and general plan. And then as we come forward, the City Council determines that they want to move forward on an annexation that flows then to a request to LAFCO. And again, the annexation, why does it matter there at the bottom? Again, it's shaping housings and where jobs and housing go, guides infrastructure and public services, protects the community and character and environment, supports long term economic health and quality of life.

No.

Okay, so. In the holster 2040 general plan the zoning and allowed uses we put up the chart here for the uses that are applicable to these three requests so general commercial industrial light industrial and industrial business park. So summary of the three requests, the faculty property is currently residential mixed use under the county general plan. Under our general plan, it would be low density residential. The proposed general plan is general commercial and proposed zoning would be to keep it as general commercial. And there would be a gas station, what we anticipate would be a gas station and retail development there, which I think would be a nice fit for capturing some of the last businesses they're headed towards the pinnacles right now the town. Brigantino is is currently agricultural. They're looking, we're looking for industrial in our general plan. The proposed is to keep it industrial. And the proposed zoning would be actually M1 light industrial. And this tees the property up for looking at and considering industrial development on the space. Clear as park. Dave Kuntz, it's currently kind of considered agricultural it's industrial under the holster general plan it's proposed general plan is industrial. Dave Kuntz, And the proposed zoning is specifically industrial business park and what is that that is a continuation of the current planned and approved clear spark project. All right. So here what we have is this is the balcony site that is down at the south end of town. And one of the things about an annexation, the property must be contiguous to the current city existing line. So this project will bring in the City of Vista residential project there that you see in the box above it. So it has to keep that. Now, City Council already approved an agreement to provide the services to City of Vista. So at this point, that's pretty much water under the bridge and this is just making it consistent. But with that, again, we hope to see the benefits from a commercial development on this end. Okay, and it's approximately 1.9 acres, the site. Okay, the Brigantino property, as you can see, it's just one parcel up north from the Dassault complex there, and It's approximately, let's see, it is approximately 12.9 acres. And that would be very up close to the San Felipe frontage and would be very attractive industrial development space. Dave Kuntz, And then for clearest part, this is kind of considered the phase two, and so a continuation of the industrial business park development would be this next piece, and this would bring it continuous up within the sphere of influence, which would be good and. Dave Kuntz, So, and we anticipate other developments coming in through the area out there on this north end of the San Felipe boulevard so yeah. And that is approximately 40.3 acre site. And I believe that concludes the presentation.

Okay, thank you for that. So questions, go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you. So thank you for your presentation. I have a lot of concerns. Number one, do we have to vote for them all as a bundle? I would assume so if they were brought in as a package.

No, we have three individual resolutions and you can vote appropriately to determine on each resolution.

Okay. Ridgemark. If this piece of property were to be annexed into the city, and we're talking about annexing in Cielo Visto as well, would that then allow access for Ridgemark potentially, potentially to be annexed into the city as well?

I'm going to ask Erica Frazier to stand up and help me with that question. Thank you. Thank you.

Just thinking hypothetically.

So, I mean, anything's high. I mean, we're moving the city limit line. Right, right. So anything can be a request, but you are not required to approve an initiation request. Right. The reason for CLO Vista having to go with this one is they're not contiguous with the small, our smallest parcel is they're just not contiguous to the limits and with Cielo Vista that agreement to serve them included the agreement to eventually annex, and this property will bring them in and do the work.

I understand that. That wasn't my question, though. Without us annexing in that little piece of property, could Ridgemark potentially be annexed in? I would assume not, because it needs to be next to

Right? Good.

Then that's a big no for me. It's a huge concern and a big no for me. Because that worries me. Because for obvious reasons. So I cannot support that at all. Thank you.

Okay.

Questions? Questions on this side? No. Go ahead, customer. Okay.

Yeah, so my question is, so we're literally looking at these three properties, these three items that can be voted on separately. We're analyzing these particular 1.9, 40 point whatever, 03s. um those are the only three things that we would be annexing if something were touching it like a fence and let's say ridge mark was next to that we wouldn't be like annexing ridge market we would just be adding seeing that little corner that's in the north west side of the um 25 fairview right and it's looks like it's residential right now and it looks like they potentially want to put a gas station in, which bring a couple of jobs. And every time somebody spends money on fuel here, goes to the Pinnacles, we would make a little bit of money. That one makes a ton of sense. So am I right about that? So we wouldn't be annexing all of Ridgemark or, you know, whatever.

Based on the request before us, it is only the 1.9 and it does bring in to the VISA, but that is, you know, Ridgemark is a different, project and it would have to make its request to the council. And the council can determine the pros and cons of that.

Yeah, I'm kind of like a romantic guy. I remember when McCarthy, you know, on the, what would that be like? The South side of McCarthy used to be an orchard. It was apricots, right? I remember that. I was a little kid playing in those apricot orchards until my mom yelled, you know, when the streetlights come on. So I kind of miss being able to play in the orchard, but I'm 46 now. And obviously I don't play in somebody else's property. um you know what i mean and so now it's a lucky's in a bike shop that i love and uh you know every once in a while going to kfc i'm not gonna like and uh whatever so it's it's you know time marches on so it's stuff that we kind of need here places that can bring jobs and places that can bring you know some industrial stuff here right in the zone that we kind of need it san felipe corridor is really where we would like to have a lot of industrial activity, which, you know, need the jobs.

So I don't think that was a question.

I think I have a little bit more of a statement there. Sorry.

Okay, thanks for that. Any, any other? Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and move to public comment. Do we have any speakers on this one?

Yes, Anna Hall.

Good evening, Council. I am specifically here on behalf of the applicant for the Clearest Park property. And this property, I'd just like to point out, is within the sphere. It would be an extension of that industrial park. And in fact, as part of the Amazon project, there are already city utilities in the northmost portion of that. So bringing it into the city would allow those utilities to be in city property and the road further developed to support that project. So, and then to the first one, I'm actually not representing that applicant at the moment, but I would say that that little triangle was sort of left as a no man's land without access to any utilities because it's sort of neither fish nor fowl. It would make sense to bring it in and allow it to be developed as a commercial site. That's just my two cents.

Okay, thank you, Ms. Hall. Other speakers?

Good evening, Council. My name is Michael Brigantino. I'm speaking on the San Felipe project. And so just to clarify, part of this property is actually already in the city. So what we're really doing is we're just bringing in the whole property under one jurisdiction. Right now, it's kind of a weird situation that we have one legal parcel with a portion of it in the city zone industrial, the front three acres along San Felipe is already zoned industrial. So it's really just bringing in the balance of the property, the 12 acres so that we can

you know go out and solicit for businesses try to get one nice you know project um for the city so thank you okay thank you mr ricantino other speakers i have no more speakers okay okay thanks for those um go ahead mr dr rescindus thank you mayor stephen so yeah um

Yeah, I'm glad these meetings are recorded because we can look back on this and then we can potentially piece together what could potentially happen. So I'm not entertained or interested in hearing about somebody's days playing in the orchards and how we move on from things. Let's be realistic here. Pieces of development and projects are pieced together. The Cielo Vista never, ever should have been part of the city. They did have an unfortunate incident that happened where they needed water and sewer from us. I understand that. But that also opened the door for development to occur across the highway on Fairview to Gavilan College to... the development of the lands of Lee and whatnot. So it's growing the city bigger and bigger. So I know you were up here before, Mr. Clower, but I'm the oldest sitting council member here now, for now. I will be stepping down soon. But I've seen this happen over the years too. And maybe some of my colleagues will too, if they're fortunate enough to be here as long as I was. So it's really unfortunate that it's bundled together because I do... support the clearest project, 100%. Mr. Bergantino, I would like to hear more about your project, but it doesn't matter. If it's already partly city and you're making the rest, I think that's good as well. So I can't support it because of that one quote unquote gas station that's going to be coming in, which we have nobody here to speak of, which we have no assurance on that there's going to be a gas station. And it's unfortunate. So if we could bring back a bundle that would make a little bit more sense to me, I would Definitely support that. And it's sad because we only have four amendments. And I know there's lots of people in the queue that have been waiting for it. But because of that one project, I'm very reluctant to move forward on the entire bundle.

So if I may be three specific resolutions, one for each project.

So we can vote on them separately. You will. And will that not mess up the four amendments that we get here? Perfect. OK, then we have a solution there and I will be voting my conscience.

Remember, if I could interject. Yes. Contiguity is. In eligible condition, but it is not an entitlement to the annexation so just checking online trying to get a better framework for this. Is that it is not an automatic yes to annexation the process still holds, we have right here the annexation process is a long one, but you are correct it expands the boundaries of the of the city.

No, thank you. And then I do want to say this is the most thorough presentation I've ever seen on annexation and all the time that I've been sitting up here. So thank you for that. I don't necessarily need that, but I think it's good for the public to have that. And I probably did at some point in time when I first got up here.

And Eric Frazier deserves some credit too. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. It was very informative.

okay other other um oh go ahead councilman so i must be a little bit confused so it's all three of them are separated and we can vote on them individually um when it comes to the one that it sounds like council member resendez has his concerns about it looks like it's residential mixed commercial right now and they want to make it general commercial and potentially what we're thinking is make it a gas station So can we put that property back up on the screen?

The map? Is that what you're asking for, the map?

Yeah, the map of the Achilles. That little sliver at the end of 25 in Fairview. So right now it's residential, right? So who? Not that one. It's mixed. It's mixed. Oh, I thought it was, oh, it's mixed commercial residential. Okay. So, I mean, who would ever want to live on that piece of property? I just don't know if that's somewhere anyone would want to go.

No, again, and I think we have revenue that is leaking out of our city going south. So, again, a nice little commercial development there.

Yeah, people could drop their fuel, head to the Pentacles, grab a Snickering car, throw their backpack. Am I missing something? Could this be bad for the city if we annex?

Strange parcel in that when the original 2040 general plan was adopted, it was commercial. And then somehow with the revised version, it became residential. So there is that dynamic and the general plan EIR studied this as commercial. Now, the applicant and in their application that they've submitted, they've indicated gas station and convenience store. And I've met with them several times and they keep saying gas station and convenience store. Whatever we study for this parcel is likely going to be what they're locked in for because we will still require some SQL work. They'll have to prepare a BMT analysis so we can verify trips. And once they do that, they've essentially locked themselves into the pattern with which they're going forward. Annexations just don't require the full development plan for a parcel. It's the idea of what they want to do because the plans that someone must prepare, the engineer drawings, the site plans, the grading plans, et cetera, that are required for development review are very expensive. We want to put that burden on people if LAFCO or even the council is going to say no. So that's why you see it as a general idea and we study it from there.

In my gut, I feel like some of us up here have a little bit of concern that once it leaves agriculture and it goes to industrial or commercial, it's easy for it to be rezoned into residential and we have just more growth. That's one thing that a lot of people have concern about.

So again, any general plan amendment in this city requires a special step, unlike most cities. It's the general plan initiation process. That's what we're doing here tonight. And you get to say yes or no before the applicant spends a significant amount of money going through the process. If I have the Burgantino parcel and tomorrow I decide that I want to, you've annexed me and I'm annexed as light industrial and I decide I want to go, I don't know, medium density residential, they would have to come back before you and ask you if you wanted to consider that idea and you can say no. Once you get annexed into the city there's 2 year limitation where you cannot rezone the property. So anyone who annexes at any time for 2 years they're locked into that that zoning district, and it's to prevent people from trying to annexes like agriculture. And then, oh, wait, I have a development proposal. or they're annexing as m1 and and then they go i'll wait i'm just kidding i want to be residential the second they get annexed into the city is to provide that cooling off period but again in this city which is quite unique and i actually really like it there is a stop before people go down the road which is the request before the council and you decide if you want to entertain the idea it does not lock you into that if you said yes to all three or two or one of them tonight It has to run through its process. Work is done under CEQA so we can study what the environmental impacts are of that specific site being annexed into the city and their ultimate development. And they could have significant impacts, any project could, and you could ultimately still say no. The Planning Commission makes a recommendation, they recommend denial, and then you get to take their recommendation and make your own decision. So this doesn't lock you into anything.

So again, a reminder, there are altogether 12 steps. This is step one. That's all it is. And Madame Clerk, if you could put up the slide that has the graphics of the perfect process, quite frankly, in civilized societies where we have a governance body. that has a general plan that becomes your sacred book you can't just go willy-nilly you have to stick to what's in the general plan but the general plan has to be consistent with your zoning so any one council that wants to just change zoning doesn't get to do it randomly it has to be part of the general plan So it's, to a certain degree, the Holy Trinity. You do have a governance body elected by the people. You have a general plan that has been already adopted. And as you know, the state of California does have some influence there, but also the zoning. So it's not any one action. And I've said it before and I'll say it again. This is actually one of the coolest superpowers that elected officials have in the state of California and in the Pacific. Land use is a superpower. And you who sit at the dais have that power.

So I'm going to interject specifically on this property because I'm looking at the floor view and I believe that I'm the only one that lives over there. So I go by that corner almost every single day. I used to walk in that field before the houses were built there. When the houses were built and all that beautiful open space was, before it was gone, it was weird that that little corner kind of stuck, and it still does, sticks out like a sore thumb. It is a weird place, but it is also a place with some opportunity to, And although I think most people know that I have been very, very careful and cautious and oftentimes against annexations, I think that what I have used as the markers for when it makes sense is, does it bring benefit, in particular economic benefit, to this community? So this project does. Is it in a weird, like, it just doesn't make sense why we have that weird open space or why we have a weird whatever. We need to fix it. I think this fits the bill. And then secondly, I think to Dr. Resendez's point is what else can happen? Although there's always the opportunity for that with future councils. I don't see that particular corner because it's right on 25 and Fairview having that much of a risk, although there's always that risk. I mean, you can make an argument for any one of the projects that we're looking at. because I know that corner so well, it is such an eyesore. It is a missed opportunity. It cannot be used in any other way. I think we have to take advantage of it in particular because I believe that it will help us in our drive towards economic development. And so I will be supporting this one because I do think that one, especially because it is in my neighborhood, I see that and it's ugly and it should be developed. And that is the way for something like that to be developed. So that's just what I just wanted to add my two cents. Go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you, Mayor Stephens. And again, I just want to be very clear. We're not just annexing in that corner. We're annexing all of Cielo Visto. And the house is in Cielo Visto, correct? With this vote. That is a necessary step on that one. So we're not talking... I know, I want to make sure that's clear.

I'm not pointing anybody out.

I want to be very clear about this. about my position without us annexing in Cielo Bisto and that corner which is the position that I said I was going to take, Ridgemark cannot annex into the city either. I just want to be very clear about that. That's all. And if we do annex in Cielo Visto and that corner, Ridgemark can be annexed into the city. That's all I'm saying. And I could be here a number of years and I'll bite my tongue if there's a gas station there, but I could be here in a couple of years and I'll be the one to say,

I didn't support it.

Told you so. That's all I'm saying. You can vote whatever you want. And I'm not putting out anybody directly. I'm just wanting to be clear about the pattern of development and annexation and sphere of influence and growing the city. That's all. And it might not even matter because we have an urban growth boundary that's been put on the... whatever, on the ballot by the residents because they're so tired of it anyway, right? They're so tired of the games up here.

So it may be a new point. And to your point, I just wanted to be really clear too that for those of us that live there in that neighborhood, that's what that means to us, that corner. And if we can do something that benefits the community, that changes that eyesore, that doesn't leave that as a misopportunity, I think we should take advantage of it. Again, because when it makes sense, That's when I and I think this is a perfect example. It makes sense.

So anyway, if everybody has, that's okay, that's fine. That's understanding or logic that you do that we're also an issue in Seattle.

Not just no, I missed that. And I thank you for that clarification, because I certainly don't want to come across as like missing that piece. But that is a piece to it. But it also is something that leads to a benefit. So that's okay. So with that, I'm going to stop talking. And I'll go ahead to Councilmember Bichet.

So I just want to help somebody help me refresh my memory because sometimes I forget. So when Cielo Vista had their sewage issue and their filtration system was failing and they needed to – I thought that we annexed Cielo Vista in at the time that they're – we're doing that right now.

But we did agree to provide services and that agreement did include annexation as part of the anticipated extending the services to it. So this project just happens to be bringing it in because technically it has to be contiguous to city limits.

Oh, so there was no like, I thought there was like a certain number of years before Cielo Vista had to be annexed in after we provided the solid waste services.

So we gave them the consent for out of jurisdiction services. And as part of that for anyone that we out of jurisdiction service. in their agreement for the services is that they will annex with a project that will that needs them to be contiguous. So that project brings them forward. And they would be annexed at that time. Or we typically give them a deadline because they're already continuous to the city, whereby which they would have to go forward and do it themselves. This allows the applicant to kind of carry the burden of doing the process for them.

So what's the negative impact to the city of Hollister if Cielo Vista becomes annexed into the city? Is there some negative impact for the city of Hollister? Are we super responsible for major cost outlay? we're giving them utilities now already giving them utilities we provide police and fire what else what is the it really i don't i'm not really okay yeah i mean somebody must i must be a caveman can somebody hit me on the head with a bat of some sort like a club because i don't see what how does it how is this bad for the city

That would that, as you say, the water has already gone underneath the bridge, right? We're already done. We're providing the services. So there's really no.

So we're just kind of tipping Ciala Vista into the city now. And it's just, there you go. Now you're Hollisterites instead of San Benito Countians.

okay okay any other okay so i think we we went to public comment already so um i'm going to then we're going to do this in order so we're going to do one at a time um so let's so do we have let's let's see i'm going to need some help on uh the resolution and the property um like one at a time and which so jeff if you can help me with this the first property name location and then we will um make them we will take an action and then we'll go the next one after that okay thank you

First resolution is for general plan amendment 2026 dash one and prezone 2026 dash one. That is the balcony property that is here on 25 and that we're discussing bringing that brings to this to list it with it.

Okay, okay. So I can ask for roll call mayor Stevenson share us that one. That's okay. Thanks.

Okay, sure. So can I get a motion on that item?

I move to adopt.

I second.

Okay, so it's your roll call vote.

Council Member Pache.

Aye.

Dr. Resendez.

No.

Council Member Morales. Yes. Vice Mayor DeAnda. No. Mayor Stephens.

Yes. Okay, so that passes. That does not pass. We need a 4-0. Okay, so that one did not pass. Oh, let me just explain quickly to the public that for these types of annexations, you have to have a four-person majority in order for it to pass, right? So that's the reason. Okay, so let's move on to the next one. And if you can do the same thing for the next one. Thank you.

General Plan Amendment 2026-2 and Pre-Zone 2026-2 for the Brigantino property, which is out there on San Felipe, just beyond the Dassault 1 extra parcel. And that is about 13 acres. And again, that's to bring it consistent with already, because there's a frontage there that's already within on the lot.

Okay. Okay.

Inside of our city map.

Okay, so that's one that's closer to the airport than the others. Okay, and so can I get a motion on that one?

I'll move to adopt, Mayor Stephenson. I'm not asking for roll call on the next two.

Okay, can I get a second on this one?

I'll second.

Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, no opposition. So that one does pass 5-0. Next one. Thank you, Jeff.

General Plan 2026-3 and Pre-Zone 2026-3 for the Wind Clearest Park property and the extension of the Industrial Business Park out by the Amazon building out to San Felipe.

Okay, that's one near the airport. And can I get a motion on that one?

Move to adopt, Mayor Stephens.

Second, please.

I second.

Okay, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so that one also does pass five to zero. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you to the public for your patience as we deliberate that a little bit. That is so important as we're moving forward as particularly complicated items. So thank you for your patience. So now we are going to move to 8.3, resolution vacating the right-of-way of a portion of Nash Road between West Street and Monterey Street.

Okay.

All right. So for this item, we will go to project location. So we are talking about a portion of Nash Road between Monterey and West Street. And as you will see, this section kind of bisects the current San Benito High School District campus. So Now that everyone's seen the location and the portion we are talking about. So San Benito High School District has requested the city vacate its right-of-way over a portion of Nash Road between West and Monterey Street and to make the closure permanent. In 2016, the City Council previously approved the temporary closure of Nash Road and West Street and Monterey for health and safety concerns. In May, the city council reviewed this request to vacate this portion of the road. They reviewed that request in closed session, and out of that came direction to staff to process the vacation as required. As agreed, the district will compensate the city $20,000 for the vacation. Let's see. In August, the Planning Commission reviewed and determined the vacation was consistent with the 2040 General Plan. Permanent closure of this road will facilitate student crossings and ensure a safe path for travel across Nash Road, which are consistent with the goals, policies, and actions of the General Plan. And vacation of the city's rights over this portion of Nash Road will not impede the city's ability to meet the goals of the 2040 General Plan. and last but least, these are a couple of other requirements that the project meets. It's not a project under CEQA and according to streets and highway code, this is an acceptable vacation. With that being said, I would point out that This property is fenced with gates and as part of the original vacation the district in the fire department agreed, they have clickers for the public safety access so again there's no negativity to this vacation, as we can still get public safety access when needed. With that that concludes the presentation.

Okay, so any questions or comments from the dais? Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Yes, thank you for the presentation. I did ask for numbers. I was wondering if those were ready. So we've heard from the school district that young people, students have gotten hurt, right? And we also heard at some point that we also need access for police and fire to get through. And you mentioned that there was clickers. So can you... share the data from both perspectives from the the school and from our police and fire or I can address that Councilwoman.

So, yes, we have requested the information from the school district as far as usage hours, especially weekends. They have events. So just to better understand what the impact will be. From the city's perspective, we have concerns. We have concerns about response time. Is it a deal breaker? Well, it depends. If you're the one waiting for an ambulance, you probably will say yes. If you're not the person waiting for an ambulance, you'll probably say it's minimal. We have concerns about fire access, fire apparatus access. We have large equipment. We have concerns about ambulances and patient transport. The impact, of course, on the surrounding neighborhoods. The police department has also expressed concerns with response times. Issues of evacuation. We are surrounded by a lot of fuel that could catch fire, and so there are some concerns there. Nevertheless, regardless, the communication has to be pretty good with the district as far as making sure that we have the authority to override closures if first responders are having some issues or difficulties. So as we move forward, we have to have a pretty good communication as to what is working, what is not working, how to fix it. So far, the school has been very open and understands that, of course, that has to be a priority as well, and that we can find solutions as problems arise. So we will have to come back to you with the specifics. Again, we just didn't have enough time to gather that.

I'm wondering then can we, of course, this is just my opinion. When you're dealing with people's lives, lives and, and we know minutes count. I feel very uncomfortable just making a decision because I also don't know if we move forward. Is it going to be easy to when we do get the numbers right $20,000 versus our liability and people's lives in terms of any potential death or disability are very concerning.

If I could remind you that this was actually a decision that was made instead of litigating. So the district had already indicated that they would be taking us to court to exercise eminent domain on that road. So the council decided that in order to avoid that, because those are costs that we would be incurring, that we would proceed with the sale.

Completely understand. However, I think this is foundational information for us to make a decision. And I understand that, again, I go back to liability and potential future litigation. If we know that we are making a decision that's going to cause potential death or disability due to the response time, and we have those numbers, we have that data, then, I mean, $20,000 For the property and you know i'm. Again, these are, I think these are decisions that have significant impact to the city so overall general fund budget and we know the potential impact to people's lives.

Okay um question start i'm counseling or a shake or head.

yeah so um yeah my my concern is you know nash road is a good road to be traveling on it's so straight and narrow there is river parkway you can go that way there's was it west and then san benito street is that where it is west street um but um my question is like how So emergency services need to use Nash Road. Let's say school is out and there's a fire and minutes matter. Literally the first we were talking about the first four minutes or something is like the most important time for a fire and we need to get there. Do other communities have some kind of a solution like this that use similar gates that have these clickers? And what is the uptime on those? What are the potential lag times on those? Because my decision really does kind of hinge on... Clearly, I don't want to litigate.

If I can just remind you that that part is not really what's changing. It's just really the changes, just whether it's our property or their property. Because right now, that is what happens. Right now, it's shut off during school time and events. When there isn't school time or no events, then it's open. That So that part of it is not going to change. Yeah. But I think in terms of, like, the questions about numbers, and I mean, that's speaking again to council member Morales is, I think, comment about not having the data that she requested. So anyway, so just wanted to make sure that you kind of understood that this is not a change from the current. So that part of it is what is actually the same. But to your point, I don't know that we've gotten the data. But anyway, just to clarify, do you have any other comments or questions?

Yeah, so I guess my other question is, so that road would become part of the high school district, right? So... Do we have any assurances that they would not build like a building or put a portable on that road? Do we have any kind of assurance that, you know, it's not going to be like... No, we don't.

And that is a concern.

Say again?

We do not have assurances and that is a concern.

And if I could just add some context tonight, the city council is vacating the right of way. There will still be an action by the city council to convey the property to the school district. So tonight you're saying we no longer need this as a right of way. You're vacating it. The property still belongs to the city, but there will be a second action where you actually give the property to the school district in exchange for the $20,000. Okay.

But effectively, we reduce the likelihood of litigation down to zero and whatever the costs that we would occur on that front. And then we get $20,000.

So if I could revisit some of the conversation that was held when this item was first discussed, it was exactly that, that we can spend money on legal fees to argue a point that we made 50-50. It's a government agency versus another government agency. Again, we'll see what happens. Or we can just focus on some of the larger issues that we have at hand, take the $20,000 and call it a day.

Okay, are you done? Okay, I'm going to come back to you. I'll come back to you. Yeah, just get your thoughts together. Dr. Bracendas, I think I saw your hand. And then I will come back to you if you have more questions.

yeah so i know we're gonna hear from the public and i think the uh representative for the high school's here too but i was never a part of this conversation the last time this council discussed it i'll just be honest with you guys but i have been over the years that i've been here and i think councilmember morales was here as well um so yeah let him litigate ted obama wants to go into another lawsuit with us fine But I was there in those meetings with the community members. We worked this out with FIRE. We worked this out with the PD. This is a bad idea for you guys to do. I'm telling you right now. Go talk to those neighbors. We're here to represent the community members, the public, the kids everywhere. And we came up with a very reasonable solution. Those kids are safe. We're close from seven to seven. There's just no way or the other, but I will guarantee you, Tenenbaum will threaten to sue. Let him sue. Fine. We're not afraid of being sued. And then he'll come back when there's a new council and he'll try this again and again and again every year. I mean, every few years. I don't know why. But you're not here to represent Tenenbaum and you're not here to shy away from litigation when you're in the right and you're standing up for what the public elected you to do. Just keep that in mind. Um, so yeah, those are my thoughts.

Okay, thank you. I see any thoughts. Okay. Okay, go ahead, Jeff.

I would just offer to the Council to remember that we've actually had the this section of Nash road has been closed since 2,016. We've had it vacated, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of very heavy issues dealing with that. Of course, it takes coordination with public safety response, et cetera. So bear that in mind as you contemplate your decision. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So let me go to public comment. Do we have any speakers on this item?

Gordon Machado, followed by Deborah Lutz.

Good evening. About 2010. I chaired a highway road improvement. If you remember people, you went down Main Street, and uh from the highway there's no sides there's no 25 bypass and all that so when you got to nashville did you really split and uh anyway long story short there's 10 different projects that were that were utilized one one of them or three of them actually the 25 bypass we spent years with the state of california going back and forth to sacramento And finally, they or we funded 25 bypasses, eliminated that part of it. If you remember, Main Street came down to Nashville, but it ended. And part of that, it continued now, the expressway, whatever you may call it. And then all of a sudden, the high school got involved. And the meetings we went to with the high school, their contention was, to put a overpass, a walking overpass over the road. And that went on for a couple of years with understanding till it came down to the dollar figure. And they found out that that's not cheap to put a walkover for their students. So then they came back to the city and the city gave in to what it is today, which, uh, The committee lost. I think the city lost. But here you are today with the same problem. It's because the high school doesn't want to spend the dollar to put the walkover. So all of a sudden, it became the city's liability to put up the barricade. Well, I think the high school paid for them, but they put in the barricades and all that. And now they're going to read themselves in a different manner. I think it's totally wrong what's happened so far. And I encourage you not to move too much further on this. Go back to the original one. It's their liability for the students back and forth. It's not our liability. And they were prepared to put a walkover and they turned around and turned it over to the city. So I say go back. and go back to tell us, go back to the original, who is responsible and who's obligated. The other thing is that in that road, that project we're going to call the Westside Boulevard and the 25 bypass and Nashville, all part of that, Nashville was improved. We have a bypass that brought the people from the west side of town to the other side of town and vice versa. So this has held up naturally, has held up that portion of that bigger picture. I'm a little bitter of spending all those hours.

Thank you, Mr. Machado. Appreciate the history. I think that's important that we don't forget about those things. Next here.

Deborah Lotz, followed by John Frazetta.

I live on the West Side, and I'm really against closing Nash Road. A few years back, back in 2001, I had a stroke. Ambulance took 20 minutes to get to my house. So there is a problem with timing. It was at eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning. So yeah, the gates were closed. I don't usually go Monday through Friday, seven to 7 p.m. through that area. Usually go on the weekends where there's nothing going on at the school. I don't see why we need to close it on the weekends. um plus the road between uh San Benito Road going down that road is atrocious in front of the football fields uh terrible road and you want us to use that instead of Nash It is a safety hazard. And have you asked the people that live on the west side? I notice there's no one else here, my neighbors. No one sent me an email saying that this is going to be closed. I found out on Facebook that you want to permanently close this. I just don't understand why this needs to be closed. It's been working fine for the last few years, except for my 20. I had a stroke. And I could not be here by the grace of God that I'm here. And I didn't have major, but yet my neighbor told me it took them 20 minutes when we called the ambulance for me. so yeah there is an issue about emergency you should really think about it that's all I really have to say I really don't think and you should need to talk to the talk to the the people that live on the west side how they're affected by it just not the high school I've had kids in high school I understand the safety of the kids going there's been no safety we know not to go during the school But that's my two cents. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Ms. Lutz. Next speaker.

John Prasetta, followed by Christy Bancourt.

Good evening council members. My name is John Facetta, Chief Business Officer for San Bernardino High School District. I want to take this opportunity to try to provide some clarity on a couple of the subject matters here. To begin with, this is at its root, as stated by others, a question of safety. And how do you balance the safety of the community round with the school itself? That's a tough question. I heard some commentary up about representing the community. I didn't hear a lot about representing one of the most densest areas of people in this city. The school itself has 3,400 kids going in and out every day, not to mention multiple hundreds of staff members. That density crosses that street back and forth, and it was very good to have it closed during school time from 7 to 7. Unfortunately, if you drive near the school from 7 to 8 to 9 p.m., the school does not shut down. It is a hub from sports to after-school events to you name it. We drove around the school right now. I guarantee we would see the lights on in many rooms in many locations, and you would see many students walking around in the dark crossing that street. We need to close this road for the safety of that school now moving forward. We don't want to wait until there has been an accident. We don't want to wait until there has been one of the children of this community struck or hurt. Now you might think, oh, that's the sky is falling. Right here, I do not have a documented number for emergency vehicles going through. That is something we're working on. What I do have is a number of accidents which have occurred by vehicles striking our fence in the last couple of years. So we have had eight incidents striking that gate with immense amount of fiscal ramification. From drunk drivers to fleeing law enforcement to you name it, 40,000, 36,000, each incident adding up. That shows the risk. That shows what could be happening to our students. And our goal is to mitigate that as much as possible. I'm trying to think you guys had so many good points and I didn't keep my notes going. With that, I would just want to leave it up to you that this is balancing act and the school does its best to provide for the safety of our students and families. And we hope that we can come to some kind of agreement on how to best navigate that. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Reseda. Next speaker.

Christy Betancourt.

Good evening, Mayor, Board of Trustees, and public. My name is Christy. I'm the MOF at San Benito High School. The only thing I would add to what John has already shared with you guys is communication. I don't remember who, but someone talked about communication. And I'm part of the team who is constantly emailing fire, police, sheriff, when there's event coming on campus. And it's really awesome to see all three organizations respond saying, no problem, Christy, thanks for the heads up. I'll often text all of the captains of the fire department, hey, just a general reminder, we have bump fest today. So there is all of this communication that's going on. The only other thing I would add to CBO Freseta's What he shared is we are truly an organization that never sleeps. I get to work every morning at 530. And there are events going on until 10 o'clock at night. We have Pop Warner there Saturdays and Sundays from 7 o'clock in the morning till 7. 9 o'clock at night. I mean, truly drive around the campus and see what's going on because we have so many students. And every year, roughly, we're crossing that road billions of times if you take into account everything that goes on at that high school. We are the major pub for our students. We could be having a wrestling event where... Public and our athletes are crossing from Matson to O'Donnell. It just makes sense to permanently shut these gates and have some consistency. Fire, emergency services, all they need to do is go Monterey B to West to get around if they don't want to use River Parkway. That's just my two cents. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Van Korten. Other speakers?

No more speakers.

Okay, so I'll bring it back to the dais. Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

No, thank you, I definitely appreciate and and respect the school districts. And I actually you know I can't imagine anyone not caring about our youth and their safety, I just want to give you some general statistics at least from my district, so that you are at least our Community can understand my perspective in my district and district three. I have 53% of my Community members that are over the age of 45. 45 to over 65 and 23.2% of my residents are over the age of 65. To me, that is just because of life. A high risk area for the need for ambulance police and we know fire also so paramedic so for me every second counts in terms of the ability for first responders to get and be able to access the roads to get to my residence all of our residents, but I think. For my for district three it's the demographics my demographics, that is a high need area and so. I understand. I'm going back to liability. If we know something and we move forward with it, I would say, you know, I have very concerns for $20,000. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Okay. Thank you, council member. Other questions or comments? Go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Council Member Morales. She's spot on with all of her comments today. She's been here the longest out of everybody, aside from myself. I'm telling you guys now. First off, thank you to the school staff that came out here. We really do appreciate you spending your time coming out here and sharing your perspective. And then, Ms. Debra, I've been to your door before I've spoken to you. I'm assuming this is not why you were here tonight, but I just appreciate you speaking on this because I do represent the West Side. And I do represent that neighborhood. I live in that neighborhood. I live on B Street. That's why I laughed earlier when you said that. So anyhow, we have put so much time and effort into finding a middle ground, so to speak, I think, on this issue. And I don't think it would be a good idea to close it 100%. I heard from Mr. Machado, which I appreciate you coming up here and sharing some history. I never heard about that walk away or the overpass. But I did hear from Mr. Fichetta, 40,000, 36,000. Well, that tells me the gate's working. I'll be honest with you, that it's getting hit rather than causing accidents. Before we had no gate. But 40,000 for one incident, 36,000 for another. But you want to give us 20,000 for us to close it. And we represent the residents. And it's them and the kids' safety, right? We're a community. Build the walkway. Build the overpass. And don't threaten to sue us. Not you in particular, but your boss should not threaten to sue us and come over here every so many years to shake us down, to close it down permanently. I'm sorry. That just doesn't work with me. That's my position. And we're trying the best that we can to meet the needs of the kids. And I know that you guys, if you need extra days, that's why it's closed. Debra, on extra days, they'll call and they'll say, we need it closed on this Saturday because we're having an event, right? So we are so flexible. I appreciate the community, the communication. We're so flexible. I know our staff does a wonderful job, but I would never support closing it down 100%. So tell tenant mom he can sue us or he can come back when I'm not here. But that's my position, okay? Because I represent not just the kids, but the people that live in my district as well. So thank you all for coming out here.

Okay. Are there other thoughts, questions? Do you have a... Go ahead, Grace Mayer.

Yeah, thank you for... I was going to say San Benito High Staff, but Hollister High Staff for coming out and expressing your perspective. I appreciate it. This one I've been really torn with simply because I did go to high school here and we had campos. I felt safe. That's just my biased opinion at the time, but I understand since then we've grown a lot and there is a lot more through traffic, I appreciate Mr. Machado too, that he brought up the history and the potential of having that overpass. To me, that makes so much sense. And had that gone through, it would already be there and we wouldn't even be here. And I'm thinking only $20,000 and what council member Dolores Morales pointed out to how the liability. And I just feel like Of course, we care for our youth, right? We care for each other. We're a community. We all want to help each other. That's just human nature, right? At least I would hope that we all want to help each other when there is an emergency in that need. However, when you have a majority community being impacted and as a result, their health possibly, you know, being on the line there, I... I just, it just doesn't sit well with me to close it 24 seven. That's just kind of, I'm still processing everything. I wish that we had a conversation. I don't think I've even had a conversation with Mr. Tannenball, but it would be great. That's awesome too. And just to get more, I guess, for me, I'm just saying just more context for me to process before making some sort of decision. Yes, I, I, you know, was part of the meeting where we're like, okay, well, we'll just, we'll just do it. But I knew that there was a process before. But yeah, it's still even to like with the with the gates itself. I mean, what if there's a malfunction or something? And then what happens then? I don't know if you just like manually crank it, you know, or who's going to get off and do that if first responders are trying to brush through to to get to somebody's residence. So, yeah, that's about it.

OK, go ahead, Councilman. Appreciate it.

I, yeah, people, I don't know if people really realize, you know, usually when you come up here, I'm personally me, I'm about 70% of the way kind of made up. And then it's the other 30% is these conversations that we have. And I'm that 30% counts for a lot. So I thought I had my mind made up, but kind of myself kind of hemming and hawing over what like thirsting for more information on other municipalities and how these clickers work. Because in a perfect world, when first responders got to get through and somebody's having a major medical emergency, I'd like them to be 100%, right? I wouldn't like to know that you had to wait 20 minutes. If we could cut that down to less than 10, that'd be great. Somebody's having a fire, same thing. I'd like to know that these clickers are fail-proof. failure proof, right? You know, uptime, a hundred percent downtime, zero. Um, and I'm also, I'm kind of torn because I, we've all seen it. Uh, drivers are distracted with it's the cell phones or whatever else people are doing when they're supposed to be piloting an automobile. In which case there's a lot of times there's 3000 pounds. Um, and, And then on top of that, I'm also thinking about how we have tried to work with the high school. We have tried to make this a good partnership. And I personally, if it was my decision not representing anyone other than myself, and it was all about me, which it is not, yeah, I'd rather just keep Nash Road open so people can get around town. I personally, I want more information about the clickers. I want to know how those work. I want to know more about that walkway that could have been, and it is not part of the solution. I'd like more information because now I'm dipping my toe into that 30% and what's coming out of the 70%.

Okay. Thanks for that. So I'll just say that the majority of the people that I heard from before and after, and by the way, as I mentioned earlier, our two boys went to school there, and right around the time that they put the gates in, because the new part of the school had been built, was when one of our boys was leaving and the other one was just starting. So I was really worried, and I was always really concerned, and I heard from parents that... they're really worried about their children. It is unfortunate that it appears that we have two different communities almost at odds in terms of the needs for safety. So I worry about what the parents, because as a parent and also the kids that were there, and having had a small dose of what that was like for our boys, as well as the staff. And because right now it is closed most of the time, the change would be for those other times, because right now it's almost permanently closed as it is. Obviously we have the opportunity to use the clicker and get it open. I worry about that. Not only are drivers distracted, our kids are distracted. So there's that thing to consider as well. So I think that it's a shame that we have these two seemingly different populations that are at odds and both needing help. their safety concerns addressed. But I feel like because we're talking about our kids, because we're talking about a huge population of kids, that it does worry me. And I do like the idea of having it permanently closed. I wish that we had had some of the information that Council Member Morales had requested the last time. And I almost feel like We should have that and maybe we could continue this item. However, I'm not going to make that decision on my own. I'm going to follow the will of the rest of my council. So whatever you guys would like to do, if you'd like to wait while we wait to get that information before we make that decision, if you'd like to just move forward on this item right now, I'm going to leave that up to you. But I think that my stance is I think I need to continue with where I was before in terms of the safety of the kids and having that ultimate safety factor for them. However, I'm also very interested in looking at the data and would welcome continuing this item so that we can get that data. But I'm gonna leave it to the majority of the council. So I'd like to just hear for what do you guys think? What do you want to do, Council Member? I mean, Dr. Resendez. Thanks.

I mean, I'm going to be a no, but I certainly will support. I think it's Council Member Morales wants the data. So I certainly support that.

A brief continuance on that. A vice mayor. Okay. And then Council Member Morales? Yes.

I would like to see the data, and here's why. We have one that didn't know that this was on the agenda, right? Again, I have 53% of my residents are older. If anything, I'd like to, when I make a decision to make sure that they understand, we looked at the data, right? Seven hits to a fence versus, you know, we already know one community member waited 20 minutes that could have been reduced potentially, right?

Potentially, right.

In order for us, I feel, to make a sound decision about something so important that has an impact on people's lives and their ability to live and function healthily, healthy. I need to see the data.

You need to see the data. Council Member Pichet.

I agree. I'd like to see more information.

Okay. So, okay. So, Council Member Morales did ask for it. I mean, I would hope that when we make a request that we are able to get that information to us when we need it. So, a city manager... how long do you think it would be before we could get that data? And I don't know if that was data that the city was going to produce or was it the high school or was it a combination of both? And then if it's whatever it is, how much time do you think we would need? Because I think I think we would all feel more comfortable making this decision with all the information as well as an opportunity for the public to hear that data as well. Hmm.

It is a combination of both. I'm wondering, maybe we can figure out how to follow up. The school district has their data. We have ours. So I like to say that at the latest, by the middle of October, we should be able to come back to you.

So a month, a little more than a month.

And if we can come back early, we will. But yes.

Do you want to come to the podium really quick? Sure. And the only reason I want you to not to give any more comments, please, sir, because I don't want to give you more time that I didn't give to others. Just simply to address the question about when can you have the data ready? When do you think that the high school might be able to? Maybe you aren't able to answer, but just let us know what your thoughts are.

I agree with the city manager. I think that between us, by the end of October, we'll be able to have the information.

Okay, but we're talking about mid-October. Can you do that?

Sure, mid-October.

Mid-October. Okay, mid-October. So that would be the second meeting, the third Monday in October is the one that we're targeting that. okay sounds good thank you so much okay so we're going to continue it until then and then at that time we will um we will take action on this item okay okay thank you all for that i appreciate it and we're gonna go ahead and move on to the next item on our agenda uh discussion regarding animal services operation police oversight and public perception um staff report please

Madam Mayor, members of the Council, for the last few weeks we have had a tremendous input from from community members that had concerns and it seemed that it was the appropriate action to create a space so that we can further discuss ways in which the city can improve its services tonight we're talking about animals but it could be about really any other service this is no different than when a community reflects for example on how it provides a sweeping services we have there's times for us to evaluate how we do things And clearly, when we are talking about impact that has on the life and death of animals, then, you know, clearly this is an important topic. So we hope that tonight we can have a discussion about how we can improve our services. There's always room for improvement. I hope that tonight is not about evaluating staff or evaluating who did what and where. I hope we can stay away from any conversations about the specific court case. And again, just for the public to understand, the city of Hollister was responsible for executing a law order. a mandate given by a court, as I've had conversations with some members of the public, to try to explain that we are frankly no different than an Uber driver. We drive the vehicle, someone gets in our car, and they say, drive me to this destination. We don't get to change the destination. We don't get to Ignore the destination. We simply implement the direction given by the passenger. And in this case, it is the courts that indicated that an action needed to be taken. Now, putting that aside, of course, there's room for improvement. There always is in all our services. There's not one service in the city of Hollister that we can say is perfect. Frankly, there is no service in any city that could say that it's perfect. There's always room for improvement, especially in a city that is... resource uh short we're not a very rich city we don't have an incredible amount of hotel tax parking revenues and so on so we are we're strapped and so there are some limitations with that said um at least in your packet there is information from at least one member i have cc'd the mayor and the vice mayor as in the past they have been the leads on animal related issues i have cc them in dozens and dozens of emails that I've responded to in the last few weeks. So in your packet, you have at least one example of that. And with that said, we definitely want to make sure that we listen. We listen carefully and we listen hard.

Sure. Okay. Thank you, City Manager. Questions, comments? All right, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you. So thank you for putting this on the agenda. I really appreciate that's important. I didn't know it was on there, but I did hear from a community quite a bit about this. So I really appreciate you providing the space for us to talk about it. And then just on a personal note, the very first thing when I got elected to office was this. It was... And I was surprised because I wasn't really aware of the passion and the community that was around animals. But the very first thing that I got approached and sat down about and I was educated on was animals. the rights of animals. And I don't remember who was there, but we had a little meeting. I think it was in my art studio. I know Honor Spencer was on the ad hoc committee. So I know I'm going off on a tangent, but I don't feel like we've ever done anything enough other than the SNP bus for it. So I'm just glad that we're bringing it back so that we can reevaluate. And then I just feel like it's a nice... way for me to leave my office. I mean, I've been here a while and we haven't done much just to kind of reassess, reevaluate and help create the change that Hollister needs so desperately. I'll leave it at that.

Okay. Thank you.

comments um go ahead so i'm trying to listen and read at the same time um because i don't know if there are any are there any links there's no attachments on this one so oh not the next l3 so there were let me just

kind of outlay what i understand and let me know if i'm right so we had a couple of dogs right loving animals everybody loves our dogs and just let me just before you move on that is not the item on today so then i just want to just caution you about speaking about any particular that is just a letter from a concerned citizen the item is simply about our current animal services program and services that we provide to the public in general. And it's the beginning of a discussion in terms of how we can improve those services. It's actually not the beginning. We started this a couple of meetings ago and we are continuing some more conversation.

Oh, okay. So I guess in light of that, my question is how long are animals in our facility? How long are animals in our care? I've toured the facility. The quality of care seemed to me was more than adequate. It seems like almost a happy place for animals to be, but I don't know. I'd be wrong. My question is like, how long are they in our care? And the job is, of you know animal you know services is to rehome a lot of these animals like he's rehoming not one of the major concerns

I will ask Chief Reynoso to step to the podium for members of the public who may not be aware. Animal control services in the city of Hollister is under the police department. That's a decision that was made probably a couple of decades ago. And so that's how we do business. But the chief will have more specifics and data regarding our services.

Okay. So yeah, what are the goals and, you know, what is rehoming animals fitting? Cause I'm just a lay person. I feel like rehoming is kind of one of the bigger things.

Sure. We don't have a staff report. We've just told to be prepared to answer questions, but captain Patty, who actually runs the animal control division, he went through one of the things that were asked and specifically was the grand jury reports over and over several years. And what he did is it recapped those findings and, and the results of today compared to the results of today. So I don't know if the council wants to hear that first and we can answer questions, but it is a very good recap. It's really short if you want to hear it. And it addresses the grand jury report starting in 2016, which arguably is the worst grand jury report, I think.

I appreciate that. I think a recap would be great. And also, are you able to answer today the questions from council member? Yeah.

So maybe you can do both. Okay, great. Thank you. So we can start with him. It's really short. Actually, it's really long, but he, he made it a little bit short. So.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council Members, City Manager. We were asked to take a look at the information, and one of the things mentioned was the 2016 Grand Jury Report, so I decided to go back and look from the 2016 to current. In that, I went back and identified the reports involving animal control and the services. I wanted to give a summary of the major issues that have been identified over the years and what has changed. Looking at the grand jury reports together, there has clearly been significant criticism of animal care historically. At the same time, the reports show substantial changes and improvements over the time. Some of the major issues identified in 2016 have changed significantly. Behavioral assessments are now retained. Animal care employees no longer perform euthanasia. Euthanasia is handled by a veterinarian. Euthanasia has declined dramatically from the 2016 Grand Jury Report, 1,411 animals, and currently the fiscal year 2025 to 2026, it was 63 animals. This total includes severely injured animals, injured wildlife, and owner request euthanasia. The volunteer program criticized in the early reports was substantially described as impressive by the 2024-2025 grand jury. Staffing, funding, and facility limitations and veterinarian resources have repeatedly been identified by the grand jury as concerns. Those are long-standing resources issues that extend beyond the action of the current animal control employees. Most importantly, the most recent grand jury inspected and toured the facility in January of 2025 and described it as very clean, well-organized, and praised the volunteer program, recognizing the work being done to reunite, adopt, and rescue animals, and specifically addressed the misconception that animals are euthanized because of how long they remain at the shelter. One additional point that really stood out to me after looking at all of these reports together was how consistently staffing and funding have been identified as a problem over the years. In 2016 and 2017, the animal care had one supervisor, three full-time animal control officers, a part-time community service officer, and a part-time kennel helper. Staffing was still identified as limited. In 2021-2022, grand jury later described the shelter as critically understaffed, underfunded, and underutilized. The 2022-2023 grand jury again found that the shelter remained critically understaffed and specifically connected staffing shortages and limitations in services and employees' ability to attend trainings. We are facing that same issue today. We currently have only four full-time animal care employees and one part-time assistant responsible for operating the shelter and providing field services. The city approved budget includes two animal control assistant positions that are currently vacant. We're in the process of completing a requisition and those have not been approved yet. I think it is important in the context of this discussion We cannot separate the level of service being provided from the staffing and the resources available to perform the work. The staffing concerns have been documented by multiple independent grand jury reports for over a decade and remain an issue today. What stands out even more is what our current staff has accomplished despite those limitations. The most recent grand jury physically inspected the shelter in 2025 and described it again is very clean organized and describe the volunteer program is impressive. Recognizing the work that has been done to reunite animals with their owners and obtaining adoption and rescue placements. And noted that animals are not youth and I solely based on the length of their state. There. are certainly areas where we can continue to improve, but I think our employees deserve recognition for how far animal care has come and for the work they continue to do there. Therefore, I wanted to thank our animal care employees for the work they're doing with the resources and staff we currently have and what's available to them. Thank you.

Okay, are you able to answer questions? Yes. Okay, and will you be answering Councilmember Hachet's questions about when and under what circumstances are the animals euthanized? And I can't remember what your other question is, and then other questions from the dais.

Yeah, how long does it take us to rehome animals? And what are the primary goals of the facility?

How long does it take us to rehome? Every case is different. It depends. So the dogs that come into the shelter, for the reason if they're microchipped, they can be rehomed really quickly. If they're not, there's a whole process in place of trying to get it adopted. If it's adoptable, there's a behavioral assessment that needs to be done. Our staff is the ones that do that. We've had animals in our shelter for months and months. The law allows us to euthanize animals after a short period of time. And we don't do that. We keep them there because they're viable. They do a good job of using rescues that can take those animals. If you look at our Facebook page, there's been times when our staff has driven pretty far away to another shelter in California just to get animals a second chance. so their purpose is to try to save as many animals as they can the figure that captain paddy showed you expressed to you 1400 euthanasias in 2016 compared to the last year's 63 and that includes That includes all animals that came into our facility that were some were injured and and some were owner requests, unfortunately, some were ill. So they're doing a great job saving those animals that's why sometimes we're so full at the shelter it's implodes and stuff like that, but the but they're doing a good job, working with the surrounding. shelters as well animal shelters and rescues as best they can, did you have another question.

Yeah, I mean, are we linked up with any other shelters as far as, like, what – are there forms? I don't know. Like, are there forms that people can fill out? Like, I'm looking for this type of dog. I prefer Frenchies or poodles. Are there, like, databases that we can tap into that can help rehome? I don't know what – I guess my question should be what – avenues or what options are we utilizing in order to find good homes for these dogs or animals?

So we're linked up with Pet Finder. And so when our animals are brought into the shelter and after they've gone through the processing and everything, we take photographs of them and they're listed on Pet Finder. And so if you're looking for a specific type of animal or specific type of breed, you can search on there and it pops up through Pet Finder when people are searching and then it will show up that they're at the Hollister Animal Shelter.

And at Penn Pioneers, I think if not across the whole state, it's a big database that we participate in and we show them, we upload all the animals that are available. And so someone from another county and another part of the state could find it and reach out to us if they were looking for a specific type of animal.

Thank you.

Okay. Go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

I mean, one of the biggest things I hear is that law enforcement should not be overseeing animal control. So I'm just wondering, what does it look like with other regions? Is that something common, not common? Can you just explain to us? what that model is versus what's the, I don't know.

Yes, thank you. Thank you for the question. Yes, it is very common for law enforcement. For instance, Los Banos also has animal control division. They also have code enforcement division. When it comes to animal control, there's basically two divisions within animal control. And one is community services, animals, and includes shelter operations, adoptions, the foster program, volunteers, community outreach, education, adoption events, customer service, routine animal intake, shelter enrichment, all of that. But the aspect that brings in law enforcement is the other requirement, the other part of that, which is dangerous and vicious animal investigations, animal cruelty, animal bites, licensing enforcement, animals at large, seizures, quarantine citations, administrative hearings, court cases, evidence collection, emergency animal incidents. Those are our animal control officers do their own investigations. They're trained. They go to interview school and they're trained by our detectives. Captain Patty also manages the detectives in our department. And they learn all these together with the police department. It doesn't mean that the police officers go with them to every call. Actually, if we didn't have animal control officers, the police would be going to all these calls. And you would be paying a police officer to handle these calls that, for the most part, our animal control officers can handle fairly well. Um, so those are the reasons why there's other reasons as well. There's there's reasons because within the police department, we have supervision. We have policies on top of a personnel rules. We have a flexible policy that they have to adhere to. All the members of the animal control have to, um, have to adhere to our entire policy, which which involves a lot of, um, being up to date with case law that changes. It doesn't just change for law enforcement. It changes in the animal control world quite often. So being together actually has improved it. When you don't have that oversight, that's been a problem. I mean, city manager Anna Cortez says it's been decades. It's ever been, ever since I've been here, 28 years, It's been with the police department. And I think there was a brief period of time when I first started and might've been with public works, but it wasn't working and they moved it to the police department for that reason. Public works had so much on their table and it just, there wasn't getting the supervision that they needed.

But it does sound like, Chief, if I can, that there is a world where you can have animal, quote unquote, experts or people very passionate. Law enforcement is still going to collaborate with them and work with them. It doesn't necessarily mean that law enforcement has to oversee them. And I've seen you guys, like there was a fire at my house and I've seen you getting the animals, putting them behind the truck. I've seen the cops do that. So essentially, I'm thinking there could be a world where there's

animal experts there has to be and law enforcement still have to collaborate and work with them in tandem right because you have these other incidents that you talked about you're right yeah right it does work very well now there are communities larger communities where there is an animal control division it's so big that they're completely separate from police but within those divisions usually with spca and some other they end up with their own type of police enforcer they still end up with with their own uh police officer type that's part of their of their animal control and they're the ones that go out and they patrol the streets so you'll see that across the nation where there's a there's actually shows about them the animal police and they're actual police officers but they investigate strictly um animal cruelty cases and stuff like that so you'll see that somewhere else where they're not connected with the police department but they have their own quasi police force with them. And those are the bigger departments that have that. But you are correct with your assessment, sir.

If I could interject. So in King City, there actually there's a strong partnership between the police department, SPCA. Most of the cities around here in the Central Coast have the same model that we do, but not all. So there is a JPA, a regional JPA for Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Scotts Valley and Capitola. That is, you know, different. So there are different ways in which these services can be provided. There is a welfare focus. There's a control focus.

And just in... Full transparency. I don't remember who went with me, but I was on the Animal Ad Hoc Control Committee when I first got here. I toured the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter, JP. This was under Westrick years ago. So there's options. There's different models. And I don't remember if some of the committee members are here were involved in that when I went. I can't remember. It was so long ago. But there are different models. I think law enforcement is always going to have an important role. But I'd like to just hear from everybody about. how we can provide the best services for our community in partnership, right? Collaborating with them. Like, I think that's what we need to get to, I think, tonight. Thank you.

Okay. Do you have any questions or comments?

Okay, go ahead, Vice Mayor, then I'll...

Thank you. Yeah. Just one question. Uh, so what techniques or is there any training on how to handle, um, animals that are in distress? I've been to the shelter and yes, it's clean. It's pleasant. Um, however it feel, I would imagine it feels like jail, like, so, um, um, What do you and I would imagine and I've heard that, you know, there are animals there that are in distress and that stresses me out because it just it breaks my heart because they literally have no idea what's going on. So who's there? How do you guys provide that care that compassionate care for the animals when they are in distress?

Well, in the circumstances, the animal shelter, unfortunately, because of all the loud noises, the barking and the unfamiliar situation and location that they're in, they're not happy to be there, unfortunately. But it's a service that needs to be provided for lost animals or injured animals, that kind of thing. Throughout the day, the animals have interaction with the staff. We do have a volunteer program that the staff has revolutionized here after the request and speaking of during some of the community meetings. And we have a play area outside. This is probably going to be coming in a future council meeting, but we had a Boy Scout, Eagle Scout, I'm sorry, that did a project there at the shelter. And it's got a shade structure now, some play tunnels, different things like that. It even has a fire hydrant that was donated from the city. So there's areas for the volunteers to take them out. out and have someone on one time or just get out of their kennel. And obviously our goal is to try and get these animals to a home as quick as possible. Unfortunately, like Chief Reynoso had mentioned, sometimes it takes months. We've had animals that have been in there for up to a year at some points. And it's just because they haven't been adopted. And we do events, adoption events, as much as we can with the staff that we have. And I know the city manager, has gotten us to go to the farmers markets and try to gain attention from some of the public and seeing some of the animals and different things like that. So there's certain things that we try to do to just try to get them out of the environment as best as we can.

Thank you.

Just want to reiterate, our volunteers are awesome. They've allowed us to attend more of those farmer's markets. And when they go in there and they take those dogs out that are in distress, take them outside. And the kennels have an inside and an outside. But it doesn't change the fact that dogs are afraid. There's barking. They're not used to this. Our goal is to get them to a home, to a forever home as soon as possible. Because the longer they stay there, the more detrimental it is to their health and stuff. And we will praise to our volunteers who go out there and they just hang out with the dog a little bit and help them through this difficult time.

Thank you.

Okay, yeah, thank you for that. And I just, I have a few questions myself. And by the way, just as a reminder to the public and others that are here, that Mayor, Vice Mayor DeAnda and myself were Animal Services Ad Hoc Committee. And then that was a year. And then we remained involved in that and have met and are in frequent contact with many of our community members related to animal services. services and concerns that they have. So can you just go back to a couple of questions, I mean, a couple of comments. So specifically about the behavioral assessment. So are the behavioral assessments, and I'm speaking particularly about those that related to the animals that are being assessed for dangerous, whether they're dangerous dogs or not that is done by the animal services officer is that right or is it done by an outside a person yes those are conducted by our animal services officers Is there another type of behavioral assessment that's done by somebody else? Because I thought what I heard you say was that it's a third party who does behavioral assessments, or are you using a consultant that's helping? I think I misunderstood what you said, or I'm not sure. But can you just say again what you said about the behavioral assessment, just to make sure that we're getting the right information to the public?

No, what I had mentioned in 2016, one of the comments that they had addressed was that we weren't retaining those behavior assessment forms. And now currently we have those and they're attached to their profile and it's logged forever.

So the behavioral assessments that we conduct are strictly related to the dangerous dog assessments and those are conducted by the animal services officers.

No, every animal that's at the shelter gets a behavior.

An initial one as they come in. Okay, so there's that. And then when there's a concern, then what happens and I'm not okay, so let's separate the dangerous dogs. There's just other behavioral concerns, then what happens with those other dogs?

You're saying separate the dangerous dog ones?

Yeah, if you separate those out, those assessments, you're doing the initial assessment, there's some duress that the dog is, or some behaviors of concern. And again, not the dangerous dog ones, but the other ones, then what possibly could happen with those to intervene with the concerns that have been identified?

So throughout their stay, there's several updated behavioral assessments that are conducted on the animal, their interactions with others. I actually do have copies of the previous behavior assessment and the updated assessment, if that's something you'd be interested in seeing.

That's not my question, though. It's not about the assessment itself. It's like once in that assessment, the conclusion was that there's something of concern, then what could happen?

It's a case-by-case situation. If the animal is in distress and obviously their behavior is becoming too detrimental to their welfare and health at the shelter, then yes, it could lead to euthanization. But for the most part that doesn't happen all the time. And it's, it's only something that's done as a last resort. If they've been there for a very long time and they've gone through and they're not, um, living a healthy life there and it's more of a concern to keep them there.

Okay. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that just because I thought I'd miss her. I think I've misheard you. And so thank you for clarifying that. And the reason that I wanted to address that one particular point, because that is, uh, One of the issues that we've heard about is that we could do, we can do better in that. And certainly this means more resources. So I, so I appreciate your point about limited resources. However, this may be an area in which we can see some improvement. And by the way, if I can just on a personal note, we have, I have my dog at home, one of my dogs at home. uh incredibly he's like a precious part of our family he's been with us over four years we adopted him there he had been there for three months when we got him he's an enormous uh malamute dog um he was 30 pounds underweight when we got him after those three months so i know he was under the risk it was very difficult however when he came out his spirits were good he was in good his health was not great and he was severely underweight But his spirits were high. So I know that especially in a big animal like that, they could spend a lot of time there and it takes time to adopt them. However, some concerns there because we know that what they do there is like they spend a lot of time in the kennel and that is not a good situation for dogs. However... So, so happy that we have him. He is so precious to us. And so anyway, just wanted to thank staff for caring for him, but also that we were concerned about the, like the severe underweightness of his when we got him. And we've heard that from other, in other instances. The other thing that I just wanted to mention in terms of the issue about euthanasia and the difference between 2016 and now. Correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't part of the reason for the huge change in numbers is that there's a huge change in practice throughout the whole animal services industry, I guess, is the way to... Because I think then it was more common to euthanize as a common practice when you've had an animal in the shelter for a long time. Almost all shelters have gotten away from that and primarily are only euthanizing those in which the examples that you gave earlier. So I just want to be really clear because I don't want people to think that, oh, we were like, you know, like we were killed. happy, you know, in 2016. That was kind of the common practice then. Practice has completely changed and the values around when it is appropriate to euthanize, not euthanize has changed throughout that industry. So I just want to be really, really clear about the reason for the huge change in the numbers so that we're clear about that. It's not just simply that Hollister just all of a sudden like, oh my God, we were kill happy back then and now we're not. It's simply that the practice in the industry has changed. Now tell me, am I interpreting that wrong or right?

No, you're interpreting it correctly. Okay. And also part of it too is we do a lot of, we work with a lot of fosters and we have the ability to work with them and certain animals that we can't get out of the shelter or aren't able to be adopted, we can rely on some of our partners as well as other shelters from other parts of the state of California.

okay okay so thank you for that i just wanted to make sure that we were clear about that because that's an important distinction between that was just like 10 years ago so i just want to be clear and then finally i just wanted to check in with you about the volunteer program because um you said that the grand jury report uh praised it it was very clean all this and that it was a really it was a great program i have to be really honest with you i have heard like almost the complete opposite that it's an arduous application process. The background check is like it will happen or it doesn't happen and you can't volunteer unless you do that, that you're often not taking applications, that you have a very limited number of volunteers, that the volunteers don't have a lot of time with the animals. So I'm not sure, I mean, if there's just a disconnect in the perception from the public and I'm just wondering if you could speak to what is it in fact that the grad jury actually praised. And it was a cleanliness that it was organized. I mean, that's one thing, but that doesn't speak to the actual care of the animals. And I just wondered if you can speak to that, because those are the concerns that I've heard about the volunteer program, because I think that is another area where we can possibly improve. So if you can speak to that a little bit.

Yeah, unfortunately, I think it's a misconception about the background process. All it is is a live scan and a simple application. It's no different than a volunteer for a baseball coach or something, somebody that wants to volunteer at the high school or any of the schools. And once that process is complete, then there's some training. Over the last couple of months, we've gotten a lot of applications in and we're working to get as many as we can. Currently, we have eight. And as Chief had mentioned, they're awesome and amazing, and they've been doing a lot of work with the shelter. And so just to kind of address the misconception of the length and the difficulty to become a volunteer, And what was the other question?

Can I just like give you like a different way to think about this? I don't think that it's necessarily a misconception in how the process is. It was their experience and I think it's really important that when we hear that from our community that that was their experience even though we know that we have a certain process. that we listen to their experience. Because I think what's on paper and the way the process works and what's currently the experience of the eight volunteers that we have now compared to others who had tried that and that their experience was the opposite. It's important for us to like... Put some weight to that. So let's just be really careful about like saying that, because that was their experience. Although I think that, again, it could either be is an area where we can improve or we want to make sure that we change the perception from the public. But we also can't discount the individual experiences and I've heard that from a number of people in the public. So I think that may be an area where we can find some areas for improvement. I think the good thing about a volunteer program, if we have a good way to run it, is that it costs us very little money. And so it's an important thing because I think when we're talking about staff shortages and other resource resources are always an issue. And unfortunately, because we have a number of priorities in the city, almost always animals come down in the low end of that list. Unfortunately, we have to prioritize safety and health of our human community, obviously. However, that is oftentimes what happens so I so it's something that we're gonna have to be really careful about because there is shortages and we are you know we are very we are not a resource rich community so we have to be as efficient with our resources as possible.

Absolutely. I agree. Our volunteer, the volunteers that we do have, they're amazing. They do a great job. We also, like I mentioned before, rely heavily on our rescues and they're great partners. They've been a huge resource to us as well.

Okay, great. Okay. Well, that's all I have for now. And then I'm going to see if there's any, go ahead, Council Member Morales.

No, thank you for the information. I think that the grand jury reports, from a historical sense, give us a better understanding of kind of where we are today. I'm wondering if, I mean, we're here for a reason, right? I think that our community is heartbroken and saddened with events. I know that we have a history, right? Like there were several significant abuse cases that your department took care of with success. Was there anything in the grand jury or other recommendations that have not been implemented that could better the organization that you know of right now that you'd be able to share?

If I could, I could add as you're aware, we contract with the county, and they pay 55% of the operating expenses of the of the animal shelter every year. And the reason it's 55% is it's, I won't go into the weeds on this. We do it all the time where our staff has to respond to the county and it's further out. It takes longer. It might take two of our officers to go together if they're going to drive an hour outside of town. But it doesn't change the fact that they pay 55%. When you take into account how much we have our budget for the animal control and how much the county pays and reimburses us, We're roughly costing the general fund 1% of your budget. And that's how much the city is spending on animal control. We would love to have more staff in there. The kennel, people who work in the kennel, who are more, you know, they can wear the Hawaiian shirts and stuff and be welcoming to everyone and take care of the kennel and let our officers patrol the city and the county. But right now our officers are cleaning every day They're maintaining the kennel. They're processing right now. We lost our SSA that does the billing. So they're all doing that. They're multitasking and they're providing the service for the city and the county. And we have those two positions that haven't been filled. And so that's one of the things that grand jury was emphasizing is the staffing that's there. And I think that we could provide more services, more adoption clinics, more of all of that stuff that I think is necessary in our community that everybody would like if we had additional funding. And I know this is a hard time to do that, to discuss it, because we're dealing with a lot of financial issues. But I just want to point out we're basically 1% of the budget at this point. And we know you can't, there's no money trees. there's no money trees i understand that but i think that's the the overwhelming thing that keeps coming up in the grand jury is the staffing for uh for an animal control department that services a population of the city in the county um so i

It might be inappropriate so that you know city attorney, let me know was there anything that we could have done to. Because I think when when certain things happen, I think one there's a there's a level of shock right like this is happening and then could we have done anything about it. And then, of course, care not not wanting to talk about specific cases or anything, but do you feel that. Our. that the city, from a policy perspective, because that's our role here as city council members, from a policy perspective, can create or direct policy that could have impacted recent situations in a way that would have benefited or would have changed the direction of certain outcomes? I'm being very vague.

I know. Okay.

I mean, I believe that our goal is to be transparent about everything, and there's a lot of questions that are out there. And we, up to this point, haven't been able to discuss those publicly. And I know that there's going to be some inquiries into this, and that might be one of the reasons why. But we would love to be transparent, and I think that that would relieve a lot of people of the misconceptions of what's been happening. uh in general um but that's that's not uh that's something that i would like to have happen but it's not necessarily per se a policy i think you already have a policy in place that asks us to be transparent we do that with the police department as much as we can as well

Okay, I think for anyone and any one of our residents, our residents really care deeply for not just their own animals, but animals in general. We know that it's a priority for our community. If there's anything I think that we can do from, again, I'm looking at it from in terms of our role from a policy perspective, we know historically that we have the grand jury as an oversight body that comes in and provides recommendations. We know that those have been addressed. We know that we need to do better in terms of our volunteer in that process. And it sounds like communication with our community in terms of potential information. But is there anything else I think that you can identify that would be relevant for us to know or our community to know?

I mean, I think it's important to know that the city's code with respect to dangerous animals is largely based on state law. And the city's code actually provides a more intense or forgiving appeals process than state law does. So, I mean, from a policy perspective, you actually have more protections for an animal owner than state law does. But again, State law is the bare minimum, and those are the requirements that any animal control department, whether it's a city or county, are required to implement. And then a city or county can implement more restrictive or more protective policies. So that's just...

Okay. That's all the questions I have. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. Go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you. So that's interesting to me. So we have in place policies that are more restrictive than what the state allows. Are we following the state policies?

You're following the state policy because that is required, but state law specifically says that an animal control agency, whether it's a city or county, can offer, for example, an appeal to a superior court, which the city offers, where that isn't something that's provided in state law. So when I say restrictive, I'm saying giving the property owner greater protection, or the dog owner or animal owner.

Yeah. And just to talk about, not the elephant in the room, right? Let's be honest here. We can say whatever we want. We can talk about what happened. This is what happened recently. We have every right to speak about that if you choose to. But again, I think what we want to be careful about and We don't want to bash anybody. We've got to be very cautious to not walk that line. So I've got questions. I have questions about the most recent incident, obviously. I do want to hear from the public. And I do. I've got questions about our policies in place and whatnot. And just for full transparency... I was approached by the re the recent dog owners, but it was already when it was already in the court's hands. So I would always encourage anybody to reach out to us for anything. Right. And I think maybe that's what you're getting at. But by the time I found out about it, it was already out of the city's hands, to be honest.

And I wonder if I could just add. So I so, you know, like Vice Mayor and myself, we've been part of the ad hoc and we've been connected with dog owners, cat owners, as well as the community. We have this most recent. However, this is not what triggered this conversation by any means, by any stretch. This has been an ongoing conversation. It's just simply that this is the more recent case in which there's a lot of public concern that has been raised. However, it's been something that's been ongoing. But I do think that there are areas where we can improve. This is an example, but I have a very similar example of another similar incident that happened several months ago, same result, but we were involved in that one. And it was like a lot, there's been others. I do just wanna say one quick little thing to catch a comment that you just made, Chief, however, and then I'm gonna go to public comment and then we'll continue this conversation. I appreciate your comment about transparency because I think that is the area in which we have been making many, many efforts to improve. And here's what happens. When we are more transparent and we're more generous with information, even if the information is not great, the relations with the community improves. So I do think that if we created a process in which we had more transparency, genuine transparency, I do think that with that, we would improve relations with our community. So I think that's an area in which we can find some areas to improve, but I just wanted to highlight that comment and thank you for that because I completely 100% agree with you that transparency is always the goal, yeah.

there um Adam air um we have a transparency portal page on our police department website the city's website we would love to put the dog hearings if that's necessary or transparent put the hearings once they're completed put them there so people can link into them if they're interested in and actually see from beginning and end the investigation and all the evidence that was provided and the the decisions if if that's possible

Sure. I mean, that's one way, right, to be transparent, but I think there's other ways as well, but sure.

Especially if it goes to court because it becomes a public document, but otherwise, as long as we can legally do that. But it would be nice to just have the facts there as people speculate, and sometimes it's a game of telephone and you don't end up with a different story of what actually happened. So we're all for that. We agree with you, Madam Mayor. That's a great idea. Yeah.

I think finding examples like that of how we can be more transparent, that's one example. Maybe there's others. If that is not possible because there's a legal, maybe there's some privacy rules around it, but also there's other ways in which we can be transparent, but I think that's just something for us to kind of think about more. Okay, well, thank you for that. Well, with that, I'm going to go ahead and go to public comment, and then we can come back and continue this discussion. How many speakers do we have on this?

We have 13 speakers at the moment.

OK. Let's go ahead. Can you say who the first speaker is?

Yeah. We have Lisa Sears followed by Caitlin Felix.

Hi, I'm here in City Council. I'll address a little bit about the 2016 grand jury report. So I'm sure if you were to look up those numbers, because that's when I got really involved with Hollister and really realizing how bad everything was, the euthanasia number is going to be heavily skewed on cats during that time period. So my family was the first one to bring SNP bus here to sponsor a feral cat clinic in December of 2018 because I knew how dire the need was. Since that time period, what has improved numbers for California in general? I'm not blaming Hollister for taking the advice of the UC Davis grant, but Hollister did take that advice and for a long time was taking zero cat intake. you can greatly improve your euthanasia numbers if you don't take any animals in. And that's what was happening for many, many years. And then, San Diego had a lawsuit over that. A watchdog group sued them and said, it's illegal. It's not following best practices and laws that are on the books for state of California to not take cats in. And they lost the lawsuit. So I appreciate that you guys have opened up to cat intake again, but we have to figure out the spay-neuter funding and who is going to be doing the spay-neuter for you guys. My understanding is that Dr. Nadine does not want to do the contract. You guys are very lucky to have her in town. She's doing a fabulous service, providing very low cost spay and neuter services now for the community. But my understanding is she's not interested in the contract. So we really need to get to the bottom of that and figure out the feral surgeries. I still want to impress upon you guys to look into the Helen Ross Fund. It's really a shame that this woman died over 11 years ago, and nothing has been done with that money to help animals. And what if it was used to fund spay and neuter? Thank you.

Okay, just to clarify, Ms. Sears, so there are negotiations. So the contract is not over, it's negotiations happening. And that's often what happens in an RFP process. So just to clarify that. Okay, next speaker.

Caitlin Felix, followed by Jillian Wilson.

Good evening. My name is Caitlin Felix. I'm a resident of Hollister and a trapper with Cat Crew, California. I'm here tonight because I am tired of watching our community animals suffer, and I'm tired of watching volunteers carry a responsibility that should not fall almost entirely on our shoulders. The lack of resources available through our shelter is incredibly frustrating. When those resources aren't there, who fills in the gaps and who opens the wallets? Volunteers, people like me who work full time, have families, and have our own responsibilities. But yet we stop what we're doing because there's an animal in need. The numbers tell the story. So far this year, Cat Crew California has TNR 295 feral cats. Of those feral cats, we have taken in 84 cats into our foster care and to get them off the streets and into homes. We also have taken on 86 medical cases. Additionally, 31 cats had to be euthanized, which brings our total number of 491 cats have been brought into our rescue from our community. Those aren't just numbers. Those are lives. And we're only one of the few rescues here in town. Behind every one of those numbers is an animal that someone had to trap, transport, feed, medicate, foster, or fight to save. And when there's an emergency that happens after shelter hours, there's no adequate system in place. Nobody on call, no drop-off safe kennels. That means volunteers are left scrambling. Just this month, cat crew personally rescued a kitten from a storm drain. After the kitten appeared to be paralyzed, instead of having a local emergency resource available, I personally had to drive the kitten to an emergency vet in San Jose just for help. This was 11 o'clock at night. We don't have anything in place. That should not be the only option. Animals should not have to suffer until the shelter opens at noon. People should not have to wonder, who do I call? Where do I take this animal? Hollister needs to invest in our shelter and our community animals. As part of this investment, we urge the city to renew the SNP contract, the TNR program, that benefits our community. Not only having a city-funded SNP, Since June has neglected the cat colonies in its population, it's putting a huge financial burden on our rescues. We are willing to help, but we cannot continue to carry this burden alone. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Phillips. Next speaker.

Jillian Wilson, followed by Natalie Day.

Hi, my name is Jillian Wilson. I am a Hollister resident, District 2. And I'm also a volunteer at the Hollister Animal Shelter. There are so many things. I wish I had 20 minutes to talk. But a couple of things that I heard over the course of you guys speaking with the police department and some of the public comments. Volunteer programs require staff, paid staff, to run the volunteer program. So if in the past people had a bad experience with their volunteer program, it's because they do not have enough staff or enough funding to run their programs. They can only do so much with what they have. And they do a really fantastic job considering the staffing and the funding that they have. There are so many animals in the shelter right now. The volunteers go several times a week for several hours a day. We do clean their kennels. to just give them some sort of quality of life while they're there. Because regardless of how well they're taken care of, that's not a good place for animals to live. We want them to be rehomed. We want them to be with good families who are going to care for them and provide a safe and healthy environment for them to be. I've personally adopted three animals, including one I just got after two days of volunteering. My pretty little puppy, Frida.

Thank you for that.

Yes, but it does require the community to step up too. There's a wonderful husky that's been there for over a year. He's doing okay. He's not in danger of being euthanized because he's not failing to thrive in the environment, but he needs a good home. And the community needs to step up to do that. I can't be relying on this. I cannot adopt another dog anyway. As much as I want to take Penelope home, too, I can't. So we need more volunteers. We need more people. But the animal shelter needs more staff, first and foremost, because it's other departments, when you cut their funding or you cut their staff, then maybe there's a backlog of paperwork that happens. But this is a 24-7 process. job that lives depend on. These are animals that are living creatures. This isn't paperwork. It's not, I'm sorry, it's going to take a little longer to process your permit. These are animals. There's no vacation. There's no time off. There's no holidays for the people who work at the animal shelter. It's a 24-7 job. And the animals need care 24-7. They need staff. They need funding. And they need more volunteers from the community as well. What I've seen since I've been there is a staff that is very caring, very dedicated to the health and well-being of the animals, to the cleanliness of the facility, to making sure when an animal is distressed that they're getting attention, that they're aware of the distress that an animal might be experiencing. To your point about your dog being underweight, it's not because they're not feeding the dog. It's because your dog is stressed.

Sure.

And animals don't gain weight when they're stressed, even if they're being fed a ton of food. So it's I don't want the public perception from that comment to be that your dog is underweight because the staff wasn't caring for your dog. It's because it's a stressful environment. No matter how good we make it, it's a stressful environment and we need more staff. We need more funding. Thank you.

Yeah. And I and just to your point, I specifically said that, that it was because of the staff and how they cared for him that he was okay. Yeah, exactly what you said. Next speaker, please.

Natalie Day, followed by Jennifer.

Natalie Day is next.

I just want to say.

Wait, wait, no, Natalie, Dave, please. Okay, yeah, please wait for your, yeah, please wait for your name to be called. We'll call you, yeah, Ms. Dave's next and then you'll be next.

Good evening, everybody. I'm sure you're real sick of seeing me up here. I'm really sick of standing here. No, we love having you. My name is Natalie Dave.

Thank you for being here.

And I've been doing animal rescue here for about 10 years. I've seen many contracts between SNP and the city and none of them have ever been so poorly put together as this last one to Reichstadt Vet Care. I've known Nadine since she moved here, and I consider her a friend. The shysty wording and lack of appropriate funding in the contract is not only terribly alarming, but presents as a Band-Aid on an amputation. With SNP, we were able to fix 480 cats per year. The city wanted to drop that number by 77%, fixing only approximately 140 cats a year. So we have a community member, a vet, with many years of experience who wanted to add to our existing services, as she could see that we still needed help. She attempts to provide that, and y'all turn it into something the city required of her at a drastically different rate than the prior services. I have copies of all the inner... This is not hearsay. A contract so convoluted, she just said to hell with it. She doesn't want to work for you guys based on the way that things... had transpired. So we get 1,000 new people every year, approximately, and all those people, not all those people, maybe half those people have animals. Without a spay-neuter ordinance, we're buried in kittens. We're buried all the time. You guys want to cut services by 75% and demand that she fix cats for the city for free and pay only a fraction of what was previously allotted for services. We are in the middle of an animal overpopulation crisis from here, the entire country. Everybody would have to adopt seven animals in order for that to be fixed. Your baby, your grandma, everybody would have to have seven animals in order to fix this problem that we have right now, which is obviously not going to happen. All of our local rescues spend time, money, and resources to trap and intake kittens that wouldn't have been born if we had a spay-neuter ordinance. It is so frustrating to go to a property with 20-plus cats, kittens dying, and the property owner says, no, thank you, I don't want to run out of mousers. We have no recourse. At least if fix-it tickets were issued, we may actually get a handle on this. A spay-neuter ordinance coupled with the funding appropriate to the enormity of the problem, we may be able to get a handle on this or at least make a much larger dent and save a multitude of kittens from being born in the first place. One last thing. Where is the Ross Fund? The one specifically for the care of the animals at the shelter? I'm sure if Helen Ross were here today, she would want to help with this crisis. She loved animals, and you all say you do too, but just your own? Or the ones dying of dehydration, illness, injury, predators? Not those guys. We care because they matter. They matter to all of us. I would like to believe that. Can you all care the same way? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. J. Now it's your, okay, I'm going to ask that audience, please not, we're going to just continue. Go ahead, you're next, yeah.

Mayor, this following speaker has indicated that she does have a disability. It might be appropriate to offer a little bit more time, similar to what we do with monolingual speakers.

Okay, and what is that typically?

We usually offer double the time.

Double, okay. Except for we have 13 speakers. So I think we'll stick with the three. And if she needs a little bit more time, I'll allow one more time. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead.

Speak in the mic.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because we can't hear you. We want to make sure that we hear every word. And we're going to start the time all over for you. But I'd like for you to speak it. Yeah.

Okay, thank you. I want to say that I am a volunteer at the shelter, a current volunteer, and I've spent spring, early spring. I'm a little nervous. So I saw so much and I've learned so much. And me and the team, my other volunteers, we've worked really hard. Communication is the key. And we all communicate with each other on how to deal with animals at the shelter. And also we communicate with the officers and so we know the guidelines of what to do with the animals, how to make the animal feel comfortable and not stressed. You know, we work with them every day, interact with them, and we also kind of do housekeeping, like we help with digits. In other words, we take a lot of, house duties off of their hands so they can go out to deal with the public and take care of phone calls and computer work while we can take care of all the simpler duties in cleaning the dishes, cleaning the candles, and so forth. I just want to say that, you know, we came the last six months I've seen great progress. I really feel that. I'm always asking them, have you seen changes in the animals, dogs and cats, whatever? Are you seeing changes in them? And they said they have seen them happier because we interact with them as much as we could. And I'm always trying to find out who is going to be there the next day. So somebody is there to exercise them, work with them to really, you know, our goal is to make sure when people come in to adopt the animal, we want them to find them compassionate and deserve a loving home. a home environment. That's our goal. Our goal is to make sure these dogs go home happy, not go home scared. I have, you know, just like the officer said, there's a lot of different cases. They come in waves, and some are scared, some are, you know, they have different emotions. That's normal. But we try to make it better. And I'm trying to say, I don't want any, I wanted to try to find solutions to this whole shelter thing. You know, the shelter works hard and we try to find solutions. for these animals regardless. And Farmer's Market is a great idea. Okay, sorry.

If you need a little bit more time, go ahead.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Farmer's Market is a great idea because I've learned interacting with the public and they let me know some of them will like to adopt, but they want more information. So I tell them the officers have all the paperwork and information that they can give to the public. Other times they wish, I mean, they wish they could have more animals, but they can't, they have too many. I think it's a good learning experience when we work with the public, when you go out there, but it really depends on the weather. So we try to do what we can. And the last time we not just farmers market, we're trying to look for different places where we can interact with the public.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I'll be around for some more input and ideas to help everybody out. So there's no argument. And I see all the time now on the internet that when people have pets, they say, I'm sorry, I'm looking to rehome a pet. And I see that more and more every day. I don't know how can we fix that. And how can we fix people from dropping off dead animals. I'm sorry to say that, but I see that all the time. So I don't know. I'm trying to get your input and ideas. What can we do? We need to communicate more about that instead of fighting.

Sure.

Okay.

Thank you for your thoughts and your ideas. I think they were great. And thank you. Yeah. Keep coming and talking to us. Appreciate it. Okay. Next speaker.

Yuko Pearson, followed by Deborah Lutz.

Good evening, Mayor Stevens, City Council members and City Manager Cortez. My name is Yuko Pearson and I'm a resident speaking on behalf of my family. I'm here because the administrative hearing that decided my family's dog's fate was not conducted under a fair procedural due process. The police sergeant with no animal behavior training made a life or death call without the input of a qualified animal behavior professional. He failed to distinguish the difference between a truly dangerous dog and normal instinctual behavior. This could have been determined by a veterinarian or any expert dog trainer, experts who examined our dogs and concluded they were not dangerous and did not pose a threat to the public. That is not neutrality, that is not due process, and it is why our dogs were never properly vetted before. An order was issued to kill them. I'm here tonight to ask the council to fix that structural flaw so that no other family loses a pet to this process that skips real expertise and basic fairness. This past Friday, September 4th, 2026, my family's dogs were euthanized by the Animal Control and Police Department. We litigated this case, but we lost because the process itself is rigged. Denying us any other options such as rehoming them or surrendering them, the animal rescue organizations willing to take them outside of our county was denied. In Hollister, when an animal control incident occurs, they investigate it and the Hollister Police Department prosecutes it and sits as a judge to decide whether a family's pet lives or dies. On a first offense, no prior history, the sergeant who judged and ordered the execution of Bubbins This is a core due process problem. The 14th Amendment guarantees every citizen the right of procedural due process and a non-negotiable pillar that is a right and a neutral detached decision maker. An agency cannot legally serve as its own investigator, prosecutor, and judge. When the police department judges its own cases, neutrality disappears, the system becomes institutionally biased, mitigation is ignored, and extreme outcomes follow. Our dogs are gone and our family is grieving a loss that cannot be fixed, but I'm standing here so no other family has to face a kangaroo court like this. This judge and executioner setup doesn't just harm residents, it exposes the city of Hollister to severe federal right lawsuits under Title 42 United States Code Section 1983. This fix is straightforward. I'm asking the council tonight to amend the Hollister Municipal Code 6.1 to strip the Hollister Police Department of its judicial role in these hearings and mandate the use of an independent external administrative hearing officer to bring constitutional fairness, separation of powers, and basic decency back to the Hollister administrative process.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pearson. I appreciate it. Okay. I'm going to ask the audience to not do that. Thank you so much. Next speaker.

Deborah Lutz, followed by Chris Doherty.

hi i'm back again debbie lots and of course i live on the west side of town i live near the riverbed unfortunately i was probably part of the problem back in 2016 i had a feral cat problem and i did not know of any rescues or anything else unfortunately My father dropped probably close to nine or 10 cats and took them to the shelter, which I kind of figured out now that they have probably euthanized them. I have currently been in contact with a cat that helped me have the issue of a cat that had more babies again, was able to get them fixed, and was able to adopt the kittens. And unfortunately for the cat, came back, the snip busted. um fix it and she lived in my front yard for the next five years so um but i did have a neighbor before the ones that i took another 10 cats went and he took him to the riverbed So that's the problem with the riverbed is it just keeps producing more and more kittens. Right now I have like four or five feral cats that I feed every day in my front yard. We need to have some get snip back i'm so sorry snip back fixing them again it's it's there's cats that i recall when my kids were in high school near the band room there's always feral cats there also They're all over, and I have helped the rescues financially and going out and trapping cats. And it's heartbreaking when you find a cat that has a big cyst on its eye, and you know that they're going to have to euthanize it. It's so heartbreaking because mission, it's just awful. You need to find the funds to help the local veterinarians fund getting these cats fixed. It's just heartbreaking to see all these animals in this town. And I just don't know what to say. Try to find the money. I know you had money before for a fixing the cats um can we find some money there's brand new houses i see thousands of new houses coming up let me not thousands hundreds there's going to be some money somewhere thank you okay thank you miss let's the next speaker sorry chris doherty followed by nicola russo

Hey there.

Good evening. I was going to come up and be polite. Forget it.

You guys are clutching pearls. Stop making excuses. Get some money out there. 1%, really? 1.1% is a 10% increase for them. Do something. It's real easy to sit there and say, oh, I care about my animals. If you cared, you'd do something. I volunteer at the shelter. Spend three, four hours, three, four days a week. Those people care at the shelter who work there. Today, they asked, can you come in early? It's going to be hot out. Come in tomorrow. We'll get the shelter clean. You just take the dogs out before it gets too hot. They love those animals. They work their butts off. So stop complaining about people. If you complain, have you volunteered, get your butts down there. I'm done, except for, excuse me, Manny, you kick butt. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Doherty. The next speaker.

Nicola Russo, followed by Melissa Williams.

Hi there. I did submit written comment last week. I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to make it tonight. So you probably have that on your desks. My name is Nicole LaRusso. I am a resident here in the city of Hollister. As others have stated, it's not a question of whether the shelter cares about these animals. We know that the staff there cares about the animals. We know that they care about their job. We know that they care about this community. The problem, the biggest complaint, the biggest issue that I've seen in the community, in Facebook groups that I'm sure you're probably a part of is different things such as inconsistencies, regular inconsistencies. When it comes to calls for service, for example, outside of normal operating hours, The response varies from person to person. I found a cat. Call. They're injured. Oh, just put it back. It'll be fine. I found a dog. I don't know what to do with it. Nobody is available to come and check it for a microchip. What do I do with it? Oh, it's okay. Just put it back. Has basically been the response to our community members. And they will not send someone out. Like I said, primarily after hours. Another issue, they closed the night kennels several years ago. So of course, these dogs that are found that are not injured have nowhere to go. Either keep it or put it back. I'm sure you have probably read my multiple emails that I've sent, which thank you for those who have responded. I appreciate that. One of the things that I suggested in one of my emails was something simple, such as more social media engagement from the shelter, which they ended up doing for a few weeks. I think it was probably about six weeks or so, which was great. They shared weekly updates regarding animals and their care. They shared posts about what was needed. We need donations. We need food. We need this. It lasted for about six weeks. Their last post was on August 18th in regards to their weekly updates. Their last post in general was August 21st. They haven't posted since then. So you were talking about transparency. I think that's important as well. And obviously that's something that they are not doing great at. So thank you. I want to reiterate, thank you for putting this on the agenda. Thank you for making this a priority. We really appreciate it. I want to continue to encourage you to have these meetings and these sessions, because obviously this is important to us. This is important to the community and we appreciate you taking the time to have these conversations. So I would like to close and say, please don't ask the community to trust the system. Show us that the system is worthy of that trust. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Urso. Next speaker.

Melissa Williams, if you could please unmute.

Hello, I am the co-founder and former president of California, Cat Crew California, a local rescue in Hollister that does a lot of the heavy lifting because of our shelters deficits. I just wanna say tonight that I believe that the data that was presented earlier is very much skewed. If you're comparing 2016 grand jury report numbers there was approximately, I believe, 2,900 intakes of animals and compared to 2025, in which the shelter only in took 840 animals. That is a reduction of almost 75%. As one of the previous speakers stated, they don't intake hardly any animals anymore, okay? And so on the 2025 data report on the current website, There was 840 intakes of which 500 were either released to their owners, sent to rescue or adopted out. OK, that leaves 340 animals unaccounted for. What happened to those animals? It doesn't state. There have been other grand jury findings over the years since 2016. The hours, the current shelter hours are Monday through Friday from 12 to 5 p.m. That is simply not enough for a commuter community. The night kennels were closed. I believe in 2021, 2022. No, sorry, 2022. Okay. Again, that is another deficit in this community. On 4th of July, I cannot tell you how many hundreds of animals we have running the street, getting hit by cars, injured, killed, you name it. And who's picking up the slack? It is the local rescues. Booth on the ground. And trying to help those animals. Okay. Farmer's market. I was at farmer's market May 6th. I went to the adoption trailer. You guys had a lot of dogs displayed. How many cats do you think that there were on May 6th? There was one inside that adoption trailer. One. And I will tell you this much. May 6th. Cat crew, Whiskers and Claws and Natalie's Rescue. I'm sorry, Natalie, I'm blanking right here. All of them, I know, I can guarantee had over 50 cats in each of them. And we had one for adoption in the adoption trailer. Okay, that's not a coincidence. The shelter, since COVID happened, has really, really, really not wanted to intake any animals at all. You can call it understaffed, I think there's a culture problem. There was a gentleman about two years ago that lived, he's a local business owner in Hollister. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He called the shelter. and asked them to intake his two fixed spade young, healthy adult.

Okay, thank you, Ms. Williams. Your three minutes are up. I apologize. You can reach out to anybody or come back to another meeting to finish your comment, but we're going to move on to the next speaker.

Sandy Takayo-Wren, if you could please unmute.

Good evening, everyone. Like a few of my fellow volunteers, I'm actually a volunteer as well at the Hollister Animal Shelter. And I live three-minute walk from the animal shelter. And Mayor, like you said, you've heard some experiences about the process to become a volunteer. I can tell you from my experience, it took me a year to become a volunteer. But that was because of lack of staff there. The person who was in charge of the volunteer program had left. I don't know why. And I was told that it would be a while before they got to me due to that position not being filled. But I really wanted to be a volunteer there because I had recently lost my dog and my husband and I knew our hearts weren't in it yet to take another dog. So I waited the year. Once I got called in for an interview, I was in as a volunteer, I'd say in less than a month. Since then, I've seen all the animals. I've seen some of them improve so drastically that I think it was Santa Cruz came and said the difference between some of the dogs they ended up taking night and day. There are times when I come in and I'm a full-time worker. I commute all the way to San Jose. So I'm gone by 4 a.m. I don't get home till maybe one or two and then I still work till five. So during my lunch hours, I go volunteer for two to three hours when I work from home. First thing I do, I check out and back. If there are two volunteers who have the dogs covered, I come into the shelter part of the kennels. And if there's a dog who really is having a hard time, I will just sit with them for 30 minutes just to encourage them to come to me I help with dishes, washing dishes, putting away laundry to give the actual officers time to go do their jobs. I'm now at the point where I'm an executive admin. I'm helping them use Outlook software to make some of their job easier. They didn't realize there's features in Outlook that can take them two seconds to send an email out. They don't have to type it from scratch. They don't have to copy and paste it. They need more staff. I just think the volunteers can only do so much. And tonight's the first night I heard you guys only give 1% to the budget to them. Me as a volunteer, I see their shelves. I don't go use the snacks that they have for the dogs. I'm working. I have a family. I have to commute with gas. I pay out of my pocket to bring my own treats for those dogs. Because I love those dogs, each and every one of them. I take a dog, I try and take a dog every other week.

Thank you, Ms. Takayo. Next speaker.

Gina Arnold-Lazar, if you could please unmute.

Hi, everybody. Thanks so much for the opportunity tonight. It'd be great if we could all sit down with the city council at some point and have a roundtable and go into a little bit more detail. I represent Babes Fund. I never expected that this would become a nonprofit, but it has. And we only support... the Hollister Police and Animal Services. We actually have given a significant amount of money over the last four years to bridge the medical gap for a lot of the animals that might have had to be euthanized based on things that were diagnosed. And so that's kind of who I am. This meeting was born of a tragedy, and it's been a tragedy for every family involved on all sides. But I want to speak to the compassion aspect of our shelter. I don't know if you know this, but we're now allowed to take dogs out for a day or a pup cup. We have a foster program. I've fostered several of these dogs myself. I specialize in deaf dogs. The volunteer process has been streamlined and the volunteer forms are now available online. Do we need a revised dangerous dog protocol? Yes. And most of you know that are sitting there in the audience, as well as up on the dais, that the shelter has been already proactive in this process. You also know that we've built a comprehensive volunteer model for the shelter, and it's already underway. And the mayor and the city manager are both aware of this. This is a real volunteer base, structured and built with the officers and the community. A list of retired veterinarians is now being compiled that would be willing to come once a month for spays and neuters. That work is happening right now. It's my understanding that the mayor does have a dangerous dog of her own. And I'm wondering if the mayor should recuse herself in these conversations. But I'm here tonight about something this council can act on directly. The police have prepared a factual timeline and report of all of the events, and they've been ordered not to release it. This may have been in regard to any litigation, but it speaks to your transparency reference. But what about the department's Facebook posts that I see go up and disappear within minutes? The veterinarian's report is being withheld. That silence is what created the speculation that is now circulating. When you look up the record, rumor becomes the record. I listened this evening to concerns about litigation. This is a prime example of a potential. The officers who run the shelter aren't invited to the discussions about restructuring. and they aren't permitted to correct the record. You cannot restructure a department without asking the people who operate it to participate. And not all animal calls are about animals. What happens when the next one involves someone on drugs or someone that's armed? Can a rescue organization handle that call? Why should we ask our policemen?

Thank you, Ms. Arnold. Next speaker.

Delia P., if you could please unmute.

Good evening. Can you hear me?

Yes. Oh, Delia, are you there?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes. Yes. Go ahead.

Okay. Good evening. Mayor, you just spoke about your beloved adopted dog. And I don't know if the rest of the council members have a beloved dog, but if you do, please put yourself in the Pearson family's shoes. What if your beloved dog accidentally got out and something like this happened and a professional animal specialist didn't deem your dogs dangerous, but they were still killed? How would that make you feel? Would you be okay with that? you accept that please listen to what miss pearson just spoke and take action and make the changes necessary so that this never happens again thank you thank you next speaker my final speaker is tim pearson

Good evening, members of the council, city residents. This is either going to be real quick, or I'll use a full three minutes. The questions that the police department said that they would answer, was that just from you all, or can we ask them questions as well?

Not from here, but you can certainly ask, and then we can relate them. Okay, go ahead, Mr. Pierce.

Well, my wife basically said exactly what the root issue is here. It appears that our police department has been serving as judge, jury, and executioner over their own subordinate department's cases. How is that fair? How is that unbiased? And how is that not just crapping all of the Constitution? Now, I respect the replies that the council gave that they're really sorry, but there's really nothing they could do. It didn't even have to get to the Supreme Court or the Superior Court in the first place. You have a sergeant that takes a PetSmart puppy training certificate and in his decision deems that that made Stewie, our GSP, who's never been hunting in his life, by the way, a trained killer that once he's had the taste for blood, he and Bubba sought out another cat. That's almost verbatim what he wrote in his decision. How ludicrous that you've got an idiot like that. Pardon me.

okay can you yeah okay and i'm not i cannot can you stop the clock please i cannot hear comments from the from the chambers please let the speaker speak his mind can you just add a few um a little bit more to his time and mr pearson you can continue thank you so that kind of plays into the next thing that captain patty said about the transparency and we put the dangerous dog hearings up on the web

Well, if it's going to be full of biased information that your your own subordinates gave to you and then you said, oh, OK, well, this looks good to me and kill the dogs. How's that going to be transparent? It's just spreading more misinformation about what happened. I really wasn't even prepared to speak tonight. I just, I coached a field hockey team. We were, I luckily got back here. I wanted to support my wife who basically said all that I wanted to say that we've got a constitutional problem here in the city. It's been going on for what I understand at least 10 years since Captain Miller left. He was, when he was retired, this is what I've been told, did, was the unbiased third party that would oversee the hearings. He wasn't part of the police department where he was retired, but he was charged him around 80 grand a year. Well, when the budget's tightened up, maybe I don't know who the chief was at the time, said, oh, let's save a few bucks. Let's just start doing these in-house. And that's why we're here right now is because the due process procedure was just not thrown away. Our families' dogs are dead now. There's nothing that can be done to bring them back. but I would at least have some sort of explanation of how you were able to get away with doing that for the last 10 years. How is that not against the constitutional rights that we're supposed to have? If I can get that answer, that'd be fantastic. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Pearson. Do you have any more speakers or was that the last one?

That was the last speaker. And if I may, Mayor, it is just past 10 o'clock. Okay. You may want to consider a motion to extend.

Okay, so I need a motion to extend.

I'll move.

Okay, can I get a second?

I'll second.

Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, we're going to wrap this item up and go to the next items as quickly as we can. Okay, so the item was on the agenda as an opportunity for us to have discussion and to hear more from the public. about what we wanna do and then just remember that we're looking at the services as well as some oversight. And so we wanna give some direction for staff to follow up on and then we will continue to be addressing these issues. So I'd like to just hear from whoever has any ideas or any thoughts about how we wanna direct staff to move forward on this. on this one item, and then we'll come back. Go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you. Thank you for everybody for staying this late. Thank you for everybody coming out here. I have a question for the ad hoc committee members. When you have these meetings, I've been to one or two, do we typically have the volunteers from the animal shelter there, or is it just the community partners that we have?

We've had a combination of different people there, and the volunteers, I believe, some volunteers were at our last forum that we had at the community center.

Okay. Interesting. Okay. Again, thank you guys for your service. Thank you for coming tonight. Thank you for everything that you do for our community partners. Thank you to our law enforcement officers, our animal control. But I do want to get to the point. And I think what Councilmember Morales was talking about earlier, it does need to be answered. And what the Pearsons are bringing up, we do need, we have an obligation to look into that. We have an obligation to scrutinize that. So this is my understanding, but I do want to get support from my colleagues on this. My understanding is that regardless of what happened, the court did take up this matter legally, and they deemed the dogs to be dangerous. I understand that. But what I, what I want to get clarity on. And what I would like for my colleagues to support me on is, in fact, did we follow our... And you don't have to answer this now. I just want to get support from them to have an internal audit done to ensure that we, in fact, followed our process processes and that we have the staff on there qualified to make those determinations. Because regardless of what the, I think you know where I'm getting with this. The court can do what the court wants. Did we follow the process? And we have an obligation to answer that in regards to what happened to Bubbins Dewey. We just have to. We have to. We have the power to do that. We have to scrutinize our own processes. That was not something that was scrutinized by the courts. I'm asking for your support on that. Number one, that's the most important thing. Number two, I think we need a different model. We need to look at a different model of servicing our animals. And yes, budget is a huge concern, obviously. So we need to look at a model fast, soon. So what does it cost to join the JPA in Santa Cruz? Let's bring back some options quickly because we need to get the animal control away from the police department. This is something I've heard over and over again. This doesn't mean they're doing a horrible job. It sounds like we can still collaborate and work with them. But I want to look at a different model before I leave the city. This is something that we should have done a long time ago and that we've never done. So I'm asking my colleagues to support me. Number one, we need to do an internal audit. Or it could be third-party non-bias audit. Did we follow our processes? Do we have the staff members that are qualified to make decisions? Did we follow due process? I want those answers to what happened in regards to Bubba and Stewie. I don't care what happened at the court. That's out of our control. We cannot bring the dogs back. That's already been determined by them. But did we follow our process? We have an obligation to scrutinize that and look into it. And then I want to look at exploring a JPA and what the cost is going to cost, what the real cost is going to cost as far as that goes. Those are my two most important things. I've got so much more to say, but yeah, where is the Helen Ross money? There's $300,000. Where is the Helen Ross money? Why hasn't it been spent?

What are we doing with it? We actually just finished an audit of various funds where there are resources for spray and neuter, education, and so on and so forth. We have about half a million dollars in the Ross fund. We have been having difficulties trying to determine exactly what the intent was. Okay.

We can't do that anymore. This has been this. It was that 300,000 years ago. We can't keep doing this. So I see chief coming up here. Maybe he wants to speak to the Helen Ross Fund. I'm assuming we need to get the money.

So council member, indeed. I mean, as you know, once you give me a task, it gets done.

Yeah.

So I 100% agree. We have received enough feedback to indicate that we continue to tell you. We don't know what it is about. It is time to figure this out.

Here's what I'll tell you. There's been lots of things. They said they were going to buy a facility where we're going to build a facility. It doesn't matter at this point. We've got the money. Let's continue with SNP bus. Let's get this lady a good contract that's doing this for us. And then let's look at a different model to partner with our police officers. And then we need to check our internal systems to make sure that they're legal and legitimate. Mr. Chief, if you wanted to speak to any of that.

And I just like to what you spoke to. We are in negotiations with Dr. Nadine. So we cannot offer snippets. So let's finish that negotiation and based on the result of that, then we can move on if for whatever reason it's unsuccessful. So we're talking to Dr. Nadine. We're in negotiation. That is ongoing. We'll continue that process. But I just wanted to clarify that.

My two main points is I want an internal negotiation audit of our processes. I want to scrutinize our internal process regarding what happened to Bub and Stewie. I want to do that. We have an obligation to do that. Second one is I want to look at a JPA. Third one is where's the Helen Ross money? That's it. And why hasn't it been spent? And we have the power to allocate those funds.

Go ahead, Chief. Go ahead.

Helen Ross money was donated for Helen Ross and her family. And it is for the, her donation was strictly for the benefit of the shelter animals at the shelter, not feral cats. And you're right. We were going to buy a building. We were going to move. We were going to create a spay and neuter center. It was $400,000 originally. And it's growing because there's some interests and stuff like that. But if we used it for SNP us, it would be gone in four years and it'll be gone. And we wanted to make it impactful and,

I'm going to have to ask people in the chambers to please not shout out. We're going to have people at the podium speak, and then please don't shout out from the chambers. Thank you. Go ahead, Chief.

In meeting with her family, we wanted this to be impactful, something that would give back to the community for generations, not just being spent. And one of the plans was to create a spay and neuter clinic at Park Hill. One of those buildings were demolished. One of them burned down, the other one demolished. And then we were going to do a portable at the animal shelter. And then we were going to hire a veterinarian and a vet technician. And then that went away about two years ago because of the budget concerns. So all that money for Helen Ross was going to go to to pay for the equipment and set up a spay and neuter clinic because the vet veterinarian was eliminated in the vet tech. It's just in hiatus right now. But our goal is to use that money in an impactful way and to make sure that Helen Ross and her generous donation is remembered here in the community forever. Right.

And I do remember everything you're talking about. Here's my challenge to you and to the community members to please remind me because I'm getting older and I'm forgetting to. I want to see that money spent before I leave this dais. That's it. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Advice, Mayor. Thoughts about direction. Okay. Councilor Morales, thoughts?

So I think while I appreciate the thoughts, I also want to hear, I would like more information from the animal ad hoc. You've been working on all animal issues for, I want to say, a couple of years now.

Like a year. A year.

A year.

A little more than a year, maybe.

And hearing not only community members' concerns with volunteers, and also working with staff, touring, and understanding. I think having more in-depth than I think most of us, just because of your research and dedication to the issue, I think the situation that helped kind of move this hearing to where we are today, I think that is out of our control. The court made a decision about the outcome. What's within our purview, I think, There's a couple of things. So one, I personally would like to see more communication. It sounds like not just... So a couple of things. One, I want to look to see how we can better support our volunteers. Two, it sounded like the community was very interested in more communication. with Facebook, with Farmers Market to let our community know what's happening with the pets that are currently in our care. So transparency is very important, whatever means that is. I think we really do need to talk about, we really don't have a lot of resources. So I think we need to be creative about how we engage. I really like the model that we have with the finance committee. We're looking at various volunteers. We're looking at the problem statement. We're looking at possible solutions. We're looking at the vitality of those solutions within our current reality. So I like that model. There's information that's presented that informs us about what's happening, right? What's within, what's our universe? What is our mandates in terms of what we have to fund? What are some things that are not funded? How can we leverage the community or other partners in order to support or provide resources for the gaps? So I like to have those conversations. And I know that will probably be another, you know, I hate to say this, it will probably be another study session.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, thank you for that. Council Member Bichet, thoughts?

um well um obviously we need to listen to the civil grand jury and it sounds like you know there are some things that we learned in 2016 and we've made some improvements so let's continue to make those forward progresses um you know some some communities that are similar to ours have figured some of these things out And mirroring some of the things that they've found have been best practices, we can find solutions there as to how to run our shelters. And finding, you know, and utilizing rehoming techniques that'll work. And, you know, clearly we have to review our euthanasia policy. and how that whole thing goes through. So it sounds like there are some options. People have some kind of recourse. We have a little bit more flexibility on the Holster side than the state. But clearly, I need to learn more. And I'd like to be part of learning more about what the Ad Hoc Committee has been learning throughout the last year or so.

Sure. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Bichet. Vice Mayor?

Yeah, thank you. I just want to be clear. It's no longer an animal ad hoc committee. So I just want to be clear that expired. So, so we open it up, you know, to community members and everybody to join us for town halls. So, which was our last one was pretty impactful. So, I'm going to speak on a broader sense because this is such an emotional topic, especially when it comes to animals. That's where people's emotions go into overdrive, right? We're passionate. We love them. They're pure love. And there's just something being around them, right? That brings us that comfort. And to have that taken away from you, I can't even imagine. So I will say that... There historically, it seems like animals, animal care has fell by the wayside. I'm not saying any, I'm not blaming anybody. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone. Okay. It comes to a point where it's taken a tragedy and an injustice and For us to actually hone in and focus in and figure out, okay, what can we do as a community? And how can we work together to better support our animals? Not ourselves, the animals in our community who need love and care and support. Um, that's really what it comes down to. And I, you know, I, along with the mayor, you know, we, we, yeah, we love animals and we want to be able to see some change. I know, you know, mayor here is, you know, she's not going to be around next time, but I'm going to be here. And I, I would like to continue this because for me, it's important that I make something happen or I see some change before, you know, I leave. So, um, This is really near and dear to my heart. I have so much going on in my mind right now. So I'm just trying to just focus on what I should be saying here. But let me see. Let me look at my notes here. I think, let me see. Yeah, so I thank everybody for... Coming out, the passion and frustration, valid. I hear y'all, seriously. And I appreciate the staff and the police department because everybody has been doing something and nobody's doing anything wrong. I... Just seeing it as an organizational, structural problem that is not getting enough attention. And so we got to make it our priority to give it attention because we can't be doing this anymore. And we need to be sitting down at the table with each other and talking rather than just, you know... saying whatever on social media i'm not really that's why i'm not really on it but call me i will talk to you um but yeah um i really want to work with you guys and i really want to make a difference and try you know to be there for our animals and care for them and um yeah that's all i'll say for now thank you

Okay, thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay, so here's my thoughts. First of all, my heart's go out to the Pearsons. I thank you so much for being in close contact with us throughout your process and being so vulnerable and sharing your story. I know it was not easy. Our animals are parts of our family, and I just feel... I just feel for you. So thank you so much for your comments up here and for coming to our meetings and speaking from your heart about your experience and allowing us to learn from your experience, hopefully to be able to improve our services. So part of what came up tonight are themes that we, I think Vice Chair and I will share and agreed these themes. So Council Member Morales and Pache, you were asking for our thoughts. So the area around spay-neuter funding, that's one issue. resources at the shelters should need to go up. And again, there's this constant concern about there's never enough resources and animals are generally low priority. However, the fact that there's minimal resources devoted to Animal services. The hours of the shelter, major concern. It's something like a volunteer coordinator program in which I think one of the speakers spoke to, we need an employee that's actually doing that. That was another idea. A dedicated adoption service program. coordinator or program, some kind of task related to specifically adoption services, spay, neuter ordinance to help to reduce the population. So we spoke about that. We have the item coming back and we wanna make sure that we revisit that. We wanna re-examine our dangerous dog protocol. Now, let me just... say this aside on that. There is a part of the dangerous style protocol in which we as a city have to follow the state law as our city attorney mentioned earlier. So in that sense, at least right now, until we lobby at the state level to change some of those laws, It is only in what is under our purview. I believe there's areas for improvement through that process, and we certainly can look into that process and look at that. I also want to make sure that we are looking at the two different types of behavioral Assessments that we're looking at, we're looking at the dangerous dog assessments, which is one type of behavioral assessment. And then there's the more general that Captain Patty spoke to earlier. The idea of improving presence on social media, I think just in general, better conveyance of information to the public, something that we've heard a lot about, improving relationships with our nonprofits as well as our community in this area. So those things that came up today are very similar to the things that we've heard in the different meetings that we've held and the phone calls that we've had and the interactions that we've had with that whole community. So in terms of your suggestion, Dr. Resendez, about looking into what happened in the one case, I don't think there should be a question about that. I think we definitely should be doing that. And in a way to, first of all, find and make sure that we did what we were supposed to do, but also as a way to learn and to improve our process, right? So it's a twofold. And that's an important one, but that's not the only case. As I said, I addressed other cases and I wanna make sure that we look at those. Bringing back some options and looking at information. So the idea of what are other communities doing? That's what Council Member Prechet mentioned. The JPA has come up often in our conversations with the community and came up today. So that idea, again, as an exploration, right? Again, remember, we are not making decisions. We need to explore. I also think that we need to make sure that we know exactly what's happening with Helen Ross and that we have a plan for how we're spending that half a million dollars. Right? So, I mean, we have... I mean, sure... Okay, we asked, we gave direction to city manager a couple of months ago. So thank you for your efforts to do that. However, this has been an ongoing issue. And so it's like time. So let's, let's make sure that we get that on there. And I think more importantly is what's our plan. What's our plan with that now, now that we know that we need to address that? I do like the idea of some kind of a commission or advisory board in the effort of being more transparent, as well as improving community relationships with our community in this area. I think that idea is really crucial, some way to better convey information, internal information, get it out to the public in helping through a commission or an advisory board or some kind of a committee like that, where there's some oversight, there's some information sharing, et cetera. I think that would really help. And then also, I do think that we really need to consider strongly this idea of separating the two duties. I would like to see our law enforcement folks doing law enforcement work and have animal care experts taking care of animals and how do we do that in the best way most cost effective way possible there is no way to separate them completely but i do think that i want our our police to be doing police work and I want animal experts to be taking care of our animals or at least finding a program that is solid in that area. So let's consider that as a possible option and then move from there. So those are the things that I would ask that we do. So just to summarize city manager, the internal, I don't know what the right word is, Looking into what happened and then learning from that in terms of our dangerous dog protocol and just our behavioral assessments in general. Bringing back information about JPAs and what other communities are doing. addressing the Helen Ross Fund and what are the plans for moving forward with half a million dollars, considering a commission or advisory board or some other oversight-type body, and then the idea of separating those two, with an effort also to look at the internal processes as it relates to, well, sure, in that one category, right, but also looking at internal processes of the volunteer, program adoption program spay-neuter ordinance actually spay-neuter ornaments we're already addressing separately and so that's already we've already given direction to bring that back so i'm going to separate that out um and then um and then in general like just a way to to convey better information through social media and other means Okay, so I know that's a lot. And that's a lot. But I think it really does come down to looking at our internal processes and finding ways, areas in which we can improve. And then bringing that back, because then we make decisions about what's feasible, what's not feasible, what do things cost? Can we afford it? If we can't? Is there other ways to resource that money? Is there ways that we can be more cost effective, those sorts of things, we can continue that conversation. But if we start there, Okay, okay. I know that's a long list. I know that's a long list, but I think we can parcel it out. But I think ultimately these are the same things that we got from the, pretty generally the same things that we've got from the two forums that we've had and the various meetings that we've had related to animal services.

So for clarification, so what would you like me to bring back first?

We want some exploration into the dangerous dog protocol, did we follow, and then areas to improve that. Explore other options like JPA and what other communities are doing. Some kind of plan for the Helen Ross. The idea of a commission or advisory board, how does that?

Let me just take the first two, a point of clarification for the funds. So you're asking staff to come up with a plan or should you come up with a plan?

I mean, I think ideas about what, because there are limits to how we can use that fund, right? So I think we can't just like open like whatever, you know, wishlist, you know, pie in the sky. It needs to be based in reality. So I think that's where that would come from. Like what are those, what can we do with that? And then certainly the policy is going to come from us.

That was the point of clarification. Okay. We will bring to you the specific parameters. However, my assumption was that you, the county... Sure, sure.

Okay. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, yeah. And I should have, yeah, used my words better. But that is... Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. And then also, I think that's the last one in terms of separating the care from law enforcement roles. I think that this kind of goes with the GPA and what other communities are doing, because I think they're the same. They're basically the same thing. It's just really about looking at all the options that are available. Okay, all right, does that work? And then any, everybody okay with that? Thumbs up or do you have any other thoughts? Okay, thumbs up. Go ahead, go ahead.

So right now we're just exploring, right?

Exploring, we're not making any decisions.

Information back. I think my only concern is that there needs to be enough, if and when it comes back, we need to have few agenda items because this is a topic that our community's very interested and there's gonna be a lot of speakers.

Okay, we'll try to plan. We can also call a special on this if we need to.

If I could suggest, I think the topics that are more complex in nature deserve study sessions. I realize that the council has not. use that as a standard. I'm used to having councils who have study sessions on a periodic basis, and we go deep into all the details needed for any specific topic. So after two, three, four months, a topic has been poorly discussed and decisions can be made in a manner that is smart and educated. So if you wanted to start, maybe this is the topic in which we start having study sessions that are part of the regular schedule.

Sure. I think that's a good idea. Fine. And then, Dr. Resendez, so we can like... Real quick.

What I don't want to happen, and I don't think this is your style at all, Ms. Cortez. I don't want this to be listed as an agenda item for discussion. People come out here and they're heard. Then we get nothing out of it. You know what I mean? I just don't want it to fall on deaf ears. Like, let's go. I've been hearing the same thing from the same people for almost 10 years. That's it. And I'm going to... be here and I'm hoping that they'll hold me accountable, that the police will also work with me so that we can get something done before I leave this seat. That's all. I don't want it to fall into the next whatever. Like, let's get stuff done. That's all. And I don't think that's your style at all.

That is correct. And I'll tell you what else is not my style, the whole we don't have money. We never have money, folks. In the nonprofit world, you never start with we don't have money. It's just life. So money is neither here nor there. We have to make the changes. We have to seek the resources. We have to be creative. We have to think outside the box. And yes, we're going to have to do things that are not in our job description. That's what it takes. It's not about money. It's about will. Ganas.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, good. Okay, thank you. Then we're going to close that. So that's how we're going to end. And then we will be bringing this back for sure. And just as an FYI, the ordinance discussion will be coming back, I believe, sooner. I don't know what the date is, but we should be hearing that one first. And then we'll get a study session or something else specific to this. okay thank you all for your time and for your patience and we are going to take a quick break and then we'll come back for the next items okay take five minutes five minutes thank you

Thank you. No, it's just, you know, I only wear these for like, that's probably for meetings and

I think it's a sign of respect for the council. So I would start to come out and I was like, maybe it's just the daily pattern on it.

I didn't make it. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you.

That's the fun, you know, yeah.

you know Okay.

oh god

we didn't do the financing work with the finance as much as we did yeah you're a bigger you're a bigger thing yeah so we didn't work with you guys much so but it's pretty ddw Okay. Okay.

We'll be here at 5.

Okay. Yeah. I have not. Yeah, we've always been saying that.

As long as you do it within five days, you can do it. Okay. Okay, we're going to get back in. We're going to keep moving forward. And thank you, especially to the public, for your patience. We have a very long agenda, but a lot of important things to discuss. So we're going to go to 9-2, a resolution authorizing the city manager or their designee to apply for and execute a financial assistance agreement with the State Water Resources Control Board for the Voluntary Water Services Upgrade Project. And so I'm gonna ask for a staff report.

Madam Mayor, members of the Council, we're going to keep it very, very short. Our partners from the Water Board are here. They are part of the presentation. So let's go. Let's speak as quickly as we can.

Can we put the presentation up real quick? So pretty much that's it. I mean, we have a lot of data here. All we're asking for is to start the administrative process. We're going to make sure that the ratepayers do not pay any of this. We're going to make sure that we protect all of our assets. But we do want to start the process to have that conversation to support the Water Board so that they can take care of this community that desperately needs water. We'll go ahead and start with the presentation and we'll go through it really fast. And I mean, if you have any questions, we have a lot of experts here to respond to the question.

Okay, thank you.

Oh, my name is Anthony White, Public Works Director. Sorry, I'm supposed to introduce myself. Good to see everybody, late night.

Tomorrow's the night, okay.

We haven't. We've been really good.

And I'm just going to go ahead and start talking. Go ahead. I'm just going to talk about what's on there. Um, funding for this project has been provided in full or in part under the safe and affordable funding for equity and resilience, safer and drinking water program through an agreement with the State Water Resource Control Board. Uh, and just, you know, just things that we're talking about is just facts, you know, not given our opinion. And then we talk about RCAC. They've been one of the Royal Community Assistance Partnerships. They've been through this process. They've been helping from the beginning, kind of have a slide on some of the things that they do. But what we're focused on is the water and infrastructure financing. I'm going to talk about introductions. I'm going to talk a little bit about acronyms. We're going to touch on the Venezuela water system. And then we're going to kind of talk about the grant funding overview, and then we'll have questions and answers. I really want to talk about some of our partners. A lot of our time hasn't been put into actually doing this presentation or doing this process. The individuals has really been doing all of the work in the background from I think 2018 has been the team right here. So I just want to make sure I acknowledge them. Rashad, Tara, Brian, I want to make sure I acknowledge him. Lucas Moore from the Division of Financial Assistance. Really having a good relationship with our regulators is extremely important, something that I advocate for. So them coming today means a lot. And then, of course, Mark and Jerry as well. We're going to talk.

Just so we have the presentation up. So I don't know if you're on a specific slide, if you want to just. Yeah, we're on page seven. So slide seven.

Yes. I could throw it. Yeah.

Okay, and then just a few acronyms, Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, State Water Resource Control Board, Division of Financial Assistance, and DDW Division of Drinking Water, just kind of some terms. And then the next slide kind of goes over a little bit about the system, the Venezuela Water System, located at 1500 Nash Road in Hollister, California. It has been an active public water system since 1983. And then the next page also kind of goes over it a little bit more. T2D1 system, 74 residents, 17 service connections. And then it kind of, after that on page 10, some of the different issues that they're dealing with is the reasons why we're here where we're at today. And then some of the compliance issues, and we just want to just kind of just highlight it, nitrates and things of that nature that they've been dealing with since 2018. This is page 11. And then we wanna talk about the history, cause that's important, page 12. They requested assistance in 2019. RCAC assigned as a technical assistance provider through Prop 1. Engineering completed preliminary engineering report in 2022, identifying a master meter consolidation with the city of Hollister. So this has been going on for many years. And then the project transitioned to safer technical assistance. Project team worked on finalizing the construction application. And what we're here today to do is complete a financial security is to start the process or request to start the process to complete a financial security package and secure funding for project implementation. And that's all we're asking. And then the next page on page 13. Just some of their current challenges. And one of the things that they believe strongly is that we're a solution. And we want to support them if we can, as long as it doesn't impact our rate payers and they're paying for it. We want to help them any way we can. Some of the benefits, safe, reliable drinking water, you know, any elimination of nitrate compliance issues in our surrounding area is a benefit to the city. Improved public health protection, long-term regulatory compliance. And one of the things I want to say, these are the same people that we'll go to if we want money, state money. These are the same people we're going to be working with. So it's always good to have a good relationship with people that can give you money.

Amen.

Yeah, it's the truth. And so with that said, if you have any questions, just a little bit more data about some of the issues that they're dealing with. I mean, high nitrate to something that happens, small system. It's just not affordable for them to do a complete fix. It's just a really small system. So with that said, if anybody have any questions, I can go over it. But that's pretty much everything in a nutshell.

Okay, thank you for that presentation and questions. Okay, go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you real quick. So thank you guys for being here. Obviously, you're not the state though. You guys are an organization or you are the state?

Yes, yes.

Thank you for being here. Yes. Are you guys going to pay for the infrastructure? Okay, then let's go. I think that's been our biggest gripe.

It's a partnership, truly a partnership.

Questions? Questions, comments? Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

That was mine. First of all, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate the partnership. Yeah, that was exactly my question. So the City of Polis is going to pay zero?

Well, how it typically works is we will pay for it. They'll reimburse us. But we'll work through all of that details. We're going to start the process. We're going to get everything approved. We're going to definitely be negotiating, making sure that the city of Hollister is protected. But we'll figure all of that out. This is just to get everything started.

So I guess my question is, do we have the funds to be able to pay to get reimbursed?

No.

Yes, we do. We will begin. This is a very different situation than some other problems we have. Here, we will have a cash flow issue. We will have to rely on different funds. The difference is we will, every month, turn our invoices to the state of California so we can get reimbursed.

Okay. Thank you.

yeah I see right here writing all the costs associated with this project will be reimbursed by the is it safe water resource control board is this the state water resource having what is the sw our CB.

Good evening. This is through the State Water Resources Control Board. Our funding program is SAFER. There's a variety of different funding that is associated with that, but SAFER itself is safe and affordable funding for equity and resilience. So it's a program designed to marry up funding for water systems, funding and resources for water systems that need it to return to compliance.