City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Good evening and welcome to the City of Lincoln's regular meeting of the City Council. Tonight's meeting will be televised and available on cable channel 18, YouTube and Zoom. For those wishing to address City Council, you will be called upon the will be called upon at the appropriate time. Those who submitted a speaker card will be called first, followed by those in the audience, and finally those attending through Zoom. For those participating through Zoom that wish to provide public comment, please use the raise your hand feature or press star nine if you are calling in. This evening's invocation will be given by Pastor Mark Andriotta. Once the invocation has concluded, Mayor Pearl will call the meeting to order.

Oh, we on? All right. I feel it's an honor to be here tonight. I didn't know it was the big celebration. Heavenly Father, we come to you today and ask for your guidance, wisdom, and support as we begin this meeting. Help us to engage in meaningful discussion. Allow us to grow closer as a group and nurture in the bonds of community. Fill us with your grace, Lord God, as we make decisions that might affect residents, council, staff, and first responders. in our community and continue to remind us that all we do here today, all that we accomplish is for the pursuit of truth and the greater glory for you and for the service of humanity. We ask these things in your name. Amen.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark. Okay. All the meeting to order. Welcome everyone over here. Hope you call the roll, please.

Council member, Andrea Adam.

Present.

Council Member Reedy.

Present.

Council Member Brown.

Present.

Mayor Pro Tem Eklund.

Here.

Mayor Perl.

Here. Thank you very much. Pledge of Allegiance. Mark, would you lead us in the pledge, please? The United States of America, public or registered. All right, thank you very much. Your report for closed session, Mr. Attorney?

Mayor and Council, direction was given to staff on one of the items, and there was no reportable action as of this moment, but we are going to need to go back into closed session at the conclusion of our regular meeting to continue it, and then we'll have a report out at that time.

Thank you very much. All right. Agenda modifications, anyone on my colleagues have anything to want to change on the agenda? Okay.

Staff. Okay, very good. Thank you very much.

Over here, presentation, recognition of Chief Al's retirement. Sean, do you want to kick this off?

Yes, I sure do. So, Chief, Chief Alves and I have worked together for almost five years now. And I've said enough about him in open session, even last meeting. So I'm not going to get mushy tonight. I'll wait for the 17th. But after 27 years with the Lincoln Police Department in almost every single capacity, you can work in that department. from dispatcher to makeshift IT guy to patrol officer, detective, and a variety of command positions until he became chief. He's worked his entire working life outside of some time at McDonald's before that. for the Lincoln Police Department and has been not only one of the best police chiefs I've ever worked with, but has become a good friend. And so it's sad to see you go tonight. But since you don't like any kind of pomp and circumstance, we've decided to do extra of it tonight. The city council has a proclamation and some thoughts that they're going to share. We have a gift for you. Our assembly member, Joe Patterson is here this evening and I'm sure there'll be others that would like to say a few things. So I'll just hand it back to the mayor and let him go.

Thank you very much. Well, we do have a proclamation over here. No council meeting would be, would be good without a proclamation. So Holly, would you start off please?

Proclamation honoring chief Matt Ows. Whereas the City of Lincoln proudly recognizes Chief Matt Alps upon his retirement and extends its sincere gratitude for a remarkable career devoted to serving the community he has called home for more than four decades and

Whereas Chief Alves' connection to Lincoln began in 1981 when his family moved to the community. He attended Glen Edwards Middle School and graduated from Lincoln High School in 1994. That same year, he began his career in public safety as a volunteer firefighter with Placer County Fire Department Station 75 and...

Whereas, after earning his paramedic license in 1998, Chief Alves continued his his commitment to public service by joining the Lincoln Police Department in 1999 as a dispatcher. In 2001, he became a police officer trainee and attended the Yuba College Basic Police Academy and with the support of the department.

Whereas over the years, Chief Alves served numerous roles within the Lincoln Police Department, steadily taking on greater responsibility and leadership. In 2021, he was appointed public safety chief overseeing both police and fire departments. When the city returned to separate department leadership in 2023, he continued his service as Lincoln police chief and

Whereas throughout his career, Chief Owls has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the people he serves. He has consistently put Lincoln Police Department, its employees, and the residents of Lincoln first, leading with dedication, professionalism, and a deep understanding of the community. Now, therefore, be it resolved that I, Richard Pearl, Mayor, and on behalf of the City of Lincoln, do hereby congratulate Chief Alves on more than 30 years of public service and extend our heartfelt appreciation for his leadership, sacrifice, friendship, and unwavering dedication to our community. Chief Alves.

And Chief, if you would join us up here, please, for a photo op.

And we also have something And I'll ask my colleagues if they would like to say a few words. Holly, would you start off, please?

Yeah, I will. So I'm going to try not to get emotional. Back when Chief Dugley was here, he stepped in. He came from Sacramento, and he did a lot of good work here. But I remember distinctly. that when he was retiring and and our then city manager was talking about oh we we have to find a new chief i i said to her right away i said it has to be matt and she said oh it already is and so it we just knew i mean with all the things that we just read um and i was just telling chief that i was clearing out old photos and looking at stuff from the past almost decade and there was a lot of pictures of us at different events badge pinnings national night out before the beard You know, he looked like a baby just even eight years ago. And so, but I just want you to know it's been an honor to work with you, the trust that we have and the work that you've done for Lincoln and how you sacrifice, because I know you didn't want to, but you were willing to take on both departments and you did a phenomenal job. You kept us safe and we're going to miss you, but congratulations.

I thought I would just share a lighthearted memory that I just thought of yesterday. It was kind of like a flashback, but I remember when I first started volunteering in the city of Lincoln, and it was the tree lighting ceremony one year, and I had met former council member, former mayor, Alyssa Silhite. And I was saying hello to her and she was pointing out just different people that were kind of standing around her. And she said, and over there is our chief of police, Matt Alves. And I said, oh, wow. And I thought in my mind, I've never heard I've met a chief of police before. And he looked so stoic and professional. And she said, do you want me to introduce you? I can introduce you to him. And I said, no, that's OK. And now, you know, several years later, we work together and I've learned so much more. And I recognize all of the leadership and experience and the reputation that I've heard so much about firsthand. And I just am very appreciative at the legacy that you leave and will pass forward. Thank you.

I come from a law enforcement family, and so I know to a small degree the pressures that are on our public safety people, police and fire, and as importantly, on their families. And I know that it's such a difficult role to place that you go out, you strap on your badge, you strap on your weapon, you go out to protect the people, and your family is at home, and they are trusting that you will come back to them. We are so fortunate in this city that we have a very safe city. We've had a very safe city for so long. And it really is as much a testimony to the professionalism of our police chiefs and police department and the personnel that make sure that we're safe in our community. I wanna thank you for your service to this community. You were here when the department was so small You were here as it grew, and then you were here when it shrunk, and then you were here as it is coming back again, and you helped to position it for the next level that we're going to be taking it to. And so I don't know, there's nothing that I think any of us can say except thank you, Matt, for your leadership, your dedication, your professionalism, and you leave big shoes to cover. Thank you, Matt.

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for serving our community all of these years. Thank you for setting the high standard. We'll be working very hard to meet in the years to come, and my very best wishes on your next chapter.

You know, any department organization, camaraderie, when you take a look at how it works, how it's run, and it's a direct reflection of leadership and those that set the standard. I can't think of any police department or organization that would match the level of professionalism and the environment that you've created with RPD, especially with how hard it is day to day with them. So the ability to lead the way you have, allow for lightheartedness as needed for the mental capacity of our officers is amazing, so again.

Is anyone else in the audience who would like to make a presentation at this point? Joe here.

Behind Mark and hoping to be that big when I grow up. Um, well, it's great to see you guys today. Uh, you know, Lincoln's a great, great city. Um, used to live here maybe during the time where it got smaller. Um, now I live about a hundred feet away from it. Um, so I can still be an honorary member, I suppose, of Lincoln, but, um, it's good to see so many people here, you know, got a police and fire representative. Maybe, uh, maybe, uh, you're the only person who could join police and fire together in harmony. Um, But, but, you know, I just obviously wanted to, and I'm sure, you know, these great individuals over here didn't come to watch the city council meeting as great as it may be, you know, they came to support, support what's going on. So, you know, wanted to be here today, obviously to recognize everything you've done for the city of Lincoln. I think it's really important to come to things like this because I think Placer County has a very, is a special place to live. I think Lincoln is a very special place to live and work and, do all sorts of things. It's an amazing community. And so these are the types of things that I don't like to miss out on because I think it's really important to be here to recognize you as an individual, how long you've been with the department, which is very unique. You're basically your homegrown boy right here. You know, I will say when I saw the announcement come across, they used the picture from the city's page and I sent it to my staff and I said, I don't think that's him. That must be somebody else. Why are they using a different picture? But, you know, it's been good. Obviously, we don't know each other that well personally, but we've had opportunities to chat about things. I've had the opportunity to present with you at some events as well and got your perspective on just law enforcement. But, you know, what really just came through is how important Lincoln is to you, not just as a job, but I mean, this is your home, you know, and that's something that You know, you see a lot of people. I mean, you know, you're a professional working individual. Sometimes you go other places to take another job, and that's understandable and things like that. You stayed here, and really this is like through and through, Lincoln. I don't know what you have planned in your future. Hopefully you'll stick around a little longer and hassle. You know the neighbors around that live around you so but i'm not going to read the whole thing because it's very long when you do 27 years these things get like three point font. But I do want to read the last couple paragraphs here. It says, whereas throughout the years with the Lincoln police department chief matt alves has carried on a tradition of honorable and faithful service. distinguishing himself as a versatile and knowledgeable law enforcement leader who's contributed to the enhancements and reputation of the agency he served. Now, therefore, be it resolved by Assemblymember Joe Patterson and Senator Roger Nilo that Police Chief Matt Alves of the Lincoln Police Department be honored on the occasion of his well-earned retirement, commended for his superior record of dedication in highly effective law enforcement service, and extends sincere gratitude and special public appreciation. he moved on me. Anyways, congratulations and thank you so much.

And Matt, since you're going home with a couple of things over there, perhaps you would give us a few words.

Hi, Mr. Mayor and Council. Thank you for having me here this evening and for all the kind words. And as you know how much I absolutely love the spotlight. Thanks, Sean. Yeah, this is the probably the most uncomfortable part of this whole process is the the two weeks leading up to the end. But I didn't come tonight with anything necessarily prepared. I just wanted to kind of wing it and see where it goes because the big speech is going to be on the 17th. So hopefully you all can be there. But one thing I just want to say to you, council is thank you. Thank you for trusting me. I don't think there was a time you told me no. But that was because I presented to you logical, realistic things that would work here in Lincoln. I didn't present to you fantasies. I didn't present to you things that were just ridiculous and obscene and trendy and invasive. I presented you real world solutions to real world problems. And you always told me yes. That's something that I'm going to take forever. That's not something that happens everywhere. That doesn't mean that you say yes to everything because you don't. But again, I brought to you compelling arguments for things we wanted to do. And you told me yes. And that's why we are where we are is the cooperation that we had from our department with our council with our city staff, being able to solve the crime that we have in Lincoln and keep us the third safest city. With that, once we're done, I'm going to get some photos of my family real quick up front. But prior to wrapping up, I just want to read one thing that is from a mentor of mine who lived a long, long time ago, somebody who I admire with his leadership and just how he lived his life and how he ran his country. So I'll be quoting from George Washington in his farewell address. These are the last two paragraphs, and they don't exactly work, but it totally works in the overall here. Though in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I'm unconscious of intentional error. I'm nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence in that after 45 years of my life, 30-ish, dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest. Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, And actuated by that fervent love towards it, which is so natural to a man who views it in the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promised myself to realize, without alloy the sweet enjoyment of partaking in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward as I trust of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers. Thank you.

Thank you, Matt.

Chief, I just want to say, I know that you are retiring from your family. That's the excuse. I think you're actually, you planned this so you don't have to be part of the flock debate.

Okay. And Matt, you want to get the family up here? Absolutely.

Okay.

And then, Matt, I think you have the option of vacating that seat.

Yeah, so, Mayor, maybe I can explain. So, Matt, Chief comes, and it's funny, I never call him Matt. Chief comes, and we have many, sometimes many hours a week together, but always at least one every week. And This last week, he's, you know, got that senior in high school one week left till I'm out kind of vibe. And he said to me the other day, as we were talking about tonight, he goes, you know, since you're going to make another announcement that night, maybe I could just come for that part and leave the city council meeting early.

And I said, oh, will you? Yeah.

But I do think it's reasonable. He sat through a lot of these. And what I'm very excited to announce, which is sort of bookending Matt's career in the beginning of another, is literally at about, well, two and a half hours ago, 4.15, Captain Zach Eaton was offered and accepted and signed a contract to become Lincoln's new police chief and begins effectively on the 17th.

So congratulations to Zach, who's in the front row there.

And if the city council doesn't have a problem with it, he will take chief seat tonight and sit as acting chief until, at least for the remainder of the meeting. Oh, yeah. Oh, this is the thing for him to hold it on.

Captain Eaton, soon to be Chief Eaton, congratulations, sir. We look forward to years of working with you and the leadership that you're going to bring to the department and just additive to the entire Lincoln administration. It's the start of another era. Absolutely. Very good. Thank you. I have to admit, some meetings are really better than others.

All right, good.

Well, that was one of the, that was just a super time, super time.

Mayor, I also think it's, as they're walking out, you don't always get fire department to come to a police chief retirement ceremony. They work well together. I think that's awesome.

Yeah, that shows the respect that Matt was held in the department and in the city. Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up, Holly. Okay, presentation 9B, Wings and Wheels event recap. Boy, am I glad this is over. I've got a life that I can now live again. We had two weeks ago, we had fabulous weather this time, a little bit of wind in the morning and the evening, so we couldn't do the hot air balloons, but everything else went really well. It went fabulously, actually. We're still tallying up a lot of the successes, but we had certainly north of 8,000 people. We did pretty well financially. I think one of the best things I think that happened for the entire event was we had so many families out there. And it was just really heartwarming to see the number of youngsters and oldsters out there just looking at those great cars and airplanes and everything that was out there. Once again, we had a very safe event, which from our standpoint was just fabulous because we have spinning props and moving cars and five-year-olds walking around and what can possibly go wrong. But everything worked really well. And one of the reasons that it worked well is because of the effort that was put in by the staff and everyone here, certainly leading off by Matt Medill and the Public Works Department and the airport people, our police and fire departments were out there. Everyone worked together. Chamber of Commerce did a fabulous job. We had probably 100 volunteers all together for moving the cars, moving the airplanes, moving the people around. It was just a great day. It was a great day to showcase Lincoln, a great day to showcase aviation and our airport. And so I think everyone had a great time. We'll be back next year.

And we'll see if we can ramp it up a little bit more.

But we did put together a video and a slideshow just so that we can get into the record exactly what, if you weren't there for some reason, you'll get a chance to experience a little visually now as we go through it. OK. We'll heat up the video first. Paul, thank you.

Picked off the weekend and the sun's going down. Food trucks are rolling, gives the hills a town. Hot air balloons light the evening sky. Moon, they got the colors right. Wings and wheels, what a show. Classic car, planes and road. Family fun, dreams take flight. Lincoln's shot. It's in the summer night. This morning comes early, balloons drift high. fly by the thunder across the sky hot rocks gleam zander's call summer's best for one and all Wings and a wheel. Oh, what a show. Classic cars, planes, and a road. Family fun. Dreams take flight. Lincoln's time. The summer night. PIP like it's tenor. Oh, it's heavenly. It's like your spirit flows. Ten thousand voices fill the air. Lincoln's magic everywhere. Oh, what a struggle. Plastic cars, planes ever roll. Family fun. Dreams take flight. Lincoln shot. To the sun. To the sun. To the sun.

out.

And that was done by Paul Elkin. He did a fabulous job on it. We had more and different types of aircraft this year, without a doubt. We had a skydive entry. And everything was just perfect during the opening ceremony when we had the national anthems being sung. And we had two T-38s come over screaming just at the exact moment. It was just scripted within just a couple of seconds. It was just fabulous. But as I said, it was a great time. We had lots of fun out there. Come back next year, we're gonna do it again. Okay, so we got another one over here because that was Paul's video. And we had about five different photographers going out there this year. And so everyone looks at it with a different slice of life. So here's compilation from that.

If you can use some exotic foods, there's a bar in far Bombay. Come on and fly with me. Let's fly, let's fly away. Come fly with me, let's float down to Peru. In Llama Land, there's a one-man band and he'll toot his flute for you. Come on, fly with me, let's take off in the blue. Once I get you up there, where the air is rarefied, We'll just fly to the stars. Once I get you up there, I'll be holding you so near. You may hear all the angels cheer because we're together. Weather-wise, it's such a lovely day. Just say the words and we'll beat the birds down to Acapulco Bay. It is perfect for a flying honeymoon. They say, come fly with me. Let's fly. Let's fly away. Let's fly. Once I get you up there Where the air is rarefied We'll just glide starry-eyed Once I get you up there I'll be holding you so very near You might even hear a whole gang of cheers just because we're together. Weather-wise, it's such a cuckoo day. You just say those words and we'll take our birds down to Apuco Bay. It's so perfect for a flying honeymoon. Oh, babe. Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly.

Pack up, let's fly away. Pack a small bag.

Come fly with me Let's fly, let's fly away If you can use some exotic booze There's a bar in far Bombay Come on and fly with me Let's fly, let's fly away Come fly with me Let's float down to Peru In Llama Land there's a one-man band And he'll toot his flute for you Come on, fly with me Let's take off in the blue Once I get you up there Where the air is rarefied We'll just glide through the sky Once I get you up there I'll be holding you so near. You may hear all the angels cheer because of where...

Okay, there we go. Thank you, Dave. So a lot of fun was had by everyone. And the proceeds go to the Experimental Aircraft Association's Youth Aviation Training Fund. And so all that money that we have that we generate stays here. Hopefully when we get her in an airline or one of these days, one of the kids that we trained here will be piloting us, which would be really slick. Anyway, a lot of fun. And I want to, again, want to thank staff for pulling, helping. They pulled it off. That's why it worked. So cool. All right. Very good. All right. Information items and disclosures. Any council members have any conflicts to report? Okay. Any information items to share? I've got one. Both Whitney and I got caught different times than today on 193. So if you haven't, if you're going on 193 today, starting today, Vin, I don't know how long it's going to take, but things are happening out there. So Fran, hopefully you're listening.

I did have a resident text me about that today. So I didn't have an answer yet. So like, I haven't been out there this week.

Ben? Yes. In fact, I drove out there about an hour before this council meeting. They've had a long day. It's a lot more work than people anticipated. They didn't want to hold up the morning traffic. They've been working continuously since 10 o'clock. Actually, I think they're allowed to go to 7, and everything should be done by 7 p.m., this evening and tomorrow traffic will be on the north side. But the hard part was waiting for hot mix asphalt to arrive and to pave all the intersections where it needs to be wide enough and they have to pull and remove the K rails, make sure the trucks can get around those. It's not an easy operation. I ask for the public's patience. I think the contractor is working very diligently and I believe everything should be completed by tonight.

Completed. So going back to what we had before with the one lane.

Yes. So starting tomorrow, the always stop will be in place and everyone will be driving on the north side of McBean Park Drive.

Very good. What's the timeline to complete the project and get the light in?

There's still approximately two months worth of work. There's a long water line that needs to be installed on the south side. There's several storm drain crossing that still needs to go in. Our estimate is roughly two months worth of work.

Early to mid-November? Correct. That's correct. Perfect, very good. Anyone else for information items? All right, very good. Okay, public comment on non-agenda items. Okay, all speakers' time will be limited to three minutes unless extended by the mayor. All comments or questions should be addressed to the mayor. And in most cases, the city council is prohibited from discussing or taking action on any item not appearing on the posted agenda but may engage in brief discussion, provide direction to city staff, or schedule items for future meetings. Hope, do we have any cards?

I do. I have two speaker cards. First one is from Stan Nader. Second is Chris Hartz.

Mr. Mayor and Council, my name is Stan Nader.

I live in the 12 Bridges area.

When I left the last regularly scheduled Council meeting, I encountered the CEO of Sparta and his colleagues just outside City Hall. I assumed they were discussing what had transpired at the City Council meeting regarding a proposed deferral of up to 50% of the Tier 2 Sparta development fees. I walked up to them and said, as a Lincoln resident, I wanted to apologize for the way you all were treated during the discussion on the item regarding the deferral of fees. For starters, not communicating with part of staff since June of this year, and only notifying them three business days before the item was to be on your August 25th meeting agenda, it gave the appearance that the city was treating them in a neglectful manner and not acting in a prudent and professional way. As this discussion went on approximately 30 minutes, it was clear that you and SPARTA staff are not going to come to a resolution that night. I appreciated that Council Member Reedy realized that and moved to table the matter. And as part of his motion, directed the city staff and SPARTA leadership to return to negotiations behind closed doors where they should have been resolved in the first place. Exchanges that took place between yourselves, and Sparta staff were uncomfortable to watch, as well as the spirited interaction between Sparta's legal counsel and the city attorney. As I have mentioned to you before, city council meetings are to be business meetings where city staff brings items before you for your consideration and approval that have been well vetted With all parties involved in basic agreement, I wanted you to know that what happened that night was not a good look for the city, and I hope you will direct staff to quote circle of dragons step up their game before bringing such an item before you in the future. When I was speaking with as far to CEO, he told me that the phone that proposed deferral would be coming from is the same phone that will be used to support spars portion of this year college Boulevard and 12 bridges drive stoplight project. As he shared this with me the tone of his voice was such that he was not pleased that the developer was asking for a referral from the same fun. As a stoplight project. Thank you. Thank you for your observation, Stan.

Okay. We have another card.

Yes, he's coming up now.

Thank you. Not knowing how to address people. I'm relatively new to the community about two years. Today, I had applied for my business license. And I called to get some information on a home occupation. permit, something like that. And I called them to ask, how's my money being spent? It's not the money, it's not the $124, but he couldn't explain to me how my money was being spent and how I benefit from that. So I was wondering, I don't know if this is the venue, it just so happened tonight was the city council meeting, so I was going anyways. So I'm just wondering if someone can explain that to me or where I could find that info. Because the best that I understood when I researched it was that the money I was paying was for the administration fees to review my application. And that seemed like kind of a weird circular thing that so I'm not sure how I how I benefit or how the city benefits from.

so happy i mean i could take a couple from that department here they could get into more detail but generally fees for any kind of permit are designed and studied to determine on average because you know each and every like a home oc permit for example could be something that um requires a lot of look sometimes they require very little look like so classic example is sometimes people will come in with a home occupation that's not appropriate for a neighborhood like a The common one we get sometimes is like mobile oil change or a mechanic in their yard and those kinds of things generally we get pretty quick complaints about. Or sometimes there's more complex businesses, especially now that a lot of people are working from home or have started their own businesses. So basically the way the fee program is set up is that it takes the average of what kind of time is taken to review those kinds of requests. and sets a fee that sort of sits right in that red basket of general time spent, so that when you or anyone else comes and submits a permit for something, the other taxpayers in the community are not subsidizing your request, is the short answer.

And so in that, I'm all aboard for that. As a licensed general contractor who subs out 90% of my work, most of my work is done with a pen and my computer. Yep. So... my footprint on the community is very light except for driving in and out of my house, which I think most people do anyhow. So I'm just curious, you know, not asking for a waiver, but apparently there's an average and I'm just on the low end of, I guess the footprint. So yeah, you know, it's almost a penalty or a consequence of doing things right.

We'd be happy to, to, to talk about this in super detail if you want, but let's just take like a generalized example, general contractor. Right. So I processed, long time ago, but home occupations for the same thing. The kinds of questions a planner might ask are, okay, just doing paperwork out of your office, you're expecting deliveries. I've had people that have started general contracting businesses and then the next day they have, you know, tractors in their backyard and they're getting all their lumber delivered to their house and you can imagine, right? So those are the kinds of things that they're intended to be a check for really the community that lives around those home occupations to ensure that we don't end up with a situation where, you know, you move in and next door somebody's operating some kind of business 24-7. But if we could get your info, I would like to kind of follow up and talk to it more.

Fair enough. Awesome.

And I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Hope?

If there's anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment, please approach the podium. Seeing none, we'll move over to Zoom. I do have one hand raised, Fran Neves. IT could unmute Ms. Fran. That would be great.

Fran, can you hear us?

There it is. Okay, it just popped up. Yeah, I'm here, and I was there this morning on 193 at 9 o'clock, and there were flag men out, and they were starting to move the K-rails. It was real exciting. There were like 60 cars backed up, because I counted them, from Ferrari Ranch Signal Light to where they did the first K-rail, which was to open up so that you could drive in and out of the Lincoln Christian Academy. They are. Anyway, it is real exciting watching all the things that are going on out there. So thank you. And I wasn't going to say much tonight, but I do want to say that I really appreciate when at night I see lines painted on the road, particularly the white lines on the right side of the road. You know, our two lane roads in Lincoln where we have yellow lines down the middle. It's nice to have the white lines, you know, it gets so dark in a lot of places in Lincoln. So I really appreciate those white lines on the road at night. I just wanted to mention that. So it is exciting out there. There's two signal lights out there. We don't know when they'll be working or if you have to wait till they're all in there. You know, anyway, thank you. Oh, okay. So the other thing is that those stop signs really worked there, you know, at Oak Tree Lane and 193. So why can't we put those stop signs up at Sierra College and 12 Bridges until, you know, if it's going to take two or three years to get the signal light there and put in all the cautionary speed limit signs like you did there. That really did work. That was a great idea, Sean. Okay, that's all I have to say, folks.

Thank you, Fran. John? Thanks, Fran. It was Vin's idea, and I think he wasn't super excited about it at first, but the Sierra College 12 bridges, it may be that that's a possibility. That really is kind of more of a county decision as the kind of squarely within their right of way and jurisdiction. I don't want to speak for them. Their traffic engineers would probably want to have a good look at line of sight and speed in those areas. The difference at Oak tree lane was that it's a pretty linear long path that has a long line of sight. And so, although, you know, we prefer not to have to do it at all. It made a little bit more sense there, but it's certainly something we can ask the County about and I will.

Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Okay. Very good. Consent calendar. We have five items on the consent calendar. We'll take, does any of the, any of my colleagues have any item that they would like pulled? Any comments on it? Okay. Hope, do we have any comments on the, anything on the consent?

No. I don't have anyone through zoom. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comments on a consent item? I see none.

Okay. Another one. No one on zoom. Okay. Perfect. Very good comments from the council approval.

Okay.

I'll second. Okay. Made in second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed. Nope. Okay. Carried five zero. Thank you very much. Okay, public hearings 14A, Liberty at Lincoln Phase 1, presented by Michaela Noble.

Good evening, counsel. Just give me one moment to set up. There we go. Good evening all. Michaela Noble, Associate Planner here with the City of Lincoln Community Development Department. The project we have before you tonight is the Liberty at Lincoln Phase 1 Village 8 project. I'm going to shorten that throughout the presentation, but it's all one and the same. Tonight, this is just a summary of the project. More detailed information was provided within the staff report you all received tonight. Tonight, we have a request for one entitlement, a small law vesting tentative subdivision map. The applicant is the Lewis Plan Communities. In August, the Planning Commission held a public hearing to review the project and discussion ensued on the project's proximity to park facilities nearby. Ultimately, the Planning Commission did vote to approve for recommendation, oh my goodness, a recommended that City Council approve the small lot vesting tentative subdivision map for the project. The proposed project consists of approximately 12 acres within phase one at Liberty at Lincoln within the Village 7 specific plan. The project site is located at the southeast corner of Ferrari Ranch Road and Chalice Boulevard. And just to kind of circle back to the park discussion, the project site is outlined in red. There is a park that's located within the community clubhouse that's already open and accessible to all people who pay into the HOA, which this community will be a part of. There's also the existing park to the south, this park right across the street, which is under review by the city for development. And then the school site will have the joint use park, which eventually will be open as well. Here is the proposed small lot tentative subdivision map for Liberty Village 8, which is included as Attachment 5, Exhibit C in your staff report. The map features roughly 11 acres with 110 village medium density residential lots and three major linear parkway and major paseo lots. Residential lot size range roughly 2,600 square feet to 7,200 square feet. The project site will be accessible via Chalice Boulevard right here, as well as on Anthem Drive here, which connects to Liberty Parkway. The project satisfies the city's minimum lot sizes and requirements for village medium density residential. Staff analyzed the proposed entitlement request and concluded that it is consistent with the goals, policies, and intent of the city's general plan, the Village 7 specific plan and general development plan, and the city's subdivision ordinance. The project site was analyzed at a project level in the Village 7 specific plan environmental impact report. And today's development plans are consistent with what was previously analyzed. Therefore, no additional environmental review is required under the California Environmental Quality Act. The Liberty Village 8 project will still need to implement all applicable mitigation measures from the Village 7 EIR, which the mitigation monitoring plan was provided with the staff report. City staff has prepared conditions of approval for the project to ensure orderly and timely implementation of the project standard and project specific conditions have been applied. The conditions of approval also include all of those applicable mitigation measures from the village seven specific plan ir and all conditions will be subject subject to verification of compliance by the appropriate city departments. And therefore, the Planning Commission recommends City Council determine that no additional environmental review is required pursuant to CEQA and adopt a resolution approving the small lot vesting tentative subdivision map for the Liberty at Lincoln Phase 1 Village 8 project. At this time, we haven't received any public comments on the project, and I have a member of the applicant team here from Lewis Plan Communities who is available for any questions or comments you have. Thank you.

Thank you, Michaela. Any questions from my council colleagues at this point before we open it up? All right. Madam Clerk, do we have any speaker cards on this?

I do not have any speaker cards on this. If there's anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment, please approach the podium. Then we'll move over to Zoom. If there's anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment, please raise your hand. I see no hands raised.

Thank you very much. Any comments from my colleagues at this point? Okay. In that case, we'll accept a motion. Council consider approving the determination that the project does not require additional environmental review pursuant to CEQA and consider approving a small lot vesting tentative subdivision map for the proposed Liberty at Lincoln phase one village eight project.

I move approval.

Okay.

Second. Anyone have a second? Second.

Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Five-zero. Thank you very much, Michaela. Okay, moving on to general business approved the strategic plan for 2026 by City Manager Sean Scully.

Thank you very much, Mayor. On June 24th of 2026, the City Council conducted a strategic planning session to review priorities and develop our 26-27 update to our strategic plan, which covers the remainder of this calendar year and 2021. Next, we went to a two-year planning effort a couple of years ago when we went to a biennium budget, which was sort of designed to most of the items that make their way onto a strategic plan are not typically, hey, we can knock that out and you know, a few months. These are, uh, marathons, not sprints. And so, um, with that said, um, a cup, uh, when our latest city council came on board, um, a little less than a couple of years ago, um, we started to think about whether or not that really made sense because, um, uh, because, um, Oh, I just lost my train of thought. Okay. I'm back.

Um, uh,

That's okay if I can't if I can't deal with a little distraction I shouldn't be up here so. But we got to thinking about a little bit more, and you know when, especially during election years when you end up potentially having new members on the city council, we felt it really made sense to circle back around. and have that discussion. We may not form a completely new plan, but we will eliminate things that have been completed or proved infeasible and then added on new projects. And that's essentially what happened at our session in June. We went through a number of things that we were able to achieve during that period of time. And city councils have things that bubble up on almost a weekly basis for them. And this gave the ability to add new work product that they expect to see from staff over the next year to two years. So I suspect next year we'll probably do another update and maybe it just becomes a rolling update. I will mention that Really proud of our strategic planning process here. When I got here, the strategic plan was more of a set of tenants that the city wanted to follow and not really outcomes or objectives. And so we've, with Mayor Pearl this year, decided that it would also be important to focus as well moving forward on the things the mission that the city has on a broad level and also address the work product that the council would like to see i attached the updated strategic plan to your agendas i don't think i need to go through every single item but i will say that we group them into different priority groups priority group a is urgent kind of now work that we need to wrap up or make significant progress on. Some of those could include or do include our property tax sharing agreements, which we've discussed a lot here at City Council, exploring opportunities for better and different development strategies that support sustainable growth. One of those things is looking at our 40% open space requirement, which we've been sort of halfway, maybe three quarters of the way through now. Develop an airport strategic plan to grow revenue and tenancy at the airport. We are working on the very tangled web of our lighting and landscaping districts and we'll be prepared to offer some options in early 2027. We have been working on the municipalization of electric power and some options that we may have for future development. And that's forthcoming. And then one of the most exciting ones that we've more recently kind of got started is to explore and identify opportunities to fast track the village five regional sports complex project, which is underway in priority B. There's a number of other items that either were priority A and now are on cruise control that have been moved to priority B because there's less to do about them now. But you can go through those. There's revenue generation, i.e. sales tax measure. We have presented to council options and are evaluating heavy truck traffic reduction along Lincoln Boulevard and a number of others. And then finally, there's ongoing projects, which are things we just are gonna continue to work on, because there are things we need at the moment. And some of them are important and are presented in no specific order, but proposed master planning process for the SUD-A annexation of industrial and commercial activities, wayfinding signage for Lincoln, including opportunities for effective electronic signage. We've actually made some progress on that recently. explore and identify opportunities for technology related projects, including AI, which there's an item actually on AI this evening. and bring in, explore and bring to council options for city funded and operated animal control services, given the increases we've seen from our contracted services. Finally, as the facilitator told me, who's done a lot of this work over his career, he said he's not sure that he's ever seen an item on an agenda that said, look into reducing costs and creating a city owned goat herd that takes care of our, or goat herding costs. And all joking aside, we actually are seriously looking at that. One of the things we've done in our management program, training program for staff is they took a crack at trying to develop how that budget might look and whether or not it makes sense for the city. So that's the strategic plan in a nutshell. Obviously, this is just big picture things. There are many more that come up, and this is what we like to say. It's 85% of my job, but for everybody else that works here, it's more like 15% of their job because 85% is doing their day-to-day activities and serving the public. So we enthusiastically recommend approval, and we will continue to run as fast as we can to knock these off the chart because we know you'll add new ones next time.

We'll always add new ones, Sean. It's okay. Yeah, actually, cities that are small, not growing, nothing goes on, maybe they're contract cities. A strategic plan is important, but not critical for a city like Lincoln, which is growing, dynamic, has so many challenges and opportunities ahead of us. A strategic plan is very critical for us. And I'm very glad that we're continuing to do this. And I think we keep on improving the product. I think next year we may want to concentrate a little bit more on going back to the basics, beginnings. What's the vision and the mission and all the pillars that we want to step up with the community over here? Because that's going to help guide us in every couple of years. You should go back to basics like that. But I think we're making great strides. What gets measured gets done, and we're measuring it. And as you say, we're knocking the items, we're teeing them up and knocking them down. And so we keep on moving forward. So very good. Other comments from my colleagues?

Go ahead. I was just going to say that I really appreciate the strategic planning that we've been doing ever since I've been on the council. And to me, whether you're a very large city or even a really small one, to me, a strategic plan just says, here's where we are. These are the items that we feel as a council and city that we need to focus to accomplish A, B, and C. And together as a council collaborating for every area of the city, whether again, whether it's large or small, to me just makes sense. I really appreciate the effort that Sean has helped. Yeah, we're doing good work, Ali.

Yeah, I was just going to say that it's pretty impressive how we have hammered out lists and got things done and then being able to move them off the list and then go on other things. And then like Sean said, some of them that we've done so much work on that we're still working on them, but they're kind of to the side now because they're not as urgent because they're being taken care of. And so I'm just really grateful and proud to be part of the process the last eight years, all the stuff that we've gotten done and all the things that we've flipped around, cleaned up, straightened out, and then moving forward. So now we've got all that done, and we've been focusing on things that we want to accomplish that aren't problems, but it's moving forward. And so I thank staff for all their hard work. We say it all the time, they work so hard, but they really do, and I don't think we understand how, you know, and they do it because they love this place, and I'm thankful for that. Thank you. Whitney?

Yeah, I'm appreciative for the process, and I appreciate what Sean said about, you know, there will always be something new and more, because there is always something new and more. We say that because it's a responsibility that we all recognize, that there is always more we can do, and we can always improve, and the work is never done, and it is great, and I wish more people would attend these planning exercises, because I even forget how much we accomplish. Because it's just there's constantly new situations and things that we're addressing. At the same time, of all the other millions of things that are just keeping the city going, you forget. what is happening slowly and getting accomplished and so it's also a good exercise to just see in real time physically as we're moving things off and oh we finished that now let's do something else and you know be able to address new things that maybe former years weren't able to because there was emergency situations that took priority over goat herding. So I appreciate that you put this together, and I just wanted to give credit to whoever your photographer was, because these are lovely photos as well.

Anyone else? Okay, very good. All right, thank you. Cope, any comments?

We do. I have one speaker card, Stan Nader.

Mayor and council, in priority group A, the first item listed is identifying potential resolution options for the city's tax sharing agreements with the county. I realize the two priority documents indicates that all listed items have equal importance and presented in no specific order, but perception is reality. And when that issue is listed first, The public's assumption is that it is the council's number one priority. In past strategic planning documents, the tax sharing agreements issues has been the number one priority. I believe the reason this matter has been difficult to resolve with the county is because when the city received the original agreements from the county, on the tax sharing agreements there was a requirement that the city place an increase in the city sales tax to support public safety on a ballot to receive a two-year extension on those revised agreements it is is unfortunate that the city has chosen to wait till the 11th hour to put the increase in the sales tax as those original agreements are about to expire. Recently, the council had asked city staff if they'd heard from the county on current negotiations And the city manager said he had not received any recent communications from the county. I would submit to you the reason that the status of the matter is that the county is waiting to see if the city can pass a measure to increase sales tax, which is now on the November ballot. The airport is listed as a potential opportunity to generate growth and revenue. Unfortunately, the airport has been, quote, a diamond in the rough for as long as I can remember. I realize current progress has been made, but the airport is in a deep hole to climb out of and making it a challenge for the airport to be a sustainable venture going forward. I was disappointed to see economic development to be listed as the fourth item in Group B, which states that these issues will not be addressed until the second year of the strategic plan. I believe the most important issue should be economic development. This increase in the city's tax base is critical. you can look at multiple revenue measures but nothing is i'm almost done i'm going nothing is going to compare with providing greater shopping and employment opportunities for the residents of Lincoln and keeping our tax dollars in the city. I would submit to you the best strategy to use as a business acumen, find a need and fill it. Look through the gaps in the economic opportunities in our neighboring communities and bring them to Lincoln.

I have no other speaker cards. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment? If so, please approach the podium. Seeing none. Moving over to zoom. If there's anyone on zoom that would like to provide public comment, please raise your hand. I see no hands raised.

Thank you very much. Comments with the council?

You know, I just have a clarification on a couple things that were just said. Is it not correct that even though economic development is on the list as fourth, wherever that lands, that doesn't mean that we're not always working on it. Like, we have a very strong economic development team, and we work on that every day, correct? It's not waiting until other things are done.

No, I mean... I would kind of pose that we are spending more time, effort, resources and money on economic development than anywhere, as far as I can tell. It's there's literally two staff people that are dedicated to that every day, full time that are meeting with developers almost every day or communicating and part of deals that are being closed on commercial property. Um, super priority and nothing that Mr. Nader said about economic development being like super important and the way out of any kind of financial problems is wrong. That's absolutely correct. The question is, is when do those projects go and we have less control over that than I think many people would like to believe.

Right. Well, and I think that given the time that Mr. Nader was on the council, he would understand that, you know, we can't force, we can approve, we can go through the process, but they decide when they actually build. We can't force them to do that. And then the other thing is, I think it's a really unfair characterization, actually just wrong characterization to say that we've waited to the 11th hour for the tax measure. We were going to do it two years ago. We were asked by the region to wait for measure because measure B was on. And Lincoln was specifically asked to be team players to wait. So we negotiated an extension for the temporary tax agreement with the county. They agreed. And this was always part of the strategic plan to do the tax measure. So I think that sometimes, you know, people forget what happens or they have mischaracterization. And so. We did not wait till 11th hour. This is something that's been strategically planned out for a long time, but we were going to do it two years ago, but we waited because we were asked to.

Yeah. And it's not anyone's fault. It's a complex problem, right? So like on the one hand, the limited term agreement that only applies to a very small section of 12 bridges, essentially the area that's right around Kaiser, that is the agreement that's being referenced. And there is a kicker in there or was that the city would explore and propose a tax measure at some point in the future. That is part and parcel completely separate of what we view as the inequity of the other TRAs tax rate areas that apply in Lincoln, which is roughly 60% of our community that we believe are substandard compared to others. So they're sort of two different negotiations occurring at once. But both equally important. And, you know, the last month and a half, the discussions with Placer County have accelerated. And so we're making some progress.

Right. That's the last thing I was going to say is that it's not true that they're not negotiating with us because they're waiting to see what the tax measure one's got nothing to do with the other. We're doing both because we need to do both, but there we, we've come a long way. Yes, they do. And it's the same that they're not waiting. And so again, misunderstanding of the facts, mischaracterization. And so I just wanted to set the record straight.

Thank you, Holly. And the other thing to keep in mind is that economic development, while you may see, you may think that nothing is going on, it's like ducks swimming across a pond. you don't see that the legs are kicking furiously under the water, you know, turning up and moving forward. And that's exactly what happens in economic development. These things take a long period of time to develop. And we don't have, as Holly mentioned, we don't have, we can't force a developer to do something and bring a certain store here at a certain time. We can encourage them. We can be good partners with them, but it really is up to them to do it. But, you know, we have a team now that is out there full time, working, you know, playing the field and moving and creating the environment that is going to bring these new businesses to Lincoln. So you may not see it, you know, ostensibly until all of a sudden, book, we have a groundbreaking. Wow, how did that happen? It disappeared magically, you know, but it takes years to put everything together. So, all right. Thank you very much. Okay, so I guess we need a motion on accepting the strategic plan.

Motion to approve. the item.

Second, thank you very much. Move to approve. Okay, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, no. Thank you very much. All right, 15B, resolution approving artificial intelligence acceptable use problem. Okay, Ms. Brown.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. I'm here today to present to you the Artificial Intelligence Acceptable Use Policy, which I've been putting together for a very long time. And as much as I love this part of public speaking, maybe one day there will be an AI gen to give this presentation. We don't want an AI gen. You're irreplaceable. So I started with this slide of what is AI because as much as it's talked about all over the place, I find many people don't know that they're even using it because it's everywhere. And so just to, you know, what is it and what does it do? So one thing that when you may encounter AI in your daily uses is that it suggests a reply or summarizes a document. So when you're starting to type an email, it'll try and autofill what it thinks you want to say, especially if it has the context of the person who sent you the email, and summarizes relevant results in a search. Anytime you go to Google now, it'll say, oh, hi, I'm your AI assistant. I'm going to tell you what I think you want to know. So it's everywhere and I just think that a lot of times people are using it and they're not well aware. So there's a whole bunch of common ways that you'll find AI just in your daily work. In my world, AI is just as terrifying as it is amazing. And so I'm only going to highlight the benefits here for you guys because we're going to keep this cheery. But in daily tasks, it creates efficiencies, improves accuracy in grammar, you know, calculations that you might be doing. It can check things for you. It does faster analysis when you have a lot of data that you need to pull together. It can help you pull that stuff together. And it can also do automated repetitive tasks. So you may ask, oh, it's great you... you're touting how wonderful it is. Why do you have to have a policy? And because if you don't, it's the Wild West. And so there's the good parts of AI, which can be used for, you know, doing good things, but we need to use it in a way that's responsible because there's, things that you don't want to use AI for, especially in public government. So you have a policy to improve public services. Good example of the CivicBot that we launched a month ago. And that's a way to have AI be used to improve service to the public. It helps operational efficiency. The policy also helps us protect the city residents and staff from using it incorrectly. Provides education and training to our staff who may not know how to use it and can then incorporate it into their job make them more efficient establishes accountability so people who use it know that they're using it and can use it appropriately and it creates consistency across departments and vendors vendors are starting to incorporate AI into all of their products and contracts and so if we can have a policy that the vendors have to abide by then we can you have them use it. So who's covered under this policy? Anyone who performs city business. It doesn't matter if it's a staff person, a volunteer, a consultant. If they're using AI in their city business, they have to use our policy. So I took the policy, I put it in AI, and I said, give me the six topics. Let's keep it simple. So as part of the operating procedures, it kind of can boil into these six categories. You have accountability, transparency, it has to have a public purpose, maintain your privacy and security, make sure it's equitable and non-biased, and your data is accurate. So the big takeaway here is to use AI with accountability, transparency, and human judgment.

Human is always in the loop.

Here's some acceptable uses. It always involves non-sensitive content and has a human review. So if you are drafting an email or a staff report, it's good use of AI. If you're creating graphics for your staff report, like this cute little robot, Using AI there, you can use search. Transcription is very popular. You even get your voicemails transcribed from what it's hearing into text. Task automation and summarizing large documents. So then you get into the big red stop signs, all the prohibited uses of AI. All of these, stop signs pretty much boil down into the last one. The AI must never be used to bypass law, policy, fairness, or public trust. So no deep fakes, which are things that make, it would be like an AI gen. It would be privacy or security violations. Any time you're trying to unauthor, like you're trying to hack into something online, install malware on a computer, those things, you can do those all with AI now. Any submission of data that contains any PII, which is publicly identifiable information, personal health information, any sieges or cluts information to an AI tool. As far as the training goes in the policy, it's going to be available for all staff, and the responsible use training will be mandatory. Policy is going to be constantly revisited because the technology is rapidly evolving, and we need to be able to stay current with the policy on all new technology that's coming as well as laws evolve. So taking everything that I said in summary, the responsible use of AI, these are the things that you can take away. So everything should be human-centered, so have a human in the loop. Security and safety is of utmost importance. Privacy, don't put any PII or PHI in there. Staff empowerment. We want to train and educate our staff, and then they'll be held accountable for anything that they create. The equity, again, human in the loop to manage bias, transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. So out of my whole presentation, I just hope you take this one quote away that AI is a tool, not a decision maker. City staff remain responsible for reviewing AI output, protecting non-public information, checking accuracy and bias, and making final decisions. And with that, I will take any questions.

Thank you, Jen. You know, I get the feeling that when it comes to artificial intelligence, we're at the ground floor of a very tall skyscraper, and we're feeling our way, you know, up the staircase, and we don't know where it's leading. So I think that putting together a policy like this, setting the boundaries, you know, is going to be very helpful for, you know, for staff. I'm constantly amazed at how good it is and how it can sharpen you know, discussion, but you have to be very careful with it. And so I remember reading someone was talking about that's artificial intelligence and there's actual intelligence. You know, I think that's what we were talking about when it comes to the human element in there. You can never just assume that it's accurate. You have to verify, verify, verify. So yeah, this is a great step forward, without a doubt. Other comments? John, I want to start with you, John.

Oh, echo all the things the mayor said. My question was about how often are we gonna give reviews and reports out? It's collecting a variety of data. For example, I think it gives you the power to give exceptions. So when will we know that you will give yourself an exception to deep fake yourself in the next council meeting, for example? So my interest is like, how often do you expect to bring revisions back? When will we see them? What will that kind of ongoing sort of maintenance communication look like?

As far as revisions back ago, I think that if it's a significant change, so a good example right now will be wearables. So I have no wearables within the policy. Rumor is that Apple will be coming out with some AirPods that have cameras in them, which, you know, again, I want to make sure that falls within the wearables. If it doesn't, then I have to absolutely like make that change and define that you also can't wear AirPods with cameras in them. So as far as like those minute changes, those can, but as the approved, so there's going to be a process for staff to submit some AI tool that they would like to use, which then I will review. As far as approved tools, that's something that we can report out to council as often as you'd like. That would be simple enough.

I was just wondering if there was any cadence foreseen in terms of when we'll see some of the statistics about how it's being used, how the exceptions that were granted, why they were granted, and then how often we imagine that the actual policy will have to come back to us to be able to look at.

Let me answer a little bit as to cadence and then like the data you'd have to answer because that's way outside of the attorney type work stuff. I actually think that What you're going to see next is going to be driven in the lot in the legal arena, because so, for instance, I'll get, you know, one of the things that I really worry about is particularly in the world where even when we're all in the same building. People will still use them, you know, or teams, you know, for convenience purposes and if any even one person has a note taking. process that's been implemented or then you have the plot devices too that can be external what that does for purposes of privacy as well as for public record acts so you know a lot of times you're having meetings with folks people are well intended they want to know what was said and what tasks they have to follow up and that can be a like a clever way to kind of memorialize that so that you make sure that you meet those requirements but people don't often understand that you know that record is now something that's subject to public record act and things that can be um seem very you know just non-consequential in a conversation when read in a transcript form can read as being consequential and so it raises litigation risk privacy risks and stuff like that so Well, I think we'll probably have advances from Jen's team in terms of technology as it evolves, and that will trigger new policies. I think probably you're more likely to hear from me and Sean in the near future about legal changes that we need to implement to be proactive in protecting our residents, our employees, and the city as a whole.

So where do you... Can you kind of describe in lay terms, like where is the line between what just gets done administratively and reported back and what causes it to come back here for?

Yeah, I'd say that the answer to that probably would be similar to kind of how we generally run most other kinds of allowances. So if we feel that the change in technology or the new thing that someone wants to do or the old thing that no longer is safe now, that rises to a policy level, i.e. contained in document, not necessarily the exact software, but what it does, then to me, that's a city council decision. If it's minor in nature, like Jen said, if it's one AI tool that does roughly the same kind of thing that another one does, as long as she can verify that the data is going to be secured, that's probably an administrative thing we just worry about on the op side. But like, let's say for example, The wearables is the best example. I think that does probably get to a place where the city council from a policy perspective needs to weigh in because we would be materially changing how we provide a service. And it's not just like it all happens in the background. And so who cares? From a public perspective, they don't care as long as it works. It's how they're going to interact with people in the public and your constituents might not feel comfortable with that. Or we may just decide that that's not the kind of technology we want to use, even if it is efficient. So those would be the kinds of things I think once the language that's in this starts to get tripped in it and we've talked about this, it's going to happen. I think more frequently in this policy than other ones you adopt where it's going to move so quickly that next year, we probably are going to have a whole new set of tools that we really didn't think a whole lot about. And what does that really make sense for us to use them? Does the public receive some sort of service as a result of that? that they would want their elected officials weighing in on. But to your point, I think just because of what AI is now, what we should commit to do is regardless of whether or not there's changes, I think it probably is a good practice for us to bring this back on at least a yearly basis to say, hey, nothing's changed or a lot's changed and we need to talk about it because outside of that, then policies can sometimes just become tools that we use internally and they don't actually, we want the public to know one of the reasons we agendized this outside of just a consent item was the security of everybody's information is really important to us because you can't really break that trust once you do, it's lost forever and we're very worried about that. I hope that answered your question, but I think what we could do is a yearly check-in and then more if needed when things change And then as part of that yearly check-in, I don't see any reason we wouldn't just list, unless there's some super secure stuff you want to use, every single thing that we use.

I wouldn't list everything that we're using publicly.

But at least like a generality about what kinds of tools we're using, if that's the exact product.

We could do that. And I'm just going to say this more just for the public than it is for the council, but so that they know. When we get into specific tools and things of that nature, that's likely going to be Homeland Security type closed session information that we would be going through. Because it would also make available how somebody could potentially access or hack into our system and, you know, by diverting some stuff. So we will be talking to those, but the specifics are likely to be closed session items. The generalities are things that we would talk with the public about.

Yeah, I think that it's certainly yearly. I think depending on the cadence and how rapidly this becomes outdated, because I have no fault of anyone in the room, it will come outdated very quickly.

It is already. In about 48 hours, it'll be outdated.

Right. A year may be a little long before we... Or certainly no longer than a year, but if things are rapidly changing in three or six months, we are alerting that you've got so many exceptions, it's longer than the original policy, then maybe we need to.

Yeah, that's actually a really good point I hadn't thought of. Because one of the things that Jen sort of mentioned is, this is a meet and confer item with our various labor groups and unions. This is part of, has become part of their working conditions. And so it's really interesting when we're having those discussions, because there's a lot of I'm glad for this. There's a lot of enthusiasm to try out new things that might make us more efficient. And we've had to be super careful about what we think, even though it could be super efficient for an individual or department, may not be best for the organization or the data that we're sharing. So how about we do this in the short term? Because if we're going to lean into the use of this technology, we want to make sure we're doing eyes wide open. Why don't we just commit to checking in for the first year every six months or sooner if necessary. And then after that, I mean, maybe we'll never get to a place where things or not a thing, but we'll continue to frame and frame and reframe. Maybe we get to a place where we're pretty comfortable with like the tenants of security, data protection to our customers and citizens and everything else kind of falls under that. But I'd rather have this discussion a lot more frequently than us institute some sort of tool that ends up blowing up in our face, which periodically happens to me.

Just one more note is this is just operational with the city. There's a whole bunch of other rules and guidelines we're going to have to adopt for how we interact with the public and how that looks like. So for instance, if you brought somebody, I mean, we talk about wearables, but when you bring somebody in for a meeting, but they're walking by other city departments and sensitive information, that you wouldn't necessarily see. I mean, you don't just stop and see, and that's the only way you would have knowledge of it, but you can, if it's reported, you could go back, you can highlight it. This is only, I think, like the first step of what we're gonna have to do, but it's the most important in terms of our information. And we're already seeing it pop up in our business, so.

So, as a Gen Xer who approaches AI very hesitantly, I appreciate the safety conversation, but also I wanted to tell you, I appreciate your points on there about human control, right? And so that means a lot to me. And obviously, I know that seems simplistic, like, of course you would do that, right? But having that being... of one of your top things i really appreciate that because too many times we see people just throw ai junk out and it's like did anybody read that like so i appreciate the human uh oversight other comments from my colleagues yeah i just wanted to say i agree with that because you know one person because of their views could ask ai a question and get a

a bunch of different information. Another person could ask the exact same question and get something completely different. I really appreciate our approach. More to come on this without a doubt.

Okay, thank you, Jen. Hope, any comments?

I have no speaker cards. If there's anyone in the audience that would like to provide a public comment, please come to the podium.

Council? Mayor? I actually just have a quick question. Again, no offense to you. I didn't read your entire report. So if it's in there, you can tell me. Just go read it, and that's totally fine. I know you wanted to keep it a little bit more happy-go-lucky about AI. I guess my question is, I know that there's going to be a human oversight. Obviously, there's been cases of AI systems trying to circumvent and then just flat out ignoring human interaction, obviously, probably more advanced than what would be used at a local governments. But there's also been some, some instances of like, in the private sector is I don't know that it's happened in the government sector where AI that was supposed to only have access to things that were you know, public and not, you know, confidential, had access to everything and was able to share that because it was on the same server. So just, I guess, what's the plan to keep that from happening?

I will definitely speak to that because that is my worst nightmare. Yeah, no, that's why I'm very picky about which a I allow in the city, because it must have the guardrails that are required that I require to not have that access to sensitive information. And That is also why in every vendor contract, as they are implementing AI, I'm also putting in things into contracts with vendors where You know, those kinds of things can't happen, and that's within their contract as well. So all I can do is everything on my side to secure the city and protect the city as much as possible. Could it happen? Yes, it can, because AI is a new tool that... is kind of unpredictable, you know, as things have been found. But if you use it appropriately, responsibly, with all the proper guardrails in place, you can use it in a good, safe way. So that is what my goal is.

Hope anyone else?

I don't see anyone else in the audience. Moving over to Zoom, if there's anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment, please raise your hand. I see no hands raised.

Thank you very much. Bring it back to my colleagues for any comments. If no comments, I'll accept a motion to adopt the resolution approving the artificial intelligence acceptable use policy. I'll move to the affirmative. Thank you very much.

Second.

Move to second. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? No. 5-0. Thank you very much.

Good job, Jen.

Thank you.

All right. Very good, Jen.

15C, approval of the successor memorandum of understanding between the International Union of Operating Engineers, Stationary Local 39, AFL-CIO Professional Administrative Employee Group, and the City of Lincoln and Related Salary Schedule.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm going to handle this one for Veronica this evening. She had an emergency she had to attend to. The professional administrative unit includes about 67 of our employees, which are professional, administrative, technical, supervisory, and related classifications. That's all included in your packet. It's actually a really interesting labor group. They have a super diverse group of people that essentially span almost every single department. at the city. Over the past seven months, the city and professional admin unit have met and conferred in good faith to negotiate terms of a successor agreement consistent with the Brown Act. We reached a tentative agreement on August 11th for a one-year successor MOU, and that agreement was ratified recently on August 19th by the labor group. we are now requesting that the council consider approval of the successor MOU and related salary schedule. I'll go through a couple of the terms here. This is a one-year agreement. We've done a number of one-year agreements. We've done a one-year with one and a half year with the police department, I believe a one year with the fire department. And we've done some slightly longer ones. Given the sort of position we're in financially at the moment, we are trying to stick to shorter-term agreements as we sort of keep an eye on what's going on with the economy. with a variety of other tax related issues, property and otherwise at the moment in Lincoln. And also what we sort of see in terms of revenue growth in the next number of years. So we're trying to be conservative during the downturn. You saw a lot of one year agreements where cities were just attempting to make sure that they had agreements in place for their labor groups and not willing to commit to multi-year deals because of the, kind of instability at that time. We're not in that place right now, but we're taking a conservative approach for the time being because we think we'll have a much better view of the financial landscape after the new year. So it's a one-year agreement. We added classifications that have been revised or established since the prior agreement, including application integrator, senior permit technician, plan examiners, and a system security analyst, which actually works on some of the things you just heard on the AI item. There is a cost of living adjustment included for all members that is a 3%. That would be effective April 5th of this year. So it's a retroactive agreement. And then for a little more than a dozen of the job classification, there's a 2% market-based wage increase following of the classifications that are in your staff report. Those are related to, we try every round of negotiations to go out and test the market to make sure that wages and benefits are within a range of our competitive agencies around here to ensure we're retaining staff. And some of those were included in this. Section 4.6 includes bilingual pay, stating that the city will develop and implement an administrative policy that governs eligibility and administration. We've done that with numerous other groups to make sure that those folks that provide that service are compensated for it. We're removing some obsolete language while retaining the existing 3% longevity differential after completion of 15 years of city service. And there are a couple other smaller items that are technical in nature. The primary one that I'll add to the deal point list, if you hang on one moment here, was four hours of holiday credit granted to employees who are required to work on Christmas Eve. So Christmas Eve around here is dead as dead as it gets in the city of Lincoln every other day, except for New Year's Eve and Christmas Eve those are two days where no one seems to come into city hall ever or calls us and I'm happy for that because hopefully they have lives. And so, usually what we will do is city staff that would like to take that half day off, they will take their own time and take it off. That usually leaves a skeleton crew left to hang out until five o'clock on Christmas Eve. And so their request we feel was reasonable to grant them some holiday credit during that time. That's pretty much it in terms of the major deal points of the MOU. Um, the fiscal year costs of 2627 is $356,000, uh, and change. Um, and this includes $71,000, which would be retroactive to the, uh, the ending of their last MOU, which has been our practice here. You can see in your report, if you so choose to take a look at it, that there's a NETO chart that talks about which funds absorb most of that. Because there's a lot of employees that work in our development services department in planning and building and engineering, Most of the cost is actually borne out of that department. Some small amounts in our inter-service fund and general fund, and then a smattering of very small amounts, less than $20,000 in a couple of the utility funds that carry funds. some of these staff. So we think it's a reasonable deal. We like to just take a moment and thank the professional admin unit for what was a very productive and relatively efficient as far as labor agreements go process. And we recommend approval.

Thank you. Comments from my colleagues yet?

Nope. Just that I know that you guys put a lot of work into it. I know we discussed it a few times earlier, on the process, so thank you.

And the impact on the general fund is relatively minor.

Yeah, there's just not a lot of employees in this particular group that are wholly funded by the general fund, so it doesn't bear as much burden here.

Anything else before we open up to the public? Okay. Hope?

I have no speaker cards. If there's anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment, please approach the podium. Seeing none, moving over to Zoom. Anyone on Zoom, please raise your hand if you would like to provide public comment. I see no hands raised.

Very much. Any final comments from my colleagues? And if not, accept a motion.

I'll second.

Thank you. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. 5-0. Thank you very much. All right. That concludes our business for the evening city manager reports.

Um, only, uh, I think the mayor is going to have some, some things. Well, so I won't step on his, any announcements he may have. Um, but, uh, we do have the County. I'd like to just draw everyone's attention. The County is undertaking a general plan update at the moment. And, um, this is a pretty important thing to be engaged on. If you can, it, while it's for the County unincorporated areas, the, decisions that are made through this process last for decades in some cases and affect your community you live in. And debatable, some are good, some we would be concerned about. We don't have a whole lot of detail on the things being proposed yet, but there is a series of community workshops that are, I believe, being held all over the county. There is one outside of Lincoln that's coming up in a handful of weeks. We'll be posting information about that so the community can attend and learn a little bit more about what's going on. And then it's looking like it's going to be in October. We will be doing our State of the City event. With Mayor Pearl. And so we're working on getting that all set up. We're the, the location is unknown at this point. It will either be in the pavilion. Or potentially we're looking at sun city Lincoln Hills, since it's a larger event space with more technology we can use there, but. Stay tuned on that as well.

Oh, last thing.

If you'd like to go play pickleball, our long-awaited pickleball courts with cover are open and available, and I just drove by and may have saw one Eric Kerwin playing there this afternoon.

And the lights are freaking awesome. Oh, yeah.

And you can play at night, too. And what didn't you want to talk about that I'm going to step on? I thought maybe you were going to bring up a certain airplane coming to the airport.

Oh, that. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. You're done? Okay, that's good. Okay. Council initiated business. I'll talk in that case. Thank you very much. That's a great, great segue. On September 14th through the 20th, we're going to be visited by a B-17 bomber, World War II bomber. from the Commemorative Air Force. We were selected to be part of their national tour, which is really good for us. They'll be coming in here with their entire support team. They'll be giving ground tours on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They'll do flights. We're posting all this stuff on our website and everyone else in the world's website on Saturday night on September 19th. We're hosting a party out at one of the hangars. We're down to, I think we only have about 180 tickets left at this point. So we're going to have the bomber there. We'll have talks by the flight crews. And it's just going to be a lot of fun. And we're seeing if we can get them back here next year for Wings and Wheels. But this is really, it's a big deal. Everyone in the city is going to be well aware that the B-17 is in town because Four engines of an aircraft that size makes a lot of noise. And so it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to keep the airport busy. We're going to sell a lot of fuel, which is really good. and it's going to be great for the community to be able to touch a piece of living history, and hopefully next year we can get a B-25 here in addition to the 17. Of course, Lincoln Airport, when at that point it was under the Army Air Corps, we were a training base for B-25s. So it's all fun, very good. Check our website and Chamber's website and a whole bunch of other websites out there. for if you want to take a ride, go to ground school, or especially come out to our dinner party on Saturday night. Okay, that was it. Thank you for the segue. Okay. Any other council-initiated business for my colleagues? Okay. Committee reports.

So at SACOG, we had an update last week. Big holders have been working on a bill called SB-1087 for quite a long time. And really what this does is it updates the requirements of CARB, the California Air Resources Board, right? That's the acronym, correct, Sean Calif... Okay, I got it right, good. And so basically what it does, there's a whole lot to it, but basically what it does is it attempts to hold CARB more accountable for public outreach, for information, having to do, what do they call them, public workshops, different things. So as CARB passes down their regulations, they have to do more, transparency and do different things so it's if I remember correctly it's past the assembly it's on to the state senate and they're still doing more work but they've been working on this for a really long time so I mean I like to get rid of carb altogether but this bill supposedly is going to help a lot with transparency and more community outreach and a little bit of less regulation maybe, so I'll keep you posted. All to the good, all to the good. Anyone else?

Whitney.

I have, we have economic development speaking of tomorrow and And then I also have LAFCO tomorrow evening, and we're gonna be discussing an RFQ on environmental for the application for the Tahoe Incorporation proposal. And then lastly, I wanted to just remind everybody that on the 26th of September, we have our annual 24th Taste of Lincoln Showcase. and um it looks like again it's another year of solid packed food and beverage vendors and uh and then there's the music group that everybody likes uh wonder bread five that will be there so that's again uh september 26th and it's 6 30 to 10 p.m here at beerman's plaza and you can get your tickets on the chamber website

That is one of the don't miss events each year. It's so good. And other cities do similar things. Lincoln's is the best.

I'm hungry and thirsty.

Let me see. The only thing we've got, my committees are basically quiet this month, including the airport committee, but we are continuing with our discussions and onboarding with the a new management company, which is good. And they'll come on board, I think January 1st, officially, but we're working through a process of a transition, which is going to be very good. So that's good. All for that, John.

I had the Plants for Conservation Authority last week. Two things. One, their 2025 annual report was approved. Those that are interested, checking that out. There's a lot of details in there about how the program works and where we're at. Where good news is, is we're pretty far ahead in all the metrics that we need to be on that 50-year plan. The other, which is local, is we appointed a member to the advisory committee for plants for conservation. And our FIAC member, Ron Delinsic, was appointed to that committee.

Ben. Yes. So after our last council meeting, the very next morning, I went to my committee meeting, a couple of them, which was PCTPA and SPARTA, of which our executive director, Matt Click, who visited us during our meeting, was there. As part of that, he had, as part of his report, reported out to the SPARTA board, at least that, um, there was some looming things that had been talked about, uh, as more of an awareness, a heads up kind of thing that, that, um, there may be something coming about the fee deferral that we have been talking about for, um, the development here in town. I also since have met with Matt, um, When the Monday after and we were able to come to. an agreement that we put together a time set aside for both our staff and his, and maybe set aside about a half a day for us to kind of work through and hammer out some details to come to an agreement moving forward. So as hard as that meeting was, and Matt is looking forward to trying to come to a resolution. And he seemed optimistic that we could do that in a half day scenario. So we have staff that are communicating still well with putting together time to hammer that out. There's my report.

Actually, I thought that everyone involved both on Sparta side and our side handled themselves with the utmost professionalism.

And Mayor, if I may too, Ben, I just wanted to thank you for your tenacity in that because I know that you and our staff have been working for a very long time. And I, again, I'm going to go back to misinformation or wrong characterization. It's not true that staff didn't respond. You guys have been working diligently on this. And the reason that you were able to meet with him and then Matt and the legal team and whoever else are willing to like finally sit down and hammer out and come to a good solution for everybody is because you and then all of us together didn't just buckle and give in. We stood our ground and we made our argument. And so thank you for doing that. And so I think now we can come to a resolution, but I'm very grateful because I think that's why we're able to come to it now because we didn't just roll over.

I appreciate that. And as far as, again, the misinformation, with the communication that we've had over the last year, year and a half, we've already sat down with them once where I had been there to try to figure something out. felt like we had had a good path forward. But even since then, there were two or three or four different what about this or what about this options that we sent out.

Well, and we also know that Nita gave them everything that they needed more than once. And so they just didn't like it. And so that's why they came. And that's why we had the thing last time. Thank you. Thank you very much for your hard work and Nita for her hard work. And hopefully we get that agenda on the SPARTA board and be done with it.

Just hoping to take out any roadblock, any blocks of any kind. And so we're getting, you know, legal from both sides to be at the same table so that we can say, you know, what kind of language does it need to have and let's just bury the thing. Okay.

just not to beat a dead horse but I think sometimes sometimes speaking of misinformation I think that there's confusion amongst some people that I've heard that there is a confusion on the deferment we're still collecting the fees they're not being deferred or or reduced indefinitely by the time development occurs We're getting paid. So it's not like there's some kind of discount that it's occurring or that we're not charging you know the correct amounts or fees. It's just being temporary temporarily deferred. Is that correct? Right. We actually, the developer ends up paying more. I think there's a lot of confusion about what we did throughout this whole process. It's getting misconstrued.

The reality is the homeowner pays more. It is, but it's paid. And I think the thing that's kind of got lost in this discussion, which is it's okay. We are not,

we are literally as late as possible to the deferment game here in Lincoln. Um,

Other member entities have been deferring larger amounts for many, many, many years. This is literally our first ever request to do so. And we didn't do the math, but I think it probably is worth doing at some point to just indicate just in the last five or 10 years of development in Lincoln, where those fees were paid at time of building permit, how many millions of dollars that is because it's, a significant amount, and there's a significant more to go. So I viewed it as a relatively reasonable disagreement, and sometimes even governmental agencies disagree, and there's, at least as far as I'm concerned, there's no hard feelings. We will sit down and figure it out, and we will move forward better.

And that was one thing that Matt had communicated to me. He said, you know, as hard as it was, that he didn't carry any hard feelings. And finally, he gave me permission to kind of leak that.

Good, because we feel the same way. We do. Matt's a good guy. Yeah. Matt's a good guy, and he does a good job.

We have disagreements. And I think, yeah, to some residents' point, is it sometimes more... ideal to have certain conversations that might be a little tense that you didn't anticipate behind closed doors okay that's one side to look at it but another side is people want transparency and sometimes things happen in public as they should and we communicated that and we're honest on both ends and sometimes things are messy and not perfect And that's okay, too, because in, you know, in an effort of transparency, it was in public. We all spoke our truths, and we will, as professionals and colleagues in both industries, we'll work together for the greater good. And we are not in some kind of weird fight with a Windsor County Transportation Agency. It's fine.

even apologized again to him i apologized during the meeting and he told me that i didn't need to apologize but even still i when i met with him i i said hey i'm just i'm sorry that things kind of went down the way that it did and whether an apology was necessary or not, I felt like that anything that happens like that that's hard, when things get tense, it's just, I'm sorry that tense things happen from time to time. And that also allows for moving forward so that we can continue to work together.

Well, to end on a lighter note, in about 10 days, I'm going down to the Diablo nuclear power plant to get a tour. because I'm on the pioneer community energy board. So I'll come back with a glowing report. Okay. So we're going back into close. We're adjourning the meeting and we're going back into closed session. If anyone really wants to stick around, we'll come back and report out at the end of that meeting adjourned. All right, we're open. Do we have any report from the city attorney?

Yep, mayor and council. Direction was given to staff, but there was no reportable action taken.

Okay. Ms. Clerk, do we have any speaker cards?

No.

Anyone on Zoom?

Nobody on Zoom.

Why did you say that?