City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening. We're going to get this meeting started. This is City of Desert Hot Springs, a regular meeting of the City Council, and the City Council serving as a successor agency to the former Redevelopment Agency Board for Tuesday, September 15, 2026. This is our 4.30 p.m. closed session. Roll call, please.

Council Member Gardner.

Present.

Council Member Pitts. Present. Council Member Pai. Present. Mayor Pro Tem Voss.

Present.

And Mayor Maness.

Present. Ms. Pai is traveling from a meeting. She will be running a few minutes late. She'll join us in closed session when she arrives. Do I have any public comments?

Looks like we have one person on Zoom.

And let me know when you allow them in. Mr. Betts, you have a public comment for closed session, or are you just observing? Mr. Betz, you're muted if you do want to make a public comment.

My apology. I had the Zoom on earlier. I didn't always tune in. I don't have a comment. Thank you.

Thank you. I have nobody else in the audience, so I would assume there's no public comments in the audience. Nobody else showing online. We will now announce the closed session. Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. We have several items on today's agenda. First one is conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. Paragraph one is subdivision D of section 54956.9. The case is Desert Hot Springs versus De La Rosa. Case number PSC1802371. Number two is conference with legal counsel, existing litigation of the same paragraph and code section. The name of the case is Desert Hot Springs versus Irene Valente, case number PSC1802698. Number three is conference with real property negotiators. Pursuant to government code section 54956.8. The property is 65311 San Jacinto Lane. Agency negotiator is the city manager and myself. Negotiating parties is Edric Pineda and the under negotiation of the price and terms. Number four is conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation. Paragraph two, subdivision D of section 54956.1. There's significant exposure to litigation based on receipt of what appears to be a claim pursuant to the Government Claims Act or some other written communication from a potential plaintiff threatening litigation. which claim or communication is available for public inspection pursuant to section 54957.5 of the government code. Number five is conferences legal counsel anticipate a litigation initiation of litigation pursuant to paragraph four subdivision D of section 54956.9. There is one potential matter. Number six is public employee performance evaluation government code section 54957B for the city manager.

Perfect. I think that's the most you've had to speak in a long time. With that, we're going to recess to closed session.

This is all Nothing feels better than this.

No!

All right, good evening, everybody. This is our 5.30 p.m. presentation period. So welcome and thank you for being here tonight. We're going to start with our police chief who has some swearing-ins to do.

All right, thank you, Mayor, Council, staff, and community. Welcome. Exciting night tonight. We have two new employees to the police department that I have the honor of introducing to you tonight. So the first one. CSO Leslie Tapia would come on up.

All right, Leslie, stand right here.

So very excited, please join me in welcoming Community Service Officer Leslie Tapia to the Desert Hot Springs Police Department. CSO Tapia was born in Indio and raised in the Coachella Valley. During high school, she was actively involved in sports and extracurricular activities, including softball, yearbook, drama, and pit crew. Leslie was also part of the Desert Hot Springs Police Department Explorer Program, so she's transitioning from an explorer to our Community Service Officer. She left the Explorer program as a captain. CSO Tapia is currently attending College of the Desert, working towards her associate's degree as she continues to pursue a career in law enforcement. She's grateful for the opportunity to be part of Desert Hot Springs team and is committed to continuing her growth in the field. And as a side note, CSO Tapia just completed five weeks field training and on Wednesday night she'll be going into the field by herself. And if you saw in the news there's a Mongols motorcycle rally this weekend, she's going to be working that event. So we're throwing her into the fire. So congratulations and welcome.

Hello, I'm CSO Tapia, and I'm very excited to be working for the city of Desert Hot Springs. Thank you.

Thank you. You're good. And I apologize because I forgot to recognize CSO Tapia's mother and father here. Joel and Marina are here in the background. So welcome. So next I'd like to bring up Officer Jose Castillo. Please come on up. So please welcome new police officer Jose Castilla to the Desert Hot Springs Police Department. Officer Castilla has been a resident in the city of Desert Hot Springs his entire life and is fortunate that he can now serve the residents of the city. Officer Castilla attended the Public Safety Academy at Desert Hot Springs High School for four years where he learned about law enforcement, fire department, and EMT. After high school, he was an explorer for the Palm Desert Sheriff's Station for over a year and then was later hired as a police cadet with the Cathedral City Police Department. And now he's come back to his roots where he knows he's very much wanted and appreciated. Officer Castillo was then hired by the Riverside County Sheriff's Department as a community service officer and worked at the Palm Desert and Harupa Valley Station. During his appointment with the Sheriff's Department, he attended the San Bernardino Valley College Police Academy as a self-sponsored recruit. He graduated from the Police Academy on July 18th, 2026. Officer Castillo is very fortunate to have the opportunity to work for the Desert Hot Springs Police Department. He is excited to learn, but most importantly, excited to serve the community in Desert Hot Springs. If you see him on the streets, don't hesitate to say hello. So welcome to Officer Castillo. So joining Officer Castillo tonight, his mother is going to do his pinning. So Elvia. Elvia. Elvia. Come on up, Elvia. And then also joining him today in the audience, we have his sisters, Hazel and Amy. Welcome. His fiancee, Hania. Thank you. Nieces, Emma and Nevaeh. And nephews, Noah and Isaac. Which one is the month old? Isaac, so welcome. So we're going to... Stay up here with me. We're going to do the oath. So please stay up here with us while we do this. I'm going to have you stand right here. Come on, you can stand right here next to me. I'm going to have you raise your right hand. Repeat after me, okay? I, Jose Castillo, I, Jose Castillo, do solemnly swear... I solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of California. That I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon Which I'm about to enter. Congratulations.

Hello everyone. Thank you all for coming. I'm very excited to work for this department and I'm very fortunate enough that I get to serve the members of Desert Hot Springs. Thank you.

Very exciting. Two people, one from Desert Hot Springs, one from Coachella Valley. So again, we're tapping into the resources that we have here and And we're excited as a police department, as a city, to bring them and have them join us here. So welcome. And then is your other presentation here? If you guys will hide after this other presentation, we'll take some photos afterwards.

Thanks.

Congratulations to both of you, and thank you for serving our city. Please be safe. After we're done here, please bring your families up, take as many photos as you like. Today's a true honor. We were going to surprise this person, but she had a day off. So the only way to get her to come to work was tell her that she needed to come to the city council because we're going to honor her tonight. Alondra, would you come up here with me? You might know Alondra Campos. She is on the news all the time with NBC Palm Springs. And she serves our community and our Coachella Valley very well. But what a lot of people don't know is that she grew up here in Desert Hot Springs. And so each and every year as the mayor of the city of Desert Hot Springs, I don't get to do a lot of things just by myself. But this was a team effort by our staff to really rack our brains and think about who we could have for the grand marshal of our Desert Hot Springs parade this year. And we've always liked to bring someone from our community that's done some really good work. And Alondra really shows that. So I usually don't read things, but staff puts this together, and it's really good. So I'm going to read it. So tonight we have the privilege of recognizing someone whose story began right here in Desert Hot Springs. Someone who grew up in our community, who walked our streets, attended our schools, built friendships here, and dreamed about what her future could become. And then she went out and built it. Alondra Campos is one of our own. A proud Desert Hot Springs native, Alondra grew up in the same community she continues to serve today. She attended the University of Luverne. She has earned her bachelor's degree in journalism with a minor in political science. Ooh, politics. Never know what her future holds. David, we might be still... No, I'm joking. I'm joking. As she didn't simply earn a degree, Alondra found her voice. She became an award-winning student journalist, serving for three years as an editor and reporter for the Campus Times and as a writer for Laverne Magazine. She worked eventually... Her work eventually took her into broadcast journalism, covering everything from local and national politics to breaking news, the arts, city life, and the stories of everyday people. But Alondra kept pushing herself. In 2024, she returned to the University of La Verne and earned her master's degree in leadership and management and an emphasis in organizational development. These accomplishments alone would make any hometown proud. But what makes Alondra especially deserving of this recognition is not simply what she has achieved, it's who she has chosen to be along the way. Through every accomplishment and every new chapter, Alondra has remained connected to Desert Hot Springs and committed to the people who call it home. Today, you'll still find her giving her time to our local youth sports organizations, AYSO, coaching, refereeing, and encouraging young athletes, and simply showing up when her community needs her. and sometimes showing up to one of the greatest things you can do for another person. Because somewhere on one of those fields may be another little girl from Desert Hot Springs with a big dream. And when she looks across the field and sees Alondra, she gets to see what is possible. Someone from her hometown who went to college, who earned two degrees, who became an award-winning journalist, who built a career, and who still makes time for the community that helped shape her. That is what makes hometown special. It isn't only the places we build, it's the people we raise. Alondra's story reminds every young person in Desert Hot Springs that where you begin does not determine how far you go. You can dream big. You can work hard. You can earn that degree. You can build that career. You can make your mark. and you can bring something meaningful back with you. So on behalf of the City Council, our residents, and the community, it is incredibly proud to call you one of our own. It is a tremendous honor to announce Alondra Campos as our Grand Marshal of the 2026 Desert Hot Springs Christmas Parade. Thank you. So I think we met about three years ago. When was Hillary? Three, four years ago?

Yeah, yeah.

And I remember Danny calling me and going, someone's going to interview you. And I said, who's this? A homegrown individual. And she showed up. I'm waiting for this big camera, and she's got this little iPhone. She shows up, and she interviews us in front of one of the flood areas. But well-spoken, well-deserved, and we wanted to appreciate you. So don't go anywhere on December. 14th, the whole evening is going to be about you.

Thank you. I'll put that in my calendar. Thank you so much. Thank you for the honor. Thank you, guys.

I know you're shy, but if there's anything you'd like to say.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think I was, okay, so it's not anybody's fault that it's not a surprise. It's my own fault. Right as a journalist. I'm very I always asked why why so when my news director asked me to come in on my day off for a Particular story at the Desert Hot Springs City Council's like okay But why we have two reporters that I'd like I don't understand why I have to go and obviously at the end He goes you know what this was a lie. I was just kidding You're gonna be named as a Grand Marshal for the Christmas parade and my heart literally almost popped out of my chest I was like what? Super unexpected. It brought me to tears simply because the city of Desert Hot Springs has been so important in my life. As a native here, I know the true stories behind the people here, behind the community here. And I also know all of the narratives and all of the perceptions that have been created about our city. And ever since I was a little girl, I always, always made it a goal for myself to show people just the wonders of the city. And fortunately, I have been able to do that through journalism. And I have been able to tell so many stories of the people that have brought me to where I am today. And I'm so thankful to my family for raising me in this community because I would not be where I am if it wasn't for the teachers that I grew up with, for the coaches that I grew up with, the mentors that I grew up with, the neighbors that I grew up with here. I would not be here. And I'm a very, very proud Desert Hot Springs native. And I'm very proud to represent the city worldwide. Wherever I go, I don't say I'm from the Coachella Valley. I don't say I'm from Palm Springs. I always say I'm from Desert Hot Springs. And whenever I'm met with, well, I don't know where that is, I'll be like, well, let me tell you about it because it's an amazing city and it's an amazing community. And I come from there and I enjoy sharing the story. So it brought me to tears when David first told me. It almost brought me, I was trying not to cry here when Mayor Matas here was reading this beautifully written story. speech about that.

I have good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no reason why you're mayor, right? No, I'm very, very honored to have been the Grand Marshal. It was very unexpected. Never, ever in my life did I expect to be named something like this. It's a huge deal. I grew up watching this parade as a little girl. It was so funny. My dad was actually the manager at the A&PM here for years. I grew up on spicy hot dogs and icies from there. I'm not even kidding. Every year, Up until I was maybe 12 years old, our tradition was to sit on the curb in front of the AMPM with a big hot dog and a Slurpee on another hand and watch that Christmas parade down the street. So it is so meaningful to be able to be the Grand Marshal. And I know that there's Christmas lights parades in huge cities, in New York, in Los Angeles. And, you know, if I were to ever be the Grand Marshal at any of those, it would never compare to the meaning. that it has for me to be Grand Marshal here in the city of Desert Hot Springs. It is truly one of the biggest honors of my life. So I thank you guys. I thank the city. It means a lot to me. I truly wouldn't be here without the support of everyone here. Thanks to David Reese for trusting me enough to put me on television and to share people's stories, and thanks to the community that truly raised me and made me who I am today. So thank you guys, and thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We're going to have the city council stand up.

Mayor, I just wanted to say one thing. You talked about little girls looking at you. You came to Ophelia, and she did a presentation, Roberta, at Ophelia, and there was a young lady there who wanted to be just like her.

Good evening, everyone. We're going to call this meeting to order. This is the City of Desert Hot Springs, regular meeting of the City Council, and the City Council serving as the successor agency to the former Redevelopment Agency Board for Tuesday, September 15, 2026. This is our 6 p.m. regular session. Roll call, please.

Council Member Gardner. Present. Council Member Pitts. Present. Council Member Pai. Present. Mayor Rotem Voss. Present. And Mayor Mattis. Present.

Just as a note, this is our third or fourth meeting that we'll be taking public participation from online. It is a new law that we will allow that. We do have two individuals that are online, so during public comment and or any items, you just need to raise your hand, use the raise hand button, and they will let you in to speak on those items. If you don't raise your hand, we won't know that you want to speak and let you in, so please... do that that's that's the way they have to do it correct gerald thank you all right with that said our invocation tonight uh candace tarrant should i get it right this time i'm gonna practice in it yes that's what i always say in my head now so and i just wanted to say that was a beautiful rendition of the national anthem which you did um where were we All mayors, thank you. I'm like, where was I last week? And she represented Desiree Ostrom very well. Thank you so much for doing that. Thank you.

I appreciate it. Okay. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you for another day of life. We thank you for all the things that we have to be grateful for. We thank you that we are able to come together as a community for progress, and we pray that every heart and mind is open for the betterment of this community, of the families, Lord God, and the children being raised in it. And we do pray for the families, Lord God, of 9-11, the relatives, the first responders. We pray just comfort over them and encouragement over those who need it, Father God, that their hearts be in high spirits, that their hearts be lifted up in this hard time. And let that help us, Lord God. Remember that as tough as life can get, Lord God, it is always good, and there is always good, and we appreciate that. And we set our hearts and our minds on what we do have and who we do have in our lives. And we thank you for the opportunities to move forward in life on a daily basis together and individually. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Would you please rise? And Ms. Pye, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? All right. Madam City Attorney, would you report on closed session, please?

We have no reportable action.

Thank you. Before we get into the approval of the agenda, I just wanted to notify the public that item number seven, the rental registration permit fees, will have to be tabled to the next meeting due to a... an issue with the posting of that item. So with that said, if you are here to make any comments on that item, you may make them during the public comment portion of it. If you're planning to make public comments and we're going to make public comments on that, you will have to condense it into three minutes. Or you can hold your comments because it will come back as a public hearing at the next meeting, which is October 6th. Thank you. right before we approve the agenda at this time the city council may amend the order of the agenda approve the consent calendar remove items from the consent calendar for separate discussion and action and add urgency items i do have some comments on the consent calendar i'm going to allow those comments to happen first before the city council makes a decision to either pull and or approve the agenda the first The first item that I have a public comment on is item number 13. Joshua Hendrick, you have a public comment on that item.

Yes, sir.

So tonight's agenda seems to be all about the council's giving away, the duties to oversee, audit, approve funding, write policy, et cetera. This consent calendar, I mean, this retention policy, I literally write retention policies in my day job, and this is like nothing I've ever seen before. A retention policy should shield you from litigation, it should apply rules very consistently, it should have dates and times when things can be removed, not give department heads and city managers complete authority as to when those things are removed, and it should not allow, without council vote, staff to change the schedules for retention. I ask that you pull this from consent and do your duties oversight for this organization and ensure that these records retentions are applied as they should be across the board. There are certain state, federal requirements, three, five, seven years depending on the records, et cetera. This policy looks like a reason to be able to throw out whatever is inconvenient. I ask you to pull item number 13 from consent. Thank you.

Mr. Hedrick, I'm going to have you stay up there and make your comments on item 16, please. Sounds good.

One moment before you start my time.

Once again, I'm Joshua. I'm a DHS resident. You've heard from me a couple of times here. Wanted to talk on item number 16. So if you look at page 421, it says that every operational contract over $5,000 needs to be on the contracts page. It was $50,000. It's now $5,000. However, flock safety we pay over $60,000 a year to is not on this. Why do we have 26 cameras and a $60,000 contract with only staff signatures, not even on our annual contracts? Additionally, Axon is missing. There's $473,000 of body cams, tasers, license plate readers bought two weeks ago. Also not on the list. OpenGov, our financial record software, which we'll be discussing in item number nine later. Again, not on the list. I'd like this to be pulled from consent so that the council on the dais can actually look into what is on this list and whether it is not comprehensive. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. I'm going to take some comments on 15. This is the renewal and expansion of the Art Enrichment Program at the Desert Hot Springs Senior Center. I know, Sally, you have a couple comments that you would like to make with this item.

I just need to take a breath.

Good evening, council. Good evening, staff. Good evening, community of Desert Hot Springs and my students. As you guys know, I started this program last year and it was very successful. I am wanting to continue it because it's a needed thing in our community for our seniors. I did have a presentation of a little video to show you guys of the work, but we've had so far three successful gallery showings. The students are happy. I have one student here that when she brought this book into me the first time to class after she took the class, I cried because her work extraordinary and she took one one process that I did and just expanded on it and then kind of made it into her style she doesn't realize it's her style but it's her style so that's um that's pretty much what I wanted to just kind of show I don't know if I could pass the book around you're always more than welcome to pass the book around yeah we can see it from there right what, you know, she's done, what she continues to do, her animals, and I haven't seen many of you down at the gallery seeing the work that the Senior Center has to... Let me get you back in front of the microphone because people can't hear you on TV. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Where, let's see, if I hold it up like this? Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. There we go. So just to see that this is something that they enjoy doing. You know, a lot of them don't have the access to materials. They don't have the access maybe to even television sometimes. You know, to look at YouTube videos or things like that. So I think that what has happened. I had one student where she got commissioned for her work. So she's doing artwork for other people and getting paid for it. She called me. She's like, Sally, I'm doing an art piece for someone. How much do I charge? I said, how much did you tell them? She said $25. I said, don't ever do that again. So... I said, the minimum is 50. And we'll talk about the rest. But they're learning. So it's like they're putting income back into their pockets. They're also, like in the video, one of the students talked about how Everybody learns at their own pace. It's not like I love paint and sip, but it's more I'm teaching them. I'm basically teaching them like when I was in college and how I was learning. So that's how I'm teaching them because that way they can grow. And I don't mean to just look at him, but...

It's fine. You can focus. The camera's focusing on you from there.

Right. But that way they can grow. They can expand. They're using their art in different ways. They're commuting with each other. They're having a good time. We sit. We laugh. I give them a couple of jokes and we're all good.

Sally, your three minutes are up, but I want to say this to you real quick. Yes. The reason that this item is on consent calendar is because our city manager meets with each of us once a week and talks about these items, and unless she thinks it's going to be something that needs to be fully discussed and possibly controversial with the council, then she puts it on the regular agenda. It's on the consent calendar because you have full support from the city council. Okay. You have full support from our staff, and you do a wonderful job, and keep doing what you're doing, please.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you. I'm going to try not to cry. But I mean, it's my students. It's my students and you guys.

Keep doing what you're doing. I have no other comments on the consent calendar. Would anybody like to comment on items? Sorry, I'm going to turn the page here. Items 12 through 16. Any other comments? I see nobody coming forth at this time. We'll take a motion to approve the consent calendar is or pull any items for further discussion. In the approval of the agenda, I'm sorry. Thank you. There is a motion to approve the agenda and the consent calendar as presented. Is there a second? Please vote.

Motion passes unanimously.

All right. For the program at the senior center, you don't have to hang around the rest of the meeting. You guys are good to go. Wow, she is a tough art teacher, man. Get home, get your rest. All right, we're going to move the public comment at this time pursuant to the Brown Act. Any person may comment on matters of general interest within the subject matter jurisdiction of city council not listed on the agenda. Under the Brown Act, the city council shall not take action on or discuss matters raised during the public comment portion of the agenda that are not listed on the agenda. Comments will be limited. Speakers may not yield their time to others without consent of the Mayor. Speakers are limited to three minutes. All comments will be directed to the City Council and shall be devoid of any personal attacks. Members of the public are expected to maintain a professional, courteous decorum during public comments. All right, so I know there was a few here for the rental item. If you came in late, item number seven has been pulled due to some posting issues, and that will come back in 30 days, or the next meeting, I'm sorry, will come back in the next meeting, which is October 6th. You may comment on that item in the public comment period now and during this time. I'm going to start with regular public comments, and then I'll talk about who had cards in for that. I'll start with Adam Sanchez.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, staff, and residents of Desert Hot Springs. I want to speak tonight. It's kind of like circle back from the last meeting we had two weeks ago. And I want to just touch on two items that the Mayor brought up that I think need a little bit of clarification. The first one is when Joshua came up to speak, and just said a few words about Gary Gardner, you all of a sudden shut him down. Now, you didn't give him a chance to at least follow through and see what he was going to say. And so for me, it seems like you were the mayor, you were the city attorney, you were the city manager. I mean, you were in three hats. So I think moving forward, before you shut someone down, you should hear what they have to say. And it's probably more important for you to maybe clarify what electioneering is. Because you took his time, which was wrong. He didn't stop the clock. And furthermore, it's some becoming of a mayor to act in anger. If you can't control it, find a way. Because residents come here because they want to speak in public comment. But you can't shut them down. That's just wrong. It's inappropriate. And like I said, it's some becoming of a mayor. Now the second one I want to bring up is that you kind of raised up the white flag over City Hall when you said that this city can't be cleaned up. It's a mess. It's trash. But you were saying, oh, no, we can't do it. We can't do it. So what I'm going to do, come back in two weeks with a plan on how it can be done. Because across this valley, everybody speaks bad about the dirtiness of this city. And I bet you any one of you council members have never taken another council member for a ride in your district. I bet you you never would have done it. Because if you did, you would see the trash. And you will see it more on the right-of-ways that are in the city that belong to you. So if you're not going to clean up your right-of-ways, why do you think people are going to stop throwing trash? So you need a league by example. And it needs to be done as soon as possible. Now, I want to read again the petition that we have to get... hopefully an engineering street report done on Pomelo. And also now Verbena residents have been calling me up. Now the thing to take into consideration is this. It's a slow process at City Hall. sometimes dragging your feet. You've got to go to fire. You've got to go to police. You've got to go to code or get an agenda item. But the city manager has 50,000 discretionary. So as you keep dragging your feet on trying to save a kid's life, a mother's life, a father's life, on our streets where people are going 60, 40 miles an hour, and according to the higher patrol, anybody hit at 30 miles an hour, you are pretty much dead. So stop dragging your feet. Get it done.

Holly Spedwick. Did I say your name right? I'm sorry.

Sorry. Holly Spiwak. I hope I'm bringing this to the right people. Good evening, everybody. So we have a road up in the Wardman Heights area. I live off of Valencia Drive. I've lived there for 14 years. And we have this one road, Casa Grande Drive, in the Blind Canyon area that is constantly filled with dirt because of the storms. It washes right through there. Us families that go take our kids to Bella Vista or Painted Hills every morning, we're riding over that every single day, two, three times a day. Mr. Mayor, you used to live in our neighborhood. I know you know about that road. And it has been... It's been at least a year since it has been clean. It's so bad now that there are stones. I mean, we weave over there. So I'm just asking that city... Council.

You're right. I'm sorry.

I'm asking that city council, please help us clean the dirt on the road because I'm about ready to buy a shovel. I don't own a shovel, but I will buy a shovel. And I will get out there with you if it means just that wash. Casa Grande Drive in between Santa Cruz and what's that? Vista Del Valle. So right over there.

Thank you for showing up tonight. Before you leave, I'm going to have you talk with Danny Porras. He's our public works director and our deputy city manager.

Thank you.

I'm sorry. Doria Wilms is going to take that over. All right, Joshua, you have a couple speaker cards, and I'll need you to condense six ones on the rental thing. So if you want to speak in public comments, you just have to condense your comments to three minutes.

I've done a quick rewrite here, so I apologize if it's a little bit clunky, but thank you for the time. So I wanted to give a little bit of lesson tonight on electioneering and what electioneering is. First and foremost, electioneering is using a public office or public funds or public things like that to endorse or promote a candidate. I did no such thing last meeting. I literally mentioned the word candidate for where the message that Gary had posted committing to making changes to the rental ordinance or considering changes had come from. It was there and in a local news station. At that point, Scott, who I'm not sure if he was even listening to the rest of my comment, perked up and cut me off immediately. I'm pretty sure the mere mention of the word campaign was enough to get my cut off at the gavel tonight. I'm hoping that tonight he's a little bit more charitable as I've notified the city attorney, et cetera, of my thoughts on not only that, but the prior illegal Brown Act cutoff and First Amendment violation when, if you guys remember, a few months ago before the break, we had a woman who came in and spoke on some different things with data centers and ended her comment with a profanity-laced term for flock cameras. There was nothing wrong with that either. The Brown Act does not require that you be not profane. It only permits or it only prohibits disruption. And it also requires a warning before rejecting someone, something she was not afforded. I don't know what more to tell you guys, but I really want to see this council get their act together and be here supporting the community, getting involved and bringing important issues and holding their candidates and their council members to account when they make a public commitment on the news, when they on a Facebook page publicly say, I will make changes to this. I want to bring changes to this. And then I come here to talk about that and I'm shut down by the mayor. really feels totally transparent, and I'd really like to see it improved around here so that more people get a voice and more people are heard in this dais. Thank you.

Kelly Copla?

Copla.

I don't know why I wanted to go the other way.

Oh, that's okay. Everybody does it. There's telemarketers, everything. But hi, everybody. My name's Kelly Copla, and it's nice to see everybody. I'm a little bit more prepared now. as far as understanding. The city already has a code enforcement, right? And I don't know if we're able to ask questions, but... You can ask all the questions you want.

Unfortunately, we can't have a back and forth.

Oh, you can't have no answers.

But you could ask your questions. I like your style. And maybe during council member comments or city manager comments, they can try to answer them.

So the code enforcement people you have, from what I understand, none of them have the background to do, like three of them do not have the code enforcement label or whatever. And yeah, I know, I don't know what I'm talking about, but... I'm just kind of curious about that and what I've really noticed is you guys actually put on I just printed this off of your website where I know where the camera is right there and I highlighted it says the program launches the city is committed to working collaborative property owners supporting compliance working with property owners well let's think about that because when you pass this you did it on the well I speak frankly you did it on the fly It just looks shady because you did it on the 4th of July weekend and there wasn't a lot of preparation. And from what I understand, I've been meeting with these property owners for four times now and none of you have met with them and really worked a plan on how we can do this better. So that's really kind of curious because you're saying that you will do that, but last time I was here, I was shocked that all these people came up and poured their heart out and then you passed it without any discussion? Is that the way this has gone on? I guess this is, you know, it really surprised me, to be honest. In fact, I walked out, I asked this, I asked him, I was like, what the hell just happened? You know, and it just seems a little ridiculous that you're passing all these laws without even talking to the tenants. I went door knocking and I asked tenants, how they feel about this? Do you guys feel like this is going to be a benefit to you, you know, if you're living in a Obviously, there's some apartments we all know. But most of them, I would say 90%. Only the elderly were like, oh yeah, come on in, because they want visitors. But maybe we can do something else other than this for the elderly poor people. I mean, for crying out loud. I know I have 31 seconds. But I'm going to tell you, there's a better way. And all you're doing is you're creating a lot of stir. You haven't even met with the property owners, with the property management companies. Who's doing it? This girl who's only been here for four weeks. And it's really obvious. And with that, I just think you ought to hold off a little bit and let's work together because she's awesome. Oh, my gosh. I put my foot in my mouth with her. And I would like to thank you for that gentleman in the back corner. He's nice. Yeah, I'd like to actually commit a crime on that one.

But anyways, I'm just kidding.

It's who I am. I'm going to just be who I am. I'm not going to read from the script, but thank you so much. But you guys need to do something different, because all you're doing is creating a lot of stress. And this isn't fair. You did a shady, and that's OK.

Thanks for your comments. Emory Lasto.

And Doria, you did a great job the other day. Thank you, guys. I'm Emery Leska. I think everybody pretty much here knows me. I wrote something today because it's bothering me, right? This is really bothering me at a core level. So I'm here about the provision that allows the city to enter a private home using an administrative warrant, not a judicial one. Whenever the city deems it necessary, I'm asking you to reject that standard. Our forefathers didn't write the Fourth Amendment as an abstract legal formality. They wrote it because they had lived under exactly what this ordinance proposes. Before the Revolution, British customs officers used what were called writs of assistance. general warrants that let them enter any colonial home at any time, for any reason, with no need to show cause specific to that house. A young Boston lawyer named James Otis stood up against those writs in 1761 and called them the worst instrument of arbitrary power ever placed in the hands of officials. John Adams, who was in the room that day, later said that argument was where American independence was truly born. That history is not a footnote. It's the reason the Fourth Amendment says what it says. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause. Our forefathers didn't trust government officials to decide for themselves when entering someone's home was justified. They required an independent check, probable cause, reviewed by a judge before the door opens. Deemed necessary is not that check. It is the very thing founders fought to eliminate. An official deciding on their own authority that they have a right to come into your home, different century, same principle at stake, guys. I'm not asking you to abandon whatever this ordinance is trying to accomplish. I'm asking you to require that any entry on any home go through a judicial warrant based upon probable cause. The standard our forefathers and the founders of our country fought for and the standard the Constitution actually requires. Before you vote, or before you put through all this stuff, I'd ask each one of you to picture that standard, apply to your own front door, and ask whether deemed necessary is a standard you'd accept for someone entering in. This is what our ancestors and my family died for in wars. So what are you really trying to say here? You don't care how many people died who fought in our wars, put their lives on the line for these freedoms, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thank you.

Irene Rodriguez?

Good evening, council, staff, mayor. My name is Irene Rodriguez. I'm the executive director at Cabot's Public Museum. And I just want to sort of give you a little update of what's happening as we start this whole new season. As you may know, we have a second grade program with the Palm Springs Unified School District. Last year, we were able to serve 13 schools, which means 950 students. This year, due to some funding, we're going to serve 10 schools. It's always our priority to serve Desert Hot Springs Elementary School, so they always come first. We're also getting some exciting programming in October. October the 10th, we'll have our celebrations for Day of the Dead. We'll have some altars in honor of Calvary Portia and Cole, some activities and performances. And then later in the month, we're going to transform our Pueblo into a Halloween house for the last two weekends. It will be fee-based, but it will be accessible to the community of Desert Hot Springs residents as well as beyond the city. Another exciting thing that's happening starting in November is our Pueblo Sessions, which is going to be a whole concert series that's going to bring people to really experience the evening with friends and the community and really experience this music. So it will be starting November 20th through April. And as soon as I get more information and flyers, I'll make sure that all the city council and staff also knows. So thank you very much, and I hope to see you there.

Thank you, Irene. We have no other public comments on items not on the agenda. If there's anybody else who would like to speak, this would be the last call. Yes, ma'am.

Hi, my name's Ashley. I've lived in Desert Hot Springs my entire life. I love the city and I hate that I feel like I have to stand here and fight the city on this issue. But as a property manager, I feel strongly that it's my responsibility to protect my tenants while also serving property owners that I manage for. I have several questions about the ordinance that I hope the city will answer before moving forward. First, how will property owners be notified and educated about the requirements? All the owners I've spoken to have not heard anything about it other than me notifying them. Will smaller independent property owners be notified by the city? Next, the ordinance says that if a unit fails inspection, it must remain vacant until the necessary permit is issued. So what happens to the family living in that home? Will the city provide relocation assistance to renters who are displaced because their home fails an inspection? Because if we remove someone from their home in the name of protecting tenants but give them nowhere to go, we haven't solved the problem. We've created another one. I want to know what the city considers a violation. Will enforcement focus primarily on genuine habitability concerns, or could paperwork and administrative issues become violations carrying significant penalties? And what happens when the issue is outside the property owner's control, such as overcrowding, excess pets, hoarding, or tenant-made improvements? These can occur despite an owner's best efforts. Tenants with these things going on in their apartments are still humans and they still deserve a place to live, so we don't see them as evictable offenses, but this new ordinance might force owners into evicting them for such violations. And then there's the money. We're hearing a registration fee of approximately $100, while the actual cost of this program could be far greater. That raises a very legitimate concern. If the fees don't cover the cost, where does the rest of the money come from? Will the city be incentivized to issue thousands of dollars in fines to make up the difference? Because if the ordinance is truly about protecting tenants, punishing property owners with enormous fines is not the answer. Those costs don't disappear. They can lead to higher rents, fewer rental properties, or owners deciding that renting in desert hot springs is simply too burdensome. Please don't pass an ordinance simply because its intentions sound good. Let's protect our tenants without creating new hardships for them. And most importantly, let's make sure we're solving a problem, not creating another one. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Last call for public comments. Anyone else? Yes, sir.

Hello, everybody. Glad there's no AI robots here. Not yet. Touche. So I wanted to bring the general public and the city council's attention to finances and revenue calculations and mayors and members of the city council. So before you adopt these unconstitutional and, might I say, unlawful fees please look at the city's own numbers the staff report says there are 6 500 rental properties here in desert hot springs it says the city expects to process 1300 registrations every year the fee is 100 for each registration that comes to 130 000 every year extrapolated over five years that in turn comes to 650 000 But the fiscal impact section of the staff report says the city will receive only a little more than $65,000 over those same five years. That is a difference of $585,000. Maybe somebody simply left out a zero. Who knows? But this report is being used to support your vote. The public should not have to guess which number is correct. This mistake should have been found before the report was placed on the City Council agenda. If the City missed an error this large, what else might have been missed? Please do not correct the numbers verbally tonight and then approve the resolution. Send these documents back to the staff. Have every Number checked and bring the corrected documents back at another public meeting. Thank you for your time.

Any other comments? Yes, ma'am. Don't have to raise your hand. You just come on up.

There's two of you. Sorry.

Maybe you do have to raise your hand. I'll go with the first one there.

Good evening, Mayor, members, City Council. My name is Crystal and I'm here tonight as a long-term renter and a resident of Desert Hot Springs. I understand that the city is trying to make sure that the rental properties are safe and properly maintained. I support safe housing and I believe landlords should be responsible for their serious health and safety issues. But I am concerned about how the rental registration ordinance will affect renters like myself. I am a responsible tenant, I take care of my home, and I understand that after living somewhere for the last 10 years, normal wear and tear is going to happen. I don't believe normal signs of living in a home should automatically create a reason for additional inspections, fees, or disruptions. After years of renting the same home, what I value most is stability and peace. I don't want unnecessary inspections or government involvement in my home simply because I am a renter. My home is where I live my life, and I should be able to have a reasonable expectation of privacy and quite If the city's goal is to find out whether renters are experiencing problems, I would suggest a less intrusive approach. Instead of subjecting every rental household to an inspection, perhaps the city should just simply knock on the door and ask tenants whether they have concerns about their housing, especially whether they are health or safety issues that their landlord has refused to address. That would give renters an opportunity to speak up when there is actually a problem while respecting the privacy and peace of tenants who are happy with their home and have no complaints. I respectfully ask council to consider the impact this ordinance could have on long-term reasonable renters who are not causing problems and simply want to live a peaceful life in their home. Please consider alternatives and address the actual health and safety problems without creating unnecessary burdens or disruptions for responsible tenants. Thank you for listening.

You're welcome. Thank you. Ma'am, in the back, you were next.

Good evening, mayor and council people and the city of Desert Hollow Street. I've been here for 10 years, over 10 years. If I have any problems with my rent, my apartment that I rent, my landlord is right there and fixes it. I don't know why you guys have two standards. Homeowners, they don't have this standard, only the people that rent. I'm disabled. I'm on a fixed income. You do this, my rent goes up. I become homeless. What are you going to do about it, Mayor? Huh? What gives you the right? I want to know. I will not allow the city, the government in my house You don't pay my bills. You don't lay in my bed. Uh-uh. No way. I don't like this. I never heard about it until my renter, the people I rent from, came to me and told me about this. And I'm not allowed to say what I said to them. I'm supposed to be clean, respectful, But what I told her, I do not approve of this, period. You don't pay my rent. You don't sleep in my bed. And you sure don't have sex with me, Mayor.

Ma'am, I'm going to give you one warning. If you're going to stand up there.

Thank you, and have a very nice night.

Thank you, and have a very nice day to yourself. Being disrespectful is not going to be tolerated.

No. Ma'am, that's enough.

That's enough. Freedom of speech. That's enough.

Freedom of speech. That's enough.

I have children in elementary school that watch us to make reports. You're not going to make a spectacle out of this city council. You can have all your freedoms you want. Keep walking away. Any other public comments? Yes, ma'am.

good evening everyone my name is claudia and i have lived in my apartment for seven years i am completely opposed to this rental registration ordinance i'm a grown adult i have an issue with my rental perfectly capable of communicate directly with my landlord and my landlord addresses it i don't need the city holding my hand or inserting itself into my home I also have an adult son with disabilities who does not do well with disruptions to his routine or strangers coming into our home. My family and my pets are my top priority, and I will not allow anyone into my home. I believe this ordinance raises serious Fourth Amendment concern. My home is my private space. And I should not have to give the government access to it just because I rent. I don't need the city to parent me, manage my relationship with my landlord, or tell me how my home should be handled. If this ordinance passes and I feel that my privacy is no longer respected, I would seriously consider moving out of Desert Heights Springs. altogether. This city will lose a valuable citizen, a member of this community, and my landlord would, unfortunately, lose a responsible tenant. Respect my privacy, respect my rights, and leave my home alone. Thank you.

Do I have any other public comments? All right, we're going to close public comments this time. We'll go to the city manager's report.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. We have a couple updates from some of our department heads. First, we're going to ask Jeffrey Buckeye, our Administrative Services Director, to provide a few financial updates.

Yes, thank you, Dora, and thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Financial highlights for fiscal year 26-27 for the General Fund and Public Safety Fund as of October-August 31st, 2026. Our revenues for this year are a little over $1.2 million, which is only about 2% of the adopted budget. Last year at this time, our revenues were close to $1 million, which were at 2% of the amended budget. And two years ago, our revenues were at $2.3 million, which is right at 7% of the budget. The reason why it was so high is that this time two years ago is when Amazon paid their building permits. to build their facility, which was a big bill. For expenditures, 26, 27 expenditures are $8.9 million, which is 21% of the adopted budget. Last year at this time, they were at $8.5 million, which is also at 21%. And two years ago, we were at $8.4 million, which was 23% of that budget. And that is my report.

Thank you, Jeffrey. Next, our Deputy City Manager, Christina Newsome, has a few updates regarding animal control.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm excited to update you on Animal Care and Control's recent achievements. Since our last meeting, we've successfully facilitated three adoptions, reunited seven animals with their families, and completed three rescues. In particular, Matilda and Tabitha are now in caring hands of our new rescue partners in beautiful Fraser Park. I want to remind everybody about an important adoption event coming up on September 24th at Wardman Park in the Cabot Building, where you can adopt a furry friend for just $10. And also in honor of National Husky Day on September 22nd, we're offering $10 adoptions for all huskies. Tonight we have Kane with us. He might take a little... Yeah, he's a shy one. He's a two-year-old German shepherd, friendly with other dogs, weighs around 60 pounds, and adores going for walks. Let's work together to find him his forever home. If you're interested in adopting Kane, please reach out to City Hall, and thank you for our continued support in making a difference for our community's animals.

Thank you, Christina. Next, Roberta Cernick, our Recreation and Community Services Director, has a few updates on events in the community.

Yeah, just a quick update. Good evening, everyone. Our last Desert Nights on the Boulevard concert of Season 1 is on Saturday, September 26th from 6 to 10 p.m. It is a No Doubt tribute band, so please come dressed in your best 90s gear for a chance to win a gift card. And stay tuned on information on Season 2 that is coming. And I would like to correct my, during presentation, I said the parade was on December 14th, and it is not. It is on Saturday, December 12th at 545. Thank you.

Thank you, Roberta. And then finally, our deputy city manager, Daniel Porras, is going to provide an update. At the last city council meeting, we heard some public comments regarding some concerns on Pomelo Drive, some safety concerns. We heard that again tonight. Between the last meeting and this meeting, he did have an opportunity to look into that area, and so I do want to allow him the opportunity to give an update to the public and to council on that.

Thank you, Dora. Yeah, the engineering department, when we receive stop sign requests or speed hump requests, any type of safety requests, we review our transportation injury mapping system. It's a TIMS system. What it is, it records every single traffic accident, collision in California. We're able to do a query. based on location and on time. So we ran a query for the last 10 years in exactly that location of Palmetto Drive and there was one accident. The accident that was there was in 2023 and it was a broadside accident with a motorcycle that did an illegal passing on there. Since there was only one, we also reviewed the distances between the actual stop signs. One stop sign was about 400 feet away, the other one was 1200 feet away, and the other one was 300 feet away. The proximity of stop signs make it very close. In other words, one stop sign is very close to their stop sign. All intersections are stop sign controlled. There's not one intersection that is not stop sign controlled. So the result of that was immediately there's no safety concerns. There might be some issue with traffic patterns, but there is absolutely no engineering safety concern that we can obviously see. Once we received any type of formal details on what those complaints or what the issue might be, we'll review it in more detail. Thank you.

Thank you, Danny. That concludes updates for tonight.

Thank you very much. I'll start with the council member comments. I'll start with Mr. Pitts.

Good evening City Council and Mayor. On September 14th, I attended our Public Safety Committee meeting where we discussed several important issues impacting our community. Hope Chrisman, a local government and community liaison with the California Public Utilities Commission, provided us an update on statewide efforts to strengthen and improve 911 system stability and reliability. Riverside County Sheriff Sergeant Mark Charshan also provided an update on ongoing e-bike safety education and outreach campaigns, helping promote safer riding practices throughout our communities. As always, it was a very productive meeting, and I appreciate the continued efforts of our public safety partners to keep our residents informed and safe. Switching gears, Sunline's Hall Pass program returns. The Hall Pass program helps ensure transportation doesn't stand in the way of education by providing fare-free rides on Sunline local fixed route buses for eligible Coachella Valley high school and college students. Students can use their pass for unlimited rides to school, work, activities, and anything above that, libraries and other destinations throughout the valley. Whether you're heading to class, studying at the library, going to work, or pursuing your next opportunity, Sunline is helping keep our students connected and moving forward. To learn more, go to www.sunline.org forward slash hall pass. And that's all, Mr. Mayor. I yield back. Thank you.

Mr. Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A couple of three quick updates here. We had the Southern California Association of Governments Regional Housing Needs Assessment Subcommittee meeting. That's a mouthful. It's terribly exciting. But we're starting the process of determining the methodology of how to allocate housing units across the region. For those who need a quick little update, the State Department of Housing and Community Development every 10 years gives a number to a region, and then the region sub-assigns the number to various cities, and that's the amount of houses that we are supposed to or allow to be built built within an area and there's all kinds of methodology to determine the formula we're looking towards getting that lump sum number sometime in the middle of next year primarily this time we discussed social equity as part of the methodology and the one thing that i pushed for and that was added is access to health care as part of that methodology it doesn't make a lot of sense forcing housing into areas They don't have adequate health care access or access to health care or even in the city. So in our case, it doesn't make sense to have the state order us to build 1,000 homes if those 1,000 homes have no access to health care. So we've got to solve two problems in that. So hopefully that formula will help as they allocate those housing units to the city. On the good news, or shall we say maybe great news side, the Coachella Valley Conservation Commission was awarded a substantial grant from the green sticker fee of off-highway vehicles. That grant amounts to $898,000, and we coupled that with a matching grant of $125,000. from the Urban Conservation Corps for a total of $1.02 million. All of that grant money is earmarked for Desert Hot Springs. Can you pull up that slide, Gerald, please? What we'll be doing is we will be installing over three miles of post and cable fencing on conservation land in Desert Hot Springs. And if you notice, all of those light shaded areas are conservation land, Conservation Commission owned land. as well as restoration of the illegal off-highway vehicle trails in those conservation lines. And the trails are marked by the blue little lines there. And then you'll see down at the bottom a red box with gates on it. That'll be a more substantial fenced area. with gate access. We're in areas where we're having issues with illegal encampments. This is going to be a three-year project. Will Steichen from CVCC will be making a much more detailed presentation to us at the next council meeting, but I wanted to just kind of celebrate that and bring that forward today because that's really exciting news and it's a lot for us. And one last item, a long-term project Desert Hot Springs fixture here. Frank Elmore, he's a member of the Senior Center, the Rotary, volunteer at Friends of the Library, and with Palm Springs Unified School District. We'll be moving back to Indianapolis. Council Member Pye and I were fortunate to record a little video tribute and a goodbye to him. He'll be very much missed in our community, and we wish Frank well. That's all I've got.

And did I hear you reappointed as the chair of a committee?

Yes, for the fourth year, chairing of the Coachella Valley Conservation Commission.

This is a committee that's made up of the Coachella Valley leaders through CVAG.

CVAG manages it. There is a representative from all nine cities, three tribes, and the county. Actually, all four, or all five county commissions.

Very prestigious to be appointed multiple times, so congratulations. Thank you. Mr. Boss.

All right. On the 9th, attended the RCTC meeting or Riverside County Transportation Commission meeting. Most of the items were related to the western end of the county, although it's quite informative with what's going on out there because many of our folks do a lot of commuting out there. So there's going to be a lot of expenditures, a lot of projects there along the 15 going through Lake Elsinore and Corona and then the continuation of some of the expansion on the 91 as well. Also on the 10th, attended the Desert Valley Builders Association luncheon where our Madam City Manager gave a wonderful presentation on the city of Desert Hot Springs and our strategic plan and our achievements and those type of things. And many of the guests there did a tour. It was at Too Much Palms Resort, and they did a nice tour of that as well, so they enjoyed that. and it was nice to hear their comments about what's some of the things that we've accomplished here in town as well. On the 11th, with my colleagues, we attended the All Valley Mayors event at the Renaissance. That was informative, listening to the different mayors, and our mayor representing Desert Hot Springs proudly and doing well up there. And then on the 11th as well, the National Hispanic Construction Alliance Desert Cities Chapter held their monthly mixer at Casablanca here off Pearson in our city. And they did a 9-11 ceremony there, which was really nice. I didn't realize that we hadn't done one of those in quite some time. But we had our police and fire that were there, which was really wonderful as well. There's all kinds of pictures and videos and things on social media. But it all kind of came together, and it came together kind of quickly in a way. But even when we needed to have a speaker or a singer, I mean, for the national anthem, we happened to have a lady that was there who volunteered for it, and she happened to be a music teacher. And so jumped right in and did it, which was really nice. But we had, you know, some of our local load rider car club was there. And we had, you know, from Station 98, the firemen there and the trucks there. And it was just a good community event. It was well attended. And everybody got a chance to enjoy themselves. We had some city booths there as well. such as like our police explorers. And then, let's see. Oh, Gerald, could you put that on up? So the Desert Community Mobile Vet Clinic, there we go, is going to be doing, is back online. They were dark for the month of August because it's a little warm and cozy that month. So they're coming back, and it's going to be this Thursday from 8 to 11 at First Community Baptist Church, which is at 66272 First Street here in town. And they do vaccines, microchips, physical exams. They provide some food, leashes, collars. And quite a few of our local residents, including those outside the area, that they will also attend that. And that's been a very successful program that they're doing in that. Then my last comment is, one of the comments was mentioned, we had other city council members from different cities come into our city. So I've had La Quinta, Coachella, Indio, Rancho Mirage, all come with me into our city, Desert Hot Springs, and drive through the city and explore the city with me. And one common denominator we all have is that issue of trash. We're in wind belts, and so those wind belts can create some of that. And all of them have illegal dumping as well. And it's a very similar challenge. And so one comment that they all will say is that the town or the city of Desert Hot Springs has changed dramatically. And they enjoy seeing some of the progress that we've done. They see the new housing, the industrial district, the cleanliness of visible law enforcement driving through the town and what have you. There's always room for improvement in those things but to say that nothing's being done is simply ignorant and uneducated and I'm gonna very blunt about it You know, we're doing our part of it as well with what's there But we're no different than what's going on with the other communities down there And so we're doing the best that we can can we improve? Of course we can and we'll continue to do that That's why we can our City Council creates a strategic plan to give staff the direction for that going forward And that's all I have sir.

Thank you very much. Miss Pike.

I

I'm a first talk to you it appears to me that we need to do some more education I haven't talked I heard you and I have not talked to the city manager about this or anyone else about this but I want you to know I heard you and I think that we do need to do some more communication And that's what I'm going to work for. I have to do this alone because Brownack, I can't talk to them, but I can talk to her. And I will try my best to do something before our next agenda to do education. so that we can get on the same page. Even if we still don't agree, we can change, but we can do something. And that's what I'm going to promise you. September 10th, I attended the Desert Health Care District Wellness Summit. And the most important thing to me was homelessness. And I'm going to bring some of that information to the city manager. But I did find out that our swag is the best way that we have to do it here. The Friends of the Desert, the Friends of the DHS Library is starting their author series again. And the person that's doing it is David F. M-A-F-U-S-Z-A-K. But anyway, he is supposedly a good author. He will be happening on September 17th. at 1 p.m. at the library. I also attended the Church of God in Christ with one of our bishops here. They wanted us... It was in the Renaissance Resort, and they wanted us to do the welcoming address, and so I did that for them. And... I'm ready. We honored two kids for Do the Right Thing this year. And one of them, the top one is this kid sitting next to the police chief is in high school. Can you see how tall he is? And then the other one is the one that's in the wheelchair. And I will talk about both of them. I and Gary Gardner attended them. Tyson Gaining. It is my pleasure to nominate Tyson Gangly for Do the Right Thing recognition. I have had the privilege of working with Tyson for the past four years, beginning when he was a freshman. During that time, I have watched him grow tremendously as the student and athlete and most importantly as a young man. And that's the one at the top. As a scholar, Tyson has demonstrated determination and perseverance. His academic journey has not simply been about earning grades. It has been about learning to take responsibility for his education and continuing to push himself towards success. Tyson has shown that some determination as an athlete throughout high school. He has challenged himself by participating in trade, football, sorry, track, football, and basketball, balancing the responsibility of academics and multiple sports. What stands out to me most about Tyson, however, is what he does when no one is asking him to okay it. At school events, Tyson can regularly be found helping whatever he has, whatever he is needed. Whether he is assisting during an event or staying afterwards to help with cleanup. He is willing to step in and contribute to his school community. At last year's graduation, I specifically remember watching Tyson help manage the lines and direct families to where they needed to sit. He wasn't doing it for recognition or reward. He simply saw that help was needed and stepped up. I'll read further. Tyson, an outstanding example of personal growth, perseverance, and choosing to do the right thing. After a rough start in high school, he was completely transformed his reputation. and has become one of our most trusted students. Tyson consistently looks for ways to help others without hesitation or needing to be asked if he is a true self-starter who recognizes what needs to be done and takes initiative. As an office TA, Tyson has earned the respect of staff and has become someone we can depend on each day. His willingness to serve others' positive attitude, personal growth, and accountability make him an outstanding example of what it means to do the right thing. Anthony Valdez, his was long. I'm going to cut it short. Tony has been enrolled in the Adult Transition Program for two years. During this time, he has been an outstanding role model for his peers, as he is always willing to try, this best at what is asked of him. A major focus in ATP is to prepare students for the world of work. Despite some of Tony's physical limitations, Tony is always willing to try a work task. When Tony peers see him making an attempt to fold pizza boxes or wipe tables at local businesses, it motivates them to also test their own limits. During the second week of the 26-27 school year, Tony was selected for Do the Right Thing award on our campus. Tony was ecstatic at the recognition he received from the campus administrator. His peers immediately wanted to know how they could win such an award, which led to an impromptu and meaningful discussion why a person should always do the right thing regardless if someone is looking. Staff and students in the adult transition program are pleased to know Tony is receiving a do the right thing award today at the district level. The chief and I and sometimes Gary Gardner, we go because it's important for the kids to know that we support them and we do have good kids. And lastly, for those that are attending Rosh Hashanah, have a good holy day. I'm done.

Thank you very much. I've got a few comments, and I'm going to address some of the questions that were asked tonight. But first, as the mayor of the City of Desert Hot Springs, I'm allotted the opportunity to add anything to the agenda for discussion. Same as two council members, if they team up together, can add anything to the agenda, and or city staff, meaning our city manager can add things to the agenda. Recently, we've been notified as a city council that we've received an abnormally high amount of public records requests. The Public Records Act is an act that was instated that allows anyone to ask for information through the city clerk's office and to receive that information under the parameters that are set by the policy. But sometimes these could be abused, especially with the AI taken apart in our society to the day. This is something that's being looked at by the state capitol and the legislation. But what I'd like the city manager to do is bring back an item for discussion by the city council to be as transparent as possible to the public. Some of the numbers that I asked for, I have received, is to date. That means to date of today's date. I don't know why I'm babbling there. As of September, we've received 695 requests. And to put that in perspective, in 2025, for the total year, we received 434. The year before that, 356. We're unforecasted if this continues to go down this path to receive over 1,000 or close to 1,000 PRA requests. Because of that, we've had to hire staff, we've had to spend public funds, and it needs to be more transparent to the community. So I'm asking that an item be added for discussion at the next council meeting, and then after that the council will decide how this will be reported to the public in the future. With that, I'm going to get into my comments. So it's always amazing to me when someone comes and stands at the podium. And I respect the people that are still here. Some might have to leave because of some items. But when they ask a question and want an answer but really leave, they really don't want the answer. They just want to make a spectacle of this community. I'm going to address the electioneering. So at the last council meeting, there was an individual that came up. And as the mayor of the community, I have a right to control this meeting to the best I can. And what that means is we have rules. We state those rules before the meeting, and we ask that everyone adhere to those. There are freedoms of speech, but that goes to a certain extent. We're not going to allow someone up there to threaten any of our staff members or the city council in any way, right? We're not going to allow that. So it's the same as profanity to me. When someone says something profane, and Mr. Hedrick You can shake your head all you want. It's not going to stop me from making my comments. And either you can listen to me and I give my answer and we can have a conversation offline, or you can just sit there and try to make a spectacle of the city. So I understand what you're trying to say, but if you allow me to answer your question, I'd be happy to do so. This is the problem we're having to this day. So when questions are asked, you want it one way, you don't want it both ways. So I'm going to try to answer your question the best I can and the reason that I said what I said. And I'm going to debate you a little bit on the fact that I never shut you down. I just said you couldn't say that. So you could have taken your time, asked for more time, and you could have redone your comments at any time. Now, to address the profanity and the disgusting comments that were made tonight, I have elementary kids that reach out to us all the time that watch this on TV to make reports to their community. If you can't be professional and you have to use profanity or you have to use disgusting comments, then I'm going to shut it down. Didn't mean that I asked you to leave. I didn't ask that individual to leave when I asked. Okay, let me restate that. There was an individual that said, F the flock cameras, right? And she walked away. I didn't stop her time, but I said, because of your language, I'm going to ask you to leave, and she agreed to leave. I didn't escort her out. I didn't make her leave. She could have sat down and said no. The same as you, Mr. Hedrick, when you said your comments about electioneering, when you referred to a council member or you referred to any public that is running for office and you referred to their campaign pages, I'm going to stop you as you're going to electioneer for them. Whether you were or were not, that's your opinion. But as the chair of this meeting, I have a right to do so. And you can disagree with me all you want. That's the great thing about the United States of America. So with that said, the city attorney gives me opinions, and we talk all the time. But she's not the judge for me. Or he. Sometimes there's a he sitting in that seat. Who judges me as a city council. And if a majority of them want to shut me down and say to allow those comments, they are more than welcome to make a motion and do so. But until then, I'm going to respect the city I grew up in. a city that I've given over 40 years of my life in volunteering and giving my time on the city council. And for anyone to stand up there and want to yell at me, that's your right. You can be mad at me all you want. But a lot of you don't know me. And if you want to spend time with me, you want to sit in my office or you want to go have coffee, we're happy to do so. We can debate and we can disagree. We might even agree on a lot of things. I do respect the comments that have been made here tonight. I really do. but what you don't see is the other side of it in the almost 20 years that I've served in the City Council I have a fielded probably at least a hundred if not more phone calls on tenants that have had issues and this is partly where this stemmed from because I'm not the only one that brought this forward the ordinance is a working document it can be fixed in the future So I would suggest to put your comments in writing and or schedule time with our city staff. I don't think any of them would deny time with you. I don't think any of the city council would deny time with you to hear your concerns. And maybe there is pieces of it that can be fixed. But the ordinance is passed. The nexus study will come next with the fees. We can adjust it in the future. We don't have to implement it right away. We hear you. But you don't hear what I heard last Friday. A young lady calls me on the phone crying because the landlord went in, cut the main water line to their apartment because they missed a month's worth of rent and they won't pay or they can't pay. So I had to be on the phone on a Friday afternoon with the water district trying to see if they can get over there and figure it out. Don't know if it ever happened. That's not a very good landlord to do that, right? So there's both sides of the coin here that we have to debate And a lot of times we don't have a back and forth with you because it doesn't allow for that here a lot of times. So maybe that's something you go to Sacramento and change, right? I don't know. To Mr. Sanchez. He sent a comment in writing and then came and made a bunch of comments, some of them not even making sense. But he states that he represents a neighborhood watch group. Well, you can't represent a neighborhood watch group. Because you have to be certified to be a neighborhood watch group. And that takes at least 50% of the residents in a neighborhood that's identified. They have to go through the classes. And I think the police department has to be involved. So if they want to call themselves a neighborhood watch group, that's fine. But what are they watching for? And I think the staff heard him at the last meeting, right? They went out and did a report on the traffic safety. But if there's other issues, it needs to be clear. The city streets aren't mine. right-of-ways aren't mine private lots aren't mine they're all of ours i did not yell at anybody or tell anybody off on the fact that they should clean up their own lots what i did do was i identified all the hard work that is being done by our city and our city council policies on cleaning up our community it's sad it it bothers me every day when i drive by and i see another trash dump on the side of the road i just don't get it when we spend almost a half a million dollars a year extra to have items picked up in front of your home. But we do know there's a lot of people who just don't respect our deserts and don't respect our driveways, don't respect their own lots. And the laws are very prohibited on how we get onto private lots. And so it takes up staff time and money and all those other things. We don't have just a crew. Doria, go grab your gloves. Let's go clean up the mediums right now. It doesn't make sense. We have had lots of community groups that have done it in the past. We do spend a lot of money with Desert Valley Disposal to go out and pick up these sites. Ms. Newsome can tell you how many times she's had private contractors go and clean up messes in the desert because people dump it. Gary Gardner worked on a huge program five years ago, six years ago, that put up signs in all these areas, a $10,000 fine if they're caught. We're trying our best. And I don't think I ever yelled at anybody or was angry at anybody. I do raise my voice sometimes to talk over someone that I think is not respecting what our authorities are. So I will raise my voice sometimes. But I don't think I've ever been angry up here and yelled at anybody. So I think there needs to be more of a back and forth. And my initial comments about these PRAs, it's inundating our community. We can't have a public debate. If we allowed every person in the community, all 33,000, to stand up here and have a public debate with city council, that's your right to elect your city council up here to go have those conversations with them outside this room. There's no real policy or real direction to allow public debate up there. If we allowed every resident in the community to sit here as long as they want and debate the city council, how would we get anything done? It doesn't make sense. That's what's been asked of us a lot of times. So, again, we've heard you. I want to talk about some good things real quick, and then I think Gary's pointing at me because he forgot something.

Did you want to mention something real quick? No, you brought up the trash cleanup, and I just wanted to let folks know that coming up, the Friends of the Desert Mountains, a wonderful conservation organization that we work with here, the city and that they do a lot of great work in or throughout the desert is doing a community cleanup and and we have those kind of groups do this often throughout the city as the mayor has noted but their cleanup is this coming Saturday the 19th and And anybody interested in volunteering and going out and helping clean up, pick up trash, they will provide water, they'll provide snacks, they'll provide gloves, they'll provide bags. You have to wear closed-toed heavy work shoes if you can and dress appropriately. They're meeting at 7 a.m. this Saturday, the 19th, at Indian Canyon and Mission Creek.

sometime in the mid-afternoon depending on how hot it is perfect a few more things real quick um maybe we should have desert valley disposal come back and give an update on how much they have picked up in our community for the people that do disposal correct and how much they have helped us in some of the things let alone some of the volunteer programs just a year ago or so we had a local business show up with their own tractors and and clean up the desert, which was awesome. I did attend to the All Valley Mayors alluded to by one of the council members. This happens every year, hosted by the Coachella Valley Chamber of Commerce, Greater Coachella Valley Chamber of Commerce, who will be hosting the State of the City also. They invite all the city mayors and tribal leaders, and there's a lot of us up there. And they give us the questions in advance, which were five questions, but it's a free-for-all. I'm trying to get your two or three minutes in to say something. But the conversation really got interested because it led to Mosley Housing and the ridiculous amount of numbers that the state of California has put on to the city of Desert Hot Springs, let alone the other ones. You had a city of Indian Wells, and I want to make this quick comment. I sat next to, I don't know if Greg is the mayor pro tem right now, but the mayor was out, and so Greg Sanders sat next to me, and we've known each other for quite a while now. And he was representing the city of Indian Wells. And before it started, he sat there and said, hey, I just came through your city recently and how beautiful and good job you're doing. That's from the city of Indian Wells. And I know a lot of people might disagree with that because it's kind of in a tunnel when we drive through our city and we see that one piece of trash or that tree growing in the sidewalk or whatever it is. But people do see a difference here with what's been done over the few years. But anyways, it got talked about housing and the enormous amount of number of We have to come up with which is what close to 3,000 homes and doors and so I wanted to recognize Gary Gardner sits on a Southern California Association of Governments, which is Really producing helping produce the path to how these numbers will be talked about in the future. So Indian Wells had a car a good conversation because it's the only city that's surrounded they can't grow but they have to produce so many affordable homes in the future, but how do you do that when you have nowhere to grow? But they have money and they're willing to give money to other cities to help them with those, but they can't do that with the current policies. So very interesting conversation. On the 14th of October, just want to keep that in mind, that is the homecoming, second annual homecoming parade for the Deseret Hot Springs High School. Last year we had it during the day and it was a little hot, so they've actually moved it to the evening, the Wednesday before the homecoming game, so everybody can participate and have a good time. It'll be 6 p.m. down Pearson Boulevard to the high school. And then on the 15th, the State of the City, which will be hosted by the Coachella Valley Chamber of Commerce. I'll have a lot of good things to say about what we've accomplished over this last year and where we're going for the future. And then as stated, December 12th is the holiday parade here in Desert Hot Springs. If you didn't see the beginning of the meeting, we honored Alondra Campos, who is the reporter for NBC Palm Springs. She is an awesome person, grew up here in Desert Hot Springs, went away to college. got a couple degrees, and then now she serves at Coachella Valley as a reporter at NPC Palm Springs, and she'll be our Grand Marshal for this year, so pretty excited about that. All right, so moving on from here. We're, item seven announced one last time that it was pulled from the agenda for posting reasons and we'll come back on October 6th. Move to item number eight is a zoning amendment 26.26-1 and an ordinance to rezone land designated commercial business park C-VP zoning along Highway 62 between North Indian Canyon Drive and Interstate 10 and north of Pearson Boulevard to the commercial highway C-H zone. Patricia, this could be you.

Yes.

Awesome.

Thank you. So a little bit of background. On June 3rd, 2025, the City Council approved a strategic plan envisioning the promotion of tourism through the development of new businesses along Highway 62 just north of Pearson Boulevard. In order to achieve the goal of making the tourism gateway along Highway 62, the strategic plan calls for intense and focused efforts to identify important sites, properties, property owner, and capital partners to attract and retain commercial development. Currently, the area is zoned commercial business park and allows uses such as warehouses, manufacturing, and data centers. These uses conflict with the goal of developing a tourism gateway which consists of hotels, restaurants, retail, and fueling stations. In October of 2025, the City Council adopted an urgency ordinance limiting those uses within the commercial business park and then extended it in November of 2025 for a little over 22 months. The area encompasses approximately 231 acres which include the east and west side of Highway 62. Beyond that and adjacent to the area is zoned residential medium density and specific plan. Currently, the general plan land use designation is commercial and lists five possible zoning districts. After an analysis, commercial highway zoning district aligns with a strategic plan and allows for hotels, restaurants, retails, and fueling stations while excluding uses such as warehouses, manufacturing, and data centers. Here is a current zoning map for the proposed rezone area. In the light red is the commercial business park designation and include both the east and west side of Highway 62. And here is a proposed zoning map to rezone the area to commercial highway, which is shown here in the dark red color. And just for clarification, this is only to rezone. No development is proposed at this time and any future development would have to go through the planning process. This proposed action is exempt under CEQA pursuant to Title 14, Section 15061, B3, the Common Sense Exemption, and any future development would be subject to CEQA. And with that, this is the first reading of an ordinance to rezone land designated Commercial Business Park Highway along Highway 62 just north of Pearson Boulevard to Commercial Highway. This concludes my report. I'm available if you have any questions. Thank you.

Do I have any questions for staff before I open the public hearing? All right. We'll go to open the public hearing. We'll take testimony in favor, opposed in neutral position. Would anybody like to make any comments? I see nobody coming forth. We'll close the public comment at this time. And if there's no more city council discussion, I'll entertain a motion on introduction for the first reading by title only. Motion by Mr. DeVos, seconded by Mr. Gardner. Please vote.

Motion passes unanimously. The ordinance will return at the next meeting for second reading and adoption.

Move to the administrative calendar. Item number nine, audit financial statements for fiscal year 24-25. Mr. Buchheim.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So our fiscal year 24-25, these financial statements have been audited by the Poon Group. These will align to the strategic goal number 11 of financial operations. The contents of this is the scope of work, the audit results, and the overview of the financial statements. The scope of work is the audit of the city's basic financial statements, the housing successor agency compliance audit, agreed-upon procedures to the appropriation limit schedule, and the agreed-upon procedure to apply to utility users tax. Norm, we also have a, when qualified, we meet the threshold. We have a single audit. Unfortunately, the single audit for 2024 is not finished yet. It is with the auditor's quality control, but they keep having more requests for more information. So until they can stop asking questions, or they stop requesting information, once that happens, we'll finally get the report. So our audit results for the audited financials are we have an unmodified position opinion from the auditors. The financial statements are fairly presented in all material aspects. Significant accounting policies have been consistently applied. The estimates are reasonable and disclosures are properly affected in the financial statements. Other results that we've had, the implementation of GASB statement 101, the Government Accounting Standards Board, which regards compensated absences, which we have a now different way of recording the liability of those absences for sick comp time and vacation. which resulted in a prior error restatement of $541,000 to the governmental activities. There was also an error correction in the RCTC Loan Capital Improvement Fund. Previously, the expenses were recorded in the ARPA Fund, which resulted in a restatement of $658,000. For the audited financials, the city's net position at June 30, 2025, was $80.5 million. Last year, we were at $71.4 million. Our program revenues were decreased by $31 million. The expenses were increased by $212 million. But our general revenues increased by $200,000. and our change in net position increased by over $9 million. As a comparison, our net cost of services to tax revenues, which is the net cost of services, which is basically a ratio showing The cost of our service is less any user fees. So at this point, the tax revenues covers about 60% of the net cost of services, or net cost of services are about 60% of the tax revenues. General fund fund balance, in comparison with the previous year, increased by $775,000. And then the general fund statement of revenues, our actual revenues increased by 3.5 million. Our expenditures decreased by 477,000. But then other financing sources, which would include things like transfers out, the largest one being the transfers to the public safety fund increased by 1.7 million, but still having over $770,000 increase in the fund balance. And here we have our fund balance trend. As you can see, we're at $13 million. Just a couple of years ago, by council authority, used fund balance for help with cannabis cultivators, the reduction in cannabis revenues, but also with some improvements we've done around the city. And so that is my report, and if there are any questions.

Thank you for the report. Before we do that, we'll take public comment. Joshua?

financials the last few years. For four years beginning in 2019, the auditor's internal control report was included in the council agenda packet and flagged no issues. That changed in 2023 when it was no longer included, the findings weren't included, and the findings were adverse. Finding one, for example, had 33 late journal entries, the issues with bank reconciliations, and the capital asset module and payroll. Capital asset module we'll flag for later. In 24, five findings, including material weaknesses. Finding one had contracts over this council's threshold, never competitively bid, and never brought to vote. That's the same year that the city paid $629,000 to Desert Concepts for the hub. No bid, no council vote. Finding five, the city certified the U.S. Treasury that it had spent all $6.9 million of its ARP of money. When the number was audited, it was actually $3.1 million. A federal report off by $3.8 million. And finding three, the federal awards schedule had to be restated by $2 million. Now, if you look tonight, page 211 tonight shows the housing finding was resolved. That's great, but that's one of five findings from our last audited financials. What about the other four? Have they been resolved? And the state blames a 14-month delay on serious error in capital asset management, but they flagged in 2023. Was that never resolved? Is that a new issue? I'd like to know, and the council should as well. This isn't distant history. Page 145 details a cannabis grant fund that spent $251,000 with zero appropriation. And two weeks ago, this council accepted a street project with over a million dollars in change orders that never came back to council. Jeffrey mentioned that 2024 is still not accepted. Do you know we're the only entity in the state whose 2020 audited financials have not been accepted? The state controller's asking questions. This dais should be asking questions. Tonight, you've been asked to give away your records authority to file a contract report with the biggest contracts missing. You've pulled a few resolutions because of a resident, not staff, noticing that it wasn't properly noticed, and now an audit without the findings included for counsel. If the mayor wants to see less PRAs, he should direct the staff to release all relevant documents for the meeting agenda, packets, and encourage discussion at the dais when people and citizens come to you guys with real issues and real questions. So which one of you on the dais tonight wants to ask for these answers before you sign off on this and just say received and filed? I'd like to know. Thank you.

Do we have any other public comments tonight?

We have one on Zoom.

Yes. As soon as you let him in, just let me know. Mr. Betz, you just have to unmute. You can make your comment.

Mr. Betz? yeah sorry I'm trying to get signed on can you hear me now we can hear you thank you so the finance department is the subject of this audit and I don't think it's the place of city staff to be presenting the audit results and certainly not without the auditor present it's highly unusual to see this happening what's going if the auditor isn't present then you as the council don't have the opportunity to ask questions of the auditor for the purpose of presenting your questions and your role as oversight. Certainly, this is nothing against staff. I have high regard for the city accounting staff, but this is a process that is very important every year for the council to undergo. And I really think you should postpone acceptance of this audit report until you have the auditor in front of you so that you can properly ask questions of the auditor. And that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other public comment? Nothing else? Okay. We'll move to city council comments.

Anyone have any comments?

The only comment I have is have you received any correspondence from the state controller's office?

We have received some correspondence. The only thing missing that goes to the state controller's office right now is the 24-25 single audit, which is the one that also shows whatever findings. All other audits have been submitted. The state controller's annual report, those have all been filed. The most recent one was filed yesterday. in June, which was late, so we had received some correspondence on that, but there is nothing outstanding other than the single audit.

When's that other one going to be submitted?

Once I get the single audit back, and so that will have to be done by October 9th.

It's not unusual to see items in certain accounts be asked to be moved by the auditor into other accounts, correct, so that it correlates better?

No, that's not unusual.

There are some errors made, and they may not have been caught, and sometimes they're caught in the audit. It's best that they're not, but it does happen sometimes.

In my world, we do audits, and it happens all the time that journal entries are made incorrectly by an accountant or posted incorrectly, and then the auditor catches them. That's the reason you have an audit, right? So they get moved in the right place. This year we did not have the Poon group here to give the audit, as they usually are. But I've read the full report and feel confident with it. I do want to make a comment. I make this every year. I'll make it again. The auditor requests from the city council to fill out a document as if we are employees and in city hall every day, which I think is very odd. I adhered this year, and I did it. I don't know if it was too late or not, but I did make a comment on the form. The form basically asks if we know of any kind of wrongdoings or if we have anything that we would like to disclose or anything like that, and that usually goes to staff, which is compiled in the audit. We are the audit receiving the audit as the body that's asking for the audit, and we should be reviewing those documents, and we shouldn't be mandated to fill out a document. That's just my opinion. Everyone's adhered to it for the most part. But in the future, depending if it's the Poon Group or whoever does the audit, I just don't understand that portion of it.

Maybe I never will.

That's my only comment. Does anybody want to make a motion to accept this item? I'm sorry, we don't. This is a receiving file. Any more comments? All right. With item number 10, the amendment to the resolution number 2017-096 regarding facility use agreements and fees for city-owned facilities. Roberta?

Yes, good evening, Mayor, City Council. This item is a housekeeping update to our existing facility use resolution. The current resolution dates back to 2017. At that time, it established a specific rate of $12.50 per hour for certain long-term nonprofit users. and included a process where organizations experiencing financial hardship could request a fee reduction. Since then, the way we manage our facilities has changed. Reservations and facility use permits are now processed through our online reservation system, and our rental rates are established through the city's adopted fee schedule. So rather than continuing to have a specific rental rate written into a resolution from 2017, we're recommending that all facility rental rates simply follow the city's current fee schedule. Currently, the fee schedule establishes an hourly rate of $54.59 for private use and $27.29 for nonprofit organizations. Those rates can then be updated through the normal fee schedule process without having to come back and amend this resolution every time the fees change. The amendment also continues to authorize the city manager or designee to approve facility use permits and non-exclusive license agreements. It also gives the city manager the ability to approve a fee reduction or waiver when there is a demonstrated financial hardship or significant community benefit. That gives us some flexibility to work with organizations on a case-by-case basis while still maintaining a consistent fee structure. This amendment updates an outdated process, aligns the resolution with how we currently handle our facility reservations and fees, and provides flexibility when there is a demonstrated community benefit or hardship. So staff is recommending the adoption of the updated resolution. That concludes my report.

public comments you know coming forth will put up the City Council comments signatures will be included on the resolution it's it's not on the one we received any other comments all right I'll entertain a motion to adopt the resolution the motion is there a second please vote

Motion passes unanimously.

And move to the last item on the administrative calendar, Desert Nights on the Boulevard, Season 2 Professional Services Agreement with Take 5 Entertainment. Roberta?

Yes, me again. So this item is for the continuation of Desert Nights on the Boulevard for a second season running through October 26th through September of 2027. We launched Desert Nights on the Boulevard last October as part of our effort to activate the downtown and create a consistent gathering place for our community. Over the first season, we've been able to bring residents, visitors, and visitors downtown for live entertainment, food vendors, and community activities. We also conducted a community survey from May through August, and the responses showed strong support for continuing the series. One of the things we learned during the first year was that our headline concerts consistently attracted stronger attendance than the DJ and local band nights. Based on that, we are adjusting the format for season two. Instead of two events every month throughout the year, we are proposing 12 monthly headline concerts and five local band performances for a total of 17 events. The local band events will be concentrated between October and March, allowing us to continue supporting local artists while focusing our resources on the event that have generated the strongest attendance. We're also continuing to build on the overall experience. Season two is including a dance floor. It will continue to have a beer garden, food and beverage vendors, family-friendly activities, community partnerships, and opportunities for nonprofits to participate. Take five will continue to handle all of the talent booking, staging, sound, lighting, production, show management, and will also provide monthly marketing and promotion. The total cost for the season is $144,600, and that includes $132,000 for the 12 headline concerts, $6,600 for the five local band performances, and $6,000 for the digital advertising and marketing and promotion. Staff is recommending the city council authorize the city manager to enter into a professional services agreement with Take 5 Entertainment for season two of Desert Nights on the Boulevard. That concludes my report.

Thank you very much. Do we have public comments? All right, no public comments. We'll move to city council comments.

So moved.

Is there a second? Is there a second? Second. All right. Ms. Pye?

I want them to include Motown. I attended almost all of the Boulevardi. Be quiet. I attended almost all of the, except one, and it was the largest outside of Salina. It was the largest one. So I just requested Motown.

If we're going to do a request, and I'd like to have Snoop Dogg and Hatebreed.

I'll support the Motown. They did have like a rock band. They had a couple rock bands that did some stuff. You got No Doubt coming, so I think my wife is definitely coming for that. I've made a couple of them. I haven't made all of them, and I apologize for that, but man, I just hear so many good things about this stuff. I mean, people are just having such a good time. I get notes on social media, and whenever I run across people, they just really enjoy this event, so thank you for all the hard work you guys have put into this, and And having this contract with Take Five, it's been great. They've just been really producing some good entertainment. So I've been having a good time listening to all the good stuff.

Anything else from you guys?

All right, please vote. Motion passes unanimously.

All right, we have nothing else for the agenda. We have public comments. One person left. You good? All right. Before we adjourn, the City Council will meet on October 6th for its regular meeting, the Public Safety Commission on the 8th, the Planning Commission on the 13th, and the City Council will be back here on October 20th. Be safe.