City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, we are going to call this meeting to order. Could you lead us in Roll call, please.

Council member Odbe here. Council member FSY here. Council member Call here. Vice Mayor Pimentel here. Mayor Hernandez

here. There are no agenda changes at this time. Any council member, authority or staff who has a direct conflict of interest on any scheduled agenda item to be considered is to declare their conflict at this time. Seeing none, we are going to move ahead to public comment. At this time, members of the public may comment on any item not appearing on the agenda and within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city council L board. Individual comments will be limited to a maximum of three minutes and time cannot be yielded to another person. Under state law, matters presented during public comment cannot be discussed or acted upon. Mayor, we have Julia Hernandez. All right. I think so. Oh, there it is. Okay. I'm naturally a loud person, so I'll try not to hurt anybody's ears. All righty. Um, hello everyone. My name is Julia Hernandez. I recently stepped into the position of facilitator at Sierra House. So, I just wanted to take some time to come down here tonight when we're all in one place to introduce myself. So, you know, you know my face, I know yours. Um, I wanted to also speak about my goals to discuss making a positive impact on the unhoused population in our community um through our services at Sier House. So, I was born and raised here in the Central Valley. Growing up in Modesto and studying at Fresno State to earn my bachelor's in psychology and after graduation, I felt that natural pull to come on back to the Modesto and Riverbank area that, you know, so many of my friends and family felt as well. This is my home. And I wanted to give back to the community that raised me. Throughout my life, I volunteered with various organizations including the North Modesto Kuanas Club to provide support to those in need. And after conducting some community outreach in Turlock over at WCare, I felt a pull to make a difference in the lives of our unhoused population. I wanted to be able to make a difference and so I was so

excited for the opportunity to contribute to Cambridgemies and their mission through Sierra House here in Riverbank. And so in that, you know, in my in my role as facilitator at re in the restart program, I am happy to share that over the month that I've been here, we've been able to secure employment for three of our four residents after focusing on resume and cover letter building as well as job interview preparation and essential skill building. We are now working on helping them develop financial literacy, preparing them for their life and success beyond the program. And one of our residents is even enrolled in a peer support group. um he is working to become trained in becoming a peer sport person to help people kind of get back on the right track as he was able to do for himself. So it's really really amazing he's set to graduate late next month. We are very proud of him. So I wanted to share that as well. It's been amazing to see the growth in these men in the first month that I've been on site and in the coming months I'll be getting out into our community myself connecting with other organizations and recruiting for our third cohort that we have set to begin April 1st. Um, we are looking for candidates that with the right support that have the potential to become the person that achieves their goals. I do have a strong desire to help the youth of our community and help them prevent living a life on the streets. Um, through our career and personal development, I will be beginning to teach in April. I would love to meet with anyone that wants to know more about our programs so we can continue working together to reach those in need. I'm excited to see what we can accomplish while I'm in this role. Um, and you know, we're so thankful to the city of Riverbank for your continued support of our efforts. of course. Please don't be a stranger. I'm there Monday through Friday. I'd love for you guys to stop by. Um, get to know each other. Connection is very important to me. So, yeah, see me anytime. Thank you, mayor. That is all we have for general public comment in the chamber. I'm not sure if there's anyone online, but I don't see anyone.

Eight. Any other public comment? If not, we are going to move on to the consent calendar. Um, items 9.1 to 9.5. Is there any discussion or a uh motion? I make a motion we approve items 9.1 through 9.5. Second. Roll call, please. Council member Da. Yes. Council member FSY. Yes. Council member Call. Yes. Vice Mayor Pimementel? Yes. Mayor Hernandez? Yes.

Motion passes. is 50 public hearing. So we have item 10.1, a resolution to adopt new fee schedule of park amenities, rentals, recreation programs, and events for city of Riverbank. Mayor and council, Michael Patton, your director of parks and recreation will provide this report.

Good evening, mayor and city council. So we'll wait for Norman to get the presentation up and we'll get get started. Awesome. So, we as a park recreation department are here to um seek approval from the city council to updating our fee schedule for the parks and recreation department. Um kind of give you a little bit background why we're doing this. Um as uh you guys know from our last city council meeting, the department completed a financial sustainability study that was presented to you two weeks ago. Um in this study the consultants reviewed with staff um the financials of the department um and some of the key findings is our department is doing about 16% cost recovery. Um the consultant shared in the last meeting that that is below the state average. Um I do know that the national average listed by the national recreation park association is 25%. So we are on the national side with different markets compared to again other organizations in the nation we are a little bit more behind. Um so we use this information in the study and we reviewed our current fees related to the offerings of parks and recreation in order to find a few things. One is how we can increase our revenues, how we can reduce our expenditures and how can we modernize our department fees. Meaning how can we simplify them to where it's easier to understand for our residents. it's not confusing, convoluted, and we'll point out some examples as we go through the fee schedule, what kind of things we're changing there. Um, the proposed fees have been reviewed by city sta or parks recreation staff. We've looked them over um looked at our participation numbers, looked at different ways on um how we can how to make the fees make sense. We've discussed them with our finance department, had gave them opportunity to

ask questions. Uh we've also presented to to the parks and recreation advisory committee which is made up of five uh local residents that were appointed by US city council members to provide guidance. Um the fees were presented to him twice in two different meetings and it was a unanimous uh vote by them to recommend the fees to you guys for adoption. Uh so you have staff support, you have community representation support on these fees. Um so as we go One sec here. My clicker decided to not work anymore. It's delayed. Um, so for the proposed fee areas, we do have about four main categories. We have our parks, our recreation programs, our events, and our facilities. Um, one thing as we go through them, I want to note, um, I think will make it easier for us is there's a lot of changes we're proposing here. Um, so one thing I would ask from council and even residents that are in attendance of viewing this. Um, if you have questions or comments, we ask that you save them to the end. At the bottom right hand corner, we do have a p a slide number. So if you do see a question you have, just write down notes slide five question this so when we come back we can refer back. Um, so we're going to go over our parks. Um, so for our park facilities, we do have pavilions and gazeos out there that people can rent for birthday parties, gatherings. Um, we do have a resident rate that the currently is $110 per day, a non-resident rate that's $135. We're proposing that rate stay the same. The only change we're doing is we do require um our policies require deposits from those that rent the facilities. The deposit is is not in the current fee schedule. So, we're just implementing it in there. Uh the traditional fee that we've been charging is $100 for a deposit. um that is fully refundable dependent on the facility being left in good condition, no damages, not a hot mess for our staff to deal with after

the weekend. We also char uh have uh pavilions and facilities available for rent at Jacob Myers Park. Those fees are a little bit different. Uh we look at our Oak Grove and our Rotary area. Again, 110 for residents. Uh for non-residents, it currently is at 150. We're proposing to remain that the same. And the deposit we're throwing in there as again $100. Um, we do have our Bernie pavilion, which is the big pavilion right there, right next to the playground. For residents, it's 150. We're proposing to keep it the same. Uh, for non-residents, here's our first change. We go, we're recommending from going from $250 to $300. And then we do charge for additional for electricity, which is $25, which we're going to keep the same. Then again adding the deposit. Um, as we get further into Jacob Myers space, I do want to note um, one thing we noticed in the past two summers about 87 to 88% of those that attend the park when we do charge are non-residents. They are those are attending from visiting from Sacramento, San Jose, Stockton. And so when we start talking about fees, um, it's one common question we get from residents on how can we charge a fee to go to Jacome's Park. Um, again, it's to help subsidize so that the general fund isn't covering it. Again, with about 88 to 90% of those that attend the park that are not residents, you mean your tax dollars aren't covering for someone else to have fun that's not even from the area that's contributing. Um, so going to their Jacob Myers fees. So we charge months of April through September, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays and on holidays. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we do not charge. The current resident fee is $7. We are proposing to keep that the same. The non-resident fee is $10. We are proposing to jump that to $12. Uh we looked at last year's numbers. Um had we charged this $12 fee last year, we would have made additional about $19,000, which goes back into park maintenance and upkeep. Um give you example, we just did some tree cuts at Jacob Myers Park, cutting down the trees, making sure no

slims fall on any cars or any people out there. That cost around $19,000. So that kind of stuff helps out a little bit there. uh from previous city council member uh city councils, they worked with the department to create um a fee for those that wanted to visit the dog park or use a trail for 1 hour parking. Um in our fee schedule, we don't have anything listed in there. The policy we have been doing, it's $0 for a free oneh hour parking pass for those that again residents that just want to use the trail and use the dog park. For those that are there that pass that one hour, we do charge for that. Uh we do also you charge for the wedding gazebo that's out there. Um we don't really get since I've been here we've had had any calls on it but we do have there that's available. So it's $500. We're going to keep the same as 500. A new thing that we were looking to add is with the veteran presence and active military presence here in Riverbank. Um we implemented just for a little bit last year and received great feedback. We want to do some sort of military first responder discount. Currently, there's no fee for that, but we're proposing is kind of a $2 discount. So, if you're a resident, that's a first responder, active military, veteran, it would be $5. And if you're a non-resident, um, coming from that would be $10. We do offer season passes at Jacob Myers Park. So, for residents, it's $35, which is equivalent to five visits. So, we're going to keep that fee the same. And for non-residents, we're moving from $50. We're proposing $60. again going from five visits times $12 be $60 there. Another thing we're proposing is we do have the McRichi campground which we do not um offer up to the community. It's only mainly for those like nonprofit organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to use. Uh we are interested in looking see if there is a want to reserve that space for big path g as there is fire pits picnic areas nice shaded area a little bit away from the river but we just want to see if there

is some sort of want there and so we're proposing a new rate of $200 for the day use nonprofit organization like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts they've been charged $50 continue using that fee and then a deposit of $100 we'll keep that going miscellaneous across our parks So, we have a bounce house permit. So, if someone wants to rent our parks and they want to bring in a bounce house, there is a permit for that. We do charge $25 for that. We're proposing to keep that the same. We also do a special event permits. So, we do have lots of organizations that come in that have great ideas for special events. There's an application they fill out. Um, it is a lot of admin work as we go gather signatures from all the department heads approving the permit, communicating with department heads on what the event is. Um, so on the application it does say we charge $35, but again it's not in our fee schedule. So we propose to have that in our fee schedule. So when we charge people this $35, we don't feel like we're going behind city council's back on this. Uh, so we're seeking for that approval there. One other thing that we are seeing very frequently is uh we are proposing a facility rental and special event permit application laty. So in our applications, our policies, if you submit your documentation or your application 30 days before the event, it's great. But if you do it within like a after the 30 days, um we our policy is that we decline your event, you decline or your reservation or whatever that may be. That causes a lot of heartache and heartburn on our end where if you tell someone, hey, you didn't give us your documentation in time, so we can't have your wedding that you've been playing at the at this facility. There's not a lot of happy people with that and so but it is more burden on our staff to now we are in a scramble to try and make sure we get all the documentation. So we're proposing a late fee for those that are late that we can accommodate. We are capable of doing it but I think there needs to be some some sort of monetary compensation for our time for your lack

of preparation. The last thing we're proposing is at Jacob Myers Park, we do have uh on-site security guards that go around in the park, look for park violations, and they hand out citations. The typical citation that they've been accustomed to offer or sending out is $100. Again, it's not in our fee schedule. It's just been policy that previous administrations are like, "This sounds good." So, we want to make sure we have it in there to where again, if we do issue citation and someone's like, "Well, where is this in your fee schedule?" We have it set up there. Uh this goes for parking violations. For those that bring alcohol on site, that use drugs on site, anything that's a park violation, they can offer that citation. For recreation programs, we'll start with our camps. So, we um offer a variety of camps. One is an all day summer camp. Um in the past, we've offered a $125 for residents and offer a discount for a second child of 115. Um, and then for non-residents, it's $135 and again a discount or for second child it's 125. We're proposing a new fee of $125 just for every child that's involved. Um, whether you have a second child, third child, fourth child, keep the same and then a new a non-resident fee of 13750. We are looking at a 10% increase difference between a resident and non-resident rate. Um, so that's why you get that weird 13750 in there. As far as our mini camps go, we've charged $45 for resident and non-resident. We're looking at keeping the the resident rate $45 and then the non-resident rate 4950. Again, that 10% of of 45. We also do offer a camp time extension. So, we do like for example start camps at 8 pm or 8 am. If a parent wants to drop off their kid at say 7:30 a.m. because they have to go to work or something, they cannot pay 20 extra $25 and they can drop that kid off

early 30 minutes before uh before the camp each day. Um looking at our staffing costs because we have to have staff there to take in the kid and monitor them. It we operate a loss offering that. So, we are proposing to increase it to $50 to where we at least break even on that on that offering to parents that participate. As far as classes go, we do have a Zumba Gold program um $3 drop in or propose to keep it the same. We do also have an archery program that um we are looking to get start up again in March. The current fee is $30 for a six week session. Um individual drop in is $25 a day. U we're looking at kind of flipping that a little bit. So, we want to do $25 per registered class and a $30 drop in. Zumba, we'll keep the same with $5 drop in with a five keep that the same. Uh, one thing we're looking to add is u we do get lots of requests for new programs and new classes and we do start them up um try and start them up here. One thing we do not do not want to do is continually update this and go to city council, hey, we have this brand new program we want to do. We don't know if it's going to be good or not. Um, so what we want to do is get that in place where we have a range where we can charge between a minimum and a maximum and if we decide that the program is successful, we want to bring it back. The next time we come back with the fee schedule, we'll propose that specific program. The idea for parks and recreation is we want to keep this schedule up to date as much as possible with the hope of coming back annually. So, if we start a new program, let's say next month, um, come beginning of 2027, we'll come back with that new program with its own set fee schedule right there based on the feedback we get. Other recreation programs, so we do have our swim team. Um, we do charge $135 per participant. Second child is 125. The new proposed fee we're we're asking for is $150 per kid. Um, and then for

non-resident, it was the same fee. Um, last year we're proposing to make that 165 per child. Uh, we do have staff that are certified lifeguard instructors. And so from time to time, depending on their schedules, we do have them teaching lifeguard first aid classes. Um, we did that last year. We didn't have a set in the fee schedule. If we were do that again, we want to set at $250, which is great deal. And then we do rent out our community pool. Um, and a lot of these fees are staying the same with how our pool does it. It's a two-hour minimum. And we charge based on the number of guests you have. And that's because that dep determines how many lifeguards we need to have on site. So the more people you have on site, the more lifeguards we required to have, which means more staffing costs we incur. And so for the residents that have one to 60 guests, it's $150 an hour. We're going to keep that the same. For non-residents, it's 170. We'll keep the same. For rentals that are 61 people to 90 people. For residents, it's 170. We'll keep it. For non-residents, it's 190. We'll keep the same. Uh for those that are 91 to 120 people attending this this rental, for residents, it's $190 per hour. We'll keep the same. The only little minor difference is for the non-residents, it's $200 an hour. We're proposing $210 an hour for our pool. So, we do have a pool pass u which is $30 which gets you access to pool as many times as you want as an individual. We'll keep that the same. And then it's also for a family of four. We uh had it set for $100 for a family of four with $20 for each added person. So, if you have a family of five, so we $120 and we're supposed to keep that the same. And similar to with the new programs, we have our special evented programs and classes in the pool. We want to set up a minimum and maximum to where our minimum is $0 to $100. And

again, if we have a awesome event that happens at the pool that is very well attended and we want to bring back again, um we bring it to the new fee schedule in 2027 when we propose what we want to do. Then as far as our events go, um we'll go through our special events. We have our haunted hay. Um our current fee is $12. The new fee we're proposing is 15. Uh for those that saw our our uh event this past year, um we had to close the gates within 30 minutes of opening up just based on how packed it got. And so with the high demand, we figure that we can charge a little more to offset our cost because we do pay staff to overtime to be present to drive the vehicles and it does get costly in that sense. Uh for those that are ages 3 to 12, we have charge $6, supposed to increase it to 10. And then for those age ages zero to three, we don't charge for that one. For our Christmas parade, we do have a parade entry $25. We'll keep it the same. We do have booth fees for vendors that are out there. It's usually $50. We supposed to keep the same for our Dia de los Muertos event. Again, if you guys were there for that event, that was very well attended. Um because of the high demand, high attendance, we can now raise our fees and for the vendors, it becomes more worth it because we can prove that the put traffic's there. Uh so for a 10 by10 craft boot, we've charged $50. We propose 55 for a 10 x10 food booth. Again, $50. We propose 65 for food truck. $50 to 150. The reason for the food truck being so much different is the amount of square footage they take up. Also, the required lot of permitting that the county requires us to give as well to have the food truck there. And so that cost of having the food truck there offsets that cost. We also charge an alter fee for those that want to have an alter. It's $25. Plan on keeping that the same. As far as our cheese and wine festival, um again, for those that have attended, it's been rocking the last couple years.

Uh we'll do a presentation next uh next city council, which I'll be gladly to report, give you guys a sneak peek. Uh we uh when we presented the budget, we were looking at trying to break even. We were profitable $8,500 this past year. So, uh, again, with the high demand that we're able to show, with the high attendance, we can now alter our fees to charge more since we're kind of getting that traction going in the right direction. So, for a 10x10 retail space, the fee is $75. Currently, we propose a move to $85. And for a 10 x 20, 150 to 170 and then 10 by30 retail, 225 to 255. For the food part of it, so 10 x10 food, it's currently 125. We're proposed to go to 130. 10 by 20 uh was 250 go to 260. And then 10 by 30 food 375. We proposed 390. Uh one big change we're looking at is last time we were here, we had to outline what each sponsorship tier level was. Um we have a lot of people wanting to sponsor help out with the event, but don't fit within those exact tiers. We have someone that say, "Hey, I um you have a tier for $1,000. I can give you uh something adds up to about $1,100. So, do I go into the next high tier or do I go into the lower tier right there at the thousand? And so, it kind of is a little bit convoluted there for us. And so, we proposed kind of a range to where it gives us the the flexibility to alter sponsorships in a way that um best the department sees best fit. Um similar to the cheese and wine programming, we do have new programs that we throw out, new ideas, new activities. Some are hits, some are duds. And so again, it gives us the flexibility to create new and if it's a hit, bring it back. And we can set established fee there. Um that's could be longterm as opposed to us kind of being this unknown area of what do we

charge for this new thing we want to do without getting approval. And similar to merchandise as well, if we do decide to sell merchandise, we can figure out our our profit margin, what we want to make on that. And again, we the goal is not to keep on coming back to the council with every single item we want to try to do. Um, other events we have our polar bear plunge that's been we've done this for the past two years. It's been a successful event. Um, so again, similar to what we've been saying, if it's a good event, we'll bring it back to the fee schedule. Uh, polar plunge doesn't have its own area, so we want to throw it in here for $5. That's what we've been charging. And then we have our my little one and me dance, which this next Saturday will be our third time doing it. Uh we charge 25 or $45 per ticket which includes a ticket for an adult and a child. And then for additional tickets it's $15. And then our food truck Fridays. Um again that's been a success. We want to make sure it has its own area in the fee schedule. So for a 10 by10 booth it's $45. For a food truck it's $65. And then we have a floating pumpkin patch event which is $10 at the pool. Uh for our facility rentals, this is where we get get spicy here, get some fun in here. Um this is going to be an example what I mentioned before of we have very um convoluted pricing for our facilities and we're trying to simplify as best we can. So I'll start with the current fees. So for the community center, um our current fee is based on depending on what you're doing. So if you're a resident, it's $1,700 for the entire day. For a non-resident it's $2,000, but if you're a nonprofit, it's $600. But if you're doing a memorial service, it's $400. We also have in there for like a meeting rate, too. If it's $50 an hour, if you want to do meetings and so we try to talk with people about what are you doing, it's a lot of questions to figure out, okay, what's the true price point for you? And when we're trying to get that information out to residents or people that want to use a facility, it's a lot

of information to go through that makes sense. And so, we propose to kind of make that very simple. Uh so we propose a residential rate which is $150 per hour and for a non-resident rate it's $200 per hour. Um we solve two issues with that. One is um we're able to cut our expenditures a little bit. So for our all day rentals we do have staff on site all day which if someone's there for half day obviously we don't spend that much but if we have an all day rental we actually start losing money. Um so this per hour covers us to where we charge for when they're using the facility. No, we start making money on that side. The other thing, too, is we get a lot of questions on people want to use our facilities, but they don't want to pay $1,700 for a half day event. So, with this, it kind of makes it more accessible to where if someone wants to use a half day at the community center, we have that available now where they can pay by the hour. Uh, with that said, we'll be limiting the service group rate. So, we won't be offering a rate for nonprofits um and or memorial services. Um the idea behind that is with last year city council approving a fee waiver application for nonprofits. We've had multiple nonprofits apply. I think all but one have been approved. The one that did not get approved was a they want to do a private event. Nothing for public benefit. Um so that's available to nonprofits that want to use our facilities. Um since we have that mechanism there. We also do have amenities at the community center that people can rent. The stage is $200. We'll keep the same sound system $100. keep the same. We also have a microphone that people can rent. We th $50 for the microphone. We have a podium which is on the fee schedule. People charge $25 for the day use. And then for those that serve alcohol on site, our policies that we require security on site and we contract out with security usually for that. Uh we use the cost to pass along to the renter. So it's an additional cost on top of their fee. Uh right now

onel is charging us $38 an hour for to have a guard on site. So to pass on the cost to the renter that will will get onel out there for their event. For Scout Hall, currently we charge $35 per uh for the day for the residents, 400 for non-residents. We're looking to break that turn that to a per hour rate. So $75 per hour and then $100 per hour for non-residents. Keep the deposit the same. And then again, we'll have the security rate there. uh teen center in the current schedule. We have it available for rent uh for rentals. We don't do it that way because we do have some of valuables in there. Computers, games that we don't want damaged, misused, stolen. Um however, in case something does come up, we figure no issue of keeping it in there. In case something does come up, that's worth worth exploring. Uh the only addition that we have there is a deposit there. Uh we do have our gym rental. We do uh have a partnership with the car with the Riverbank Unified School District to use the Cardoo gym. Um we do have groups that use the facility every day of the week usually for volleyball programs, adult basketball, um mainly adult basketball. Uh we look at um they pay about $50 a day. Um and that's usually about four hours use. we start looking at that is a loss of city money as we do have a staff member on site that's costing us around $20 an hour. Um, one thing we started noticing is we do have groups that are open to the public so anyone can come participate. We also have groups that are closed off to the public, meaning they just have their friends come together and they play basketball without having that access. And so we're proposing a change in that dynamic to where if we're using taxpayer dollars to subsidize, it should be available to the public. And so we're going to try to change the use to public use and private use. If your program that you're offering is available to the public, you're not going to turn anyway unless

you hit capacity or if there's violation of city rules, we propose a $15 per hour fee. And that's kind of in line with what the current measures are paying um for private use. for those that are using the facility for their own friends groups to go play at the facility and we proposing $100 per hour which is our cost recovery to operate the facility with the utilities with staffing um and also a little bit of profit there as again it's closed off to the public. We do require a deposit of $250 and then for those that want to use the scoreboard it's $50. Uh for the sports complex uh the current fee is $25 an hour. We plan on keeping that the same. We also we plan on increasing the deposit here from $250 to 300 for those that use the facility. Um oftent times there's trash left behind. It's just a big field to where it's hard to really clean everything up all at once. And so we have to propose a increase that to again if we have to withhold deposit money we're able to do that. Uh staffing we do charge for a staff member specifically to be on site for that. Pass fee schedule is $20 an hour with minimum wage increases our costs go up a little bit. So we're proposing $22 per hour. Lights per field is $30 per hour. $35 per hour. Scoreboard rental will keep the same. And then snack bar rental will keep the same. I believe this is our last slide here. So we have a Castleberg Park ball diamonds. Um we do charge for that. Uh we do field use uh $30 per hour. We wanted to clarify it a little bit, make it more clear. We are proposing $30 $30 per hour per field as $30 does not encapsulate both the two fields are out there. Uh we currently do not charge a deposit or it's not in the fee schedule. So we want to put it in there. The lights are saying they're not in the fee schedule, but we want to include it in there. $35 per hour per per field. I think in the in the schedule it either

has it for both fields. We want to kind of identify it's per field. site monitor. It's $20 an hour. Again, with the minimum wage increases, we want to bring up to $22 an hour. Uh, one request we've gotten from our local baseball group is to drag the field. Again, with our staffing time with full-timers and machinery and equipment, we've estimated it's about $75 per field to do. And then concession stand uh to kind with this to what we're doing at the sports complex. $200 a day. We figured it would be the same charge $20 per day at the at the at Castleberg. And then lastly, we have the Zurel Park tennis courts. We do have a key to the tennis court. We do lock it up. Um and so we do charge $5 for that key. We will add that to the fee schedule. And then if we do want to go down the course of having our courts rentable for the public as we do have pickle ballers that like to be on the courts on the weekends and use all the courts if someone wants to rent, you know, reserve a spot so that way they don't they can play with their friends and family and not be overtaken by pickle ballers, they can do that as well. And we're proposing $10 per hour per court. Um so that that was a mouthful. a lot of changes that were that we're proposing and so I'm available for questions if council and the public have any.

Thank you. I will bring it to council first. Are there any questions or comments? Okay. So, I'll go first. See if I got my notes correct. So, slide five. Michael, you're making me go back a long way here. You said you said write down the slides. All right. Let's hear it and we'll ask you questions. Uh just curious. So for the Jacob Myers park, do we have any signage as far as when we actually charge there at the dropboxes? Yes, we have a sign right at the very front and we also have an iron ranger which is located by the restroom where those that um when we do charge and they're not there to collect the money. They can go there and drop in uh money in the envelope. We do have a sign there that does state when fees are accepted.

Okay. I would I would just suggest maybe adding it to the actual Dropbox because I It's on there. cuz cuz I looked for it the other day and I I couldn't find it. So maybe you have Ranger and then right behind is a big sign. That's okay. So I I have noticed some residents um we were there November and I was watching some residents they were dropping stuff in there. I'm assuming they were paying so maybe. Yeah. No, absolutely. Uh if we can go to slide 13. So, for the sponsorship, you said it was uh you guys are trying to be more flexible with the cheese and wine sponsorships there. Third line from the bottom there. Uh is it going to stay tiered or can you explain that a little bit? So, yeah, we still plan to keep it tiered. Okay.

Um one of the things we've been seeing, like I said, people have different offerings. So, I'll give you a great example. Last year, um Raising Canes came in with a sponsorship of $1,000 cash, which was a tier level. The next level up was 2500, but they were willing to offer us free meals to our city staff, all volunteers that day and gift gap baskets for raffles. And so trying to figure out, okay, does it does not quite meet the cost of the 2500 tier, but not the thousand tier. So where do we fit in all this? Yeah.

And so we don't want to offset, hey, you're stuck to the thousand though. You're giving us so much great things. And so it gives us flexibility to kind of figure out what we want to do there. And so that's something staff. We're actually meeting tomorrow to kind of talk about this coming 2026 and how we plan on doing that. So I think as we come to to the next city council, we're going to talk to you guys about our plan for 2026. We'll kind of outline sponsorships there. Gota kind of get that flexibility there, what we're thinking, right? We do plan on keeping it tiered in a sense. So we might increase it a little bit, maybe move things around. Um, but again, we don't want to be tied down to something where say come August, we have to switch things up and it's like we're kind of hands behind our back here.

Gotcha. Okay. Uh, jump to 14. So, the food truck fee. Uh, second one from the bottom. Just kind of curious why that one is a lot lower than the than the D loss muertos one. Yeah. So, this is per week. So, food truck fries goes for all the fries in May. So, you have four Fridays there. So the TIFF they use supply to the county is good for whatever the event is in general. So they don't have to keep on submitting TIFFs every single time. So the 150 is for the one day, this is for four weeks. Yeah. So 65 is for one day. So 65 times 4 if they tend to be there the whole time is 250 some odd dollars there.

Got it. Uh two more. Uh slide 15. So the next one there. Um did did for the community center did you guys ever consider maybe like uh maybe minimum hours for that or is there no minimum hours for that? So we have it set to where if it's one hour we're going to make money off of it. Okay. And so if someone wants to use it for the one hour um again increase accessibility. So one of the biggest complaints we hear from the public is we have two main rental facilities. Scout Hall which the capacity is around 50 people and then community center which is 300. So for those that want to do like a 150 people but aren't able to afford $1,700 for that much, right?

This gives a little bit more flexibility. It's like, hey, you can do a, you know, middlesiz group, but you like half day instead of paying $1,700, you can pay $750 instead. And so as far as the minimum goes, we don't need it. We have the staffing capabilities for it. And again, if they do one hour, we have we're gonna make money off of it. Okay, cool. So you touched on cost recovery. My last question. So slide 17. So is there cost recovery at that 15 bucks per hour? So that so so it's not it the city will still be subsidizing it. Okay. Um it's I think we looked at our current renters. It's maybe additional $10 a month.

Um but again that our perspective is if it's available to the public again we're not charging we're not running the program ourselves. It becomes worth that subsidizing because it's for the public good. Um so that was kind of the thought process there. We do have again senior basketball. We do have women's volleyball, um basketball again on Sunday, Sundays. So there's just a lot of good things that are offering that if we try to do it inhouse, we'd be spending a lot of money on staffing and all that kind of stuff. And so um so we figured it's worth to have some sort of subsidizing there. Um again, if it's open to the public. Thank you.

Eight. So this is a public hearing, so we're going to open it for public comment. any comments or online. Mayor, we did not receive any comment cards or written public comment and I do not see anyone on Zoom wishing to speak on this item.

May I say one thing though? I see that we so the parks and recreation department I do want to make a note of this real quick. So what is what we have here is what the fee schedule will be. So, we did not include items that are being crossed out um that are not being taken in consideration or that have been going on that we are plan on eliminating. So, one of the comments that I've received today and kind of be transparent with the city council is at Jacob Myers Park um we do get um one of the fees that we do offer is if you have a handicap placard um there is no charge to enter the park. um we are proposing to eliminate that that they are taking a parking space at the park and they're using the amenities that we do charge them the the rate that we charge everyone else. So that is one other change that's not listed here as we are planning on taking that out.

No public comment I will close the public hearing and bring it back to council. Is there any more comments or questions? Any motion? I'll make a motion to approve item 10.1. I second. Roll call, please. Council member, yes. Council member FSY, yes. Council member Call, yes. Vice Mayor Pimementel, yes. Mayor Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you. Item 10 or 11.1. We have a presentation by Chief Reinower on current staffing allocations and a five-year plan for Riverbank Police Services and to consider a resolution authorizing the reallocation of one community resource deputy position to a patrol deputy position. As stated in the title of the present of the item, Chief Ridau will provide this presentation.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So tonight we're going to talk about uh you know the staffing of Riverbank Police Services as it sits today and then the future moving forward. So in summary, the three items I'm going to cover tonight is going to be the proposed recommend um reallocation of our currently requested additional CRD uh to patrol operations and then I'm going to talk about um the future staffing recommendation coming forward at budget year and then also provide you with a five-year staffing plan. So this is a organizational chart for our sworn personnel at Riverbank Police Services. So on both sides of the the slide here, you have our patrol on our A squad and a B squad. And that represents the first half of the week, which is staffed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, every other Wednesday, and the second half of the week, which is Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and every other Wednesday. Those are all 12-hour shifts, and that's how we maintain coverage 247 for patrol. when you call 911 that we have someone to respond. So then when you look below those areas they mirror on both sides, our patrol deputies, we have two dayshift deputies, a swing shift deputy and two graveyard deputies. We do have in our contract that we always will have at least two deputies on to answer calls for service at all times. So there's backfill behind those if someone's out for vacation, training, sick, whatever it may be. The swing shift position, however, is not backfilled and that's why I have it in gray there. So, that is a spot that is filled occasionally, and we'll get into later slides how often that is and is not filled and why that is the way it is covered. So, again, I mentioned those are 12-hour shifts. Our dayshift operations are from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Uh, swing shift is 300 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. and graveyard is 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Now, down the middle is our administrative division. Uh, you guys all know Sergeant Hickman who runs that portion of it. Uh this is typically our guys that are working those business

hours that Monday through Friday um generally hours. So we have three detectives, we have three traffic deputies, of course we have one community deputy now and one more that has been requested and that shows you where that vacancy at is highlighted there in the blue color and then our school resource officer. So with all our positions, we're currently allocated 23 swarm positions. And that provides us a ratio of 088 per 10,000 residents with a current population of roughly 26,000 residents in Riverbank. So our first recommendation tonight is going to be reallocate the already requested CRT position to patrol. Uh this will ensure that we have three and sometimes four deputies uh available for calls or service during our peak hours during outside of our norm normal business hours. So right now I kind of remind everybody what the community resource deputy position is. Um is one of our very important positions because they focus on those quality of life issues, things that they have a little more time where they're not handling calls for service per se. They don't have a case load, per se, but they have time to focus on the issues around our community, whether it's a neighborhood watch program going on. Maybe it's blight, maybe it's graffiti, um working with our in-house folks. So, we made this request for an additional deputy because it was very successful back in beginning of 2024 around March with a two to three year recruitment trying from the sheriff's office to hire, train, and get us a deputy down the road. So, right now, we're sitting almost two years in that position. So, I'll kind of get in the reason why that position was requested back in 2024. So, in 2024, beginning of that, we were under the Supreme Court ruling. They basically said, the Ninth Circuit said that when you have an unhoused person that was in public areas, whether it's a park that's enforced by community guidelines, rules, the park must be closed at night. You were not allowed to move trespass violations. You couldn't

enforce a trespass violation unless you had a bed to move somebody who had low barriers. So obviously the county struggled AC across the state actually right you saw we had encampments going up and down um our highways throughout the communities. So our CD often find themselves spending almost all their time engaging our homeless folks or unhouse folks. I remember I was going out there daily when we had all our folks that were living in our parks and engaging those folks and getting the resources they need and it was very labor intensive. Um but it didn't allow our CRD to focus on other issues in our community. So that's why we requested that additional position back in March of 2024. So moving forward, um the US Supreme Court heard the case and they decided that this was you could go back to enforcing trespass again, right? They basically said it wasn't legal to not enforce for unhoused folks to take over public spaces, not be for trespass violations um simply because you didn't have a place to put them. Right? they made it a crime again to be trespassing in parks after hours uh making a campus on longer public access areas. So when that changed it immediately empowered all of our sworn staff um in Riverbank and across the street the state to enforce trespass violations. So that freed up our community resource deputy to now focus on other issues in our community besides just the unhoused folks. And now you see that they still do with a lot of their time with their own house folks. They know them all. they still connect them with resources the same they were before but now there's this understanding that hey you can't you can't just camp in this park all day long right it's open for all of our residents not just a particular group and I think we have a pretty good relationship with those folks now especially with the Sierra house we have a great working leadership with them and Julia and we have good plans in place for that so that kind of brings me back to why we want to reallocate this position so right now again to go back to patrol we have those two squads I spoke about

earlier uh outlining their shifts again on this slide and I show how the swing ship position is often not filled and a reminder that we do have that required two deputies staffed at all times. This kind of shows you our calls for service going back to 2020 to 2025. Um, our river, our city has grown and continues to grow and our daily swell of population that comes into our communities to shop at our shopping centers also increases. Um, I don't have a good way to measure that, but we do see the increase of population coming from outside Riverbank to come use our shopping centers. And plus, you have the traffic as we're located in a major thoroughare from up in the mountains, people coming through. So, we see a lot of traffic through our community. So, our folks are staying very busy throughout the day with calls for service. So we averaged right around 11,10,500 calls for service um for the first four years there and then in 2024 and 25 we see a spike and now we're closer to 12,500 creeping up to 13,000 calls for service in the air. So we're increasing in our in our workload um as we move forward with the with the growth and that kind of corresponds with how we've been growing and the new stuff that's occurring in our community. So this slide, there's a lot going on here, but this is regarding retail theft. So there's two columns. On on the far left is a chart that kind of shows you the number of incidents of theft that's reported to Riverink Police Services. On the right is the the reported loss of goods from those incidents. So the red correlates to how many incidents were reported to us in 2024 and and 25 respectively. And the blue line shows the value for each year. So, you see both that we're trending upwards from 2024 to 2025. Even with the new law changes, we're still seeing repeat offenders. Um, however, we are making large strides and and breaking down like the retail theft, not just the

people that are stealing the stuff, but where it's going, right? The fencing operations they're supplying. We have another one we're working on right now. And last year, we were very successful. I think we got almost $25,000 just at one location of items out that we recovered. So, it kind of shows you idea, but this is that goes back to increased calls for service for our deputies, right? We we provide what I what I like to rec call is a high level of customer service. If you call 911 um for somebody who shoplifted, we're going to respond. Some of our neighboring agencies don't do that. Um they refer people to online reporting centers. We still respond. We still take those reports. And because of that, we're very successful in locating responsibles and and making arrests in those cases. So swing shift like I was mentioned earlier about how it's vacant. So I went back and looked at our staffing schedule for 2024 and 25 and it's pretty much on point between each year. Um in 24 there was 156 times that shift was left vacant. In 25 158 so pretty much neck and neck the same time. But that's almost half the year that that spot is left unfilled. And the reason being is specifically for our graveyard folks. There's only there's only two of them. And the pool to backfill that with is is really those are the only folks working because everybody else has worked during the day already. So we can take our sling shift and when those graveyard vacancies are there, we can push them in to fill that vacancy. During the day is not an issue because as I mentioned earlier, we have all those detectives, traffic, community resource deputies that we can immediately fill those resources with on duty staff and also helps us not incur overtime. But some of these shifts are also backfilled not just with swing shift but also with overtime as well. Um some of the reasons is uh the trainings that deputies required. Every deputy is required u ongoing and mandatory trainings. They have vacations and there's also sick and family bombing time. So I want to talk about our response time. This kind of helps show a picture of the difference between what I'm going

to talk about is our normal business hours where we have all that additional staff that's working. um that Monday through Friday when we have all of our detectives, our traffic folks are here, our community deputies here, um the school resource deputies here, we average about 3.6 minute average response time during those hours. And our calls for service and activity is generally busier during this time of the day, right? That's when people are shopping in our shopping centers heavily, right? That's when people are commuting through our communities. That's when businesses are open. We can do follow-up from our investigations. So, it it does correspond with the amount of staff working those hours. makes sense that they're working during those hours just because that's normal business hours people operate for followup and schools and then you also got to remember like I mentioned earlier we generally have 8 to 10 deputies working any given time Monday through Friday 8 to 5 when you look at the non- business hours which is anything that's after 5:00 pm Monday through Friday and then all day Saturday and Sunday uh we have a 60% increase in response time and now we're averaging 5.7 minutes to respond to a call and typically there's there's only two deputies available because that swing shift's not there. That's further reduced when either we make an arrest or we transport somebody to the hospital or maybe it's behavioral health. Um that deputy is now out of the community or there's another incident that may be just outside of city limits that we're assisting with that could have no deputies in the city during those time periods. This chart shows the difference between business and non-b businessiness hours just showing that difference and and it kind of also shows you per month over the last year um how the calls for service and the response times do fluctuate based upon a variety of reasons, right? It could be weather related, people are staying more indoors or outdoors or people take advantage of the fog, more thefts are increasing. But it does show that consistently our response times are always longer in that non-b businessiness hours just because we have less staff working.

So if we were to reallocate that community deputy position, this kind of shows you where that moves. It goes from that center column at the bottom where they would be and we put them on that B squad. Again, the B squad is the later half of the week, the Thursday, Friday, Saturday from that 3 pm to 3:00 a.m. shift. So that would in at times during those busy peak hours we would generally have four deputies on the handle calls for service. Granted the swing shift still may be used to cover a graveyard shift that would allow us to have three. We would never get rid we would never go down to zero swing shifts at this point. We would always have it mandatory filled at one. Um and that's simply done by staffing to make sure we allocate it that way. Uh our staffing ratio wouldn't change because it's still 23 to total sworn staff. We're not changing that. We're just moving it from the community deputy position over to a patrol uh swing shship position. All right. So then it goes into my uh second recommendation. This is going to be um talking about for a future future budget item but getting the presentation to your to you guys tonight. So my my other request is that we would request a second deputy for patrol now. And just remember that when we request that position from the sheriff's office, we're looking at that 2 to three year fulfillment time. But we also got to looking forward, right? So if we we ordered it now, we're talking 20 28 29 before we actually see that that deputy actually come out to us. This would be an increase in funding, right? because this will be a new position to the city riverbank and that roughly is 160,000 per year which in covers all the the benefits and rollups that come with that employee cost as well. If we were to approve this deputy it would bring us up to 24 sworn staff right for our 26,000 residents which increased our ratio to 0.92 deputies per 1000 residents.

And this kind of shows you where we put that second spot which we move it to the A squad. So now you would have those two swing shifts on both A squad and B squad. And this this staffing model that we're showing here is very similar to what we run uh in the city of Patterson, which is a city that's much like size to us and call volume. So it's very similar to how they run operations as well. So this is not something that's totally abnormal. It just makes sense to have somebody that's working. So when someone calls 911 or calls for help that we have somebody to respond to you um in those after hours. So quickly, we have a five-year staffing plan here, but just just be mindful kind of like when I spoke earlier about we requested a community resource deputy that that was what was needed at that time. So this is kind of like looking at today based upon current legislation, current trends, looking at future growth of our city is what the wish list would be to add deputies in there. So obviously the first requested was the one I just requested which is that uh had that additional deputy. Hopefully we can consider that at fisc or at budget year and then going forward would be bringing back that community deputy uh additional deputy because I still think that's an important item for our community and then after that would be increasing another traffic deputy. Uh as it is now we do have three traffic deputies for the city of riverbank which is which is fairly good for a city of our size. But it's one of those things where I talk about you can't always just go by just the size or a certain ratio, right? We see a lot of traffic in the city of Riverbank. Oakdale's a community that's roughly populated similar to us, but we have much more traffic, believe it or not, coming through our tooth than they do. And we see a lot more traffic incidents than they do. And then going beyond that, we're looking at detectives. And the reason I put detectives in there, again, I'm looking so far out. You're talking about filling these in 2031 32. I can only believe that technology continues to be the future and with technology yes it does help us but it takes a lot of people investigators to extract that information and make arrest. So hopefully that's the idea but any

positions that we request down the road my recommendation we request a deputy from the sheriff's office and then as it gets closer we can decide that hey we want that to be a community deputy want to be the traffic deputy. we can choose as it's closer to that time period because we need to be working in the moment, right? Being fluid and reactive to what's going on in our community. And generally the benchmark for a city site is that one one sworn deputy per 10,00 residents, right? So today we're sitting at 26,000 people. So you're looking you would roughly want 26 sworn staff. Um again being mindful that's not like a hard set number but that's a general general idea to keep you a balance of ideas especially for our city or our size it makes sense the further you grow you start uh scaling that back and you also got to look at you know what is our training numbers doing are we going up in cost for service are we staying stagnant are we seeing an increase what is legislation change so there's a lot more to that but currently speaking I think that's a good way to staff our community and that was uh I went quickly clear everything. So, I'm sure there'll be questions and we can go back and revisit items.

Thank you so much. Yes, that was that was great. Um, is there any comments or questions right now from council if we were to move the uh CRD position requisite to a patrol deputy? How quickly would that position get filled at that point?

So, I did call the main sheriff's office today to kind of find out where we're at in that two to three weight period. We are sitting at number one of the list right now. Um, we do have a large meeting tomorrow. So hopefully after getting through tonight's decision and figure out how we're going to allocate that that I can get that position recruited and hopefully get it filled in the the near future. We do have 10 people coming out of the police academy. Um, granted, even though they come out, they have about three months of training before they hit the streets, but hopefully they have it filled in the near future. Our shift change is at into April and typically is that's when we see a new position. It's just a good timing to transition someone in. So it could be as soon as April.

And then I know there may be concerns with the community resource deputy requisite going away. Um and so I kind of wanted you to talk about the care team a little bit and the access that we have in Riverbank to the care team from the sheriff's department because they can kind of help with some of that outreach that previously in 2024 that the CRD was doing.

Yeah. So we're not getting rid of a CRD, right? So we're keeping the same CRD that we have today, right? We're just not adding an additional one as their recommendation. But the county care team is the team that does we work very closely with them like handinand um the point in time count coming up pretty soon. We're already working with them to tell you know hey these are where our inhouse folks are at um different locations but they have all the tools and resources from the county to provide people with the the documents they need that housing um training all those things. So we work very closely with them and we do tell them where our unhoused people are located and they regularly come out. We have them set at least once or twice a month that they come out and engage those folks. So nothing would change there. So that same engagement would continue. It's just we wouldn't bring the recommendation is not to bring an additional CRD because we can we can basically use the resources we have available.

Any other questions? I just want to comment. I'm really happy to see the presentation and the response times. And I also just want to note as I'm driving around in the community, I do see sheriffs and that's nice to be able to see them out there um in the community and I appreciate the service that you guys are providing. Um doing a great job. I love that you're taking down these people that want to just go in and grab. Um I'd like to see that more. I like to see videos. Yeah. Um but I appreciate your service.

Thank you. And I'm going to just add to that. I speak from experience. So I work in Modesto and so when we do get calls for theft or anything like that. Uh we do get oh maybe in two hours or sometimes they don't show up at all. So the customer service that you guys are providing I I see a ton of value in that. So I appreciate you guys for everything you're doing. Uh you made a comment at the end there. Um I think you were talking about maybe like the population growth. You said the further you go you scale back. So are you saying like as your population grow the metrics evolves or

what I'm saying is so as a as a community grows right let's say you get to you know a city of 300,000 people you're probably not going to have 300 police officers right it starts getting you start having the resources you're more condensed and you have more focused eventually get to a point where you have enough people to respond to things 247

you have other metrics right like technology and stuff like that when you're a smaller community you're trying to do a lot with little right so our guys our detectives they're not just specialized in one area like other cities Your detectives may specialize in just gangs or they may just be retail theft or they may just be homicide. Our detectives do all those things. Child crimes, homicide, they do all of it. So, you're doing more with less right now. And as you grow, you have more of those issues. So, then you reallocate those resources elsewhere to focus on whatever is going on in your community at that time.

Yeah. No. And shout out to you guys uh responsiveness wise, like that's a huge thing. Um I had a a chance to meet with four residents uh yesterday. Um they kind of shared a bunch of security concerns in town. Um they wanted to restart a neighborhood watch in their area. So I want to give a shout out to Tina who's in the audience uh for for setting up that meeting. Um I I forwarded all those concerns to you guys and you passed that on to Deputy Tovar CRD and connected uh connected them immediately. And so thank you guys for for doing that and just showing why it's important to have a CRD as well. So thank you.

And I appreciate you um mentioning what the moment's calling for. And so this makes sense um especially with the increased traffic from all the construction that we're seeing. So that transition would make a lot of sense as we approach the budget talks um in a couple months. Could you bring data that uh disagregates what the calls for service are? Would you be able to do that as far as like what type of calls for service? Yeah, we can bring something that's very similar what's in the year report. Is that what you're referring to? Like show or if you could just forward it to us. Yeah, directly. Yeah, absolutely. check that out. Definitely.

So, as council is aware, we do prepare a year-end report and so all of those statistics will be included there as well. Thank you. Um, are there any comments from the public or online? Mayor, I do not receive any comment cards and I do not see anyone on Zoom wishing to speak on this item. All right. I will bring it back to council for any more comments or a motion. I'd like to go ahead and make a resolution authorizing the reallocation of one community resource deputy position to patrol deputy position. And I'll second it. Roll call, please. Council member Odiva. Yes. Council member FSY. Yes. Council member Call.

Yes. Vice Mayor Pimementel. Yes. Mayor Hanned. Yes. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you. All right. 11.2. to the adoption of a groundwater use management program in the Modesto groundwater subbasin. Mayor and councel, public works director Cody Bridgewwater will provide this report.

Mayor, members of the council. This presentation and the following have to do with our groundwater um sustainability plan that was submitted in 2022 as part of a requirement of Sigma which is the sustainable groundwater management act. So 11.2 is the Modesto subbasin groundwater use management program. In September of 2014, Governor Brown signed legislation creating the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act or SIGMA to provide local groundwater sustainability agencies within with the authority and technical financial assistance necessary to sustainably manage groundwater. February of 2017, Sturgba or the Stannis Losi Regional Groundwater Basin Alliance GSA was formed with Riverbank Oakdale Waterford Modesto uh Modesto Irrigation District and Oakdale Irrigation District. The groundwater sustainability plan or GSP was submitted to the Department of Water Resources on January 31st of 2022. And January 18th, 2024, the DWR issued an incomplete determination letter to the Modesto subbasin. That letter included three items. The two there in bold refer to the groundwater use management plan and the third item, the well mitigation program that will be on the following uh presentation. So the first two items would be include reasonable means to arrest groundwater level declines and stop overdraft in the subbasin and provide pumping management framework or groundwater allocation and pumping management program. So the Modesto groundwater subbasin

is a high priority basin of approximately 245,253 acres in size bounded by Stannos River on the north, Talami River on the south, Sanwaqin River on the west and the crystalline basement rocks of the Sierra Nevada foothills on the east. The subbasin itself relies on two primary sources of water supply. Both surface water from the Santa Loss and Towi rivers and groundwater pumped from the principal aquifers described in the groundwater sustainability plan. It's about 64% agricultural land, 13% urban and then 23% non-ag non-errigated undeveloped and surface water area. In 1996 we were approximately 40% agricultural. So over the last 20 years you've had a 40% increase in irrigated a land and this is just a review of the previous slide. So the Modesto subbasin was broken up into management areas. You have there in the blue that's the Oakdale irrigation uh management area. In the green Modesto irrigation management area, the kind of orang-ish color off to the east that's the non-district east management area. And then the management area which city of Riverbank is part of is non-district west which is the yellow that kind of borders the east or sorry the west side and the north and the south. So the purpose of the groundwater use management plan is to respond to the department of water resources incomplete determination letter by arresting groundwater level declines and stopping overdraft and providing pumping management and demand reduction framework. So why the demand management is needed long-term groundwater declines in the non-district east and Oakdale areas. So you have supply project timing and funding uncertainties and then the

groundwater use management plan serves a backs stop to protect sustainability goals. The framework you have equitable distribution of sustainable yield and based on measurable groundwater pumping volumes and adaptive and updated over time. So the goal of the framework is to equitably distribute the sustainable yield to each management area throughout the subbasin and allow the management area stewards to decide how to implement components of the framework in their respective management areas as needed to operate within those allocations. So in your Modesto management area you have Modesto Irrigation District, city of Modesto, city of Waterford. Oakdale management area is Oakdale Irrigation District and city of Oakdale. Non-district west management area is Stannis Los County and city of riverbank and nond district east manage management area is Stannis County and Tommy County GSA. Sustainable yield is defined under sigma as the maximum quantity of water calculated over a base period representative of long-term conditions in the basin including any temporary surplus that can be withdrawn annually from the groundwater supply without causing an undesirable result. So the calculated sustainable yield for the Modesto subbasin is 267,000 acre feet per year and that was based on long-term modeling and this ensures the avoidance of undesirable results under sigma. There are special considerations integrated into the plan. Uh so these developed water supplies are credited to importing entities and dimminimous uh water users that use less than 2 acre feet per year are exempt from reductions and municipal users such as the city of Riverbank are capped at historical pumping levels. So just a 4-year average for the city of Riverbank we did

approximately 4,250 acre feet per year. The GSA designated municipal water users as a special case and limited their future groundwater use to their historical groundwater use. And this decision was supported by several local and state requirements for implementing water use efficiency programs. So we currently have the making conservation as a California way of life requirement that the state of California passed and that's a regulation that establishes efficiency goals and urban water use objectives for urban water suppliers to reduce municipal demands. The regulation requires urban suppliers to determine their water use objectives and demonstrate compliance annually growth obligations. So municipalities have statemandated housing and population growth targets that drive water demand. public service constraints. Cities or nonprofit entities that typically operate with limited flexibility and pricing for the purchase of water supplies and supply limitations. Groundwater supplies are limited in meeting future demand will require surface water development, recharge projects, additional conservation or purchased allocation credits. So the groundwater use management plan lays out the allocations as follows. Uh I'm just going to focus on the non-district west being that that's what the city is a part of. So our total allocation is 11,500 acre feet of water per year. Our total historical pumping in non-district west is 15,100. So we are expected to reduce by 3,600 acre feet. Now that's both the city and the county as well. That's not just a responsibility of the city. That's of the management area in whole. We are looking for an average basinwide reduction of approximately 16% with the

largest reductions coming from the non-dist area and the Oakdale management area benefits from developed surface water supplies providing an excess allocation of 22,700 acre feet per year. So oid has offered this excess spread among the management areas for the 2027 through 2031 water years at no cost to the management areas. So then the adjusted groundwater allocations, Riverbank moves from the base allocation of 11,500 and oid is providing us an additional 1,900 acre feet per year for the non-district west management area which equates to a total of 13,400 acre feet per year for our management area. So you would see overall we have an 11% reduction in lie of the 26%. So local implementation by management area stewards these allocations are will be distributed by January 31 of 2027 and annual monitoring of sigma reporting will be required. Non-compliance with these criteria may trigger other additional management strategies. And should groundwater data and parameters such as groundwater levels indicate that a particular management area is not achieving their sustainable management objectives, then management area stewards will develop a management area action plan for Sturgway GSA approval. So with the response levels we are going to implement the ground implement the groundwater use management plan and then the stewards of the management areas develop and implement the management area action plan if those allocations are not met and that's presented to the GSA for approval. If they're unable to comply then the GSA develops implements an action plan of their own for the management area. Cody, since you don't have slide numbers, can we ask you questions now?

Sure. Go ahead. Okay. Can you go back to slides uh right there? So, uh so you said there was going to be some uh fees from the state. So, so are we talking about that? Is it the 55 per pumped acre foot of water? So, does that apply to the the 1,900 difference that we have to make up for? Um I'm not familiar with the the fees that you're

So, state fees. So, I don't know if this is part of the well mitigation or if this is part of the the state fees for this. So, I've been going back and forth with both of these. Uh, so, and I was watching the county. So, they passed their they implemented theirs today as well and they stated that the state fees were going to be 300 per well and up to $55 per pumped acre foot of water. So, I was just kind of curious if that's what you were referring to uh if we didn't meet those new base allocations if we're going to be fined for that difference. I I apologize. I'm not familiar with those numbers. so I can look that up and get back. Okay, appreciate it. And could you go back? I think it was Go back one more. No, one more. Okay. So, I I lost the slide. You can continue.

Yeah. You can continue, Cody. Sorry about that. Okay.

Yeah. So, the management action or management area action plan development process. Step one would be the GSA identifies the need and parameters for an action plan in one or multiple management areas based on monitoring data and or exceedence of the management area allocation according to the groundwater use management plan. And then the stewards of the uh applicable management area or areas develop the action plans in collaboration with the GSA. And then these plans are submitted to and approved by the GSA. And then the action plans included in the annual report and are implemented by the applicable management area stewards. So some content to the action plans. Uh we would need to determine a response level. So the GSA will identify conditions and determine appropriate allocations and restrictions and they will notify stewards of response level and the need for an action plan. In the preparation of the action plan, you'd set achievable goals for implementation, identify and document corrective actions, submit to the GSA for approval and coordinate with GSE means and objectives. And you would develop a plan to collect and evaluate groundwater level data and provide implementation approach and schedule of proposed actions and meet reporting requirements submitted to and approved by the GSA to aid the management area stewards with adaptively managing their areas. The following is a list of some potential strategies that may be employed to help reduce groundwater use and support achieving the subbasin interim milestones and ultimately groundwater basin sustainability. So you would have implementation of voluntary or mandatory conservation measures such as land repurposing to

enhance groundwater recharge, habitat restoration or cleaner energy incentives such as solar fields, replacing high water use crops with low water use crops. Following groundwater extraction fees, increased groundwater use reporting requirements, prioritization of implementation of supplemental projects, incentivization of surface water deliveries, recycled water use or inlue recharge, pumping restrictions in areas where minimum thresholds have been exceeded, flow monitoring on extraction wells, and then implementation schedule for the plan itself. Uh 2027 we would arrest overdraft and groundwater de level decline. Hopefully by 2032 achieve minimum thresholds. 2037 raise groundwater levels to halfway between minimum thresholds and measurable objectives and by 2042 reach measurable objectives. So a little bit of information regarding non-district east management area. They will begin the groundwater use management plan phase one implementation period in the phase 2 response level. Therefore, we'll require preparation of a management area action plan by November 1 of this year for the Sturggo GSA to re approve and initiate reductions in groundwater use following implementation of the groundwater use management plan and the non-dist on January 31, 2027. Reductions in groundwater extractions will ramp up in five-year increments as necessary to arrest overdraft and raise groundwater levels to the measure objectives identified in the GSP. So for non-district east management area between 2027 and 20203 or 2030 they're expected to have a 34 34% reduction in

overall groundwater pumping. uh between 2030 and 2035 60% or 67% reduction and by 2040 100% reduction. So a total of their 58,000 reduction that they're acre feet per year that they're required to reduce. They have a target goal of 2040 for that 58,000 acre feet reduction. That's not total pumping. That's just their their allocation that they have to reduce by. So some key takeaways, the groundwater use management plan is required for Sigma compliance and it provides structured equitable demand management and the program adapts as projects and conditions change within the subbasin itself. So staff recommends that city council adopt the resolution authorizing collaboration with the Stannis Lawson and Towalami Rivers Groundwater Basin Association Groundwater Sustainability Sustainability Agency its member agencies consultants stakeholders and the county of Towalami GSA to take such such actions as may reasonably necessary to one approve and implement the groundwater use management program for the Modesto subbasin to ensure longterm groundwater sustainability and two develop action plans which ensure the demand management actions identified in the groundwater use management plan are under implementation beginning January 31 2027 and the adoption of the groundwater use management plan fulfills commitments made in prior council actions and advances compliance with the sustainable groundwater management act or sigma and I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you. Um, does the council have any questions or comments right now? Um, so I think it's important that you kind of gave us the download a few months back on Sergba um because we we knew that this it was leading to today's um decision. Could you just to place that a little bit more? You mentioned at the maybe one of the first slides that the um subbasin is 64% agg and 20% urban. How many people does the urban and do you know about how many each represent each body? Unfortunately, no I do not.

I I mean it's urban is city of riverbank essentially and then agriculture individual farmers. Yeah, it would be um urban would be city of riverbank, city of Modesto, city of Waterford, city of Oakdale.

Okay. And then um when you were talking about groundwater allocations, you mentioned I mean the state uh district or the department of water services stepped in, resources steps in when there's an undesirable result and that's essentially where we're at at this point. Um so you mentioned that there are going back if you could go back to the chart with the different uh yes this is the adjusted and this would be after 23

and and just um for council as well we are I mean we've been pretty good stewards of of those allocations and um I think It is important to take a look at the different sections of the subbasin because we're looking at um nond district east for the management plan here for example. So they or maybe oh it is this one. Uh I mean the allocation's at 30,000 the furthest column to the right the allocation's at 30,100 but the historical pumping has been at 89,700. And so I just want council to take into consideration, you know, I think it's great and and uh Sturga is doing what we need to do and what's being asked of by the state to uh mitigate these uh allocations or this pumping. Um but I just want us to know right now the differences in what that looks like for each part of the sections of the subbasin. Um, I had another question in that and maybe not right now. Are there any questions from council at this point? We'll go over to public comment.

Mr. Wrangler Wheeler.

Uh, hi. Good evening, uh, council members and staff. My name is Wrangler Wheeler. Uh, I'm a hay and almond farmer from West Vanesto. Although I do not have the privilege of living in Riverbank, I do conduct business in and around your city limits. I'm here to discuss the potential effects and possible steps of action regarding the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. I would like to thank a few members uh of your staff and your mayor, Rachel Hernand Hernandez, for taking the time to meet with myself and a few other farmers from the non-dist last week. Stannis Loss County, in my personal opinion, has done a poor job of representing not only myself but the taxpaying citizens of Riverbank. Throughout continued negotiations regarding shared cost and management actions, Stansel County has failed to give farmers like myself within the non-district west and the city of Riverbank a proper seat at the negotiation table. The problem they are effectively trying to solve exists within the non-district east from farmers who have planted permanent crops with no access to surface water, creating a deficit from excessive groundwater pumping. We can all agree we do not wish to share the potential costs associated with solving someone else's problems. Through continued communication with Riverbank staff, I would like to propose a working group that includes affected parties within the non-dist including the city of Riverbank. We share common goals and understanding of keeping our own water costs manageable and affordable. With that being said, I do want to support the adoption of both 11.2 and 11.3 moving forward. I think it's an mutual benefit for uh everyone within non-district west. With that being included, I do want to acknowledge that looking at these numbers, um the city of Riverbank and the community of Del Rio are both extractors, right? So you guys are pulling more out of the basin than you are putting back in where us as farmers within the non-district west, we're all grouped together. We have the opportunity and potential to be a net positive, right? So I have other sources

of potential water, whether that's um repairarian rights or potential other sources that we have the opportunity of recharging the groundwater. So I think it's in a a net benefit for the entire basin that we come together as nondist west and work together to um become sustainable and meet um our GSP um regulations and become sustainable within Sigma. Uh with that being said, I thank you for your time this evening and I look forward to the continued and growing relationship among the Nongish West.

Thank you Mr. Bill Lions. Uh, mayor, uh, Councilman, uh, city manager, uh, I was here, I think, three or four months ago and talked about some of the issues that we saw coming and they're now here. I want to let you know that I've been very engaged in this issue for the last two years. Um, we own, uh, my family owns the center called River Heights, mostly, uh, you know, mom and pop operators. And one of my concerns is to being involved in this uh, process for two years is the potential costs that are going to be leveled on your city residents. As I followed this and you looked at the charts, there's one area that is not sustainable and that's the non-district east. I think you have to realize that they've been offered solutions. Just today, MID uh passed a water sale program provides 60,000 acre feet to the nondist east, but it's up to them to take advantage of it. Now if they don't take advantage of it as a subbasin the nond district west which is basically riverbank del Rio and farmers could definitely get hurt by our ability to use water and by fees. So, I would say pass this issue, but be very cautious that your residents, some of my tenants don't end up paying to solve the problems in the non-dist farmers, but they went up there for

business reasons, put wells in, put permanent orchards in in areas that did not have sustainable water. Um I do also today in NI share some of the same concerns that Mr. Wheeler does about the relationship transparency of the county with riverbank the non-district west farmers in Del Rio. Just today, a bunch of farmers on the west side received a letter from the Department of uh Environmental Services Stewart. No mention of Riverbank as their partner as a steward. He passed it to Toby and he hadn't seen it yet. So, I want you to take a look at this letter, especially page two, where they're basically saying, "We have an abundance of water. We are sustainable, but we need to share water with individuals that cause the problem. I appreciate your time and effort, and please watch out for your rate boos. Thank you." Uh, mayor, that is offer 11.2.

Is there anything online by chance? I I don't see anyone on Zoom wishing to speak on this item. Great. I'll bring it back to council for any more comments or questions. And if there's none, I um the similar to the next item, so I want to say it now because I will forget. Um, sorry to interrupt. Uh, we just have a resident that rose their hand on Zoom. Okay. Phone number ending in 3108. Can you please unmute?

Please go ahead. Can you hear us? Yes. Please go ahead. Can you hear us? Yes. Okay. Um,

Miss Hellbert, can you turn down your um TV in the back or your computer? We can hear an echo. No, it's clear. I just have a a a question if if if you would address the cost of this and who is going to pay it on both of these items. They list funding areas as being either from the uh this the funding coming from the STR GB GSA funds or from member agencies which I'm guessing you would be a member agency and uh other sources which they don't name but it also mentions the fact of using Prop 218 fees if they're going to use assessments fees or whatever Is that going to be coming from you from you taking out of ours? Is there going to be another uh one of these TR 218 fees on our water and sewer again or wherever it's coming from? Um one way or the other and how much are these costs going to be? I just like to know how much that they're it appears that this is all going to come out of our pockets rather than the cities. And I'd like you, Patricia, you could address that and just a little more exactly how much is this going to cost us? Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Hbert. Um, mayor, that is all. Thank you. Um, I will just say that at this point we don't know uh what the impacts are going to be from the plan. um we're right now we're going to approve and then send this approval to the larger uh uh organ collaboration as a whole. So so we're not sure but the I guess the assumption is correct and it's going to end up being a taxpayer um through the city um impact.

That's correct, mayor. So, um through the development of the action plans for each of the management areas, we would determine if there's any fees that would be associated with that. Um but unfortunately, this is a state unfunded mandate um that we're required to comply with. And so, our water system um is dependent upon fees from our residents to help offset the costs of providing water, including meeting those unfunded mandates. And so yes, ultimately it does come from the rateayers.

Thank you. And and that being said, um we're all facing as the council these decisions around um increased water rates with the study coming forward with the wastewater discussions that we're having. So um we want to appreciate Strugg Buffer taking the lead and as you know we have trusted them to do so with their consultants and everyone involved. Um but as we I would like to make a motion to to recommend this resolution but being clear and adding uh the following as well um in in a memo maybe as an attachment. Um, so it would be to that way we're clear uh as as a city that we want to protect our rateayers that we want to move forward in this collaborative approach but have an equitable uh strategy to get there because as we've seen it's we've been good stewards of our allocations. Um and so this memo would say uh or not uh would include requesting inclusion of the establishment of a north uh non-district west wall mitigation program committee and technical review committee to oversee the claims process. Um we've asked about the outreach uh that's going to be handinhand with the well mitigation and so

here that sounds like um perhaps for the next item. Yeah. Yes. Uh I I mentioned that this would be great in just one memo, so I think I'm saying it all now. Um but but yeah, I'll repeat it for the next one. Um uh so for this item specifically, the memo would include um sharing a formal invitation uh as part of the non-dist work group. Um, I think it would be great to move forward with that suggestion so that we're the city of Riverbank is included in those discussions moving forward. Um, and then skipping ahead. Um, yeah, this that would be it for for this resolution. So, um, if the council would like to approve a motion to move forward with this resolution attaching a memo that's going to include in part, uh, the formal work group, uh, that we would like to be a part of to be able to take part of these conversations.

I'll second it. Roll call, please. Just to clarify, we're adding the memo to this resolution, correct? Yes. Yeah, it sounds like she has two. So, just what she Yes. Yeah. Okay. Council member, yes. Council member FSY. Yes. Council member Call. Yes. Vice Mayor Pimento. Yes.

Mayor Hernandez. Yes. Motion passes. 5-0. Oh. Oh, sorry. I was waiting for you to just start it. 11.3 um adoption of a well mitigation plan in the Modesto groundwater subbasin.

Okay. So this will be the third portion to the letter that was deemed or the incomplete determination letter for the medicine subbasin by DWR and it will required us to provide a dry well mitigation program. So the purpose of the well mitigation program, it provides mitigation for drinking water wells that have experienced adverse impacts due to declining regional groundwater levels associated with groundwater pumping during the the GSP implementation period since January 31, 2022. So, an analysis was conducted that included all 4563 water supply wells with available construction information in the subbasin and it showed potential impacts to water supply wells due to groundwater levels declining below established minimum thresholds or MTS. Potential impacts are expected to be limited to an interim period before planned projects and management actions are fully implemented which would be January 31, 2022 through the hopefully sustainable uh measurable objective year of 2042. It provides framework for the following elements. An application process and well mitigation program measures for impacted well owners. establishes well mitigation program committee and technical review committee to oversee the claims for impacted wells which would be made up of the GSA members and Sturgba will contract with self-help enterprises for the coordination of emergency water supplies well assessments and replacements if necessary. So there are local non-governmental programs that offer support for those affected by impaired access to drinking water within the Modesto subbasin and

across the Sanwaqin Valley. You have the Valley Water Collaborative which was formed to address nitrate groundwater contamination in private domestic wells used for drinking water in the Modesto and Turlock subbasins. And the VWC provides well testing and replacement water or water treatment systems for nitrate contamination to all qualifying applicants regardless of income level. Then you have Self-Help Enterprises or SHEI who offers emergency drinking water supplies, long-term mitigation support, and well stewardship educational resources for those who qualify under their program in Stannis Loss County. They're a nonprofit in the Sanwaqin Valley that can provide water quality testing and emergency water service for eligible land owners. She establishes elig eligibility under their program by an application submitted to SHIE with for with information about the well, property and household including income. provide emergency water within 24 hours and then conduct on-site well assessment. And if replacement is warranted, grant agreement is completed between she and the well owner. Uh the income requirement is 80% or less of the mean household income and you are required not to sell your property or transfer ownership within a 5-year period after the weld replacement. And the grant can be funded up to $60,000. So some funding and anticipated costs. The well mitigation fund has been established to finance well program implementation. So the initial funding of this program is being funded by the Sturba GSA as part of their respective annual budgets and a portion between Sturga GSA using the existing annual budget allocation meth methodology. So we do have a current cost sharing agreement in the

GSA that reflects 12 and a half% uh requirement of the agency members. The baseline fund will be the for the implementation of the program and Sturggo GSA has established a baseline well mitigation fund amounting of $300,000. The annual funding the Sturgeba GSA has agreed to fund the program on an annual basis as may be required to address the needs of the program until groundwater sustainability is achieved. The Sturgma GSA member agencies will meet and confer in good faith to determine the appropriate funding mechanism, replenishment amount, and Sturgma GSA member allocation methodology prior to fund replenishment. According to DWR's dry well reporting system, there are 15 domestic wells that were reported dry or failed since the GSP was adopted on January 31st of 2022. You had 13 in 2022, two in 2023, and zero in 2024. It's unclear whether these dry or failed wells were due to GSA management or ground of groundwater levels. And as such, it is not possible to estimate the number of future eligible claims and annual costs.

Cody, the 15 is that is that countywide or is that in our district only? That's within the entire Modesto subbasin. Okay. So, uh just for reference, Turlock is in their own subbasin, but they are in Stannis County. So, this is in the Modesto subbasin alone.

So, it's anticipated that the program funding will come from one or a combination of the following sources established by the parties. You have Sturba GSA funds, one or more Sturba GSA member agencies, funds generated through implementation of projects and management actions such as fines and/or penalties, uh, county, state, and federal funding as available and any other sources that may be identified. She provides a well modification replacement grant that was uh spoken about earlier. So there is that option that is there are actually grants funded by the state water resource sources control board. So if an applicant does not qualify for mitigation through stob GSA program then the applicant may be eligible through mitigation by she and it doesn't have to be necessarily uh related to the GSA or the mismanagement of the GSA. So say the GSA reviews it and said it's not a groundwater issue that was caused by mismanagement of the GSA, they can still apply for a program through sheet.

So for example be like water quality, right? So like water quality could um be a an issue that was caused by mismanagement of groundwater. If you have a depletion of groundwater levels, the the level of the well may still be good, but you may have water quality issues as a result. So if it's not associated with the mismanagement, yes, water quality could be one, but maybe it's a failed pump, maybe it's, you know, a failed casing, uh, infrastructure issues. Yeah, there's there's still other mechanisms that can be used.

Okay. So staff's recommendation is city council adopt the resolution authorizing collaboration with Stannis loss and twomi rivers groundwater basin association and its members stakeholders in the county of Tommy GSA to take such actions as may be necessary to approve and implement the well mitigation plan developed for meto groundwater subbasin and again adoption of the well mitigation plan by the sta GSA fulfills the commitments made in prior council actions and advances compliance with Sigma and I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Uh council, are there any questions or comments? Any from the public? Mayor, we have a couple in the chamber. Mr. Wrangler Wheeler, you're okay. Mr. Gary Pearson.

Good evening, council. Um, I'm Gary Pearson. I'm a resident of uh the city of Riverbank. Um, my comments are equally um I I support what's been said from our previous presenters. I'd also ask, what does it actually mean to me as a resident? I am considerably concerned about our future water security. I believe our city must actively engage in meaningful com conservation and long-term planning including expanding the cons conservation through graywater use uh condensate recapture and rainwater catchment systems. For example, at my house I collect over 2,000 gallons each winter cycle and I repurpose that within my landscape. Uh this does not impede the overall water use but improves our water use efficiency. Next um I know our city promotes drought tolerant landscaping by replacing traditional lawns with drought tolerant plants and also has an artificial turf program but I also would advocate we need to increase our shade trees to reduce that evapo transpiration and trees that are suitable for this part of the valley. So don't plant redwoods. Uh next, uh prioritizing groundwater recharge. I strongly urge that the current wastewater treatment facility proposal seriously consider how treated discharge water can be redirected for local reuse and recharge. I know that there's part of that system is for local farmers to reuse. I advocate yes, but there's still volume we could use to recharge the aquifer. Um then uh encouraging the regional agricultural sector which you've heard here to rethink its long-term water use practices. I as a longtime farmer and constant looking at the inputs to the

farm and how I I can be efficient with our natural resources and water is one of those. Um, next I I really greatly appreciate hearing that we want to partner together and partner with Oakdale and Modesto. I'd also advocate we need to uh really think about our housing and truly get to that green housing and what we call lead inspired design standards. All new housing should be water efficient by design. Finally, I hate to say this, but we're going to have to put a moratorium on all new wells unless required for public safety. Every time we punch a well, we punch into that aquifer. I understand that that's has some issues. And then um all of this requires time, planning, participation, and partnership. But we must start now. We're in a long year. Thank you for your time. Mr. Bill Lions.

Yeah, thank you again. I'm just going to kind of follow up on the comments. I enjoyed your comments. Thought they were right on. Um, this is another project that I would urge the council to support. Yes, I think it's important. I think she will do a good job. I think there's a lot of criteria there to protect citizens of Riverbank uh tenants that I have when it comes to the $300,000. I think it's important that you also know though that those wells that are having problems are not in Riverbank and they're not in the nondist west. They are in the nondist east primarily. So even though the report may say countywide, it's really in one area. You have one management area out of four. It's got a problem. I really urge city council to be very cautious and to collaborate. And when you hear the word equitable, equitable sounds really good. But if you have water like merch does, you don't want to be equitable that you give half of it to somebody else who's caused their own problem. So equitable ought to be in my position should be what you've done to protect your water resource in the non-district west. I see this bond between the non-district farmers, Del Rio, and yourself. And I think it's really critical that you form this ad hoc because I am not satisfied with what I've seen and many others have seen the county level because they use the word equitable. What they're doing is they're pitting

areas, management areas that have done a great job with an area that hasn't. And think of it as a bank account. You put in money, your neighbor puts in money, a neighbor puts in neighbor puts in money, the fourth neighbor doesn't put anything. The fourth neighbor says, "Let's divide the bank account by four." That's as simple as it gets. You've done a great job on your water resources. Your staff has done a great job. OID has done a great job. MID's done a great job. You've got one area that's a problem and they need to address it. They need help. I would encourage you to be very aggressive on management plans in the nondist east. They need to have carrots and sticks so they comply. When I see MID offers them 60,000 acre feet of water to purchase, they have two farmers today that have stepped up. That's it. Because they're going to ride this thing till they're forced to deal with it. Thank you. Um, mayor, that is all I have for comments in the chamber and then there's one on Zoom. Will the phone number ending in 3108 please unmute?

Phone number 3108. Can you please unmute? Hello.

Yes, please go ahead. Yeah, I just want to the comments that I made for the other item also for this item because they seem to have exactly the same uh funding source for this one as the other one which is with the prop 218 and all of other sources will come out of our pocket. It appears that they have this set up so each item has its own funding source which means we're going to hit twice once for one, once for the other. So you need to know what's going on with it. you need to know the costs, which you don't, and all of that stuff that we have been told. So, I'm hoping you'll add what you added on the other one on this one also because that I just seems like an awful lot we have two separate funding sources for this. Thank you,

Mayor. That is all we have for public comment. Great. Um, I will bring it back to council for further questions or comments. Otherwise, um, if uh if everyone if it's at everyone's pleasure, I would like to add the rest of the memo to um the motion. Any other questions or comments? Want to verbalize the memo?

Um, so, uh, let me try and put in some sort of order. So part of our resolution states um serve by GSA will contract with she for coordination etc. So the city requests a schedule of the types of outreach and dates of outreach to property owners. There was a concern that there's a short timeline for uh folks who would be able to qualify for the well mitigation program um here. So, I think it'd be great to get that timeline. Um, and also request action plans to address the overdraft needed to uh to address the overdraft. So, needing it to be strong enough to ensure compliance with the pumping reductions under the well mitigation program. Um, further requests inclusion of the establishment of the non-district was well mitigation program committee and technical review committee to oversee the claims process. Um I I think as mentioned already, I think it's important that we are involved in every conversation and I want to thank Cody um and the team for being present and representing us. Um and finally uh as details develop for the well mitigation program to ensure tactics and strategies to consider are are built to consider the impact to it members including us and uh as annual funding is going to be assessed providing a schedule of meetings. So member agencies including us can calendar uh and have those good faith meetings to address address and discuss appropriate funding mechanisms um and approving the resolution.

Same ad hoc committee. Right. Right. Okay. Just making sure that was a motion. That was a motion. Okay. I'll second it. Roll call, please. Council member. Yes. Council member FSY. Yes. Council member Call, yes. Vice Mayor Pimento, yes. Mayor Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 5-0. Thanks, Cody. Okay. 11.4. We have a resolution approving a consultant services agreement with JPW Communications, Inc. for the preparation of a community engagement strategy and communications plan.

Mayor and Council, good evening. I'm really excited to be able to present this item to council today. It's an item that has been on our strategic plan um and is going to provide us with the opportunity to develop a community engagement strategy and communications plan to guide how we communicate best with our residents and our stakeholders as well as how we communicate internally. Uh so just a little bit of history as I mentioned um it was part of our May 2025 um five-year goal to improve public communications. There was a specific objective that was established to develop a formal communication plan that will include social media policies, translation services, and public access to information. And so the community engagement strategy and communications plan um was determined to be the best option to be able to address all of these different objectives. And so what is the plan? The plan is envisioned as a comprehensive document to guide communications and engagement for the city. It'll focus on the successful, consistent, effective, and collaborative approach to engage city council, city employees, our residents, our visitors, and our stakeholders. The goals of the plan are to define the messaging priorities, strategies, and tools that the city will deploy to improve community and stakeholder engagement that with a set of tools and priorities to offer access to information and amplify meaningful participation in and a broad understanding of city services, initiatives, and resources. and to be able to create guidance and establish best practices for the city council and city staff on external communication with the community. So, a little bit of the RFP process. We

did issue a request for proposals u back in October. Uh we did offer an opportunity for proposers to ask us questions and then had a submittal deadline um of December 11th, 2025. Uh we did receive four proposals and we did have a um ad hoc committee um of city staff, city council and our consultant um Jane media services um that reviewed the four proposals. Um we selected the top two to bring back for interviews and then today we are excited to be able to award the contract. Um, as I mentioned earlier, four proposals were received and the proposals were evaluated based on the submission of the proposal, the qualifications, the project um, and implementation plan and of course pricing. And so our recommendation is to award a contract to JPW Communications uh based on their extensive experience working with local government, the methods that they'll be using for collecting data from council staff and stakeholders which include residents, their approach to the plan development, um the timeline that they've established for this project which is approximately 18 weeks and their pricing was extremely competitive. Uh this is a bit of a breakdown with regards to the tasks and the cost proposal. Uh so task one which is to gather input at an estimated cost of 41765. Mind you some of these um do include travel costs so they'll be able to meet with staff with council and with stakeholders in person. Um the plan development 41195. Uh task three the training um 24680 and then part of the deliverables which of

course are the uh plan itself um 8180 with a total estimate of 115,820. I'm not going through the specific details of each tasks as I am going to invite Jenny Wendell from um JPW to communications to be able to to go through each of those and to introduce her firm um to council and to our residents. Um I did skip over really quickly two optional services that um we will discuss um whether it makes sense to to implement here at the city. Um so within the resolution um I've allowed for discretion for myself and the committee that reviewed that to have uh further discussions um with JPW as to whether we would implement um these additional services or not. They do fall under my threshold of approving additional funds for projects. Um so I would be able to do that um without having that conversation today. And so with that, I will go ahead and transition that over to Jenny with JPW Communications. You so much. Good evening, Mayor Hernandez, city council residents here this evening. Uh my name is Jenny Wendell. I'm the founder of JPW Communications, and it's a pleasure to be here with you tonight to go over a little bit about our company, get you familiar with who we are and the work that we've done. Um, our agenda for my presentation really just includes a bit about our company, our approach to this work. Uh, and then we'll walk through those four task areas to give you a little bit more detail about what that all entails. So, I wanted to start out with this quote, a favorite of mine, that plans are nothing and planning is everything. And we do this process quite a bit for

cities, counties, special districts throughout the state. And we always sort of get a bonus plan from the planning process. And what I mean about this is we're obviously working towards developing a communications and community engagement strategy for you. But the process is really robust. It's really steeped in a lot of research that we do with stakeholders, residents, staff, council, and in that process, we also learn a lot about things that may not even be on your radar at the moment. So, um, we really enjoy the process. We lean into the process. It is a process. Make no mistake about it, it does take a little bit of time, but we really find at the end of it, we have a super robust program that you all can take and implement for years to come. and we learn quite a bit along the way and we share all of those findings with you. So, as city manager Garcia mentioned, we are um a team that's created from government for government. We have a considerable amount of background in this work. I started JPW Communications 10 years ago after working as a public communicator for 18 years uh for three different cities in California and then I finished my public service career with the Port of San Diego. And in all honesty during that time I hired a lot of consultants that would develop plans for me and I'd just stick it on a shelf and it was really kind of a waste of time and money and I really felt like government deserved better. They needed actionable plans, not just theory and concepts that um collect dust. So about 10 years ago, actually, I drove by the hotel in Sacramento. I'm on I'm a drive-in today where I hatched the plan. I thought, I really think I can do this. It was a at a statewide conference um there. And so 10 years ago, I did it. I

struck out on my own. I left my my I left my calers behind. and started um started JPW and have we've had a lot of fun over the last 10 years working for several different agencies um as I mentioned throughout the state. We are government centric. We are California specific. So we don't work outside uh of of the state very often and it's because a we love where where we live and b California is very nuanced. It's like a country, right? there's so many laws and um nuances to the place we live and the place you govern. So, we really want to be attuned with that and dialed in um to all those specifics. Uh since those humble beginnings 10 years ago, we've worked with um over a hundred different government agencies, as I mentioned, throughout California. Uh we've worked with cities of all shapes and sizes from very small cities like yourself uh to very large cities like the city of San Diego uh the city of Chula Vista um and some other large cities. Uh we specialize in strategic work. That's really where we do our best work. Um and like I mentioned, our goal is to give you something that you can actually implement. And just four quick things that I wanted to touch on. Um that you know I was really happy that you selected us because when we got off the line with you all we felt like it was a great match as well. Um we shared these on the call but just for the good of the order tonight uh as I mentioned we have that statewide experience. Uh we also really lean into data uh in the process which you'll hear about in just a moment. We have a fullervice design team inhouse so we can also augment uh those services if you ever

need things outside of the strategy realm and we have a tremendous amount of outreach experience. Uh in fact we have on our team one of only three public participation professionals in the state of California. Uh she's certified by the International Association of Public Participation. Uh and that whole world is about engaging residents in meaningful ways, meeting residents where they're at, harder to reach residents, making sure everybody's voices are heard in a public engagement process. So, we're really proud of that expertise. Obviously, we understand what's at stake for you. This is really important. I think a good communications program is one of the best things you can do to build trust within your community. So, I applaud you for making this investment. And then last but not least, this is something we can't seem to shake at JPW, but I think it's for uh your benefit. We really like to co-own the outcome with you. So, your success is our success. We want to make sure that we finish strong, that you're getting what you need, and that it is truly making the impact that you're seeking. Okay. So, how are we going to do all this? So that task one is where we are going to do all of our factf finding as that little graphic there on the right indicates. Our goal during this process is really to get to know you and understand your current communication landscape, your workflows, what success looks like to you all, what your priorities are. We're going to audit your existing communications program. Um provide some thought towards that. listen to leadership, staff, and the community to hear from them as well. And really are um I want to underline this last part. We really want to ensure that there's inclusive multilingual engagement in that process so that we're not just hearing from uh the regular suspects as we like to call them. Not that we don't want to hear from

them. We do. We just want to hear from everybody. Once we gather all that input, that tees us up for plan development. And your scope of work was really heavy on framework development, plan development, and getting sort of all those tools in place to help launch a long-term communications program. So once we're sort of grounded in that uh in the findings from task one, we'll move into task two, which is making meaning of all that and putting together messaging, segmenting your audiences, how you should reach those audiences, which tools and tactics are most appropriate for those audiences. We're certainly not going to recommend Tik Tok for your senior citizen community. Not yet, at least. uh and then defining the roles and responsibilities for how you make sure all of that moves forward. And then last but not least in this section, we are going to provide tools for real world implementation. So that can be everything from a key message platform to a media list and so forth. So really getting you geared up. And if I'm not mistaken, um your strategic plan calls for a public information officer at some point. I don't know if that's still in the works. if it is, they're gonna have a landmine when they get here with all of these great things to uh put in motion.

So, Jenny, you guys are focused on kind of creating that blueprint for the PIO's. Correct.

That's how the scope is set right now is really creating all the blueprint materials. Um, we obviously are implementers as well, but this particular scope of work is calling for more of the tea up of the program. Task three moves into sort of the handoff, I would call it that training component. The goal here being bringing those plans to life. This will be some practical hands-on training, making sure everybody knows who's on first, what the roles and shared responsibilities are. Uh, I believe there's some media training in there for media readiness and confidence. And again, as you've heard me say throughout this, really built for real world use, not to sit on a shelf. And last but not least, this last part is more about deliverables um and the plan evaluation. We want to provide you a system that you can measure all of this work eventually. Um doesn't do any good if you're putting all this communication out and it's not having the effect or impact that you want. So we have a lot of thoughts um and also tools that we can offer to um sort of set the stage to measure effectiveness as you get into the implementation program. So that could look like anything from a dashboard that measures resident sentiment um to just a way to track everything that you're doing in one place and how sentiment is tracking online and so forth. So we'll understand what that should look like when we get into the planning process a little bit more. And then last but not least, this was already touched on earlier, but we do have uh an estimated timeline of about 18 weeks from start to finish. We will be back in market uh right out of the gate to meet with you all and do some SWAT analysis. Uh then we have this those surveys, the one-on-one conversations and and the communications

audit plan. I like to say that's sort of the getting under the hood position part of the program. um we don't like to diagnose things until we kind of know the lay of the land. So that's what we're planning on doing right away once we are ready to get started. And that concludes my presentation, but I'd love to entertain any questions that you all have.

Thank you so much. Um council, are there any questions or comments at this time? I just want to make a few comments from the interview process when we have our phone conversation and some of the reasons that I really leaned into you all that are relevant to Riverbank and could be useful for council when making the decision. Um they worked with the city of Belmont who was experiencing growth. They had a similar population to us and um San Marcos was one of the fastest had the fastest growing CSU. So, they're adapting to growing populations, which Riverbank is tremendously growing. Um, and the variety of demographics within San Marcos, which Riverbank does have a variety of demographics. So, to me, that was a really good fit. And then the biggest, um, takeaway for me when we left our phone conversations was meeting residents where they're at. We don't have a big chamber, so we can't get 26,000 people in here whether we want to or not, but meeting people where they are, finding group homes where they're at or going to school. So, just really meeting people and targeting audiences that may not be willing to speak. So, I really appreciated that about them.

And to add to that, um, because it was all of that, including, um, you being hands-on, we really appreciated that and your expertise. um and the the data the to back it up and the long-term sustainability measurements as well um stood out from others as uh we were reviewing all of the proposals um and and just to a little bit of of your comment council member because we have had discussions around the PO but also I think this so important uh for our staff who has served in a communications capacity our city clerk in the past and um some of our admin staff at the time or right Now, um Jane Media Services have jumped right in and increased our communications and us as a council to be on the same page right now and in the future uh with this plan. And so, um really looking forward to to this. Um I will bounce it over to public comment. Is there any public comment at this time?

Mayor, we did not receive any comment cards or anything on Zoom for this item. I'll bring it back to council for any more comments or questions. And if uh I can get ahead of myself here, I will make a motion to approve this uh resolution improving the consultant services agreement. Second. Roll call, please. Council member, yes. Council member FSY, yes. Council member Call, yes. Vice Mayor Pimento, yes. Mayor Hernandez, yes. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much, Jenny. Thank you so much. We look forward to working with all of you.

Thank you. All right, we are at our staff reports. So, just a couple of comments from staff um from our planning department. After submitting the third round of updates to our housing element um to HCD, we have received approval to move forward with consideration of adoption of the final document. So, we are tenatively scheduling that for approval at the planning commission at their March meeting and then at our first April meeting for city council. Uh, from our parks and recreation department, the third annual My Little One and Me Dance, as Michael shared earlier, will take place on Saturday, February 7th from 5 to 7 at the community center. They'll be offering a fun family focused evening for adults and their little ones to enjoy quality time together. The event will include dinner, dancing, games, and interactive activities that will create a memorable experience for all attendees. The tickets are $45 for one adult and one child. And then additional tickets can be purchased for $15 per person. They can be purchased online or here in person at our parks and recreation office. uh from our finance department. Um a reminder to our businesses that business license renewals are due and will be considered late as of January 31st, 2026. Late fees will be added and delinquent notices will be mailed out. And then a final um comment from our public works department. Uh, next week our street sweeper is going to be going in um for some upgrades and so we will not be having street sweeping services for the entire week. So that would be from February 2nd through the 6th and

that is all from staff. You vice mayor.

Thank you mayor. On the 13th I had a meeting with Mr. Steve Grand uh from Grand Asia for sister city. We are planning the Chinese Lunar New Year event. So stay tuned for that. It's in the beginning stages. Also on the 16th, uh we had the Chamber of Commerce Awards dinner. I want to give a shout out to Olivia and Monica for all their hard work and to all those that took the time to make it a great night. Even though there was a movie being shot here in Riverbank, there was a great turnout. And also seniors, if you need help with your uh utility bills, reach out to me. St. Francis of Rome has access and I can help you with that. Also, if you need help with groceries, there is a CVOC program that you can reach out to me about. I'll be having a meet and greet in February. Stay tuned. I'll give you the time and date. Thank you.

You council Moody Ben.

Thank you, mayor. Uh so, uh we've been discussing strategic plan ad hoc ad hoc committees is something I should have probably mentioned at the last one when we were um kind of assigning uh committees and subcommittees. I'd love to get a just an update from staff uh on our strategic plan. We wanted to do a ad hoc committee for tourism uh kind of create that guided city tour where the benefits would go to historical society. So um if I can get an update on that. Uh the chamber asked since I am an ambassador if I would mention some of the events for February. So uh February 4th uh and it is open uh meetings are open to the public so feel free to to stop by. Um they do meet uh on clause at the RIC. Febru February 4th uh their first ambassador ambassador meeting of the year. Uh and they are recruiting other ambassadors. So feel free to stop by. Uh February 5th will be a multi-chamber uh held in Patterson. February 7th, they'll be doing a food truck ribbon cutting uh just down the street behind us here. Uh and February 13th, the boot barn ribbon cutting um will be at 12:00 that day. And then February 25th, a lunch and learn from 12 to 1 um at the Timeless Real Estate. Um and then a save the date for the Easter egg hunt for March 28th. That's all I got.

Thank you, Council Member FY. On February 6, the Riverbank Historical Society will have their um annual installation dinner meeting. It'll be at Perkos at 6:00. We'd love to have anybody who would like to see what we're doing or become members um attend as well as all the council members and the mayor and staff. On February 17th, the women's group will be meeting at six o'clock at the Morris Nursery. So, if you have gardening questions and you want to come and see who's at the women's group, please uh show up at six o'clock. Thank you.

You council call. On the 17th of January, our Riverbank branch for the Santa County Library reopened. I was able to be at the ribbon cutting and if you haven't been by, I highly encourage you to go. It is absolutely beautiful in there and all of the books look absolutely perfect. I couldn't stop taking pictures of them because none of them have tears or dents or anything. I loved it. They also have uh they're bringing back their book clubs and they're doing story time and there is a bilingual story time. And then last week the mayor and I were at Cal Cities. The one session that really resonated with me was land use planning and smart land use planning. And that kind of leads me into the next thing that I've been doing. I'm knee deep into meetings with constituents and other elected officials regarding the Riverwalk project. So, if I have not met with you about it or if you would like to have a refresher or just more conversation, I encourage you to email me so that we can set up a time to meet. And then lastly, there's a tremendous blood shortage in our nation and January is National Blood Drive Month. I'm personally donating tomorrow. So, I encourage everyone if you are able to donate blood to sign up to do so. you um yeah there was uh and especially with Jenny here to give you a flavor of what happens in our city of action. We had a film crew come out uh to uh film a uh romantic comedy. I believe it was a holiday romantic comedy and um it's been so sweet because the the main actress or the the yeah the main actress has been just uh posting about Riverbank every single day and uh we actually had an interview with ABC or someone um this week uh and that is now up on I have not seen it yet so uh have some grace with

me. It's up on uh online right now. Um uh council me ura and I had a meeting with staff about at the tiny tots program with our uh partners over at Skoey and um there they have uh a lot of data that they're going to provide to us to be able to make some assessments moving forward on what um the child care situation looks like in our city specifically. So they have it broken down by zip code and um would love to pass that along as soon as we get it. Um the the session that stood out to me was of course communications. So there was a lot of conversations on the uh legality and the changing laws around communications for cities and so I am very excited to get moving on some of the strategies there. Um Stanco is uh taking up a lot of time per usual but there's a lot of positive progress in that. So, there's final interviews at the end of February for the executive director. Um, slowly the the policy council, policy board members are getting back into advocacy as a whole. And so, I sit on as a representative for the California Council of Governments. Um, and there's going to be some meetings happening around there. Um and uh as also chair of the VVS uh the Valley Vision steering committee which is going to have some uh more meetings and movement. So there's a meeting coming up in March. Um let me see. Youth council had their Applebee's fundraiser and um I probably lean on you for how much they raised. Do you did we get a final number?

Um it was final after they paid Applebee's. Um I got 1300. So they raised about $1,300 which is exciting. which was their goal over their goal.

Okay. Yes. Yeah. And so that is going to go towards their social night uh at the end of this year around uh early May. Um let me see. I I do appreciate the budget uh presentation from RPS to be able to uh start like planting some seeds and getting some data before we have the full budget considerations. And so it would be great if we could get some uh presentation similar from other staff member departments um to be able to uh process that as it leads up to the budget discussions. Um and finally I am headed off to DC. I have a flight at 5:00 a.m. um tomorrow and so it is going to be for the US conference for mayors. Um I think the all the snow has passed, the storm has passed, so um it should be a smooth flight there. But I'm I'm looking forward to it to connect with um mayors from across the country. I mentioned before I was able to get into some groups, group conversation, the group chats. um the last time I went and it served uh really well to be able to bring some ideas and some uh just best practices here to the city is they're made up of mostly east um east coast mayors and so I'm looking forward to that and I'll discuss it more is when I return. Um and that is it from me I believe. So uh we do not have a close session. We're going to our next regular city council meeting is going to be on Tuesday, February 10th. And this meeting is adjourned.