City Council - Regular Meeting

So we've got special presentations and announcements. Okay, looking like none. We'll now move on to public comment. So if any member of the public would like to speak for three minutes on any topic not on the agenda, now would be the time. Just please step up to the microphone there and say your name and where you live.

And for first-time commenters, I will be tracking your three minutes for you. When you have 30 seconds remaining, I'll let you know, and then when your time is up, I'll let you know. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Baruch Inbar, and my wife and I, we're residents of Mount Shasta. Should I start?

Okay. Let me put the timer on.

Good evening, Mayor Glauman, council members and chief of police. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I'm here with my wife, Maya, regarding a serious and urgent public safety concern involving city park in the surrounding area. A few weeks ago, my wife was verbally threatened and physically attacked by an unstable woman at a city park. Thankfully, nearby people intervened and prevented the situation from becoming much worse. Since then, many residents have reported similar and disturbing encounters with the same individual, including harassment, threats, aggressive behavior, and feeling unsafe in public areas. Maya's Facebook post about the incident has now received over 66,000 views. along with many comments and shares from concerned residents and visitors. Several people also reported that this woman appeared to be under the influence of dangerous substances, more specifically, crystal meth. In any case, her behavior was extremely erratic and dangerous. This concern is not limited to one individual. Residents have also reported that other people who appear to be abusing strong substances roam freely in the city park, creating a broader safety concern. This is not just about one incident. Just recently, my wife and I were driving south on Chestnut Street and stopped at the corner of Alma Street. The same woman passed by our vehicle and spat towards us. Thankfully, she did not hit us, but if she did spit into my eyes while I was driving or thrown an object at me, this could end up in some serious accident. City parks should be one of the most peaceful, safe and welcoming places in Mount Shasta. Families, children, elders, residents and visitors should not feel afraid to go there. This is not only a safety issue, it also affects the image and reputation of Mount Shasta. Our city is known as a beautiful, spiritual, nature-based destination that attracts visitors from all around the world and the country. If people begin to associate our parks and public spaces with danger, harassment, drugs abuse, and lack of enforcement, it can harm tourism, local businesses, and public trust. We respectfully ask the city, the police department, and the parks department to treat this as an urgent public safety issue. We understand that situations involving mental health, homelessness, substance abuse, and public safety can be complex. We love Mount Shasta. We're speaking up not just for ourselves, but for the many others who live in this city. And we ask that some serious measures and actions will be taken. And we'd love to hear what kind of the response we can get. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much, and I'm sorry that happened. That's very unfortunate. Chief, I believe we spoke about this already, but we'll follow up. All right. Other public comments?

Hi, Araya. Half of, I guess, Ohana. Connect Ohana Malama Lama, formerly Yeah Movement. Thank you, Baruch, for bringing that up because I heard about what happened with Maya. And for a long time since we've been here, I've been a single mom until Afa came around. And my kids were very little when we first came here. And I also have felt uncomfortable having my young kids at this park in particular. Shasti usually seems to be safer feeling for families. And I've heard the same thing echoed from a lot of other women as well with their kids. So I think it is something that needs to be considered. We want everyone to be able to enjoy the park. So I want to echo that. And, you know, on a different note, we have our next Ohana Connect business mixer coming up this Thursday. We've had really good response from the community so far. People are really excited that this is a thing and they can be a part of it. So I will hand out some flyers. Everyone's invited. A reminder that our mixers are free of charge, so everybody's welcome to come join us, meet other people, meet other business members. Our directory also is free for people to browse and post. You can post your business, you can search and post local events, you can search and post local jobs. I've pulled a lot of information from the county. We've got like over 200 job listings, 200 events. We've got tons of stuff on there. So the more people use it and interact with it, the better and better it is. And just a note, Tessa and Jeffrey, I did reach out to Chamber of Commerce a couple weeks ago after our meeting. Took about a week or so to get a response. We played a little phone tag, but I did speak with someone today. She was a little... confused if they needed to link our events, but she said she was going to reach out to their tech person and find out. So I'll keep you posted, okay? Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

Namaste, Aten, Aloha. Been around for a little while, KOA area. I know Baruch and Maya since 10 years ago, back when we were at water wars with Crystal Geyser, that whole push that came out. So we've been speaking since that time area. And I got to triple what they just said. And many of you might see me, but I'm here at the headwaters maybe a couple times, three times a week. And so I am in every circle. I'm in pickleball with the resorts. and those peoples and I'm chanting at the headwaters. And every now and then you'll see me on Sundays just chilling on the grass listening to drum circles and you'll see me here at every city council and you'll see me with business networking with fine print legal lawyer and business commerce and fifth dimensional unicorns and spiritualists and metaphysics and taking worldwide renowned Mount Shasta to a spiritual niche in tourism. So I'm on both sides of the world. I also had an experience here where I was coming back from the water and a mom was there with her little kid, rolled down the window and said, is it safe for me and my kid to come here? And I said, of course it's safe. What are you talking about? And then she said, oh, I just hear some yelling down there. I said, don't worry about it. Come with me. I'll grab your five gallons and we'll go to the water together. So we go to the water, grab them some stuff. The kid wants to go to the playground. I said, go with the kid to the playground. I'll take your water back to your van. So I take it up there. I come back, look at the playground, give them a hug, and they're good. They're having a great experience, and there are many people from many different countries that save decades worth of money to come in a trip with 30 other people, all dressed in white or some special color, but they've been waiting decades to come to Mount Shasta for that ceremonial experience of just hanging out there for five minutes. And I got to play blue ray protector guy and keep that place sacred. I don't know how many times I've taken hard alcohol away from people and walked with their speaker and their bag and the rock and roll music and walk and escort their shit out, throw it on top of the parking lot and says, you, and then one of the officers come, awesome, and they're doing the best they can with all the resources they have. And I tell the officer, hey, here's my CDL, run my license, I'm a great record of everything, run his driver's license, good. Take him to a county for public intoxication for four hours and get him out of my city, gone. And then when that lady, I helped the lady and the kid at the playground, and then when I come back up to the car to put the water away, I figured out that there was two guys down there with that one knife, that stabbing incident that happened. And then I made a small little video that says, how come our parks doesn't feel safe? And that went small town, county, viral.

That's time. Thank you.

And so we appreciate all that the officers are already doing and what the park is already doing. And I just second this and appreciate all of you. Thank you. Aloha.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Joan Romer. My husband and I came here two weeks ago for the meeting. We want to hear about the library expansion. And there was a lady that got up and she spoke her public comment for three minutes. And at the end, one of the council members called her an absolute idiot. And we were shocked. And if that wasn't enough, later in the meeting when the The gentleman was getting approved to be on the planning commission. The same councilman asked him, are you prepared to work with the village idiots? I know your job isn't always easy. It has to be trying. But I don't think it's appropriate to call the public or insult the public. That's my comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Rosalyn McCoy, Mount Shasta. So I kind of brought this up at the town hall meeting, but we pay, we spend a lot of money on advertisement. People to come in and shoot videos. If we invested that money into advertising, actual things here in town, then people, when they come here, they're going to say, this is awesome, and they will take videos. Over the years, we've had fewer and fewer vendors on the 4th of July, and the price of setting up a booth has gone up year after year. I would propose to at least offer locals and maybe expand out artisans to be able to set up a booth because shutting down two streets for the big spenders is gonna cost the same as if we put in more booths. So I think that really looking at some kind of local discount to be able to come and present their wares would increase our tourism because if there aren't a lot of booths, then people are going to go, you know, this is Chinese garbage and they'll leave. And that's what we've been seeing year after year. They'll come for the walk-run and then they'll jump in their cars and they'll be out of here. And so using this money to really invest in the community rather than paying someone to put an article in a newspaper, in a magazine and draw more tourists here. We're not handling them. We've had our river shut down, and so you can't park along the river and go down to the river. Castle Lake was so overrun that they had to shut it down. We don't have enough camping here. We have money that is being spent, but we're not investing it in what tourists want to come and do. So I think that it should be an agenda item at least and discuss diverting some of this money into actually doing something. I know the kids, they worked really hard to get the skating rink and it was like pulling teeth to have something for the community. Think about it, please.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Therese Swenson. I did not know Joan Romer was going to say something tonight. I'm grateful for that. I want to address what you said about the park. I know I'm using up my three minutes. I've lived here over 50 years, and I believe you that you met a crazy person. But this is a completely wonderful park and safe. In my experience, I raised my kids here, so I'm uncomfortable that 61,000 people think that one experience is representative. I don't want to spend any more time on it. But one thing I want to say is all of us, when we hear something or see something, we need to say something. The minute you saw that woman, did you call the police then? Because you did? OK. I have three minutes. But I just want to make sure when we see something, hear something, we say something, anybody that sees misbehavior. Prior to the May 11th meeting, I made a three-minute presentation and asked the council many times to be on the agenda. There was one meeting when I came up to Casey. I said, what can I do? He said, you need to canvass the city. At that time, John Redman walked in and said I was stupid. I went to Kim later. I met with her. I said, please, Kim, just ask him not to call me stupid. Kim told me that she, the mayor, and the city manager spoke to him. I just want to make record today that on May 11th, I was treated in a disrespectful manner, being called an idiot and a dumbass. I'm bringing the record to document this behavior to ask the council to review the professional conduct standards for all members, because respectful dialogue is essential to good governments. Okay, nothing else needs to be said at this point. I just want to say one more thing. It was documented in the meeting that he spoke about. And thank you very much. Oh, I'm sorry. So wait, there's just one more thing I want to say because I bet you're busy. I would like to see, I don't know where the camera is. I'm sorry. Oh, you didn't hear anything I said? I can't say it again. Okay, I know that Todd's been talking about the landing. We need a huge piece of plywood up there so that everybody, I don't know where the camera is, so that everybody knows the landing is for sale. I've asked repeatedly for copies of this person bid or that it was accepted and I'm having a difficult time getting that information. So if this land is in fact available for sale, according to the city, it needs to have, like at one time there was a big sign that said, if you have any ideas about the landing, turn them in. All kinds of people turned in things, ideas. Kim said she hadn't found it yet. But I just feel like we need to advertise this for a competitive bid, and I want to be on record bringing that up. Thanks for listening to me. Thank you.

all right any other public comment at this time okay we'll bring it back for council and staff comments oh okay get this one up a little bit we'll bring it back for council oh there we go bring it back for council and staff comments sorry guys Anybody over here? Please.

Okay, so with respect to the event, our Fourth of July event, I decided to go check out the Mushroom Festival. and it's really grown to a very popular event, and they actually have mushroom-oriented booths, a lot more than I remember in the past, which is nice. Anyhow, there was at least 209 stalls I asked one of the, and I knew some of the people, but this one I know very well. It's related to the ice rink. And they paid like 180 for the two days. And they said that it's a lot more for the 4th of July. The 4th of July event with respect to the vending booths is controlled, is managed by the Chamber of Commerce. I don't know that we regulate or There's no regulation on the part of the city with respect to the event except that we collect a fee and require a permit to operate probably, right? Okay. All I can say is they would do well to take a look at what's going on at the Mushroom Festival. I remember when that wasn't much of a festival about 10 years ago. now that was an out outlying uh stall so 180 there so i'm i'm thinking that the stalls average 200 a piece it's about 40 at least 40 000 in rental income what the costs are of operating the mushroom festival i don't know but i have a feeling that it's a good fundraiser for the mcleod chamber of commerce just just just a thought um regarding the comparison of that event to our event. And it's really in the hands of the Mount Shasta Chamber of Commerce to decide where they want to go.

Just to state the obvious, what you're saying is potentially have a conversation with the Chamber at looking at their fees. I don't think your microphone is on. Oh, it's on. I'll try to hip hop the mic so what you're saying is have a conversation with the chamber and and have them reassess their fees during the July 4th and other events because they may end up drawing in more vendors and thus more people spending money.

Yeah, I don't understand why they wouldn't want to have 200 stalls. And it seemed to me... Sensitive? Okay, so it seems to... But I'm loud enough, right? Can you hear me back there? Yeah, the heat's on in here. I don't know why it needs to be turned off.

The fans will shut off at 6 o'clock, so we're almost there.

Okay, so why they wouldn't opt for volume, I don't know. And it seemed to me, I didn't really do a scientific survey of where all the vendors came from, but it seemed like at least half were very local. very local meaning within Siskiyou County. People with little businesses that maybe are online businesses that come out to these different festivals and set up shop, but they don't have a brick and mortar place. So, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of local small businesses that showed up for this festival, and they definitely don't show up at our 4th of July. So I could only assume that the price is so high that they're going to lose money. Is that a good? I don't know.

I have something else to say.

Go ahead.

I know, that's what I'm gonna say. Can we take a five minute break and fix all of these microphone issues that we're having? Thank you.

Anyhow.

I would like to be warm.

Anyhow, that's my comment on the festival situation.

What are you talking about, the mic? Yeah.

So I have that thing going on like that? Yeah. But it's coming through pretty loud, right?

The noise is fine, but it's that.

It's picking up my breath a little bit too much. It's too sensitive. I got to have the right distance. Just the right distance. Yeah, I don't have a cover on this thing. And why is the heat on?

It goes off at six. Nothing?

All right, let's go around and test these out. How's yours working?

Give that a shot. Hello, hello, hello.

Tessa?

All right, that sounds good. Melissa? Yours is very quiet now.

Test, test.

How about this one? Can people hear in the back?

Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test.

Test, test, test. Audience, also, we need you. If you can't hear us as we're testing, please raise your hands. How am I sounding? Okay, let's go to Melissa.

Can you hear me?

Okay. Casey?

How about this one? Ooh, yeah. Test, test.

Thank you. Todd?

Test, test.

Great. Gibson?

Hello.

All right. I think we are back in business. Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much. All right. Chief, you were going to... Oh, sure. I was just going to address one thing about the landing real quick. Yeah. So with regards to the landing, Therese, to answer your question on that one, where we are currently. So there was some leftover money, grant money from the brownfield cleanup, and that money was put to what we were able to put towards an RFP to get a master plan for that. So the landing has not been sold to anybody. It is not under contract with anyone at the moment. There were 14 responses, significantly more responses for that master plan than we were expecting. And city staff are currently reviewing those to find the one that will best suit our purposes. We'll get that master plan done at which point we will proceed with more development. And there will be a ample opportunity for public input before any shovel gets in the ground there.

But this isn't a back-and-forth this isn't a back-and-forth I'm just addressing your comment there And if I can add one thing there is no agreement with anybody there we ever responded that We have an obligation to see if they can meet the needs of the state in terms of building affordable housing. But we have no agreement. If we had a developer that came in tomorrow, they would still be subject to the requirement to build affordable housing. But if they were moving faster, then we could sign an agreement with them. Any agreement to develop out there would need to come to council. And I don't think we're going to get to that point until we actually have, you know, part of the master plan is having three meetings under which we understand where the public desires certain projects to be built and what are the elements down at the landing that could be put in place that the community that's here could take ownership of and it becomes the you know, the center of gravity for the community so people buy into what's happening down there, which I think is key.

All right.

Anyone else? Okay.

all right um we will now move on to committee updates we've got the downtown enhancement advisory committee library tax advisory committee beautification committee and the active transportation committee any updates from those oh if i can bounce back oh my mistake chief apologies comments and stuff just to address uh so the the person in question that's been on your car and stuff she was contacted on the second

and trespassed from the city park. So for 30 days, she wasn't allowed to be down here. If we find her, we can arrest her. If citizens call, we can arrest her. She was also contacted later in the month of May and trespassed from Chastise Park. So we're aware of her. The issue is we can't do much on a misdemeanor that we don't see. So if a citizen isn't willing to press and sign a citizen's complaint, we cannot arrest. So, for example, if somebody spits on you, that's a battery, but we can't arrest for that. If we didn't physically see it, we have to be contacted. One thing I will point out is I know a lot of people get on social media and they put things are going on on social media. The police department doesn't have the staffing to monitor social media. So we're not even looking at it. So if you see it, like she said, call us. And then just for that incident, also, you know, it was put out that she was a missing person. We ran her for wants, warrants, and in the national NCIC, No, she was not entered by any agency as being a missing person. So she came up as not missing. So it might have been a personal, somebody putting it out on Facebook. Again, we don't monitor that. We don't have access to that. But she was running through dispatch, checked for warrants, because that's what we do. We check them for warrants. They got a warrant. It's real easy. We take them. We get them out of here. If they break the rules, we trespass them from the park. That's the ability we have. Just for this year alone, we've had 15 cases or citations issued at the park. We've had 239 incidents, so that includes our extra patrols. So we're down here doing extra patrols. We're down here, so about 1.6 times per day. So almost two times per day we're down here. But again, we don't have the staffing to put an officer down here full time. And when we see things, I mean, we're kicking them out of the park. We're writing them a ticket for smoking in the park. So if we're down here and we see it, but if you're down here and you see it, we can't fix it if we don't know. So call us. Don't be afraid to call us or come down even if you think it's silly because they may have a warrant or it may be just simple where we trespass them. Because some people, I understand, don't want to get involved. They don't want to say, you know, the situation has been mitigated, but they don't want to have their name on the complaint. They don't want to have to go to court because that would be required under a misdemeanor. So We understand that, but if we've got a person such as the individual there, we realize they're a problem, and we try to take whatever lawful courses we can, which is for us in the park, we have the authority to trespass for violating park rules. So the picture that we got that was sent to the mayor and stuff, the lady smoking in the park, that's a violation of park rules. We have trespassed people for smoking in the park because they break the rules or habitually letting their dogs off leashes. So we are trying to get it back. I think this versus... Prior to Johnson v. Grants Pass, the park was a different story because we had very limited on what we could do. Now we have full authority down here. So if you call us, we're going to take care of it. And if you're driving down the street and that happens, you call us and we will go there. But again, misdemeanors require a citizen's arrest with only a couple exceptions in state law.

Thank you, Chief. Yep. Chief, can I ask you a question?

Absolutely.

anecdotal only I have heard that on the weekends of the drum circles there's a lot of meth and you know smoking weed in the park which of course is illegal whatever you think about it is it possible on certain occasions to get somebody plainclothes down here to Just kind of like send the message that you got to follow the rules.

Do plain clothes or we can have the officer come down here and if they see it. Just so you know, the first ticket's $100 and it goes up from there. So if you're showing up the circle and you're smoking marijuana or cigarettes or vapes, any smoke, this is a no smoking zone. The first fine's $100, second's $200, $500, and $1,000. And we'll just keep raising them up until they stop. Plus, you get trespassed. So if we tell you that you're smoking here. So I try to get my officers. We get busy. We got other problem children, if you will, in town that we deal with. It takes time from the officers. But we get people down there. The problem with an undercover is you've got to have somebody to be around. watching them in case they get in trouble so it's not just simply having an undercover there walking around you have to have a from my experience and i did undercover for five and a half years you'll always have a team ready to go rescue your undercover so with limited staffing undercover sometimes doesn't work but we'll get extra patrols down there and lately we were having a problem i sent some officers down and lately we have not been getting the reports of as many problems at the drum circle as we were having prior to the officers showing up and making their presence known and kind of letting people know that we're watching. We can't be there all the time, but you never know when we're gonna show up.

Awesome, thanks. Ken, did you have something to add?

Well, for back-to-committee updates,

Yeah, committees, absolutely.

Okay, so beautification committee, just a couple of quick things. We just placed an order for some additional planters. If you know those big planters we've got downtown, we're going to get several more. Actually, even the local Rotary Club has pitched in and is going to buy another couple to match. But the big deal is the clock and thermometer. We've got a local resident, Mike Yee, who... The man's amazing. He's kind of a combination electrical engineer, mechanical engineer. He is basically rebuilding the parts for the clock. They're better than the original. And he's doing it from scratch. He's writing the software. He should have a prototype to try out here the next couple of weeks. So, you know, I said those things were basically boat anchors a few months ago, and he's proving me wrong. So we should, and he's volunteering. Just wanted to bring that up. That's awesome.

Great news.

Yeah.

Let's give him a round of applause for that one. That's awesome. Any other committee updates out there? Okay. I would like to note that there are two vacancies on the beautification committee. Staff comment. Sorry, what's that?

Do your staff comment, though. Yeah.

Okay.

If that's okay. I promise it won't, it, Some of this stuff gets in a little bit of depth, but it's important. So everybody get your pillows out. All right. So Prop 68 funds we were planning to use for the Chestnut parking lot for repaving. We were told by the state, because we don't have a park down there currently, we're trying to daylight Castle Creek, because it's not built, it doesn't count. So I reached out to Shannon, who also reached out to me prior. She's got a shoestring budget, has a really hard time getting anything done. You know, there's a bunch of stuff that she'd like to do. And, you know, the T-ball field, retaining walls, backstop, netting, chain link fence, little league field repairs, general site improvements, concrete picking tables, playground equipment. ADA compliant seating, all this stuff. So what I've asked of her is first get cost estimates for the things that are most important for you, and then let's figure out how we can package these so if we're reprogramming with the state, which is like pulling hen's teeth, we can fit everything under one project if possible. And I think once we have that, we've got to bring it to council and ensure that this is the way we want to spend some of the remaining Prop 68 funds. I mean, you could, you know, the council could say right now, you know, what we want to do is repave the ring road, you know, down at the ice rink or this, you know, dilapidated road around here, the upper lodge. But Let's get some options on the table and then bring it back to council. That's one. All right, this is where it gets a little interesting. So the landing, we're still having many, many meetings. We had, as mentioned, an unprecedented amount of respondents. You know, we're trying to be fair. What we've come down to is there's one firm, you know, many of you have met Nunzio and Mark DeSantis, that feels like they are the best storytellers and the ability to hand sketch, listen to what people want in the community, parrot it back, and be able to describe to them what the landing could be. But we also found in talking to some other firms, that there were some economists, consultants that could help in making decisions with the input from the public on what are the things that we need to do to make this a holistic space, open space, whatever it is, something that the community takes ownership of, but also how to phase this so we're creating enough return on investment that we can then fund the next piece of the development project. So we're really close to, you know, saying this is what we want and seeing if we can put it together. One of the things, the snags we've hit is when we went out for this RFP, SEDC is managing the Brownfield grant. They said, For sure, we've got $200,000 that we can spend for that RFP. It turns out that's not the case. Geocon, who's been one of the consultants on much of the land use covenant and all the cleanup on this, there are some reports that they need to finish in terms of things like if if you were in an area where there isn't compaction, how wide would you need to go with a foundation for it to be stable? Those kind of things are really going to help a developer out. Also, and this is actually very good, $5,000 was also set aside for Siskiyou Economic Development to submit the landing as an economic opportunity zone. It has a number of things going for it. It hits the low income requirement. It's a cleaned up brownfield site. Sorry, I'm trying to hold off a sneeze. We have an EIFD in place. We have developers in place. We're about to kick off a master plan. We have so much going for us. They are putting in four applications from Siskiyou County to the state. Normally, and they're doing this for $5,000. Normally, this is if you hired a consultant, $70,000 or $80,000 venture. 25% of what's submitted gets accepted, and we by far have the best package that would be submitted from this county. And here comes this news part for anybody other than numbers folks. If we get this declared a California Opportunity Zone, there are a lot of perks for the developers that would help them offset the cost of putting in infrastructure. There would be a tax deferral on capital gains for a period of time on these projects, and it would be the entire landing. There would be a 10 to 15% basis reduction in capital gains if the property is held for more than five years, which they can then use that to reinvest into infrastructure. California state taxes still apply. The program is now permanent through the state. It's not going to go away. It isn't something that can be unfunded. If you have this in place, there is much easier financing for that developer. There is permitting delay protection. They are not subject to timeline penalties if they're missing the mark on certain aspects on a development agreement if the slowdown is due to government bureaucracy. There is what's called bonus depreciation. Certain assets can be fully expensed. Typically, it takes 39 years to pay off some of these projects. If they hold onto this property for 10 years and then they sell it, they're not subject to recapture income fees. Certain types of developments, like certain types of manufacturing or production, like If we got Robert Kendrick down here with the idea of rebuilding, you know, the building, you know, stand-up structures, prefabricated structures down here, we had his plant. We're doing a couple things, creating living wage jobs. And right there, we now have the ability to create what we're calling affordable by design workforce housing where we're not seeking grants, but it hits that sweet spot where we're not normally able to hit. Or if we're going with a wood products facility that doesn't pollute and doesn't make a lot of noise, those kind of things count. And at the end of the time period, if we get this in place, the cost of that entire building can be written off. If you have this economic opportunity zone, there are Cal reuse and other state perks that you can stack on top of this, especially when you're looking at a capital stack to fund some of this. I think we've got a really good shot. We've got an EIFD in place, which gives us points. We've got the brownfield cleanup. We've got a developer in place. We've got a master plan that we're undertaking. We've gone through the majority of the SLA, and we're trying to lead with affordable housing. This would be one of those things that I would be shocked if it got turned down. Other part of this that is really favorable to developers and the Powers Group is really excited about is the entire site for many reasons, but one of them being that it's lower income census tract is we have access to new market tax credits, which allows us to build a lot of things like potentially civic structures. It's a complicated instrument, but the cost of building is substantially reduced and it's a major benefit for developers and allows them to use that offset to put infrastructure in place, which is always the impediment to taking a raw land site and getting it built.

So you mentioned that if they hold onto it for a certain amount of time, I believe it was five years, then they can offset, can reduce capital gains by 10%. Yep. Um, and then you mentioned they can then reinvest those gains back into, are they required to reinvest those gains back into infrastructure? And if so, or they're not, is there a way to like, as part of the agreement, uh, require that as, as it, or no, but here's what it does.

It, um, That's part of making them more competitive for loans in that because you have this perk, you're less likely to default on a loan. And along with these other perks, that all adds into the mix and potentially getting a better rate.

To the chair. Please. There is also a perk for holding it for 10 years or more. I believe that they, like, release the deferral altogether. Like, you never have to repay.

In some cases, yeah, depending on what it is.

And once it is marked as an Opportunity Zone, we have an Opportunity Zone expert in our firm. So if you need assistance with the tax side of things, come on down.

Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. That's it.

Oh, awesome. Any more staff comments? Council? Okay. I believe we already covered the committee updates. So we'll now move on to item seven, the consent agenda. The city manager recommends approval of the following consent agenda items, all resolutions and ordinances on this agenda or added here too. shall be introduced or adopted as applicable by title only, and the full reading thereof is hereby waived. A, approval of minutes, May 11th, 2026, regular city council meeting. May 18th, 2026, special city council meeting. B, approval of disbursements, accounts payable April 27th, 2026, May 5th, 2026, and May 13th, 2026. Total gross payroll and taxes for the periods ending April 30th, 2026 and May 13th, 2026. C, professional services agreement with Craig Johnson surveying. I'm sorry, was there a committee update for that? Oh.

That's agenda item eight.

Okay, we'll get that.

I'm gonna move to approve consent agenda items A, B, and C by title only.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Now we will move on to item eight, public hearing for the fiscal year 2026 and 27 budget. And Melissa, you have the floor.

First of all, I think council's had the opportunity to look at the package that was put together. I feel like we're moving at light speed towards a more professional presentation of our budget, but also you know creating a level of confidence in the management of this and I think I want to thank specifically the Finance Committee and our finance director in in taking the lead on this and really bringing us up, you know For a city our size, I think that this is a, you know, we're going to have some rough patches because this is the first time we have done it to this degree. But I just want to express thanks to everybody on council and especially to our finance crew and staff. So in the, I'm going to go over just the highlights. I don't want to bore everybody. But in the budget message, The budget across the board totals about $16.4 million. That includes general fund enterprise drainage and special revenue funds. The general fund total projection is a little over $6 million. We could do karaoke in between. All right. So General Fund, our major sources are sales tax, bed tax, property tax, and vehicle licensing fees. Our projection is a little over $6 million. And it reflects, as always, very conservative projections. you know, and especially given the ongoing economic uncertainty, we've got some funds that are trending downwards and some that are flat or potentially trending up. We also are entering in now to the summer season to the end of June. We've got projections based on past years, but, you know, hopefully we get a better year. But as it is right now, With sales tax in 24, 25, we collected $1.5 million in change. And this year through April, and I think Melissa's got some more updated numbers, we're running at just shy of 60% of what we normally collect annually. And while we hope we make this up before the end of the budget year, it's likely that we are going to collect less in sales tax than last year. TOT, bed tax, 24, 25, we were looking at about 1.6 million. With collections through Q3, we're just shy of a million dollars. We're on target for our projection of $1.6 million and change. Property tax, of course, remains, you know, stable. It's about $820,000 or so. And, you know, Prop 13 guarantees that that stays pretty flat. So cannabis fees, flat franchise fees projected at $175,000. Our enterprise funds face real structural issues. The water enterprise fund, we have a reserve of just under $86,000, which is not a lot. For the wastewater fund, our reserve is just over $18,000. The good news is that we have pace undertaking a sewer and water rate study as we speak, and we're gonna need to go out to a 218 process. But both funds, we've got significant debt obligations, and we have growing personnel cost, PERS cost, and aging infrastructure, and one of the things that we ran into that we really need to address is the fact that we have a drainage fund that was passed in the 80s where we're collecting for residential a dollar a month. And for larger properties, we're collecting more. We had a national expert in do a really, really comprehensive study and had a proposed phase-in increase to get us to a point where you know we start to address the stuff that's crumbling and hopefully get us to a point where we can undertake infrastructure projects or at least have enough for match and that was shot down and it's that is something that needs to get picked up again it feels like the city has their hand out and But at some point, we've got to face the reality that if we're paying 1980s rates, we can expect things to fail. So moving on, citywide is always the most expensive cost. Single expenditure, of course, is personnel. Citywide, it's $5,897,000. And it's up from last year at almost $200,000. A lot of it's driven by cost of living agreement with the Teamsters union negotiations, rising health care costs, and of course, the PERS unfunded liability. Insurance costs are significant, liability is significantly increased this year and it's one of those things that we see when we've got smaller cities that are part of SCORE. We had these anomalies where things happen and we had more than normal workers comp claims and so there we're facing that increase. Um, but they, they tend to even out, um, we resolve these things, but you know, but generally insurance is never going to go down. It just, that's just the way it is. Um, and so, uh, there are a lot of things that are going on, you know, we're looking at, um, you know, our licensing fees with our, our finance committee. We're also, we've have an ad hoc master fee schedule. committee that's been meeting on a regular basis and our finance committee is has been involved in that and what we're trying to do is for the services that we've been providing in some cases for free for very specific services like encroachment permits licenses plan review you know across the board We've been woefully undercharging for the services for not the community overall, but very specific individuals. We're not going to get to a point where we're recovering all of our costs because we'll then not be competitive, but we want to roll out in 2026 a fair increase that allows us to capture more of our time with, you know, the blessing of the master fee schedule committee and then eventually the blessing, hopefully, of city council, and that should help in bringing in some additional revenue and offsetting some of our personnel costs. Yes, so, you know, we wouldn't be in the shoes that we are without taking a drastic step haircut across the board and really limiting our expenses. Our department heads and our people have really absorbed some cuts we really need to ensure that our best that we can get this tax measure to pass. We need to shore up, especially fire. We're down one individual minimum to have a full cadre of folks for staffing. And, you know, we're going to continue to work to make sure this measure passes and do whatever we can to streamline our services. And I'll stop, but I want to, again, thank everybody department heads, everybody else, finance at all the cost cutting and the team spirit in seeing what we can do to bring down our cost to the bare minimum. And I would say that in previous to this, to having our finance director on, we always listed as having reserves. And we are going to have, it looks like we're projected to have a reserve, but it's tight.

Thank you, Todd. OK, so yes, we have a couple presenters today for their part of the budget. I know this is probably different than what you guys are used to. I just like to have people tell their story about how we're spending the public funds. And I think it's important for us to hear that and for you guys to be able to give your input to that. So I'd like to ask Danny to come up and give the presentation for the DIAC committee. Thank you.

I am Dani Williams on the Downtown Enhancement Advisory Committee. And thank you for taking time to hear our projects, what we have been doing and what we are hoping to do. So we can forward. There we go. The projects which the committee has managed to bring into a visible fulfillment are the installment of some bike racks at each end of the downtown district. One at the Parker Plaza area and one down by what was the gallery previously. We have also had the ability to wrap two of the power boxes on Alma Street and one on Chestnut. Sorry, two power boxes, one on Alma, and one on Chestnut with art, which discourages graffiti and different things like that. And we have helped facilitate the installment of a sculpture that was put at the top of the Castle Street parking area. Then there was the facade improvement initiative for the street facing aspect of downtown businesses that they could have. Sorry, we've gone way too fast on the slides. There would be the possibility for businesses to apply for a $500 reimbursement towards improvements done to their facades. as a way to encourage the improvement of the public-facing aspect of our town. Some of these projects are projects that we would like to continue into the coming year. The wrapping of the power boxes is something that we would like to finish the power boxes along Lake Street. And so that is something that we are hoping to finish in this budget year. But we have discovered along the way that projects don't get done as quickly as you might think they could or hope they would. So it is possible that that would be something that may not get finished in this budget year. We would like to continue the facade program, and we're hoping that some other businesses might be able to apply and get that $500 bump towards improvements. We would like to try to see if we could have a mural put in the, we've contacted the business owner of the Crystal Keepers building, And with the possibility of a mural being put on the upper half of that building, that's where the farmer's market is. It's an area that gets a lot of visibility and thought that that could be something. ACE does a nice job of keeping their buildings very beautiful and maybe we could enhance that general area by adding a mural there. And we know that there's a process of checking in on all of that, but that's something that we would like to try and promote the possibility of. And then one of the bigger tasks that DIAC is interested in trying to move forward and be able to eventually present a hopeful what this would look like presentation is kind of a unified way finding signage in the downtown area. And obviously we have big dreams about that including like informational, kiosks or maps or things that would help the walking tourist, but our hope immediately would be to help bring awareness to the existing and underutilized public parking, which is the Parker Plaza parking lot. because we have heard that there's a lot of complaints of, oh, there's nowhere to park in town. Well, there's this huge parking lot. So if there were perhaps just signs that we could perhaps install at the intersections that have the lights so that visitors coming to town would see a sign saying public parking to your left or public parking and lead them to to the available parking that is there. So that is one beginning step along the way finding goals that we have. And then we have a, let's say, dream that we're hoping to make baby steps of realizing is to create an event that would bring kind of a potential inflow of tourism in the shoulder season of the fall. And so October being when things taper off, summer has kind of ended and the winter months haven't brought their sports and their fun and their version of tourism. So we had the idea of something that we are calling a biketoberfest, which would bring together two aspects, both the biking tourism, which is really increasing in the town, with the Oktoberfest theme. And it's something that we could imagine having some similar elements to other events in town. So they're like music, having what we could imagine is like a beer garden type idea that would have both a beer garden but also non-alcoholic and then crafts, events focused towards family fun, maybe an evening bike ride with lit bikes and things like that, perhaps building in the future to some kind of bike event on the actual trails that would then culminate in town or culminate in one of our parks or culminate at the landing in the future. So it's something we see that could grow, hopefully, into really a reoccurring event that would draw people year after year and would be something that would benefit all of the town in kind of a slow time.

And I'm not sure if I'm allowed to weigh in on this, but I've sat in with different iterations of the DEAC. This is a very high-functioning group. You know, we have... All Trades has graciously offered to provide materials for much of the stuff we're working on. Solano's has as well. Very generous folks because they see what's happening. I think, Denny, I don't want to steal your thunder, but there's also the work that you guys do with the Chamber and other groups in planning events and that's a big part of it. And you guys give an inordinate amount of time beyond the meetings we have once a month or so.

Yeah, we're a super enthusiastic group, and we love our town, and we are happy that all of you are interested also in the growth in this town. So those are our dreams, our projects, our hopes, and thank you.

I've got a question. Yes. Great presentation, thank you. I'm a big fan of all that you're doing to make it all look nice down there. I have a question about the downtown, the facade enhancement program. You mentioned two folks have taken advantage of it so far. And I'm not a downtown business owner, so this doesn't surprise me, but I didn't know about it until I read the budget or this portion of the packet, I don't know, last week whenever it came out. And I was curious, and not a criticism by any means, but like... and maybe this already did happen, again, not a business owner downtown, was the word gotten out pretty well? Were things gone out to people to know, to take advantage of that, because I would love to see every business downtown take advantage of that, frankly.

So the caveat with that program is it requires business owners and building owners. I own a business that I don't own the building and my building owner could care less and you can't do it without both people signing off. So there are some unfortunate limitations to businesses being able to take it up if there isn't actually a great relationship there. I think we did door-to-door deliveries. We did everything we could to try and promote the information, but you never know if it gets to the hands of the right people. We would definitely do that again afresh this year. Yeah, it can be also challenging with the insurance costs to be able to do anything. So there are some things that make it a bit of a challenge. But I would love to see as much uptake on the offer as possible.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Danny. Thank you all. Appreciate it.

Okay, and so next we have a presentation from the library, so I believe Evelyn and Cy will be joining us for that.

Good evening, I'm Evelyn Callis, secretary at the board of the Frenzel Library. And you have received in your packet an outline of what the library has been doing for the last multiple years. And I don't think I need to review a lot of the details for you, but we are a very busy library. Last year, we circulated something like 43,000 items to our population. We served 1,200 individual local citizens and issued 400 new cards to them. And we printed 22,000 pages of documents for them or with them in our copy and printing activities. And gave them access to seven public computers and around the clock Wi-Fi access inside and out. And we're open six hours a day, five days a week. All of those things are probably quite familiar to you. You asked me to present what I saw as upcoming expenses. We have no really alarming expenses to look at in the upcoming year. A year ago we were notified that 10 of our 11 computers were out of warranty and would no longer be repaired. We replaced two of those immediately because they were our desk computers and without them we couldn't function. The rest of them are public computers and we decided that we would wait until one failed and then replaced it because we could do on six public computers or five or four or and so on. So we're waiting for unpredictable catastrophe in that respect. We have been considering obtaining some help about landscaping around the outside of the building. but we may be able to work that out with volunteers. It's a task that we can't, at the moment, supply from our staff. Beyond that, I have no big reasons to expect any increased costs in the costs that are under the control of the Friends of the Library managing the operation. We have other costs attributable to the library that go through the city alone, and those costs might rise without our having control of them. Some of those include the oil for heating, a renegotiated contract with our janitor, and issues with certain suppliers. Ramac, who services our heating, bills the city directly. Our paper and paper goods supplier deals directly with the city, but is billed to the tax revenue. and we don't have information about how that might change. Beyond that, our regular expenses run approximately $13,000 a month, of which 85% is payroll and employment costs. I included in the information I provided because I have not seen another venue for it that we need to bring to the council's attention that there will be some significant impacts and possibly costs related to the building expansion that is planned. When this is undertaken, we need to take into consideration that The public access to the library and the school is on the same driveways and they go through the same parking lot. There's going to be some major problems with both access and safety when construction materials and trucks and equipment are being brought in there. Unless we can plan a great deal of the construction to occur during school vacation, we're going to have some significant problems there, particularly with reference to safety of the children who are pouring into the school in the morning and out of the school in the afternoon, and the long lines of parents' cars that are waiting to pick them up. And finally, another that faces us in the future is that the board of the friends is having significant problems in recruiting new members. Our capability to do so is not great and most of the members of the board and of the staff and of our volunteers are well past retirement age. This may impede our ability to continue as the management indefinitely, and the councils should be thinking about what and how that could be managed in the future. Do you have any questions I could answer? I would be happy to do so.

Any questions from council? Jeffrey? Melissa?

No, thank you, Evelyn.

Thank you very much, Evelyn.

And Todd, I didn't know if you had anything. Love the library. I didn't know if you had anything you wanted to add. I know that we've been spending roughly around, as Evelyn said, $155,000 to $165,000 a year for the services that the Friends are providing. I believe there was a request to increase that to $180,000 from the committee, LTAC, I think. Yeah. So I did include that increase in the proposed budget as well. The sales tax revenue obviously is down a bit. So that makes up the difference of the downside, the less amount, not a very good way to say that, but the reduced amount of excess funding that we'll be going to for the library.

So I think, you know, one of the things with the library is you know, Evelyn and company have, you know, received a stroke of luck in, I'm blanking on her name, I apologize, but a person that is finishing up her library science masters and the potential for that person, you know, taking over the running of, of the library and, you know, I think it takes some sitting down and figuring out what this looks for because, you know, I understand. I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, the friends aren't getting any younger and I think we need to have a plan for succession and figure out how we can do this. you know, in the most budget-friendly way with seamless service, but then there's the elephant in the room of, okay, we've got cost estimates for the, you know, this project that has been worked on seemingly since, you know, we were decades younger in trying to get either a renovation of the interior with new HVAC and new systems and or an extension onto it and we need to sit down based on that cost estimate first with our finance committee and figure out based on what we think that that uh our rates would be and uh you know melissa has reached out uh to our bank and um we've got a we need to make a call to cameron waste our waste and find out a little bit more hold that Finance Committee meeting so we have sort of a recommendation and I know that we've disbanded the library expansion ad hoc committee but it may be worth either informally or formally re-establishing that for one more meeting to to figure out what we want to do what direction do we want to go do we want to do the interior renovation and HVAC, which is the practical route, or do we want to go for the bigger bang in terms of the expansion or leave that, the expansion, to something where we can seek our folks that are interspersed in the community and are really interested in the library and have the means to want to support that expansion using private funds. Sorry, long-winded, but those are all issues we need to talk about at some point here.

Okay, so I just wanted to, Todd did a great job of going through the revenues in the budget message, but I did want to provide a couple updates. Since we put the budget message together and since the finance committee met, we did get sales tax revenue for the month of March, which is obviously for January, but it was down to 99,000. So, a bit lower than I had projected at 120. And as you can see, the trend of sales tax revenue actuals for this year are on the downtrend. So, while I budgeted a projection of 1.5 million, that could potentially look like it might be down to around $1,450,000-ish. I handed that out to you, something to consider. As well, on the TOT tax, sorry, I think the chart says chart title. It's the annual TOT collections. As you know, we went from collecting TOT quarterly to monthly. So I've been monitoring this monthly to see if I could group things together that would come close to what it would have been on a quarter, but because we collect in July for previously collected in July for three months. It's been a little bit hard to see that. But as you can see our March, which was February and April, which was March collections are significantly down. March was $50,000 for the TOT. So the projection of 1.6 million could potentially be down to closer to 1.1 million 550,000. So I just wanted to point that out to you. You know, if we want to change the budget projection, I think that now it, be the potential time to do that, knowing that we may need to make some cuts elsewhere. We do have a little excess built in. Reducing those, if we reduced them each by 50,000, that would go beyond that. So it's just something to consider. I don't know if you want to have any other conversation about that. And I also wanted to ask, are we okay with where we're at with the proposals from DIAC and the library?

Bring it back to council, please.

To the chair, are we are you wanting us to deliberate by section like it's laid out in the proposal or are we are we doing all that and then going to public comment?

However, this is new for me, so I'm open to this was my proposal and I'm not sure we can.

So this is question question clarification time. So I'm going to bring up a point here. in this general page called Summary of Estimated Revenues and Appropriations and Estimated Changes in Fund Balances. This is page 22 of the budget report, 55 in the agenda. So, this is an edit recommendation because I think they're backwards. So, for the library fund, 68, 269, 615 is the budget report. So you have to flip those, 340 in that column and that. And so with respect to that budget item, we can have this after public comment. The library fund is projected to be positive, but note that the sales tax revenue is down. and trending down in general, and therefore the library tax too, which is going to really, really affect whatever loans we can get to build the library, renovate the library or expand the library. So anyhow, further on that later. But yeah, I think that's the only question for the public. The water fund and the wastewater fund, if you're looking at this page, which is probably the easiest page to read to get a feeling for where things are going, it's page 22 of the report, 55 of the agenda item. The water fund has $17 million, and the wastewater has $41 million of balance or reserve or fund. That includes assets, so don't think that that's the cash sitting around. Okay? I just need to remind everybody. It might be nice going forward to say what the cash part of that is, parenthetically or something, for the edification of the public and for us, too, here on the panel. Because that looks super rosy and don't need any rate increases, for sure, in that scenario. But that is largely assets. So, anyhow. Just points of clarification.

Thank you. Any other questions? John? Other? John Redman?

No? Okay.

Did you have more to say? No. Okay.

So, I think Tessa's question was, do we want to do any public comment or deliberations during or?

Because there's, yeah.

I guess that depends then if we're doing questions about each section with a public comment about each section.

Can we ask questions by section and then save deliberation for all at once or is that going to be too much?

Other thoughts?

I'm fine with deliberations at the end if that works better.

That's fine. Sorry. Playing devil's advocate. You know, public comment is obviously limited by three minutes at a pop, but if we were to do public comment up front, it may inform some of the questions that you guys have. But either way, I think we can do it.

Anybody, thoughts? I think we should go to public comment. Okay. Sounds good. Seven people here. Six, yeah.

So, just so I'm clear, I'm sorry, just learning how to present this my first time. So, what we're doing now is adding public comment for the three pieces that were discussed already, the DIAC proposal, the Friends proposal, and then projections on revenues. Okay, great, thank you.

All right, so at this point, we'd like to open this up for public comments. Anybody who would like to speak for three minutes or ask questions about the budget.

And the revenues.

And the revenues that we just discussed as well.

Rosalyn. So, under the general ledger budget analysis, is that what you're talking about also?

Which page are you looking at there?

That is page 81. We haven't gotten to that part yet. We haven't got, okay.

Oh, absolutely. It's a big document. Please. Okay.

On June 3rd, there's something posted. Could you please explain what that is? The people in the community can come and look at the budget? Did I understand that? Or is that what's happening right now?

I'm not sure.

June 3rd, there's a posted meeting for people to look at the budget. I think it was posted. I'm not sure. That doesn't, did I misunderstand?

I'm not sure what that's in reference to.

I'll find it and bring it to the counter.

Sounds good. All right, any other public comment? Oh, Afa, you got one.

Aloha. Is that on now? Oh, there you go. Thanks, brother. Yeah, I just wanted to thank the finance team, committee, staff, putting this whole budget together, consolidating budgets and accounts, making it as plain as English as possible. And so I just wanted to clap you guys up as amazing job because a year ago when we first started looking at it and all the work that we've seen happen in about a year later is amazing. So I just wanted to show appreciation. I know it's probably easier than said than done, but a suggestion might be, you know, I know you're looking at something quarterly and it's kind of tricky to track, and then we might be off a little bit from our projections. If it's possible to look at it monthly or get, you know, monthly, but I'm not a business owner, it's way easier said than done. But if it helps your, you know, monthly tracking of where we're pretty good tracking, I would be super happy to make that as just an option, a suggestion, a little tighter on the budget and take a look at it. Because as we've heard from our manager, our fire insurance, our California taxes, our inflations, and all these other things are inevitable. And then also our graduation and ascension of all of our elders. And the next generation that may or may not be able to afford to stay here is also in the decline. So property taxes, people, tourists coming over because government shutdowns. It's just a trickier time. And so as the future might look something similar to this, with affordable housing or workforce housing or tiny houses or alternative housing, we're looking at the slowing, the stopping, the growing. the anticipation of our elders making their graduation and then sustaining, retaining our younger generation and college kids to grow the population to 32, 33, 3400 and just slowly grow it into that. And so big thank you to all the budget people for all the things that we are doing and dealing with everything together.

A big thank you to DIAC, super enthusiastic.

Precious. Be fun to go see the bike things and see the wraps. 30 seconds. Thanks. And a big thank you to our library elders that's sustaining our community. I know it's super, super tricky. And so, yeah, I'm just very grateful and thankful for all you guys' help and appreciate you. Aloha.

Thank you. All right. We'll... Yep. All right. We'll bring it back now for comment, please.

So sounds like we can deliberate now for this part. So I think noting StackFlush's note about the library, I'm fine with things that were presented so far.

So with respect to the library fund, D-ACC, The only thing about DIAC, and maybe Danny can do this some other day when she has time to get all the numbers together, is that how much money do you need to accomplish all the goals you mentioned with the exception of the Biketoberfest? You can just come in some other time. That's okay. Unless you know it off the top of your head. There's some rough numbers. Okay, so what's the rough number? On one of the topics.

Yeah, I think it's basically...

$10,000, that's it, to get all the murals, all the stuff done? Go ahead. The boxes, the utility boxes? That would technically be as money as the past budget, so I just don't know, does that roll over? All right, will you answer my question? It's not very much. So thank you. It just, just as an aside, The D-Act items that were discussed by Danny have been lingering for years, actually. I used to be on the D-Act liaison. I was the D-Act liaison back in 2017 and everything, with the exception of the Biketoberfest. Even maybe that was discussed, were items to be funded then. And so... If the budget turns around with respect to cash flow, maybe we can look at getting these projects funded directly from the general fund, but that's just a suggestion. Anyhow, so yeah, the budgets for the proposed budget for DIAC and the library are fine by me. What was the other thing that we need to look at, the general?

Just if you believe that we should make any adjustments to the general fund. Okay, well, yes, I do.

By your own suggestion. Yeah, because you just said that you think the revenues are going to be approximately $50,000 less than what is on here?

For both, I mean. So $100,000 less? Based on this information, I've made a projection for June's TOT, which will be collected in July. I've got $400,000 there for collecting in May and June, so for two months. In the next two months, in order to meet that goal, we have to collect $400,000 in TOT. And our highest months have been July and August in the 200 range. I'm just not as familiar with the patterns of tourism here, and especially because we had been collecting it quarterly. So that would potentially be my recommendation is to reduce the revenue.

I would suggest you do that since I'm out about town all the time, at least three days a week. the volume of, there's been some surprising volumes of business increases back around spring break time, around Easter, and around Mother's Day recently, and then this weekend was very big in this town that will be reflected in sales tax and TOT eventually. But to be conservative, if you're suggesting that you want to trim down the revenue numbers and I think you probably should do that and then we'll vote on that in June 22nd, right? We have to finalize this eventually.

Yes, so this is a proposed budget. My understanding was that after this evening we would come up with an approved budget and if that means that we reduce these revenues by potentially $100,000 then we need to decide whether we're going to have a balanced budget or not. And then I would bring whatever is approved here tonight for adoption on June 22. That would be my understanding of how that would go. And again, this is my first time here. So again, what it's going to come down to is if we say we want to reduce those two revenue streams by $50,000 each, that will eat up the current excess as well as put it into a deficit mode, and we need to determine if we want to run a deficit.

I do think we should budget for what's expected and not have the balance of the budget lead what we do. Agreed with that. Because the actuals will be what it will be.

Yeah, go ahead, Jeffrey.

Melissa did. Is the equipment replacement fund, that $75,000 a year that we normally put in, is that in here someplace?

That, I don't believe, was in either of the past two years' budgets, and I did not include it in here.

Okay, so that's not in here.

There is no set aside for capital improvements or capital purchases or reserves for future improvement expenses.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

So I will, what I'm hearing is that I will move the sales tax and the TOT tax down around $50,000 each and at the end of the discussion tonight we'll determine whether we're going to reduce the budget further on expenses or have a deficit.

Yeah I believe that's the general consensus. Yes.

To the chair please. If we can do the rest as one lumping otherwise this can. I'm not a big fan of making meetings longer than they need to be. If we can avoid that. So instead of deliberating and discussing after public works we just do it all at the end.

Any objections to that. Any objections? Okay, sounds good. In that case, we'll go to questions about the next sections.

Melissa, please. I didn't know. I was just going to go through these pages and see if anybody had any other comments. City Council is pretty straightforward. I don't know if you guys had anything you wanted to add. It's basically the same as last year. It includes a stipend. It includes the 22nd Avenue, the rental of the lodge, and a small portion for travel expenses should there be conferences to attend. I don't know if you guys had anything that you wanted to add as far as that goes. Todd, I didn't know if you had anything you wanted to include for the city administration budget.

I'm sorry.

City administration.

One more time.

the city administration budget?

Oh, no.

OK. It's pretty much a flat budget as well. I will note that all of these general fund budgets, which is why I put that break there in the deliberations, just because we'll wrap up general fund, but we can move on. There is a 3% COLA increase in all of these program personnel expense budgets. So that was this most significant increase in the city administration budget. And I think that pretty much covers that. I just wanted to speak to the finance budget and the human resources budget. We had significant turnover last year. We basically have one staff that has been here any longer than two years. So we were working on getting everybody staffed up or trained up and we'll probably attend some conferences in the coming year just to get people familiar with their positions in the government organization of things, processing the TOT, STR payments, things like that, HR-related responsibilities, going to the Cal Cities Conference. So I did budget a little extra in there. I think it had traditionally been around $2,000. I bumped that up to $8,000 for those training activities. We went through significant changes in our finance operating systems. As you're aware, we did decide to not move forward with the Springbrook licensing application. and we will move that over to the NUMO, which is our short-term rental software application. It's going to be a lot more user-friendly. It will cost a little bit more as far as the actual module, but I was able to reduce the expense on the software side by not renewing a contract with the True Comp that I was using for personnel expensing. So it basically came out to a net wash. So those were the most significant changes in our budget. I am going to be still moving forward with the fixed asset module in Springbrook, and I'm going to continue to try to develop this document. I thank you for pointing out the items that I have, you know, had mistakes on. ended up a little bit rushed, a little more rushed than I thought I was going to. So I do think that we can refine it over time. And it's a good speaking point to how the community, how the tax dollars are spent in the community. So I think that was it. I did notice my own error there on page 34, that the total for the proposed budget for finances is different. It should be 386,880. We are also reduced to FTE, which is the most significant reason why our budget is down. One FTE in total was released, and then the other FTE is actually reallocated to the building program and the enterprise fund program because we have one person that basically that's her full-time job is taking and processing utility payments and working with the building department to make sure that plans are moving along and inspections are getting scheduled and, you know, the staff is getting what they need for that building and planning component. So that FTE did get moved to those budgets. So... And then I was going to just review the community partners because they were here some time ago to do their presentations. There really isn't any changes. What I do want to note is in the proposed budget, I did go with the lower number for the visit Mount Shasta marketing. He had presented two options. Obviously, neither of them have to go forward, but I did budget for the 42,000. There were really no other changes. I think there might be some for change in this area so when we get there we can deliberate about that. And then Kim had some slides and I will turn it over to her for the planning and building budget.

Okay, good evening, everybody. I'll make this very quick since it may be a long night. But for everybody in the room, for the benefit of everybody in the room, I am the planning director, and as the planning director, I oversee both planning and building. The planning department does everything land use related. Planning in particular are future projects, and building then are existing projects. So to demonstrate that, uh-oh. Hmm. Okay. So for the mountain townhomes project, the planning department would have approved elevations and then the building department will then come in and verify that Danco is building the mountain townhomes to what the planning specs were. That's a big part of the building effort this year. One other big accomplishment this year is bringing in for the first time an in-house building inspector. Formerly, we had consultants do our building inspections and our plan checks. And with consultant budgets, we were limited to having inspections done two days a week. I think having a building inspector in-house now and opening that up to three days a week has helped tremendously. And I do get a lot of feedback from the community indicating that they are very thankful that we have more of a building inspection presence within Mount Shasta. Oh, next slide. Hey, that works out really well. One of the major focuses of the planning department this year, obviously, is to facilitate development of the landing. When Jeff Mitchum was here, he initiated the Surplus Lands Act process by which the city solicits having a developer come in, and now we're at the point where we're going through a master plan process, a process by which we land use develop the landing and after that build it out. That's going to be the biggest thing from a land use perspective that the planning department will be doing on behalf of the city. Next slide. A lot of what the planning department does on a day-to-day basis is facilitate permits. We get a lot of graphics permits, signing permits, special event permits, and also processing business licenses, helping staff process business licenses. Next slide. Planning department also meets very regularly with other outfits in town. We're meeting regularly with the Siskiyou Housing Alliance to get a better understanding of what the actual housing needs are within Mount Shasta. And we're also working with Great Northern Services to look for and procure grants so that we can do some more work. And meeting with the Rotary on an every so often basis just to get a better understanding of what it is that the community needs. Next slide. A lot of ordinances are underway, one of which is the mobile home rent stabilization ordinance that will be coming to the city council very shortly. There are other ordinances that have since been deemed update or root. We need to update some other ordinances, one of them being the short-term rental ordinance, another one being maybe the tiny homes on wheels ordinance, maybe refining some of the language so that when people come in and want to build tiny homes, that there's a clear set of instructions in terms of how to do it and how the city's going to facilitate that. As we move along in the next year, we'll also identify other ordinances that may be needed and tweak some as needed. Next slide. Key projects and future initiatives. We'll keep on doing what we're doing. The general plan has not been updated since 2009. The state does require every local jurisdiction to update their general plan on an every so often basis. Because we have very limited staff, it's been a slow go, but we are tackling that one chapter or one element at a time. So that will be coming back through Planning Commission and City Council in the year ahead. Newer revised ordinances will also be in front of you for review. Development projects we haven't had a lot of in this past year. I did just get a new Temple conditional use permit application on my desk that was submitted last week. for a property at the south end of town on South Mount Shasta Boulevard. There are also some talks of other developers coming in and wanting to develop multi-family housing units within the city of Mount Shasta. So as those applications come in, staff will be taking a look at it and it'll eventually go through Planning Commission and City Council also if there are land use changes involved. And then lastly, there will be an effort to update the fee schedule for planning and building items. That is something that has been on the list for quite some time. The fees haven't been updated in a while, so that should also be coming in the year ahead. I think that is all I have, so thank you in advance for the consideration.

Thank you.

Corey will present for the Fire Department next.

We're going to go through all of the rest of it and then go to public comment.

Good evening, Council and Mayor. Thank you. I'm Corey Burns, Fire Chief, as you know. Just going to bring back, you know, If our department continues to grow the best of our abilities with the staffing and the volunteers being an accommodation department as well as being down some paid staff. Currently we're operating with five. We just got another one back on board hopefully starting in the next week. We are working to keep services running you know at the highest level that we can provide. Last year just for a little bit of recap we had one thousand 23 calls for service that ranged anywhere from a smoke detector call to picking somebody off the floor that was not injured, medical, you know, ranging anywhere from a cut hand to, you know, CPRs. You know, responding to vegetation fires, one being pertinent right behind our back door back here last year, the Spring Hill incident, which was the largest incident that I can recall as long as I've been on the department of 25 years or more, starting as an explorer. A lot of collaborative effort happened with that, with Cal Fire, the Forest Service, and everybody. And luckily, we were able to hang it up where we did, you know, without worse infrastructure loss. A lot of that comes back to having the staff readily available to respond to incidents like that, and that could happen anywhere around us at any given moment. We continue with fuel reduction projects throughout the city, trying to reduce that wildfire risk with the grants that we have, and we'll continue to look for more and keep that as a high priority. Another big thing for the year prior is strengthening the communication between the fire district board and the city, you know, trying to make that a joint effort across the board because we are running as a multi-agency in a way, but, you know, one fire department but two governing boards, you know, trying to make it all work as one department which is, the best that this community could see at this point because getting volunteers is a very strong struggle and it's strong to train them to the levels of a professional firefighter, which is required even by a volunteer eventually. Couple other things on the key projects and future initiatives, keeping the staff level we have and try to increase it the best of their ability, and hopefully we can pass the sales tax initiative to increase that back to a more comfortable level of having a higher level of service in the future past where we are providing right now. Developing a plan for some kind of barracks for that type of shift, as well as bringing on, hopefully, students throughout the college program and stuff to staff additionally, you know, with having some type of sleeper program. Having a barracks or somewhere to house people would be huge on that avenue. I'm also exploring trying to bring back our Explorer Cadet Program, which would include high school students. But that's a challenge in itself, but it's just something I'd like to put in the key future initiatives. And then, you know, developing an equipment replacement plan is on my top of my list because equipment in the fire service is not getting cheaper. It's just going up and up and up and up and up. You know, for instance, A fire engine back in the day was $500,000, $400,000 for a big structure fire engine. Now we're looking at $1 million, $1.2 million, and everything is just dating itself right there. And we are doing the best to maintain them and keep them in the highest ready operational with the budget we have. But that also could be an issue if we have catastrophic failure in the equipment. And then, We are pursuing any grants for personnel, anything. I have a couple that we're going to meet with in the future with Todd and others to try to procure some short-term, you know, grant opportunities to augment the personnel issues. And then in the long term, I mean, If you have anything you need or want from me or the department, you know, I'm all ears. I just like to keep what we have and keep trying to drive forward with the current state that we are in and not right now, I don't have much more I could cut to stay operational. So that's just a brief overview. I did put a little thing in the packet, you know, elaborating a little more depth, but I don't feel I need to go much further into depth. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Gibson, if you'd like to move on to the PD.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Right now we're at the The police department, we currently sit at nine sworn police officers, two reserve officers and one code enforcement officer. We do have a canine officer. I will note that our canine officer is grant funded and all the expenses for the canine fund are supported by donations or grants. We also, the police department runs a 24 hour, 365 dispatch center with three dispatchers and a dispatch supervisor. Essentially I was asked to hit a target of 1.6 million that came in I think 30,000 under that within I Even though I have the largest budget hit to the council. I also have the most employees, and I'm the only 24-7 service out there roughly of the 2.5 million Roughly 900,000 of that is grant funded So with my Prop 64 grant that I received, that fully funds two full-time officer positions, their equipment, their phones, basically everything that goes with them, their gas, as well as our full-time code enforcement officer that is funded through the Prop 64 grant. We also fund another officer position through what's known as the COPS funding in here, which has gone up to about $207,000, I believe, somewhere right around there. for the next year, which helps cover the salary of yet another officer position. Having said that, you'll notice in our capital outlay that I have put in $0 there. That means that we're not budgeting to replace any vehicles. So as vehicles go down this next year, we don't have any budget to replace them. This impacts my ability to, should we lose too many vehicles, to safely provide security or safety for big events such as the Fourth of July. So I'm hoping to make it, we're doing the hope and pray. I'm hoping the one vehicle that we got coming, which was grant funded through Prop 64, will get us through. But we are in that position where we've cut down to minimal trainings and we're required to have so many hours per year through posts to keep the officers training and their credentials. I've cut that down to the bare minimums of training. We've gotten rid of janitorial services. We're handling that ourselves in-house. But so those are the steps that we've made to get to this budget where we're at I will point out that some of the things that we brought to Council we've got the parking district pass ordinance that was passed I've got the taxi inspection ordinance that was passed we got the two-hour parking ordinance hammered out and we changed the hours to the parking lots in the public parking lots which has cut down on the camping you'll notice there's no campers and trash and garbage in our public parking and which is helping the flow in the outtown. So those are some of the things that came to council last year. Some significant calls that we're dealing with last year, and we had another one just this weekend. We've had assault with a deadly weapon. We were able to identify and arrest the subject. Of course, working with the Spring Hill Fire, that was a law enforcement cooperation with fire, working on that. We have contracts and MOUs in place with state and federal agencies such as the ICAC unit out of Sacramento, which is the Internet Crimes Against Children. One case we worked this year had over 300 victims associated with it over this gentleman's 30 to 40 years of abusing children. We continue to clear illegal camps throughout the city with code enforcement officers walking around to help reduce the fire danger within the city. Again, one of the things we had at the park was we had the attempted stabbing that had all calls. We called in all our fellow law enforcement to assist. We had public alerts notified. Dispatch was pretty busy getting the picture out to the public and stuff. We were able to identify and make that arrest. And then we start getting into the scary stuff where we had a robbery with great bodily injury. Again, these are, 99% of these people don't live here and they just thought they'd come down here and cause a ruckus and leave. We were able to locate and arrest that subject. We assisted with a deputy when he was shot at up on an eddy circle just outside of Mount Shasta. We had a pretty significant DUI accident which involved a pedestrian being run over We were able to locate the vehicle and make that arrest as well as, at the same time, help assist providing immediate first aid to the victim. And then, of course, most recently we had the officer-involved shooting where a suspect pulled out a gun and shot at our officer during a traffic stop. So for the police department, what you're getting for the service, you're paying for community involvement. We regularly attend the high school football, baseball, and basketball games. We have officers going to the high school all the time. We participate with the elementary school walk and bike event to make sure the streets are clear for them to do that. We give them hot chocolate down at the police department. We facilitate the homecoming parade. We shut the roads down for the high school real fast to get their high school parades done. We do the winter magic, the Fourth of July, The Halloween walk, I don't know if you've ever seen the little kids from the elementary school walking the boulevard in downtown. We help shut the roads down. And there's some other things we do. We offer security services for off-duty officers. If an event wishes to pay for the officer, we do security. You'll see us up at the, doing for the concerts in the park. They contract who have off-duty officers in uniform, as well as the Blackberry Festival. And then we do... Coffee with a cop, which the last time we did that, we had five cops show up and one citizen. But we try to do that as much as possible. The canine demos, he goes to schools a lot with the canine. And we're getting ready here next Wednesday, I believe. I believe it's the first. We will be doing the senior parade. And this year, we're going to have a fire engine and a police truck. and the seniors are gonna decorate those up and ride in our equipment to show off our seniors and send them on their way. Yep, send them on their way so they can get their education and come back and spend money here. So for the department last year, for the dispatchers, they handled 25,425 non-emergency telephone calls, or about 70 calls per day. On top of 2,244 emergency 911 calls or six per day, that's what our average call volume is there. And on top of that, you add all the radio traffic from the officers out there, it keeps the people walking into the lobby, keeps our dispatchers jumping pretty good. We had 7,155 calls for service last year, 399 cases were taken, 162 arrests. 993 traffic stops and 309 citations were issued. So key projects coming up in the future. We're working right now on the possibility of a $365,000 grant from the state to update the dispatch center, new computers, different screens, everything to work in there. We're anticipating that the cohort four for Prop 64 will be released hopefully this next year. They got a steering committee going now, so hopefully we'll find out what that funding is going to be like and get in line to get ready to go for the cohort four to see if we can expand the program and continue funding our code enforcement and other officer positions to help reduce some of the burden to the general fund. We're continuing to focus on providing the best and most professional service. Of our last four hires, three of them had over 60 years combined law enforcement experience at other agencies that they brought to us because they wanted to come work for the city of Mount Shasta. And we have one brand new. That's stuff we can't pay for. That's thousands and thousands of dollars of training that we don't have to pay for because they came to us. So we're doing that. I'm right now working on revising the city's emergency operations manual to get that up to date. Hopefully we'll have that all on little thumb drives so we can just hand them out with everybody that's on a thumb drive, get technology, get caught up. And then one of the other things that came up at our chief's meeting is going to be standardized notification system for the schools the Siskiyou County schooled and our local schools with the elementary and system middle schools are going to go with a centralized standardized notification because right now the school goes on lockdown and And people are like, oh, school's always a school on lockdown. And it was for, there was a dog on campus or what. So we're changing the language so that parents, students and teachers know that maybe it's just one of the things would be like a hold where the kids can just come inside. They can mingle around, but they just can't be outside. Maybe law enforcement's doing something. Cause we wanna get back to lockdown being locked down and nobody's moving around. Cause too often it's lockdowns are getting to like fire drills and nobody cares. And we don't want, as a community, we don't want the kids and the teachers and everybody disobeying a lockdown order. So we're working with the schools. And one of the things I attended a meeting today with all the chiefs and with both fire, our federal partners, CHP, and our state partners, on the California law enforcement mutual aid agreements and pre-fire planning for this year. And one of the things I brought up at the meeting is training for non-emergency personnel within the city. That's finance director, council members, city manager on your roles and responsibilities and what to expect and what we need from you in an emergency so you can kind of understand how the ICS system works and what is helpful and what is not. And so we can use lessons learned. So I think that you guys might be seeing something coming out from the Sheriff's Department of Cal UAS for just some training and just to give you an idea of what me and Corey might know to get everybody. So if we have to activate our EOS or EOC here in Mount Shasta, the incident commander, finance, everybody knows their roles and they've got some training. We're not just kind of winging it. So that's things in the plan. So I thank you, Council, for listening to me long-winded. I hope you accept the proposal budget as submitted to you. Again, I will point out that I literally until we're down to the point of people now, so I can't stress that enough with you, but we're down to that far.

Thank you. Okay, this is going to be even briefer. But I do want to echo what both chiefs have said. Vehicle replacement is becoming a critical issue. And I know it's not in the budget for this year, the money's not there, but keep it in mind for the future. Our VACCON is getting the pump rebuilt for the umpteenth time. Last winter, it wasn't even a bad winter, but we had two snow piles go down and we had to contract out snow removal. which costs a lot more than if we had done it in-house. Our equipment is old. It's just getting older. We're getting to the point now, and we are a small city, so we have an exemption, but it's coming that We're not meeting the new California standards for diesel. What is it? Level four? I can't remember. But in a couple of years, we won't even be able to operate some of the equipment we have now. It won't be allowed by the state. Something to keep in mind. I'm not going to touch on past year accomplishments. Part of the problem was we're down two people out of our eight-man crew, and my supervisor wasn't, he's filling in, and he didn't have time to sit down and generate the list we needed to generate. So I'm going to talk about key projects and future initiatives. Right now, our water system improvement project is nearing completion, everything from Ackley north to Russell. We're in there paving now the trenches. North Washington is done. They're moving into, they're finishing up Mount Shasta Boulevard. They're gonna move to the south end of town where Sheldon, South Washington, finish up that work there. I'm thinking they'll be done by the end of June. There's some funds remaining in that project. And we are going to steer those funds toward replacing tank two up on Quail Hill so we can actually get back up to full capacity, which will give us our fire storage requirements that technically we're not meeting right now. Lake Street, complete street reconstruction from Mount Shasta to Rockfellow is in design stage with Kimley Horn. It's broken into a phase one, phase two project. The phase one will be from Mount Shasta Boulevard east to roughly Alder, and that's going to basically eat up our $2.2 million construction budget. Phase two, we'll get to that later, but we'll be going after some grants. The Stormwater System Improvements Project with Progression Engineering for the McLeod Avenue, Coal Creek Drainage, and South Washington Drive area is well underway. We're going to be looking, I'll be bringing to you hopefully next council meeting, a proposed modification to the contract to add design of improvements for South Washington. You know, we're coming up with the drainage down there needs to be controlled. We're talking sidewalk curb and gutter draining lights. There is funding still in that grant, so it wouldn't be an increase over what's in the grant to add this modification. We initiated a contract with Roberts and Bryan to study viability of increasing the allowable zinc concentrations at the wastewater treatment plant effluent by increasing the dilution credits by using real-time flow rates in the Sacramento River and adding storage capacity at the plant. About a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, we added four level two EV chargers at the city yard under a community in charge grant from the state. So again, one of the mandates coming is that we have EV vehicles. At least we'll have the chargers, even if we can't afford the vehicles. Working with Alta Engineering right now to submit an active transportation program grant application. This would be to go after the funding for construction of phase two of the Lake Street reconstruction from Alder all the way up to Rockfellow. We're working with Kimley Horn to submit a sustainable transportation grant application. It's going to be in the target range for that is $400,000 to $500,000. And we're looking at targeting either finishing the design of West Lake Street which was part of the conceptual Complete Streets design work we had done by Greenhorn, no, Green Dot. Or looking at the planning phase for Complete Streets study of Mount Shasta Boulevard, south end, focusing on the south end, maybe tying in with landing development, but looking at it all the way up to the north. In April, we got a regional surface transportation program grant of roughly $145,000 that we will also apply for the design contract that we have with Kimley Horn so we don't have to dip so much into our gas tax. Todd already mentioned the sewer and water rate study we have going with Pace Engineering. And as a small set aside, you know, we have the ongoing issue with the sediment sediment flow coming down out of the north the subdivision Upton Highlands We're sitting down with the county Public Works Department We're gonna sit there and beat on each other, but we're gonna see if we can come up with a solution to get that stopped So that's roughly what's going on right now Oh, yes, yes. Shasta Lake has asked to pick our brain, if you will. We're not the only wastewater treatment plant with this zinc-level issue. There's got to be at least four in Shasta County, Siskiyou County and Shasta County together, that they're going through the same thing with the state. The city of Shasta Lake is definitely one of those, and they've... They've done all kinds of studies so far to find a solution and they have not been successful. But we're gonna meet with them and tell them the approach that we're looking at that might also work out well for them.

Thank you.

Okay, so you want to move then on to the enterprise funds and get those going. Okay.

If I can interject, I want to acknowledge what all the department heads have done for the year. It's really a great accomplishment to hear what you guys have done. And I know listing it out like this is really good for us to hear and also saying I think I can speak for all of us. We know that the sacrifices you've taken to get to this level of budgeting, and that's been difficult. I was not anticipating this for the budget. It's running a bit long. For me, when I saw a two-item agenda, I told my boys that I would be home early, and now I'm having this in the back of my head that I was not prepared for this. So I would just encourage... if there is direction from the finance committee to, you know, I think it should have come to us maybe before to have a brief, do we usually do like a budget review before it comes to council? In the finance committee?

It's a general budget. Oh. Okay, so are we in balance or not? Right. What is going on now is something that, to me, staff handles and then presents to us whether we have a balanced budget or not, or close, or whatever. What's interesting here is that there was an admission by the key person that the revenue projections are probably incorrect, so we have to redo the whole budget. I'm not quite sure why we're continuing at this point. So my feeling is I'd move to, we can get public comment, but move to have a amended final budget for June 22nd that's in balance, which means there might have to be some cuts if the person who is making the call on revenue projections believes that they're going to be $100,000 less. Yeah, so...

So the budget is basically balanced with the revenue information that I presented to you when we had the finance committee. I have new information since then, so that's why I'm bringing it forward to you. We can move forward with the proposed budget It's no different than when we adopted a budget with sales tax revenue that wasn't passed. So I am fine with, I am looking for an approved budget from council. We can go back and change the numbers if you'd like, if that's the direction you're providing to us. I'm sorry that this is a different approach than has been done in the past, but I wasn't given any other information. we can finish the deliberations and move on.

Any other thoughts from council? Jeffrey?

Well, after 12 years, this will be my last budget that I'm going to weigh in on. And I'd like to start with thank you because I've seen enough budgets to know a good one. that's thorough by department. And thank you, department heads, because it shows, because it's not easy to have a budget that is this tight and have everybody work together to bring it to a balanced budget. With roughly $6 million in the general budget, we're about $50,000 up or even being roughly even. to have a continued loss of a full-time employee in fire and police and a new loss in finance to make the budget balance. And have this laid out. Melissa, thank you. This was laid out great. And I just wanted to say that just for my 10 cents that this budget is a great springboard for support for a local sales tax increase to facilitate all the things that we have discussed here tonight and more. It is, I I hope the board, the council here will move forward with putting this on the ballot, and if they do, that you all support it.

Thank you. So, what I'm hearing is that folks would like to see this budget back with the $50,000 each from the sales tax and the TOT tax accounted for, but still bring it back as a balanced budget.

Actually, what we'd like to do is see if we can pass the budget as is and if we need to make an amendment that we will do that just so we can keep moving forward on it.

Okay. All right, at this point then we'll move to public comment. All right. Sure. You've got your three minutes.

Corey, so at the college, do they have like CPR or some sort of EMT classes or something?

You've got to be on the list. Sorry.

Corey, and do we solicit, do we send flyers up there and tell them that they might want to be volunteers? Do we, that's where we do trolling. Okay, so it just came, I just knew that they had some programs there. I want to understand one question, and I don't want to bother you guys after the meeting with a bunch of questions, but you're talking about Washington. Is there a possibility Washington's going to be happening in the next year, the improvements and sidewalk? I heard that word, and I have friends and family there. No. Thank you. I thought I heard funding for sidewalk. I heard that comment.

Design.

Thank you. I wanted to clear that up. Okay, and I was glad to hear that you have grant funds for like the canine and stuff. This was really informative and I really thought about what you just said that we're trying to encourage the people to understand why we need a one penny tax. And the thing about the one penny tax is that it stays in the city and I got clear about that at one of the meetings. So I do think one suggestion I have for advertising the one or one and a half, whatever it is, I think we need to use a copper penny because they're on the way out of the government but we could encourage people that they might be So I appreciate that you brought that up. All right, I think that was my question.

Thank you. Any other public comment at this time? I see some heads shaking, no. All right, we'll bring it back to council for discussion. Okay, seems like we have discussed.

So I just need to be clear, are we balancing the budget with reduced revenue?

Okay, so we do need to deliberate. Are you, finance director, saying that your projections are incorrect and they have to be corrected?

No, I'm not saying they're incorrect. On the information that I had at the time that we met, they were correct. I have new information.

Okay, so the new information means that they have to be corrected.

Well, it's a projection, and like I said, I'm not sure about the...

Okay, but I'm under the impression that in California, municipalities have to present, have to vote on balanced budgets. It's ill-advised to let deficits run, actually be structured in advance, so the budgets are supposed to be balanced. So... It seems to me that we're coming back on June 22nd with adjusted revenue numbers, and so particularly with respect to sales tax and TOT, and therefore there'll have to be some cuts with respect to costs to have a balanced budget. That's the impression I'm under.

Yeah, I think we can't, with that knowledge, we can't, approve that budget because there is more information saying that it should be changed to the more accurate information. And to what Councilman Stackfellas is saying, we can't then just approve that change because we have to approve a balanced budget, otherwise we aren't doing our due diligence. So there has to be work done before it's brought back to us.

So that is... I don't think the budget was balanced in prior years, and that's fine. I understand that we should be moving forward with a balanced budget, and so what I'm hearing you say is that we will cut, as department heads, another $100,000 to make the budget balanced to bring forward for you to adopt. That's what you're approving tonight.

Right, so I'll move to amend the current budget to take into account reduced projected revenues that will then entail an appropriate reduction in cost to lead to a balanced projected budget for 2026-2027.

All those in favor of that motion? Aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Okay.

All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for that. And thank you, just to echo everybody else's sentiments, thank you for all that work. We do have one more item on the agenda here. Council Member?

I'm sorry. I have to go home.

Okay. I think we'll maybe table. No, we can't do that. We've got three people.

We've got to have this. This has to be done. We've got to have a July 1st deadline. Okay.

All right, we're going to move on to item nine, election consolidation. California law requires that general municipal elections be held on the same day as the statewide general election and consolidated with that election. Todd, could you give us some background?

Yep. So what we've got here in front of us is a resolution that consolidates the city election For two vacant seats and for the tax measure with the county the county would administer the election So we're looking for approval of this language Because we need to run this by Laura Bynum the city clerk first to make sure this passes muster but the next time we we meet we need to this is where we need to to kind of fish or cut bait and decide what is the percentage. The next meeting, we've got to decide that. Do we have everybody on board on that? I mean, we could vote. Well, we don't have everybody here, and I think we need four-fifths to adopt the percentage measure in agreement.

Can we vote on the resolution with the three of us to at least get this on, consolidate onto the budget?

We've got more time to say what percentage.

Okay. In that case, do you want me to read the whole resolution right now? Do I? What?

Say that again.

Do I need to read the resolution?

Oh, it's clarifying questions.

Clarifying questions. Okay. Yeah. Any questions from council? Jeffrey? John? No. All right. We'll go to public comment. And just in case that wasn't clear, this is to put the sales tax measure on the ballot as well as have two council members on it.

And the two empty seats. It's to consolidate the city's desire to fill two seats and also to pass a tax measure because we're required to have, as the state's agent, the county run this election for us.

Run the election for us. So whatever we are elected, electing two council members and a ballot measure, we're basically saying we're having the county run this. This is a regular academic official type of thing, and if you don't do it, that means the city has to run its own election, which will be very much a hassle and very expensive.

And we need to make sure that Laura Bynum, the city clerk, signs off on this language So we've got another bite at it if we need it. And we need to, at the next meeting, decide on a percentage.

Any public comment? There we go.

I know I'm going to be greatly loved. but this has been on the ballot twice before about the percentage. And last time, even if it didn't need the two thirds threshold, it still wouldn't have passed. And how much money are we spending on putting it on the ballot? And how many times are we gonna keep doing this? spending more money to put it on the ballot. I understand that, you know, this kind of revenue needs to come in, but it's that or start charging more for all the different services that we the citizens are receiving. And it sounds like both is going to happen or Well, if this taxes go through. So I don't know. It's like, how many more times are you going to put it on the ballot and pay? I mean, how much are you putting into this? What, we're $150,000 potentially for three times on the ballot? It gets expensive.

No, just to clarify, I think the cost of doing this, the fee from the county is something like $3,000 or something.

I believe it's $4,000 for an off-year or a presidential election. If it's a special election, it's more.

Right, which that is what you're talking about when we had them help us with a special election. But this is not a special election, so it's... much, much less expensive in that $4,000 range? That's what you expect?

Ultimately, I don't know how to stress this.

Hold on a second. Besides that, we have to do it because of the two council seats that need to be voted on.

If we want to remain a full-service city, we've got to put this up.

So I think in the same breath when you're talking about the taxes, you need to remind people that that penny that people will be paying will go into the city and one of the things they've made clear tonight is that we need to fill more positions on the police department and the fire department and whatever seats have to be voted. But I think in the same breath, people need to remember that, that the money's gonna stay in the city and it's gonna go to that. It was asked as a clarifying question at the last meeting to be reassured, and Todd said that we'd all have transparency for the money, so it wouldn't go to fixing potholes, as was mentioned. Anyway, I just wanna make sure people put those two things together when we talk about that tax, and I understand it has to be on twice. Okay, that's all.

Thank you. We're going to bring it back now for council discussion. Anybody over there?

I move to approve resolution number CCR-26-08, a resolution of the City of Mount Shasta, California, requesting the Board of Supervisors of the County of... to consolidate a municipal election for an increase in the transaction and use tax, sales tax, and the election of two members of the city council with the general election to be held on November 3rd, 2026. The date pursuant to government code 10403 of the election code Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed or abstained? Okay. All right. We'll move on. Thank you, everybody. We'll move on to item 10, council reports on attendance at appointed outside meetings. Okay. We got none there. Moving on to item 11, future agenda items. We've got the master fee schedule review, mobile home rent stabilization. and the 2026 sales tax ballot measure.

So the sales tax is going to be next meeting on the 8th, right? Yep. And then the budget will be on the 22nd. Okay.

All right. That is it for now.