City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay.

All right, welcome everybody to the city council meeting for 11/04/2025. Can I have a I'm sorry? I'm skipping ahead here. Call meeting to order. Can I have a roll call, please?

Vice mayor Sandhu.

Here.

Council member Pratton.

Here.

Council member Reid.

Here.

Council member Rodriguez. Here. Mayor Farmer.

Here. Can we have a report from closed session, mister Spondario?

Yes. Thank you, mayor. There's no reportable action tonight.

Alright. If everyone can please join us for a silent prayer followed by a flex loop. Salute pledge.

I pledge

allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Alright. Can we have our replay statement, please, Tina? This

meeting of the Galt City Council is recorded with closed captioning. The recording will be cable cast on Metro Cable channel fourteen, the local government affairs channel on the Comcast and DIRECTV U verse cable systems. The recording will also be video streamed at metro14live.sackcounty.gov. Today's meeting replaced Friday, November 7 at 9AM and Saturday, November 8 at 9AM on metro cable channel fourteen. Once posted, the recording of this meeting can be viewed on demand at youtube.com/metrocablefourteen.

Alright. Thank you. Alright. Moving on to item f, agenda approval additions and deletions. Do we have any this evening? No? Okay. Moving on to presentations. Presentation this evening is gonna be from Unwired, Jeremy Stern, regulatory adviser, and John Majors, the vice president of operations.

Good evening, mayor. Before Jeremy starts, I'd like to just do a little background on it. We've been working with Unwired for the past handful of months. And what I think I've spoken to most of you, and what they're proposing to do is basically provide fiber optic service to the city of Galt. That will entail them installing fiber network throughout the city.

There's no cost to the city on this. Basically, would go through this through a normal encroachment permit process. There's we're not asking for approval from council tonight, but we wanted to make you and the public aware of this activity because we do believe it's a good thing that is coming to the city to provide faster and better Internet accessibility to the citizens of Galt. And with the work that they're going to do, they're gonna be working when it does get started in the right of way and in Eastman's throughout the existing city limits. And it will be a disruption at times.

So it was important for us to make sure that you and the public are aware of the activity that they will be undertaken. And so then Jeremy will give you a presentation on their proposal.

Thank you, Chris. You you just took about two minutes off my presentation, so thank you for that. My name is Jeremy Stern, and I'm a regulatory adviser for Unwired Broadband. Thank you. Thank you, mayor and honorable members of the council and city staff.

I'm delighted to be here to share with you our plans to build a fiber optic network throughout the city and tell you a little bit about Unwired Broadband and what we intend to bring to the city. I'm very excited about it and really appreciate the opportunity to work with your incredibly insightful city staff. They've been very gracious with their time and would look forward to building that partnership with them in the months and years ahead. Alright. So, I joined the company just a few months ago and I've I've found, the company to be filled with incredibly, hardworking and creative people that are focused on the company's mission of building out advanced broadband services to the underserved and unserved communities, in in Central Valley.

Our goal that's our goal is to build that advanced broadband, things that lots of highly urbanized areas already have, and bring the the features and benefits of that great network, which I'll share with you tonight to the folks in Galt. Company was founded about twenty two years ago, as a fixed wireless provider, and we serve about 30,000 customers from the grapevine all the way, up to, Yuba and Sutter County. But, these days, we're transforming into a hybrid broadband provider, which means in addition to fixed wireless, we're providing, advanced FTTH service to several communities and I'll share a little bit more about what FTTH is, fiber to the home, in a moment. But right now we have services available throughout Gustine and Kolinga and we're building out in Parlier in Gustine and we'd like to add Galt to the family of communities that we serve proudly in the Central Valley. So what is FTTH?

It's literally fiber to the home. We run, fiber optic strands from our central office, which we hope to locate, somewhere around here and build those out to every, resident and business in the city. The fiber runs straight into their modem or router and brings extraordinary blazing fast Internet services. It's essentially become broadband has essentially become, the essential new utility for the information age. It's foundational infrastructure to help provide for economic growth and quality of life improvements for all of the city.

And essential it's important to understand that this network is future proof for your community. This fiber optic network will last for decades. So we're building something now that as Chris mentioned may be disruptive for a little bit as we build out, but your residents and businesses will get to enjoy the benefits of that for decades. And those fiber, little teeny fiber optic cables can deliver speeds of up to five gigabits in both directions. And we firmly believe that with these speeds, with this kind of Internet capacity in your community, this is how your residents and businesses will live, work, and play in the information age.

I wanna emphasize that we're not just a technology company. We're proud of building partnerships with the communities that we serve. We work in a very collaborative spirit. And while this is a massive infrastructure project throughout the city, while we're experienced in managing them and working very closely with the city, we know that our secret sauce is working with your professional staff to make this a success. Let me just share with you our prices are extraordinarily competitive and one of the things that you find with existing broadband providers here and around the country is their speeds are not symmetrical, as I talked about.

You can get a gigabit or two gigabits from some providers, but it's not it's downstream. It's not upstream. And in these days when you're working with so many applications that are cloud based or you wanna get your massive amount of photos that you you took at the family picnic over the weekend up to your Google cloud storage, photo Google Photos. This is upstream capacity that really makes this such an interactive and effective network. We don't require contracts.

There are no speed limits on our superhighway, so to speak. There are no data caps. And and we guarantee our speeds 20 fourseven. Other providers do not do that because they're they're capacity constrained. Our fiber optic networks, as I told you, are future proof.

And so we don't have to do that. I'm gonna skip to the construction portion of the presentation just real quick to give you an overview. It's a good sized community you have here with over 8,600 residential and commercial units in the community. We don't build out the entire community at once. We're not constructing a 100% of the city.

We divide it into what we call distribution areas. And each of those distribution areas, there'll be about 16 of them in in your town and about 600, a little less than 600 homes per DA. And we'll start out with one DA once we get through the permit process with your staff and build that out, build the trust and awareness in the community. And from there we'll start to expand into a second DA, a third DA, then we'll start building multiple DAs, couple DAs at the same time. And we can get up to maybe four DAs at the same time.

And that's why we think we can build this out in about thirteen months. That's what we're looking to do. And the process is very involved in, but we've we've been very experienced at it. We've divided it into, each DA into sort of seven phases. I won't go into the weeds about it, but we're right now we're in the first phase with our construction design and talking to the city.

The next phase will involve permitting and then we get out into the field and start, constructing the system. And once we finalize building and restoring the rights of way as we found them, we turn turn these each of those DAs live and start serving customers. So we do wanna gain your trust. I think that's what Unwired has built over the last twenty two years is that trusting relationship with the communities they serve. And we look forward to building that this network in your community and being become part of the fabric of your town.

The next step is we'll be working with staff on this is we're we've done sort of a high level design and, that's, using sophisticated mapping and engineering technology but we need to get out into the field and see how those maps line up with reality where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. So we'll have our technical teams, construction teams going out and walking through your community literally following the design areas and noting any discrepancies. So that walkout will be next once we move forward with that plan and then we'll get to our finalized designs and permitting and hope to be constructing right after the first of the year. That's it. If you if you have any questions, I'm available to answer them.

Chris

and John and the team know how to find me if they come up after the fact. Thank you so much for your time. It's an honor and privilege to be here. And on behalf of Unwired, we look forward to moving forward with you.

Thank you, mister Stern. Is mister Stern right?

Yes. Jeremy.

Do we do we take public comment on presentations? I forget. Yeah. We do? Do we have any?

No.

Okay. Thank you for the presentation. My questions would be, tell us more about the construction. Tell us more about the impacts on the community. I mean, we talking about because I was in telecom for twenty years, so I have a little bit of knowledge of this. So are you talking about pulling your fiber through existing conduit that AT and T or whoever else owns? Or are you talking about going and digging up, you know, every 300 yards and then going out with your equipment and pulling pulling cable through the current I mean, what are you what are we talking about?

Ideally, if there's existing conduit that we can work through, we will. But, ultimately, building for the long term, if there isn't, existing facilities, that we can use, we will go in and we we don't trench through the entire street. We do direct boring underneath. Right. So we don't have to tear up every inch of the street.

And then we come back in and restore those facilities, those ground, those areas to the level and condition we found them in. We also will explore with the city staff here the possibility of doing micro trenching which instead of boring under the ground you actually build a cut a two or three inch strip into the pavement, backfill it immediately and seal it so that it retains its structural strength. So yes, it is a massive project as Chris mentioned. There will be disruptions but I think one of the things that we found is that we are less disruptive than your average other utility around here by a significant long shot. We try to manage those working closely with your city staff and addressing concerns not just on the community wide basis but on a household by household basis as we move through the communities.

We start with a very detailed construction outline, if you will, to the residents. We'll provide information to the community, to you, as well as do door hangers as we are getting ready to move through the communities and as we're moving into the communities. So everybody will be aware of this is happening. And because we're concentrating our efforts on a DA basis, it'll only be those 600 homes that'll be impacted during that construction phase and then we move on to the next DA. I hope that answers your question.

Yeah. Just I mean, it's we have a lot of I just I'm looking at your map, and I'm just envisioning having to bring that to every home. I I one thing that would concern me would be that that how many I mean, let's just I mean, we can't always we can't just assume that every every resident in Gault is gonna use your service.

No. It'd be nice if

they would. So you're gonna have a you're gonna have a certain percentage, whether it's, we don't know what that percentage is, of people that are gonna be impacted by the construction process who are not gonna be benefiting from that. I mean, it's one thing to go out and have our crews out digging up a pipe for, like, the sewer or the water or something or electricity, which everybody has to have. Whereas this is a so this is one concern I had. I'm just trying to weigh the negatives and the positives. I mean, obviously, I think the only person I mean, you you kind of have a monopoly in the business right now with, like, you know, with AT and T and and Comcast with fiber. So it's like, you know, it'd be nice to have another option.

Yeah.

I don't know. I have some more questions, but I'm gonna let my

other council members talk. Mayor, maybe it's a good time to also add that there are some benefits to the city for the activity. We will be leasing some ground some space for their ground equipment, and in return, we'll get, you know, access to the fiber network at no cost to the city. All the activity that they are engaging in, any staff time associated with it, we will be reimbursed. We're also working with them on getting us help to help do inspections, you know, for their work too. So there are some benefits to the city to to obtaining this service.

Yeah. And and I and I'm and I am aware of that, Chris, and I Yeah. I appreciate it. But no disrespect is Yeah. I I just think the general public is not gonna be like, you know, oh, we're fine to be inconvenienced because the city's gonna get a great deal on the Internet. I mean, it's kinda like the people from Cornell Road here, you know, they're being massively inconvenienced by a project that benefits them zero. The city's gonna benefit tax dollars and stuff, but they're not. So I just look at it and I kinda I think, I mean hold on. I'm not done. So over at over at, like, Joy Drive, where they trenched up all the streets and did all that stuff, and we had water people's water shut off and all that, and those people were massively inconvenienced because of that project going on over there. And I heard all about that, believe me. And so those are the things I think about.

No, for certain. And that's the whole reason why we're bringing it here is just so everybody's aware. This activity, and maybe Jeremy could share, you know, on the amount of time spent spent in a community. So I think one of the advantages, it moves quickly. One of the disadvantages, it moves quickly. And so my concern is always, I know there are gonna be issues that come up. So it's a matter of, like, how quickly does Unwired respond to the problems that do come up? Because anytime you're engaging in that activity, there are a lot of unknowns, and then things do happen. So you're right. There is gonna be a disruption. There's the potential for problems. And for me, it's always a matter of how do we respond to that.

So one more question, and I'm sorry. I promise I'll let my other counselors talk. So that's a great question, Chris, because I and I would like to know, before we finish this discussion, who would be the person overseeing your operations from the city side? Because a few months ago, we had Comcast digging some holes up over on Ranch Road. And people were blocked in their driveways because they dug holes up in front of people's driveways. And one of them was my daughter's house, and she couldn't even get to work that morning. So we were very unhappy about that. Public Works had to go out there and do some intervening. But I just, you know, this is always a thought. It's like, who's gonna be who's gonna oversee you guys Well on behalf of the citizens.

It's it's that partnership that we build. And absent that kind of communication, we can see problems. But that's what we try to avoid at the ground level. We are locally based down the Road in Fresno. Our headquarters are in Fresno.

And so the person who will be leading the construction is John Majors and our Vice President of Operations. He couldn't be here tonight but he's I don't know how he gets how he can be in this entire this in so many places at once. He's very responsive and and so is the company. So I I hear your concerns and that's our number one goal is to build this in close partnership with the city staff to avoid those. And we don't have to dig up in front of people's driveways like that. We don't shut them down like that.

Councils, anybody have any questions?

Well that was kind of my question is what does the inconvenience look like to an individual homeowner? Are they going to be locked in their driveway or are they not going be able to get into that? No,

we don't block driveways. We design around that. And we try to minimize that disruption as we go through a neighborhood. And, you know, we do have to sink certain equipment, not in, most of it's underground, and then we have to go back and restore it. So as we're moving through a DA, it may be a few days till we get back to restoring that and we try to be as quick as we can at that. But I want to mention there's a lot of homes in your town and we have to address them individually as well.

And you're just going to at this point you're just laying basically the road work for it and then the individual homes would have to say, Okay, I would like your service. And then you would take it up to their home. So you're not spending all the time going making all the connections. You're just laying the groundwork. And then they come in and ask for the service.

That's exactly right, Councilwoman Rodriguez. And whether they take the service initially or not, the network is there for the community. And you're right, Mayor Farmer, we'd love to have the entire community, but competition is what it is and we won't get everybody. But the presence of our network, as has been the case in other communities around the country, The presence of a fiber to the home network increases the attractiveness for new residents moving in and new businesses as it creates opportunities with that infrastructure. So it's, as I said, it's essential infrastructure for the modern age.

Is there a connection fee? I don't see that on your

We do not charge for installation. Okay, so

to take it up from your road to their house, you don't charge

it?

There's no installation charge, just the monthly rates that I shared with you.

Okay.

So if a business wants your service and there's no existing conduit or a previous provider, you know, and you guys have to trench or put your interduct in and your fiber or whatever, you're not gonna charge for that construction cost to the customer?

There's no installation charge for our for residential or or businesses.

You know, my question is you're gonna be having no contract. Right? You said there will be no contract. If the business wants this fiber on their business and you're gonna spend all this money and you're gonna have no contract, that's what you say. How they can be have a contract?

I I believe that it's month to month even for businesses. You sure? Yeah. I will confirm that. Thank you. For you. Absolutely.

And that price you are that is gonna be like it's gonna be monthly, it's gonna changing or it's gonna be like in three year that's gonna be the same price or

We we don't have any can I go back? Here we go.

Yeah, mean, it's probably hard to say.

It's hard to we can't guarantee our prices, but these are illustrious prices that we have currently today in those neighboring communities.

Let's just say the price is not future proof.

Technology is

I can guarantee you that.

There is a three year price guarantee for that.

I will follow-up with you, councilman. Says that Vice mayor.

Excuse me. Three year price lock, it says on the three upper tiers.

Yeah. Yeah.

One quick question. So you're not gonna block my driveway, and it's gonna go underground. Right? So I may not see anything. But once you connect to my house, do you gonna have to break into the street to get there or how does that how do you tap in?

We're not using aerial. I don't know if there's any aerial utilities in Tano Smuds here, but I I don't know if you have poles in the area. We're not using aerial attention. Will dig we will dig into the yard to get our our from our box in the street to your house and lay the and then repair it, and that fiber will run directly to the modem inside your house. Right. We'll install it inside your house.

From the box in my yard, you have to get to the wire in the street. Yes. How do you connect without cutting a hole in the street and going down?

I wish John were here, but

Because if you do, we're gonna have little potholes all along We

build to little boxes in the neighborhood, and they serve several homes. And that's where we run the cables to the houses. And there's boxes on each side of the street.

So ideally, Matt, they'll have it, they'll it, like Comcast has their services in the yard already, like there's a Christie box that has the other utilities, sometimes they can bore, but you're right, out in the street, there's probably going to be a penetration in the street to get even if they weren't able to even if they didn't have to trench up your yard. Should be something

But you gotta connect with someone. I'd like to see the answer to that.

Yeah. Will you know, in our next discussion with the city, we can provide you more. You know, like I said, I wish John could have been here, but we were intending to be more high level and you guys are very good to dive into the weeds. We will get you pictures of what our equipment looks like and how we design and build into the neighborhood from those boxes.

Yeah, I'm less worried about the citizen's yard because if the citizen wants their service, they're going to make certain concessions and understanding that they're going to be either boring up or trenching or whatever. I'm more concerned about the work that's done in the street. Are we going to have these little potholes that are going to be backfilled all over the community that are going to be like sinking and people are going to be complaining and public works are going have to go out and put some cold patch in it or something. I just that kind of stuff is what I'm more worried about for the people that aren't getting the service. So it would be helpful to get a little more understanding of the construction impact.

Because I think, really, I think it's going to be great having more choice, having all those things. But I worry about the construction impact to the streets and to the communities for people who are not going to yeah. Tim, I don't leave you

out. For the other communities that you guys are already in, for Gustine and all those other ones, do you have a problem with your speeds? Like, I I I know you said it's guaranteed. Right? And it's guaranteed on there. But do you have you guys had a problem fulfilling the speeds front the in which because to be honest, I have a a Internet provider that I'm supposed to be getting a certain level, and it never even comes close. And when I ask them that, they tell me, oh, you should just pay for a lower package then instead of them figuring out what the problem is.

Let me try to explain why that won't happen with fiber to the home. The other providers have a shared network. So you're not, it's not a single fiber running into your home. I don't know whether you have cable or whether you have a telephone provider providing your service. But that network is shared.

And so when your neighbors are using a lot of bandwidth, it sucks up a lot of bandwidth and they don't guarantee if you buy a gigabit or two gigabits, they don't guarantee that gigabit service to your household at all times because they can't provide it technically. With fiber to the home, it's a gigabit from our central office to your modem, a 100% of the time.

Because you guys are the only ones We're

the only ones providing that, and you're the only person that's getting that gigabit from us. So it's it's not a shared network and that's one of the significant competitive advantages that we offer to your residents is the guaranteed speeds 20 fourseven. So you won't have that problem, Councilman.

So, Chris or staff, what what what are what are you looking from us tonight? Are you looking for some sort of direction or thoughts or

really, it was it was really just the information coming through. As a utility provider, they have the right to work in the right of way. The entitlement from us is really just, it's not even an entitlement. Well, that was my next question

because I thought, you know, a lot of times they don't really have to get

the Yeah, it's an encroachment permit process. So the goal of this item was to make you aware, allow you to ask some questions, and to have the public aware of what will be coming.

Well, what I would like to see is just me and there's five of us up here, but I think, I would like maybe another presentation at a future time whenever it's convenient with with your construction person so that he can answer some more intricate questions for us regarding the impact on the streets and stuff.

We absolutely will make that happen. And we're glad you asked because we want you to be informed and aware of what our process looks like so there's no surprises. And I think you'll find when you talk to John and other professionals, executives that work with the company, they intend to serve this community at the highest levels.

And I would ask that we include a little more detail on the process and what it's gonna look like. Right? What it's gonna do to the streets and everything like that. Because if you if you didn't know, we have a lot of homebuilders in this in this city I'm I'm hearing you. Lot of stuff Yeah. Taking up a lot of street and causing a lot of issues for the city staff and the council members that have to deal with. And for us to have a better understanding of what that's gonna look like up front so that we can try to get ahead of it and and have a better understanding instead of us always trying to chase our tail when we have issues that come up that would probably benefit us.

Also love to have some references. I'd love to if there's someone from the city of Kalinga or what was the other city?

Gustine. Gustine.

Gustine. Yeah. Yeah. Those are way out in the middle of nowhere. Mhmm. If if, you know, someone from that maybe someone from their city could talk to our staff and give us some feedback and on the experience so far. I mean, could probably do it on our own, I guess. We could call them. But do we have any more questions for Jeremy or we were to move on? Well, thank you, sir, for the presentation. It's very informative, very interesting. So, we'll, you know, sounds exciting, but I think we still have more questions. So, if you want to just get with staff and we can set up a future soon

for another Absolutely. Okay.

We're we're excited, to have this first discussion. We look forward to continuing this conversation and working with you in the years ahead.

Thank you

so much, sir, and counsel.

Thank you. Alright. We're gonna move on to item h, which is our public comment. Gina?

Under government code section five four nine five four point three, members of the public may address the city council on non agenda items. The public comment section is for the city council to receive comments except for brief responses to questions. No discussion or action may be taken on any item that is not listed on the agenda. Please limit comments to a maximum of five minutes. Consistent with the city council procedural guidelines, the mayor reserves the right to shorten the time limit for speakers to ensure the efficient and timely completion of all city business on the agenda. Ken Lee.

Good evening, council members. I'd like to bring up the last Saturday market on fourth. I enjoyed the kids booth. You know, they had baked goods and crafts. And could it be a monthly thing for the next year and set up because it puts the good kids in a good bite and it gives them a step up in life and to go into business venture and that's how Just Desserts got started.

And look how big they are. And is there an update on the grocery outlet coming to the old Rite Aid or did they back out? And there is too many advertising signs placed on the roadways and the post. It sometimes becomes a distraction when I'm driving because I'm staring at the sign when I hit the curbs. And could the economic development work with more fast foods to get on the EBT on hot foods?

As a senior, I save on the sales tax. I don't have to pay sales tax. So that's a 10% savings right there. I don't waste raw foods at home because, you know, you buy and then you don't cook it all and you end up wasting it. It also saves me under my electrical bill when I don't have to cook as well as the water usage.

And I support our local businesses by going out and eating. Many of the businesses are unaware that EBT can be taken with hot food purchasing, so they need to be educated in the program that's available. Carl's Junior is one of the first in this town to accept the program, where Lodi has many participants participating taking EBT cards. And I support those businesses offering senior discounts and the EBT, thus eating out more. Thank you. Thank

you, mister Lee.

Rich Lozano.

Good evening. Mister, mister Lee is always a hard act to follow. My name is Rich Lozano. I'm the president of the Galt Rotary Club here in town, and I'm here to invite you all to our fifteenth annual community dinner that's going to happen on December 13 from one to four. We'd love to have the council members and city staff help us serve the community. This is a free family event, So invite friends, neighbors, and everyone. We are prepared to serve up to probably 1,200 people if they come. And last year was just under a thousand. So we invite everybody. Wanted to make sure that you got it on your calendars before it was too long.

I understand you may not have another meeting in November, and so I wanted to come six weeks rather than two weeks ahead of time. Also, if you're interested, we have a QR code, and I'll pass this these down. Just take a picture of it. It's for anyone that would like to volunteer. On Friday night, we will be prepping the turkeys as well as dressing up the Littleton Center.

And so that's an opportunity if you'd like to come out and help out for an hour or two. The Friday night, we'll be there from six to hopefully nine. And and then Saturday, the cooking crew will be there at five in the morning to prepare the turkey. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to get it on your calendars early. This is a free family event. It's free to anybody in the community. Oftentimes, we get the question of, well, is it for the needy or or not? And it's for everyone. So not just folks that may need it, but people to come out and, be together as a community and really, enjoy the time. It's many of you have all already been, and every year, it seems to get a little better.

So wanted to, extend that invitation. I will send an email to the city clerk to to message all of you, with the information and a flyer so that you have it for your, refrigerators. Any questions?

Rich, do you guys need, you said you guys need help Friday night. Do you need help? Because I know the youth commission that I'm associated with is always looking for ways to volunteer. Would that be something that you could use their help with, maybe with helping with table stuff or maybe the day of the event, stuff like that? Or

you think

you got

to handle it? And always do. And they do such a great job every time they come. Our youth commission here

in town

is so awesome. One of our members is also a youth commission adult adult Jessica? Yes. Yeah. And so I I suspect that she'll be reaching

Okay.

Out to the group as well.

I'll make sure I put it on our December meeting. We just met last night, but we can talk about it on December, you know, first week. It'll be before the dinner.

So Yeah.

Okay. Anybody else have any questions for Rich on this?

It's always a pleasure being here. Nice seeing everybody, and hope hopefully, everyone can make it out to the to the community dinner. Alright.

Well, thanks for the invite. Definitely try to try to be there as usual. Thank you, sir.

No more.

No more public comment? Okay. Alright. Well, with that, we'll move on to item I, is reports by city council members on regional boards, commissions, and committees. We'll start with mister Pratt.

Since our last meeting, I have not attended anything other than the county city collaboration on the homeless, but I'll discuss that more at the last part of the meeting.

That's it. Oh, what's on the is there a

No. Just

No. City council. Oh,

okay. Gotcha. Alright. Okay. Alright. Vice mayor Sandhu?

Nothing to report tonight.

Alright. Thank you, sir. Mister Reid? Nothing. Miss Rodriguez?

Just real quick. We held the unmet transit needs meeting, and we had seven additional people than we had the year before. So thank you to the city for putting out the advertising for that. I think it really helped, and hopefully we'll get momentum so people can be more involved. So that's it.

All right. Thank you. Well, since you guys all skipped, you're gonna leave plenty of time. You're have to indulge me because I do have two things and one of them is quite large. First of I met youth commission last night. It was a good meeting. We went over a lot of activities the youth commission's gonna be involved with over the next couple months. They are going to be they were out at the Saturday market challenging people to questions, trivia questions. And if you didn't get it right, then you had to donate. So it was very lucrative. Not a lot of people could answer some of the questions. I was very shocked at some of the questions that people didn't know. So but it was fun and very a lot of people engaged with them. So it was very good. And they're going to continue to do things like that moving forward.

The other thing that, as Mr. Pratt mentioned, is he and I attended the calling it I call it the homeless summit. It's more like a summit. Kind of a better description, right? It was quite the to do, to be honest with you. It was in Sacramento. All the elected leaders of all the cities, most of them most mayors. Well, there was one council member, but most of the mayors were there. All the Board of Supervisors were there, including some other officials. There was lots of staff there.

Ms. Carloni accompanied us as well. And she was there and gave a brief presentation for Galt. And, it was kinda they were calling it a historic meeting. It's the first time that all the elected officials have sat in the same room to talk about the issue of homelessness and what needs to change and what, you know, what are we doing wrong and what what course do we need to change? And I think it was very I'll be honest, I was very pessimistic going into it because I've been a part of similar things. And I felt like it's just a lot of talking and a lot of not a lot of action. But, I feel like we all were kind of on the same page. We all shared our sentiments and our concerns. There was a lot of people there.

We had people like Jim Cooper spoke. Our, Sac County DA, Mr. Ho, he spoke, along with a lot of people from the community. We had experts with mental health, and so on giving their, input on things. And so I just wanted to share basically two things that we we kind of all agreed on, There needs to be more prevention.

We spent $418,000,000 last year in Satt County, and only 1% of that was spent on prevention or diversion, which to me is just putting the cart before the horse. Two of the biggest things that we felt that need to be addressed is on the mental health side, we feel like there is a lot of programs, but we're still struggling with getting people into those programs. A lot of them are still voluntary and getting people to volunteer for those, whether it's mental health, health with mental health, mental illness, or drug dependency or something like that. It's been a challenge. And so things like Care Court and these kinds of programs, although seemed very optimistic rolling out, they still have some things that need to be tweaked and things need to be worked out to make them more efficient.

The other big one was that we just simply struggle with affordable housing in our cities. And this is not something that we can solve in Galt or even in the county for that matter. This is something that we need help at the state level. We're just simply not building houses. We're not I mean, things like the Housing Accountability Act, the intention of that in the beginning was to say to cities that you can't deny projects that came in that are intended for low income people.

That was the original intent of that. But it has morphed into something that just all developers hide behind like we've witnessed. They come in and say, well, you can't say no to our projects. We need to be able to have those types of projects. We need to be able to be building houses, multi residential, high density, and some of it be subsidized so that we can have so people can have places to live who are low income so they don't become homeless. So we need to get in the front end of it. And this is something that everybody there agreed with. We had a great dialogue. It was an all day meeting. We all agreed to meet again, although I was a little disappointed that we didn't pick a date or pick some kind of whatever.

But I'm going to be emailing them soon here and express my interest. I did get reached out to by someone today from one the other cities and wants to meet and talk about how that day went. So hopefully, we can put together a ongoing meeting. Maybe it's every other month or every couple months or something where we can come together as a collaboration and have a big voice and advocate on behalf of all of our cities to the higher ups in the state to fix some of these things. So anyways, it was very good. You can watch it. It's on cable TV. If you go under the same network that films ours, our meetings, it's on there. And it's very interesting. I would I would say anybody who's interested, just check it out.

So with that, that's all I have. We will move on to our consent calendar. So our information consent our information consent calendar is recommended that items one through 12 be acted upon simultaneously unless a separate discussion and or request by a council member. Do we have any items to be pulled by council? Alright. I'm gonna pull item nine. And do I have any public comment on the consent calendar?

Yes. Okay.

Gavin Boyne.

Good evening, mayor and, members of the council. I do appreciate what you had to say about Cornell Road and Fairway Oaks. I attempted at sending you guys all an email because I I was hoping I could put something up on the screen here, but maybe if you could review my email that should have went through. I took a stab at Tina's email because I've never emailed her before also. Excellent.

Some of these photos you guys have already seen. I sent an email almost two weeks, two and a half weeks ago, right, that addressed KHOP and their roadwork going on with improper road closure, no traffic control plan in place, no flagging traffic control of any measure, no containment of the spoils. It was contaminating my neighbor's frontages. Right? And then the last two photos are from yesterday.

So we've had, like I said, a little over a week to clean this up. Tomorrow, we're getting a quarter inch of rain. In a week from that, we'll be getting an inch of rain in two days. So I'm really concerned about this construction site by Kahoff. Right? This is stuff that I've brought up to some of you since July. These were things we could have got ahead of, but now it's it's becoming an issue. Right? Our vehicles are getting trashed. Like I said, the front of our homes are just are are getting contaminated.

And, you know, I think what would really help is maybe some dates. We've been told since, and that's why I wanted to talk about this on agenda item six. Right? Because this all began with the sewer line install on Bernal. That's when that's when our worlds first got turned upside down.

That's when Kayhoff came in and they cut trees on properties they didn't have permission. They were trespassing on on Bernal Road, which they only had permission on half of it, not the other half that they were blocking. They were they were parking equipment, blocking potential emergency vehicle responses. And Glendale's been a mess since they started for the most part. And I guess the main reason why I'm up here is at what point should we be holding them accountable?

Right? Like, at what point is enough enough and they should stop work for at least a day? May because everyone knows the developers worry about two things, money, schedule. And right now, it's very clear that KHoff is only worried about those two things, not the community around them. And I think it's time that it's past due on when we should stop them and have them correct and move forward when they're ready to move forward correctly because this is an acceptable behavior.

They're running all over you guys as far as the way that they're handling this job site, and I'm asking for help, for residents, for my neighbors, for all my surrounding community that they're impacting because it's everybody. They're working seven days a week now, which for me, that's I'm happy they'll be out of there sooner, hopefully. But things like completing the walls and the fences around the perimeter would probably help with a little of the noise, but out of sight, out of mind would be I know I would appreciate that, and I don't think any of my neighbors would argue that they wouldn't appreciate that. But the continual track out, you know, our vehicles are are hammered. A lot of my neighbors have a lot of private ownership in their homes, including myself, and I don't know when I'm gonna get my frontage back because right now, there's chunks of asphalt mixed in with the dirt.

There's uneven grades. There's import import soil mounded in weird places. I'm trying to mow my the field next to my home. I'm running over root balls that they dug up when they were doing their CMU wall install. They just threw it all on my property. Sunday, I ran over a conduit that I asked them back in late July to remove from the property. Now the grass is overgrown it, and now I found it with my mower. So it's just continual ongoing neglect and abuse to the neighborhood around them. And I feel like at some point, the city should have take took an action and held them to their forty eight hour notice for this road closure of of Cornell. That is something that's required by your public works department.

And if it was an emergency, which it wasn't, but if it was an emergency, they still owed a phone call to Public Works' phone number. They still owed a phone call to Kasumas Fire and the police department. That it clearly states that in their general notes. I was gonna share that as well. But they're not adhering to any of these things, and there's no consequences for it. So they're just proceeding. So I know we can't exchange our q and a here, but if you could please think about that, maybe if you get a chance, drive down Cornell Road and stop by the car wash when you're done, and then just kinda live in our own in our shoes for a minute. How would you feel if I tore up your front yard and then told you we'll get to it maybe a year from now? It's just not fair to

us. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Can we pull that one for discussion?

Which item?

6.

6. Sure. We're gonna so mister Reid has requested to pull item j six. Alright. Any other public comment? No. Consent? Okay. So we have item j six and j nine have been pulled for discussion. So I will be looking for a motion to approve items one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 10, eleven, and twelve.

Just quickly, item one is the receive and file warrants. Item two is a minutes of the regular meeting for October 21. Number three is a letter to Caltrans regarding the Highway 99 corridor in Galt. Number four is the authorized interim city manager to execute a park development credit reimbursement agreement for Liberty Ranch. Number five is the cancellation of the November 18 meeting.

Item seven is the award of consulting engineering services contract for utilities. Number eight is the cease for enhancement project CIP final balance contract change order. Item 10 is the approval of a third amendment to the city manager's employment contract. 11 is the Gora Aquatic Center pool filter replacement. And item 12 is the approval of purchase of additional unmanned aerial systems for frontline for law enforcement use. Do I have a motion to approve those 10 items? Moved. Moved by Council Member Reid.

Second.

Seconded by the Vice Mayor. May have a roll call please?

Vice Mayor Sandhu. Aye. Council Member Pratton. Aye. Council Member Reid. Aye. Council Member Rodriguez. Aye. Mayor Farmer.

Yes. 10 items approved, five zero. Alright. Item j six, mister Reed.

So I just I had some questions for, director Griffin and basically anybody else, including the city manager. Right? We've all of us on the council have been in included in a lot of these emails that are going back and forth between public works and people from the community about a lot of the complaints, that this gentleman brought up. My my question is, you know, we're continuing with more construction in that area done by the same relatively the same company that's been doing it up until now. What steps have we taken, or what steps do we plan on taking to try to mitigate some of the issues that they're having, currently right now?

I know that Trung's been doing a great job with trying to communicate back and forth, but it it seems like and I'm not involved in any of those conversations between him and or them and the home builders. But, I mean, what are we doing, or what can we do better to try to make sure that these types of things don't happen with the installation of this sewer line?

Thank you, council member. I'm gonna need to sit down with our staff and discuss these issues with our construction inspector. They've been out there in courting with them. It may be a point where we need to be a bit more firm with them than we have been.

Okay.

I jump in really quick and ask maybe more directly and maybe this is, a legal question. What hold does the city actually have to make them toe the line? I mean, it seems like we you know, I I believe staff has tried to negotiate this or navigate through this, and obviously, the message is not be coming through. What can the city do to actually make them behave?

So council member Rodriguez, the city can and and should and will investigate the complaints. And if the developer is not following the rules of engagement for development, we could essentially adopt the measures mentioned by the public speaker, which is really close them down. So there are stronger mechanisms that we have to hold them accountable to making sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do in an appropriate manner.

And I think that's something that we should aggressively look into because, you know, we all know that they're not the only homebuilders in town. We've got all of the rest of them. And if and if, you know I got two kids, and if one of them gets away with something, the other one tries to get away with a little bit more a little bit more and a little bit more until the hammer comes down and we draw the line and say, look. This is this is where we mean business. And so and it and it may just be that one company, but I think that, you know, there's been several issues over the last few months that we I think we it'd be great if we can look into it.

No. And totally agree. And, you know, this development is unique in so many ways and very sympathetic to the people on Cornell. And we just need to do better.

Yeah, I would like to jump in

and

say, yeah, this project's the gift that keeps on giving, to bid it bluntly. I mean, it is unique in the sense that it is one of the only projects that kind of is in close proximity to existing neighborhoods. And I think those are obviously a lot of the problems that we've had. But it I I don't really hear any complaints from anybody about other projects going on, and I hear complaints about this project all

Mhmm.

The time. Like, I would say daily, I hear about prod it's it's literally just I just they're just not being good neighbors. And Mr. Griffin made a comment a minute ago that we need to maybe the time has come to be start being more firm. I think that time was a long time ago.

And so I appreciate, Chris, what you said, that we need to treat this with the utmost urgency. Because, again, I just don't think it's fair that residents in the community be impacted by such things. I mean, they're gonna be impacted by, I think, everything that Gavin has brought up through his course of emails. And it's not just Gavin I hear from a lot of other people too. But he's probably one of the more knowledgeable people on the construction aspects of it.

But it's just, yeah, it's just not acceptable. And and, I'm actually personally just trying to make excuses on behalf of him because I feel like that's what I've been doing lately is just saying, well, I know, but but, you know, well, And I'm just not gonna do anymore. So I think the point has been made. I think you guys get it. So if we can please look into these matters and and see what we can do. And if we have to, you know, shut them down for a while until they can clean up what they're doing and hold them accountable, then that's what we need to do.

I'd like to add my name to supporting that. Okay.

Same thing. I'm agree with the every council member. As you know, on the public work, maybe John know. John, there might be somebody is the project manager. This is a city staff or there's the somebody from you hired as a third party who is the responsible as a project manager, especially on that project?

So, yes, we do have a consultant project manager and also consultant inspectors. We have one city inspector, and he is don't have enough, doesn't have enough time today to cover all the projects. We have consults helping us on both those aspects. And,

yes. Who is the person? Who's that person?

It is, our former director of public works, Steve Winclair.

Steve Winclair? Yes.

I would have to talk to our staff to find out exactly how active he is. He takes direction from from both me and from our city engineer. So I will need to, have a better update on on exactly how active he is.

So which third party is working as a consultant?

So we have several we have consultants who are several consultants who are working with us to help us administer these development projects, both from a project management perspective as well as construction inspection. And so we utilize plan firms for plan check, firms for project management, firms for inspection. So some of the firms that we use are on their on call list. We use REY engineers for a lot of plan check. We've been using Will Dan and Interwest for staff support services. We've been using KSA

But for things like construction management. What's going on here, like just the construction site. Because I think what we're talking about is just construction site issues, not so much plans and inspections. Who's the one that oversew I know Trung is our intermediary, but does Trung deal with Steve Winkler, and then Winkler goes back to the contractor? Is that the process of how it goes?

Trung deals with both Steve and our inspector. So we have two different firms. We have Steve administer helping

staff So Trung's not having so Trung doesn't actually have the authority to have direct contact with the contractor? He does. He does. Okay. But but Winkler is in the mix of that? Correct.

It's on. It's on. Good evening, mayor, farmer, council member. You know, I talked to Gavin outside, and we are definitely sympathetic to, you know, the work and the disruption that they have out there. And, I know that for a fact that we keep on moving, we're gonna get to a process where we're, you know, through with that area and and moving forward.

We have a consultant inspector, Jack Wilbur, and I'll communicate the message that you're sending us tonight. Definitely not acceptable what what has happened, and we have a standing weekly meeting every Wednesday, so I will communicate this. I will reference the concern that you guys have. And obviously, you know, it's construction. It's, you know, at some point, that road will be will be installed and, you know, the dust and, you know, the wall will be up and we'll get to the point where they can be on their side.

But we have to get a do a better job, obviously, of, you know, not affecting the people in Cornell and Burnell. And I'm committed I'm committed to doing that and, you know, we'll we'll communicate that tomorrow during our meeting, and then I'll follow-up with John and Chris and keep you guys updated.

So, Trung or John, could you just quickly please just describe briefly what number six is doing? Can you just for the just for us and for the public, what number six is on the on the consent?

Yes. So item six, there is a sewer main that is being constructed as part of this project. And Burnell Road is privately owned. So the developers are required to obtain an easement for us for the sewer and water mains and then transfer that easement over to us. So the action tonight is to accept the offer dedication of an easement over the Brown property for the infrastructure that's required to serve the Fairway Oaks project.

So we're good they're requesting it from us?

They're granting that easement to us.

This is just the paperwork. This isn't actual work. This is them giving us

So the easement will provide us with the rights to operate and maintain the infrastructure once we accept it.

Okay. So we're not approving we're not granting them but with that, they can't but they can't do this work without this item approved tonight, correct?

We cannot accept the improvements without they've already performed the work. This is the They already have a temporary construction easement to install the infrastructure. This is a permanent easement for us to be able to operate and maintain this infrastructure once we accept it.

Okay. Mayor Farmer, can I add? This was all part of the conditions of approval for the project that Shoreline goes through there. It's part of the consultant, the developer's work to basically work with the homeowner to basically dedicate the easement over it so that we can maintain the structure that they're putting in.

Right. Well, I appreciate your comments, Chung. I know you're trying very hard and I do appreciate your efforts. I would appreciate that conversation with the powers that be. And I just wanna remind the staff that I'm sure you all know how few people feel about development in this in the city. And when projects like this happen, it just makes it even worse because this is why people get a bad taste in their mouth. So I appreciate any and all efforts you guys can make.

One Thank more comment. Just my concern is we don't have another. Our next meeting has been canceled. You know, this could string on for another four or five weeks before we get a chance to comment on it again. So I just think it's important. There are rules that have been broken. We need to start.

We'll provide an update. I'll provide an update to counsel when after Trung speaks to his group.

Well, I'm just saying we're, you know, we're tongue lashing right now, but we have no teeth between now and the next meeting. So

Chris, I would like to also mention that, you know, there has been some dialogue where staff has asked the residents if, you know, please give them the opportunity to resolve things first before coming to elected officials. And I understand that too. But what I would say is you have to understand that the residents feel like they're not getting something. That's why they're coming to us. And so I don't ever want to discourage people from doing that. I do understand that it is sometimes faster to go right to staff. But in this case, it seems like they weren't getting what they wanted. And so they came to us. So thank you, Trung. I appreciate it. Mr. Griffin, thank you for the the comments on this. Are you satisfied with that discussion? Would you like to Yep. Okay.

Is there any comment on that particular item public?

Just that one.

Okay. I'm looking for a motion to approve item j six.

I'll move to approve.

Moved by councilman Councilwoman Rodriguez. I will second. Can I have a roll call, please, on that item?

Vice mayor Sandhu. Aye. Council Member Pratton.

Aye.

Council Member Reid. Aye. Council Member Rodriguez. Aye. Mayor Farmer.

Yes. Alright. Item J nine is item I pulled. Mister Griffin, so I just wanted to get some clarification. The way the staff report read is a little confusing. So we're looking at we have an oxidation aerator at the plant. I know what those are. I've been out there and did the tours. And I did a little research today to kind of update myself on what they are. And so one of them has developed a vibration that's concerning. And so the thought is to replace it. But I'm confused on the staff report. It says that the parts are not of are we so we're buying a replacement unit, and then we're going take the unit that we're replacing and have them service it and keep it as a spare? Is that what it is? Correct. Yes. Okay.

The idea is we do not have any spare. So we have two units in each of our three oxidation ditches, and we do not have any spares on hand. So the idea is, with this one that we're now starting to see a vibration in, this would replace that or allow us to replace it, and then we would take that piece of equipment and have it refurbished. And that way, we have a spare on hand in case these and we have a future problem with any aerators. These aerators are approaching ten years old, and this is about the time that we would start to see some mechanical failure of these pieces of equipment.

Yeah, I did do some research. And ten years is supposed to be the lifespan, approximately. That's what I was told. I know this is not something we went out to bid for. We're using Westech, which is one of our preferred vendors. Or they're on our regular vendor list. I mean, I don't know. This is kind of maybe a silly question, but I mean, we confident that $113,000 is a fair price? As I I to be honest with you, I actually contacted another company to try to get another bid just to get a ballpark number. Unfortunately, they require twenty four to forty eight hours to do that.

And so I wasn't able to get any opinion. So I'm going into this kind of just on trust. But I always get nervous when we use, you know, some of our I get it's quick, I get that. And this is a waste of our treatment plan. It's very important. So and I get all those those things. But I just in the first parts of my research, was finding numbers like $30 or $40 grand for such a piece of equipment. So I was just, like, wondering why it was so much.

Yes. We do believe this is a fair and reasonable price. And the existing equipment is from Westech as well. So that's another reason why we wanna go with them is to continue using the same pieces of equipment that we have out there now at the wastewater plant. Okay.

So let me ask a question real quick then to our finance director. So, if we have a if we have them as a preferred vendor, these things have already been worked out. Correct? So the amount of money is based on a contract that they have to guarantee us a certain either cost cost plus or a discount or something so that we know we're getting a good price from them.

That is correct.

Thank you.

Alright. Was there any further questions on this item?

Well, now I'm curious. Do they does Westech do any maintenance or fixing or, you know, fixing issues? Or they simply are just a supplier?

My understanding is that they will also be evaluating the equipment and then repairing it as well. And that is all part of that price. So part of so that price includes their time and assessment for identifying what the issues are and what we need to replace.

Okay.

Is the so I just thought of another follow-up question with Bonnie asked that. Was it ever considered to just repair the unit? Or because I mean, it looks like we're going to repair it anyways and keep it as a spare. Is it something to do with kicking it out of service during that time of repair? Or what was the can you?

Again, the thought process is recognizing these pieces of equipment are approximately ten years old and not having any spares on the shelf. We wanted to have a spare on the shelf, and this allows us to put a new one in where we're recognizing we're having vibration issues on that one piece of equipment and then have that get it repaired and have it on the shelf. So that's the reason.

And we have a number of these out there, right? And there's many.

There's a total of six, two in each two aerator in I'm sorry. Two in each oxidation ditch. Okay.

Any further comment from counsel? Is there any public comment on this item? No. All right. Thanks for the explanation, John. I appreciate it. I'm looking for a motion to approve item number nine, authorization to execute Persorta West Tech in the amount of $113,580 for a purchase of an oxidation ditch aerator unit.

I move to approve as stated. Alright.

I'll second.

Seconded by miss moved by Pratt and second by Rodriguez. Roll call, please.

Vice mayor Sandhu. Aye. Council member Pratt and

aye.

Council member Reid. Aye. Council member Rodriguez. Aye. Mayor Farmer.

Yes. Item is approved five zero. Moving on to item K, scheduled matters notice of public hearing. Do we have any this evening? No. Alright. Moving on to item L, regular calendar. The first item is gonna be from the Parks and Rec. Actually, I'm sorry. It's not from the Parks and Rec department. It's the Parks and Rec Recreation Commission appointment. Miss Hubert?

So the recommendation is council member Pratton appoint a community member to the Parks and Recreation Commission to fill a vacant position and remaining term ending December 2028. The vacancy on the Parks and Rec Commission is due to the resignation of Francisco Gallegos junior, and city staff advertised vacancy on the city's website and social media sites. Two applications were received, and both applicants meet the required qualifications, and they are Robert Wilson and Jody Abarka. And it is council member Pratton's appointment.

I would say we had two excellent applications, and I'm going to appoint Jody Abarca.

Thank you.

Alright. Moving on to item two is from the city manager's office. Approval of the twenty twenty five to twenty twenty seven strategic plan.

Good evening, mayor, members of city council. Amy Mendez, assistant city manager. I am here this evening to request approval of the twenty twenty five to twenty twenty seven City Of Galt strategic plan. Uh-oh, it looks like this isn't lining up properly. We'll get through it.

As you may recall, Juan Lopez was the facilitator of this year's strategic planning session. He met individually with council members to explore issues, concerns, and priorities that individual city council members had. This was followed by a one day planning session with the executive team to review the previous strategic plan and understand the city council's feedback regarding current concerns and future priorities. On August 25, city council and the executive team met during a one day strategic planning session to collaborate on the upcoming strategic plan and ensure alignment of goals and priorities. Following this session, staff finalized the strategic plan priorities that we will present this evening for approval.

Once adopted, the strategic plan will be presented to the city council every quarter to review progress towards achieving established goals. So this is essentially the plan that we worked on together during the strategic planning session and these are the tasks and priorities that were assembled as part of our discussion. The strategic plan priorities remain the same as our former strategic plan, which are quality of life, economic development, fiscal sustainability, infrastructure, responsible growth, and employee engagement. The entire strategic plan and all of the affiliated strategic tasks are in the staff report as an attachment. This will basically just cover those main strategic priorities and some of the overarching items that we're going to be focusing on as part of the strategic plan.

So under quality of life, the strategic outcome is to preserve and improve Galt's small town charm. The strategic tasks, really the main focuses are the parks master plan, the Galt Civic master plan and Old Town visioning process, public safety outreach and communications, addressing the unhoused in Galt, focusing on community engagement and beautification of Galt. And again, there are strategic tasks associated with each one of these items. Under economic development, the strategic outcome is to pursue economic development opportunities to attract and retain quality industrial and retail users that enhance the quality of life for Galt residents. The focus really is on retail and industrial business attraction within the community, developing readiness of future industrial sites specific to the Kessler property and property North Of Twin Cities, the 400 acre industrial site focusing on business retention and expansion efforts of existing businesses in the community and revitalization of Old Town Galt.

Under fiscal sustainability, the strategic outcome is to ensure that the city has viable and sustainable financial resources. Tasks associated with this include focusing on fiscal reporting, implementing a city pension stabilization policy, retaining focus on fiscal priorities through financial policies, focusing on a new financial system to support citywide efficiencies. That's actually an item that we will be discussing later this evening on this agenda. Updating the cost allocation plan and converting to monthly utility billing. Under infrastructure, the strategic outcome is to maintain and improve the city's transportation, utility, parks, and facilities infrastructure to ensure and protect the community's health, safety, and quality of life, focusing on major capital projects that are underway currently, upcoming capital projects that are planned for the near future, identifying funding for consultant support for future grant applications, identifying funding for a citywide GIS system, and modernizing and maintaining city technology systems related to infrastructure.

Under responsible growth, strategic outcome is to maintain the city's small town charm and quality of life through innovative and efficient growth. Focusing on the 2050 general plan update that will be kicking off next year, reviewing and improving internal review processes for residential development projects, updating the utility master plan and transportation master plans through the city, identifying infill areas that may need infrastructure investments to facilitate development, creating incentive programs to incentivize residential infill and high density development, exploring opportunities for affordable housing, and exploring funding for a new permitting system in the building department, planning department, and public works. For employee engagement, which is the last priority we have, the strategic outcome is to build a culture of connection, recognition, and growth, foster collaboration and boost employee morale, enhance job satisfaction, drive performance across departments, and foster a workplace where employees feel valued and appreciated. Focusing on improving retention and succession of employees, building the bench with employee training, professional development, and opportunities for internal mobility, growing our people with education and training, and integrating the city's organization culture into daily operations, decision making, and employee interactions. That concludes the presentation this evening for the strategic plan.

I'm happy to answer any questions. And again, we will be returning this on a quarterly basis to cover these items and progress that's been made. In addition, there will be potential asks for funding as we go through implementation of the strategic plan over the next two years, which we'll touch on either through appropriations individually on items or through the budget process.

So mayor, before turning it over to you all for questions or comments, I just would like to add that I wanna thank you and thank the directors for the effort to create this plan. I think it is an excellent strategic plan. And I think as mentioned, this can help guide our next budget cycle. So our next budget process really should reflect the priorities that we have identified here. This was a, I don't wanna say lengthy process.

I think it went fairly well at both the larger meeting and then the individual meetings we had. But it was very informative. And I think the end result is a good plan. And the goal is to report out, as Amy mentioned, regularly on our progress toward achieving it.

All right, thank you. And thank you for the presentation, Ms. Mendez. I just had a quick question. I'm assuming that the item under the, it was the second to last section. Yeah, right there, responsible growth. I'm assuming that number two, the review and improve internal review processes, is that kind of the language that would constitute us looking at our subject, or turning our subjective into objective design standards and stuff, that's that, right? Okay, I just want to make sure that was in there. That's a huge priority.

Yeah, and there is detail under each of these items in the actual strategic plan itself. We will publicize this once council has adopted it. We will push it out through social media and add a city newsletter item this week as it relates to connecting it on our website so that folks can take a look at it in detail.

And I'm glad to see, and I know I remember talking about it now, but the various things up there where we're trying to incentivize the residential infill, high density development, trying to find and then explore opportunities for affordable housing. Those two items, obviously, we talked about that were important. But after that meeting that I was at, I really, really kind of think that they really are very, very more important than I think than we even talked about. So I'm glad that we had those on our strategic plan because those are challenging things. And whatever we can do locally to help that, I know it's a huge huge challenge, but does anybody have any questions for about their strategic plan?

Oh, I don't have a question, but thank you for the staff. I know we spend a lot of time, and I hope we will follow that strategic plan for 2527. Thank you again for this staff spending a lot of time. Everybody spend a lot of time. I ask for that that plan. Thank you.

I'd like to say, yeah, I like the plan. I I like the way it was presented, and I like the fact that we're gonna come back and revisit this on a regular basis. As demonstrated in an earlier conversation tonight, we've kinda added an additional item onto this thing unofficially to hold our contractors accountable.

Well, yeah. I mean, number one priority if there's quality of life. And clearly, you know, the quality of life for some people, is not that great at the moment. So we wanna make sure we start off on the right foot. But, yeah, I am happy, though, that the five of us were able to you know, we all have like, Bonnie and I were talking about this earlier today.

The five of us each have kind of things that are kind of our pet things that we really, you know, are kind of most interested in. But I think overall, this council has been very of one mind about what we want the vision for the city of Galt to be, and that is to continue with, you know, the quality of life, our small town feel, you know, trying to retain that with various things, you know, focusing on things that keep that that feel. And, obviously, all the other things on that list kind of fall just in behind that. But I'm glad that we all agree on that, that that making things the best they can for the people of God is is the top priority. So anyways, thanks for the presentation.

I look forward to seeing the updates as we move through, and I know we have one item coming up next. So looking for a motion. Is there any public comment on that?

No. Okay.

Alright. I'll be looking for a motion to adopt a resolution approving the twenty twenty five to twenty seven City of Gallup strategic plan. Move. Moved by Vice Mayor Sandhu. I will second that. Can I have a roll call, please?

Vice Mayor Sandhu. Aye. Council Member Pratton. Aye. Council Member Reid. Aye. Council Member Rodriguez. Aye. Mayor Farmer.

Aye. Resolution approved five zero. Next item is from the finance department approval of the enterprise resource planning system.

Good evening, mayor council. Lila Menor, finance director. Since I've been here with the city, there's been a lot of discussion about how the current financial system is just really outdated and we need to move to the modern age of technology, which is an enterprise resource planning system or ERP. So throughout this process, we've looked at other systems, and we've decided to go with Oracle NetSuite for government. NetSuite is a subsidiary of the larger Oracle system.

The only difference is that NetSuite is specifically tailored for smaller local agencies such as ourselves. They're also a cloud based solution so we feel that this meets our needs. Just to give you a little bit of background, the city currently uses many different software systems to perform our financial, HR, and utility billing duties. Our current financial system is called Central Square Navaline, and there's just many limitations because it's so outdated. And from an operational and technological perspective, it just makes it really difficult to meet some of the current requirements.

Because we're having to use multiple programs, sometimes we're having to do a manual approach to some of our processes to get the data that we need. And with that, it can cause a lot of inefficiencies. It's really time consuming. And when you have manual processes, it's also prone for error. Not only that, there is an ability to integrate or communicate with other citywide systems.

And this is extremely important when it comes to financial reporting. We need to make sure that we have all of the data and that we can capture everything. And also, lastly, the current version of Navaline, our financial system that we're currently using, will no longer be supported by vendor. So this is going to create like significant security, operational, and compliance risks. So the benefits of an ERP solution, it's to improve business process efficiencies, electronic process workflows and approvals.

It'll eliminate any duplicate and manual systems, enhance customer experience, increase visibility and transparency, and it'll also allow us to kind of look at our current business practices and to see what we can do to improve and move towards like best practice models. And so for example, one of the things is to move towards monthly utility billing. Right now because our current system is so outdated and the process is so manual, it makes it difficult for us to have to do monthly billing. So with this new system, it'll help us move towards that. In addition, this also supports priority number four of fiscal stability of the strategic plan, which was just adopted.

So why Oracle NetSuite for government? As I said, they're focused on small to mid sized local government agencies. They have a lower total cost of ownership compared to having something in house. They are flexible and adapt to our needs. They also have government accounting standard boards, or GASB, reporting, which helps us remain fiscally compliant. Not only that, they have proven and best in industry security. They have really strong encryption and have a lot of layers of additional protection. Not only that, the interface is really easy to use. They have AI capabilities. And their customer service is really they have really good customer service.

Right now with Navaline, because it's so outdated, we're having difficulties with technical and customer service support when it comes to meeting the needs of our current program. Contract that's coming with this comes with the finance, HR, and payroll, and utility billing module. We're going to be doing this as a phased in approach, starting with the finance module first. It'll come with data conversion, training, live, and post go live support. And with that we're asking staff recommends entering into a NASS PO Value Point participating addendum establishing the finance ERP capital improvement project, executing ordering documents.

Now the cost of the one time implementation and the three year licensing term is $854,681 so we're asking for an appropriation of that from available fund balance. And so how this is going to be broken up is out of that 854,668 thousand dollars will be a general fund cost and the remaining $186,000 will come from the enterprise funds. Costs will be expended as each program phase begins and once fully implemented it's anticipated that any licensing or maintenance costs from our existing systems will you know we can eventually eliminate that which will ultimately lead to about a $100,000 savings ongoing. Again it's a one time implementation and then the annual ongoing cost for the licensing is 110,000 per year. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

I do have Mark Johnson here from NetSuite if you have any other questions regarding the system.

All right. Well, thank you for the presentation. So my understanding, the onetime cost is $8.54. And then there's gonna be we have an ongoing yearly of 100 for

The licensing. It's for the license for the system.

Right. That's I I've I'm familiar with software. I Mhmm. Like I said, I was, dealt with that kind of stuff for years, but I just I don't know. This is never heard of software that, like, the licensing cost one eighth of the original purchase of it. That's like it seems super high to me. What comes with the with the license upgrades? What what what other things are you wanna elaborate on that, sir?

I I would. I'd like to. So I'm Mark Johnson from Netsu for Government. And, actually, the the fees that she's showing there is the total project including three years of licensing.

Okay.

So that's that's it's if you take out $330,000, that's the licensing or the subscription cost for the three years. So it's closer to 5.

So on year four, we'll start with the $100,000 licensing?

Correct. 110.

So for the initial rollout cost, is this I'm assuming this includes staff training Yes. Support. What about tech support? How does that fall into everything?

Yeah. Tech support's included in the annual fee. But during during the implementation, you have tech support as well, obviously. And then this also includes integrations with four of the systems that the city is using today, and it includes historical data migration as well. But then we'll do the training and also work with your team and set up the software.

One thing that's unique about us is is our team came together about five years ago, and I actually worked for the company that's supplying your your software today. And back in 2000 when I was working for them, Navaline was old then. So I think you folks really need to move forward. There's definitely a need there. And what we've done, so we're a business unit within Oracle specific to local government, and we're specifically targeting or working with small to mid sized local government agencies.

Our entire stack, if you will, is Oracle. So it's Oracle database, Oracle application, Oracle cloud, and it's all hosted and maintained by our teams. So it's a proven solution, and we've taken and brought it to local government. We've got about 70 customers in the last three years. Since I started, there was one customer.

What are some customers around us that we might know?

We have Southern California. There's about five cities in Southern California. I can get you a list, but it's, Arcadia, Placentia. And then throughout the state, there's nine customers total right now. Across the country, there's about 16 that are specifically city customers.

So I know and I'm sorry.

It's That's okay.

Leila, right?

It's Leila.

Leila. Okay. I'm sorry. Leila, some of the complaints that we have are regarding and I don't know if these are tied into some of the systems that we'll be replacing with this, some of our business license stuff, utility payment. As a matter of fact, I went to pay my city a golf bill yesterday, and it literally was super difficult. Like, I had to I just did it right now. It takes, like, seven clicks just to get I know that's a website thing, that's not the system. But but it's like this little tiny hyperlink at the bottom that says pay now. It's like, it should be just a I'm just saying this out loud because I'm thinking about it. I think that I would guess that a large number the large percentage of people that even visit our city website probably do so to pay utility bill.

Mhmm. So I think that we need to rethink, like, something on the main page to make it because I was like, is it under business? It is under our city? And I had to, like, figure out where it was at, and it's way down at the bottom. And I don't know. I'm just telling you. So tell me how this is gonna streamline. Give me some examples of some things that this would streamline. And and I don't and I don't just mean for the staff's function. I mean, is this gonna improve this money? How is this money gonna improve the customer experience? Let me put it that way.

So number one, this will allow us to do monthly billing, which will maybe help with some of the shutoffs that we're currently experiencing right now. Because having a two month bill it can be costly for some individuals who don't have that readily available. There's a lot of dashboards that we can for real time tracking that they can look at and view. It does integrate with our business licenses. And a lot of some of the stuff from the Galt market, we were able to integrate some of those systems as well.

Not only that, since we're going to be looking at our business processes and updating some of those, we would have the ability to possibly do electronic payments instead of cutting checks. So our vendors would be able to receive payments a lot faster. And it'll also save on the costs of mail and other checks. And as well, too, for transparency purposes, we would have the ability for our residents to see budget to actuals in a real time form.

So this is a citywide system. This is not just for the fact this

is This is a citywide system. That's correct. It's not I mean, it's a financial system, but it's going to integrate with a lot of the citywide processes that we do have. So it's just kind of taking all of the different processes and software that we currently have and just kind of making it into one package.

All right. I'm going to ask if you want to maybe stay up at the podium in case council members have questions Anybody for want to kick us off?

Sure. I'll start. The new software, I have a couple of things. What is it gonna do for public facing budgetary things? We have certain individuals that are very keen to our budget, and I'm not gonna point fingers, but, they are asking for more transparency when it comes to budgets. And what is this software gonna do for us as on on the forward facing part of our budget?

This will allow us to kind of run a lot more better reporting. It'll allow there's a lot of dashboards that customers are able to customize that they can use. Again, this will integrate with our budget system so that we can, again, do real time budget to actuals. So they can, on a daily basis, be able to go on to our website and look just how much we spent from our budget.

So

Okay. And then my next question is for mister Mort. You know, I work for the state, and the approval process for something like this is, I don't know, twelve, eighteen months because of all the security and all this other. What is the city's evaluation process for evaluating one of these systems for from the cybersecurity standpoint?

Yeah. So I I reviewed the some of the documentation that they provided from I mean, it was very detailed, very long. It it looked very thorough. We had a few meetings so far with Mark and the team. We were able to ask some questions about how we integrate it with our current, like, user authentication, how will they log in, how will we keep it secure. All indications so far, plus just the name Oracle and knowing that they're used for other agencies and private sector businesses. And they're, you know, very big name. All indications, you know, that it should be secure.

Okay. And and then my last one is, do we see any other areas in the city in which, you know, once we get this up and running and we all love it, you know, or or we don't, whatever that do we see other areas in which we can expand, like other modules that we can use for other parts of public works or parks and rec or other areas?

There are there is ability to expand on certain things, but because this is, you know, specifically tailored towards the utility billing and financials, we can integrate with other Oracle systems. For example, the permitting system, Oracle does have a software system specifically for our permitting, which can integrate with NetSuite. Again, NetSuite is a lot smaller than the big Oracle, and it's just because we wanted to it's tailored towards smaller agencies like us.

That's all. Can I

add something on the security side? Yeah. So the very first customer for Oracle was the CIA. They're still a customer today as well as all the branches of the military. So our security has to be as bulletproof as possible.

Thank you.

Laila, thank you for this report. My question is, I know there's a lot of money. Mhmm. This is a public money. And what kind of benefit the new system will be a normal citizen? I know it can be a benefit to the staff. It can be easy to look at the report. What kind of benefit is a normal person going to pay the bill, going to look at the business business license. Can you explain to the public?

They'll be able to, you know, access the system really easy. And again, it'll have real time dashboards when it comes to usage. They'll be able to see, like, a dashboard of like their usage so far and do a comparison regarding what they've used month to month so they can see you know if there's any kind of issues and that they can address those you know with the department a lot faster. Again, know, we can it will allow us to kind of change our practices to make it a little bit more best practice model. We can go to a monthly billing.

So the the this system also can help to, for example, if somebody fill an application for a minor development.

Mhmm. A reminder for?

Yeah. It's minor development means if there's somebody gonna do the addition, somebody can

Like planning department.

Yeah. Mhmm. If they fill an application in a community development, They can they can see their application, all the application in community development. It's approved. It's going to the public work. Right now, the system does not show that. Is that gonna help or not?

At this time, no. Not for our building permits.

What about the new system?

It doesn't have that ability right now. Like I said, it's a lot smaller. The bigger Oracle system would have that and it does have the if that's something that we are going to do, maybe something that we can integrate. But as far as being able to see those approval processes, system doesn't have that.

Okay. Maybe last question. On the report, it says it can up to $100,000 is can be in the future is can save to the city for that system. Can you might be detail how how how it can save?

Right now Central Square and Avalon is what we're currently using as our financial system and that's about 75,000 annually. We have Forte which is our online payment processing which is about 7,000. TCP is our timekeeping tracking system. It's going to be about 7,000. And then the reporting that we use to help develop our annual comprehension financial plan is about 10,000. So that's about 100,000 annually, because those systems can eventually, you know, go away once we integrate fully.

So that means the new system which can be reduced the work, it can save 100,000 each year, and it also can be integrate all the department. And that's why we may be leaning towards this new system. Right?

That's correct.

Thank you. And that's all, mister Mayo.

Quick question. So in the vetting process for this, you know, we're at the sales point, right? What about, did we make some phone calls to some other cities Yes, talk

did. Other We've discussed with, I've met and had some conversations with other cities who've had some kind of, you know, with with competing type of systems. And a lot of them have discussed about the time it took for the integration. It took years and some of them, you know, like the city of Tracy, it took like, they're they're still working on implementing and it's on their seventh year and the costs are really expensive. Not only that, any time they have to make a change or update any of their systems, it costs additional. They have to do another purchase order, and they have to go to council, and it costs additional just for them to make any kind of change to their system. With this, you know, we wouldn't have that problem.

Yeah, and another thing is when we're delivering the services, those are billed as incurred. So if you don't need as much help as what we've outlined in the proposal, you're not going to get billed for that. And then the actual subscription is billed, and that's that's monthly. And then the subscription part is billed quarterly in arrears. So you don't pay for the first three months.

You don't pay until the end of that. But one of the reasons that we exist is because we are hearing from the marketplace. And I've been doing this. I've been working for twenty six years with local government and specifically ERP. And one of the big reasons that we exist is because our competitors are not delivering great software, and they're, on top of that, not delivering great customer service experience.

And so we're trying to turn that on its side entirely and provide a kind of a white glove experience. And some of those implementations that Shu's referring to that have taken years and years, a lot of that's because they use a third party implementation team. And we do all of our implementations ourselves, and we have some really stellar people on that team that are delivering success. And I can confidently tell you that we're very much pleasing the people that we're working with.

What do you what can we expect as far as you've been talking about implementation time. What what's a realistic time frame with implementation with the size of our city and the size of our staff that you feel confident that you can train our staff and then be comfortable with using it, and you'll see the support kind of taper off to the I mean, what what what how much time frame do

you think it's gonna take? So for for the financial side, probably seven to nine months to go live on financials, and then HR and payroll could be overlapped, and then you'd be also overlapped for that. So it could be twelve months to eighteen months total to get everything live and up and running.

And I did speak to the city of Placentia, who, you know, they've been go live for about five months. And they told me that it took them about five months to implement their just their financial system. And they're a small city just like us.

And I've had two customers up in Oregon that went live in four months. But we want to make sure that we go at your pace. We don't want to rush you through it. But at the same time, we don't want to drag you along.

So our current systems that we use and I know when I say systems because we're using kind of a hodgepodge. Maybe this is a question for Rodney too. But they're basically not are any of those cloud based or some of them? I mean, I know I'm thinking back with our cyber problem that we had a few years ago, and we lost a lot of stuff because we weren't so so, basically, those systems we do cloud backups and all that stuff now, but the systems we're currently using are not cloud systems.

The current finance system is actually cloud? It is? Okay. Yep. And something to add really quick just on the process just as an example of where we're currently at.

When we have to pay for something in the city, we print it on a piece of paper. We go to the printer, grab it, stamp it with an ink stamp, fill it out with a pen, either bring it to finance. Or for a lot of our buildings, we have intercity mail where somebody delivers paper from another building to the finance department, then they do the whole paper check printing process of printing it, doing the postage, mailing it. So we hope, if all goes well, all that becomes paperless and streamlined. And some of that may be hard to quantify, like the the hard cost, but the staff cost, you know, and potentially requiring less staff as we grow or, you know, there's some some savings there, I think, as well.

I know that the vice mayor was asking about and I and I did ask as well, you know, what what can you know, what's the customer experience gonna be? And I and I get that this is not this is not something we're rolling out to the public for the public to mainly use. There will be some usage from the public. But mainly, this is what what I'm what I'm hearing is that the customer the customer experience will hopefully be improved because of the efficiencies by the staff. And to if those processes can be streamlined and be improved, then it's gonna it's obviously gonna be a a better experience for the customer on the front end when they come into the finance department. Correct?

That is correct.

It's also my understanding that the current system we're using doesn't allow us to do like, we've been talking for a while about going back to monthly billing. There's been a big deal about people's bills. We because we bill every other month, people's city of golf bills are very high. And we thought it would be, you know, easier impact on people's household incomes to be able to pay, you know, 150 a month instead of 300 every other month. Our current system doesn't allow us to do that, right?

It's just it's really time consuming. And because it's really manual and complex, it makes it very difficult for us to do a monthly. And just the time that it takes for us to gather all the information of the data,

it just takes And a lot of

I know we have a public comment on this. Go ahead, yes, I'm sorry.

Just really quick because I'm lazy. Will the system set up for automatic withdrawals like I do with SMUD? They can go ahead

and pull that

out, and I'm never late.

In fact, the back end, the system so we took the larger Oracle energy and water utility billing solution, and we've rightsized it for small organizations. That's what SMUD uses. That's what PG and E uses. So on the back end, it's the same as what you're doing now.

Because the less I have to go on to the website to find to pay, the better for me. Yep. And I just to put in a little bit of perspective, I know it's a different industry, but in my previous job, we did something like this, about twenty years ago. And that number right there is a lot less than what we had to do with all of our finances, Everything that went through the migration system took quite a while, and our annual fee after that was, not quite as much as this, but also we weren't as labor intensive and as important. So I actually was surprised at these numbers and, and very grateful that staff went through and did some homework on this.

I, you know, I personally am in favor of moving forward with this, but I would like to hear from the public as well.

Is it okay if we, hear public comment real quick before we make any comments? All right, Tina.

Harry Wenzel.

Mr. Wenzel, I would have been disappointed if you did not speak on this item.

I'll take that as a compliment.

It was.

I didn't plan on speaking tonight. Was very busy and I didn't have a chance to really read through everything. But this is just too much not to touch. First off, when we had the strategic planning meeting, was very in favor and I'm still very in favor of an ERP system. It'll change your life if you do it right. Okay? And I see there's a lot of struggles. So I'm just gonna bring up a few things, kind of pile on. I I really appreciate what the council did tonight. There were some really good questions.

And so I'm gonna just pile on a little bit on that. At the end of the day, I think there needs to be an expectation. So as a citizen, I'm gonna say, well, we take about eight to nine months to issue a financial statement. I'd like to know what the goal would be if you can integrate that. We don't see quarterly.

We don't see monthly. And I don't see why if you hire a company like Oracle, who's very, very well respected, of course. If you don't have stock in Oracle, you're missing it, you know? So I'd like to see these expectations, everything down to maybe a little more granular. Maybe reporting that the city manager and finance and so forth can get into who's late on their payments for rent, things like that.

Seeing, you know, the mayor, the council, citizens, who's late, who's delinquent. When we have reports like the warrants report, which I've complained about before, and I dare anybody to show me where that report is really worth the time that's put into it. We don't even know what the who these people are and what what they're doing and, you know, so forth. And then I just see a lot of advantages. But when I do look at what you see up there on the screen, I see general fund 668,000.

I realize, you know, there's probably like, you know, that $100,000 of, I don't we used to call it maintenance. But that's where all your finance and so forth. So what I see is sewer, solid waste, storm drain and water. If anybody has looked at their utility bill lately for water, sewer and garbage, that's it. So that's the main focus of what we're doing.

So as I understand the software, it's like we're getting these modules that fit into Oracle's, you know, they are the kings of database. And if it's into their database and that we would tack on some things as we go. There's other, there's sort of like canned programs. So, and having done, you know, an ERP system in a really large international company, I was kind of like with Bonnie, was like, well, it's not such a bad I mean, we were looking at 20,000,000 for what we did, but it was not Oracle. But it batted off Oracle's database.

Okay? So I don't know. On the one side, I I don't know what to say about the price, but I don't I didn't hear that we heard what other you know, who the competitors would be. I've been out of that business for twenty years. I don't know who the competitors would be.

And and so I don't I don't have a big issue with that. That's up to the council to decide. But I would like to see, though, some expectations of when you're said and done two years from now, what's it gonna look like? What does the citizen what is the how does the interface change with the citizen? People like me, like I mentioned to Rodney, hey, it'd be nice if we could kinda open up and we could see what's the chart of accounts and if we could actually data mine off of what's going into the accounts and we could understand which accounts go into which classifications on the financial statements.

And I'll say it again. I I would like to see an I would like to see a common thread between your budget items and your financial statements. And I would like to see, like, the budget via paper like we saw the last time. If we're not gonna go back to the big paperweight, I'd like to see it like that. But the question would be, could you drill? You know? Could you say, well, I wonder what's what is it that goes into one of the things I'm always harping on is what are we doing with cow waste and the franchise fees? What what could we learn from that? But I'm I'm just I'm very in favor with this. And I as I look down the row of our staff here, we got a lot of young people, and it's a sweet spot.

I think that I think that it's time for the you know, it's time to bring in something like this. This staff right here, you don't have a bunch of relics there. They go, well, we never did it that way. Why are we doing it that way? Hopefully, they've all died off or retired, you know. But these every time I do it, I deal with staff or I watched them in the strategic planning, I'm very impressed with staff. And I just think that this would be this would be a catalyst, and and it could really be something big for the city. And that's my 2¢ worth. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wenzel. Any other public comment, Tina? No. So, yeah, I mean, when I first saw the staff report, I was like, wow, it's a lot of money. And so, but I did do some checking around as I do. It is par for the course. And there was some that were more out there in the world. And so I just think of it as like we're operating in a huge company. The city is a company.

If this is the backbone of our financial whatever, we have to have something that's good. Mean, because you kind of like, in some respects, you get what you pay for. And if he's telling us that the system we're using now was old in 2000, that was twenty five years ago. I mean, so I think it pays to put money in the right spots. I do think that some of the some of the some of the things that are mentioned, the efficiencies, we're not gonna be able to put our finger on and say, look.

We've saved that much money here, but there is some, like, what Rodney mentioned with the way things have to pass through in departments. There's gonna be some things that are gonna be hard to put our finger on what exactly we saved. But if we can streamline things and make things better for the public on the back end because we're making it easier on the front end for the staff, then I think it's it's worth it. So put a lot of faith in it, but, look, we need to upgrade. Just the fact that it's that old, the stuff we're using, to me, we we have to change. So anybody else got any comments?

No? I I did have a follow-up to something that mister Wetzel did say. What was the bidding process, if you will? And how did we settle on Oracle?

We didn't do a bidding process. What we've done is just we've kind of pulled surrounding cities who've used, you know, existing systems that they currently have, some of the challenges they've had, costs that they've used, and, you know, And I've also had experience with Oracle in Sacramento. So I feel like they're really reputable. They're great when it comes to their reporting. And so that's how we were able to come up with that. And it's also you know it's with our purchasing policy we do have the ability to kind of work and use another cooperative agreement.

So the cooperative agreement that I found, the NASPO ValuePoint, participating addendum that, is with Oracle, led by the state of Utah, also shows a contract, if you will, or a master agreement between Oracle and the city of Banning for what seems to be because I can't see exactly what is on ours compared to theirs because they line out all of theirs. And I did a short little research on Banning, and it's roughly about the same size as us, 29,000 people. And their contract shows that their total price is 299,750. So one of my questions would be, you know, I I obviously can't compare apples to apples because I don't have that. But if it the city's roughly about the same size, why are we paying so much more?

They didn't use all the modules. Okay. So they switched their financials. So we you know, and I don't think they have a utility billing. So

Okay.

And I did reach out to them as well and spoke to them.

Okay. I just we've had things in the past about not having, you know, multiple bids and looking at other options. It just

Well, I mean, we're required to go out to public bid for I mean, to for we're usually required to go out for public works projects. But in these kinds of things, we're it's not required by law. But, but, yeah, it's always good to shop around for sure. But I do appreciate the fact that you've checked with other cities and talked. I think it's important when you go and you talk to other entities and they say this is what we like and this is what we've used. So we're not we're not just this isn't something that just came out and we're going to be we're gonna be the guinea pig. Right? So Yeah.

All I

what I care about is that you get good support. Because what I always say look. Being a business owner in two different businesses, being a contractor for twenty years and then being on the retail side for eight or nine years now, there's more to a good deal than a good price. I say a good deal, a good deal is a full package. A good deal is getting a good product. It's getting good service. It's getting a good support for that product. And when you're dealing with software and stuff, that's obviously huge. So it's not always the best price. We can't always look at things like we're going to get the best price.

If we were buying a pickup truck for public works, that's different because, well, it's still I I guess it's not different. You still wanna make sure you get a good warranty and stuff. So even on that instance, it would still apply. But in this instance here, it's not so much that we can't get hung up so much on the dollar amount. We gotta get hung up on, you know, the reputation of the company that's that's that's the that's delivering the product and all that stuff. So that that's the way I think about it. So yeah. But but that's a great question. Is is that's significantly less. But it makes sense what she said, right, that they're not using the Yep. Because it's scalable. Miss Rodriguez or mister Pratt and vice mayor, anything else from you guys? Questions?

Actually, maybe point out though, because I did ask this earlier that going to what Rodney was talking about, this going paperless for the most part, that it also does it for HR. So employees now can, or with the system, can go on and look at their own HR or, you know, their payroll, and we won't have to be picking up our little

Yes. You'll have electronic. It'll be electronic pay stubs. Right.

I mean, and that is eventually I know that's minimal cost savings. But, you know, overall, it brings us back, you know, into the twenty first century, twenty second century. No. But I think it's good. I did I did have a question on insurance, but I did find it in here. I am curious, though, on, Oracle's policy of of breaches, for one, since we had our breach, and loss. I don't know anything about the cloud, so please excuse my ignorance. I send it up. I have no idea where it goes. It comes back down when I ask for it.

But is that always a guarantee? And if that doesn't happen, all of our financial records are somewhere up there. What does that look like? How do you get that back if if there's a hiccup in the cloud?

In the cloud.

So I'm not positive of the specific answer. I wanna speak out of turn. But breaches are covered in in our agreements and our and what we're providing. It has to be, especially with there's 42,000 customers worldwide running NetSuite, the commercial version of NetSuite. So a breach there is just as damaging as in a in a local government organization. So it's in there. I just I don't have it at my fingertips right now.

You're you're quite Hopefully, don't need a reason for that.

Your concern is to understand, you're asking, like, if there was a breach of our data was compromised or something. Right?

Right. Does that does necessarily in the cloud mean that there's less opportunity for something

like that?

You're much more secure in our cloud than you would be hosting this in house. We have a thousand or over a thousand people in the organization that just do ethical hacking to try and break into our systems.

Yeah. So it's basically like it'd be like someone trying to hack into the city of Galt, and all of our stuff was on our own servers. Whereas in this case, you're gonna have to hack into Oracle and get stuff off their servers. So I imagine the redundancy you guys have is probably just like especially if they're operating government agencies and stuff is gonna be super so our stuff being cloud based, which basically our stuff is on their servers, we're we're pulling from it. That's how it works. So as they're working, it's nothing's on nothing's stored on your on on on her computer or her computer. It's all in the cloud. Yeah. The cloud is basically their database on their database.

Which I guess need is the need for the fiber in that we just approved as well. But that actually opened up a question. Okay. I understand we're protected from the breaches. But, and again, excuse my ignorance, but, you know, Amazon just went down. What are the chances of something like that interfering with daily workflow of Oracle's cloud?

So, yeah, our cloud involves a lot of redundancy. So if one data center were to have an issue, it would automatically fail over to another data center. And they're in different parts of the country. I think there's three to four that you would be simultaneously backed up on. And so if there was a failure in one data center, you wouldn't even know it. I mean, it would just I'm not sure what happened. I can't speak to the Amazon issue, but that

was I just know that the gamers were very upset.

And airlines. There was some airline stuff going on there.

Yeah. I think I think the only weakness we would have would just be our connection to the cloud. So if our provider, whoever that is that we pay for as a provider, went down, then we would lose our connection to our database. That's the only time when on-site data is helpful. But most of the another 90% of the time, it's not. So I was looking at yeah, I was looking at her screen about the insurances. You have low risk. These are the insurances that come with our as long as with our agreement. Right? It's $2,000,000 for low risk data, $5,000,000 for moderate, and $10,000,000 for high risk. So I mean, those are significant numbers. So, I mean, that's great that that's all in there. It just shows when I see those numbers, that just means shows you how confident you guys are that that's not gonna happen.

Thank you for finding that. I I didn't have that at the my fingertips either.

Yeah. It's pretty hard.

That's a very long the NASPO agreement is a very long document. A couple 100 pages. Any other questions for me? I'm excited to be working with your team here. I I have to say that the success of an implementation is we have to have a a strong partnership, and you have to have people that are willing and excited about change because it is going to be change and it is work. And in meeting with the team several times now, I feel

Well, like Mr. Wintzel said, we have we have a fairly young staff, so they're probably gonna be really quick and savvy to pick up on. If you're trying to train someone like me or maybe like mister Solis, maybe not so much. They're all like, why are

we still using these time And

Chris too. Probably not. But alright. Well, if we have no more if we have no more questions from council, I guess we'll be looking for a a motion to approve to adopt a resolution authorizing the interim city manager to enter into a NASPO ValuePoint participating addendum to use the state of Utah's cooperative contract to cover the cloud solutions for an enterprise resource planning, ERP system, including implementation support licensing with Oracle America. And number two, authorizing the establishment of the finance ERP capital improvement project.

Number three, authorizing the appropriation of 854,681 from available fund balance to the finance ERP project. And number four, authorizing the ordering documents for the one time system implementation and the three year licensing term.

I'll move it.

Moved by Councilwoman, I'm sorry, Councilwoman Rodriguez. Second. Seconded by Councilmember Reid. Can I have a roll call please?

Vice Mayor Sandhu. Aye. Council Member Pratton. Aye. Council Member Reid. Aye. Council Member Rodriguez. Aye. Mayor Farmer.

Aye. Approved five zero. Thank you for your information, sir. Alright. Our last item of the evening is gonna be from the Public Works Department. It is the revised draft speed control program guidelines. Mister Griffin.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members. I'm here tonight to provide an updated or revised draft speed control program guidelines and receive feedback and answer any questions you may have. So the overview for tonight's presentation, again, I will walk through the drafts, the revised draft speed control program policy. I will give an example of how this would work on a DARE way. I'll quickly go over the questions that were raised, questions and comments raised by raised at the last meeting we had this discussion and provide answers.

And then with that, give an opportunity for questions and feedback. So the revised speed control program is a three step process. So the first step begins with receiving an inquiry from the public. With that inquiry, then we will go out and collect baseline speed data, both volume and speed and that will allow us to determine if there really is an issue in that neighborhood and then from there if we determine there is we will perform public outreach in tandem with the police department. And we will also analyze and assess non physical measures that may help reduce speed and make that corridor safer.

And then after those processes are in place and given some time to marinate, we will come back in three to six months and then collect a new set of speed data to see how these nonphysical measures have performed. And in a perfect world, we will see a reduction in speed, and we're good to go.

Nonphysical being temporary?

No, non physical being non no speed humps at step one. It would be something such as clearing some vegetation that might be obscuring signs. I'd be looking at signs to see if we need to put place signs in a better location.

Okay.

Things like that. If there's pavement markings that would be that we need to place to inform the Understood. Driving So those are interim measures that would be both for putting more of a speed control improvement

out there.

Sorry to interrupt you. Just wanted a clarification.

So step two would be for those situations where the education outreach do not achieve the desired outcome. And from there, we will have the residents in the study area. We will send out that speed control form to them and have them return it just to confirm, you know, their interest in having staff look at a more permanent measure speed humps, speed humps, speed tables, or whatever they may be. And the policy, as written, still has a 75% threshold for moving forward into the final process. Part of the step two will again be to have public works engineering team look at the form submitted and the data collected and come up with more of a precise study area.

And with that, we will identify location or locations of speed control devices in the neighborhood that would we think would best achieve the goals for that neighborhood. And then the final step is step three is where we actually send notifications out to those members of the public who would be directly impacted. For example, those who would have the speed lump, you know, along their property line, those are the residents that we would reach out to to confirm. Hey, you've said before you're in favor of this. Now, this is where the rubber meets the road.

We're gonna put it right in front of your home. I just wanna confirm that you are still supportive of it. And the policy still has a 75% for that third step as well. And should we receive a 75% or greater support, then that gets added into our next roadway capital project. So real word example for Adairway.

Let's say we're looking at Adairway from East Stockton to Fermoy. Same process, know, we go collect the data, collect the baseline data, perform the outreach, you know, assess do we need to put more signs, striping, it may be, and then come back in three to six months and analyze the data. That stretch of roadway has a total of 14 homes. So when we send out the form for the residents to return, we would be looking for 11 out of 14 to say, yes, we support some type of speed control device in our neighborhood. Again, that's not saying where it's gonna be, but yes, we support staff in the city looking at our corridor and determining where the device or devices are best to be located.

And then with that, we would identify the locations. Step three, which is what we're doing now based on the direction from council previously, is we would send a notice to all of the impacted residents. Again, being the four, if we put in one speed, speed lump, it would be along a property line. We would send a notice to four residences. And to achieve that 75 percent, three of those four would need to vote yes.

They would support putting the speed control device along their property line. And assuming we get 75 or 100%, then whatever locations are identified for a speed control device, those get rolled into our annual roadway maintenance program. So that kind of walks through a specific real world example of how it would apply. So now jumping back to the last meeting to boil it down, council had a total of eight general questions on this program. So the first one, the question focused on is signage required, or can we install just the speedlump without signage, without road striping?

Reviewing the MUTCD, signage and striping is strongly recommended in the MUTCD. And that is our recommendation as well, that with any speed control device, we put out a number of signs on both sides of the roadway, as well as striping on both sides of the roadway.

And this is permanent signage or temporary signage?

This would be permanent signage. So another question that council asked is, are there different percentages for thresholds for, and there's a typo here that should say step two and step three. Are there different percentages that we could consider? And again, the program as described had a 75% threshold. Other options are 50% or 66%, two thirds. Those are two other options council could consider. All of those are reasonable. And step two, again, the program identified 75%. Another option is 50%. Again, when we're looking at, you know, four residences, it's either gonna be in 25% increments.

And for both these, we do not recommend a threshold lower than 50%. So step three, counsel asked, us to identify if, hey, there's an come up with an idea for an appeal process. So the appeal process has been added into the policy, and that is new. It's in section six. And that's a much lower threshold, 25% of the residents in the area.

They would, if we had 25% who desire an appeal, that would then be presented formally to city council. So for the example of a Dareway, 25% of 14 would be three and a half. So we would have to receive four out of four. If we evaluated that segment of roadway and decided nothing was necessary, if we had four out of 14 request a reconsideration, then out of this policy, that would require us to bring that item back to council for consideration. Question four, council asked if what were our thoughts on bringing every speed control request submitted to council?

Our thought is that would be a very cumbersome process. In turn, what we recommend is that staff would provide a report either quarterly or semi annually on requests received and status and timeframes for those requests. Another question that council brought up was, should there, if there's a minimum criteria such as peak hourly vehicle numbers or, you know, a certain threshold above the speed limit, would it be beneficial to just skip the public outreach process and go straight to step two or step three for implementation of this program? Staff recommends that we don't skip any steps. You know, again, in a perfect world, public outreach, having the speed trailer out in a number of locations, hopefully that would help the public be a bit more cautious or cognizant of what their speed is and correct their driving habit without anything permanent.

So our recommendation is we always include step one regardless of what the baseline speed data shows. Question six, counsel asked what role does the Public Safety Committee play in review of these requests? So our suggestion and recommendation is that the Public Safety Committee receive a report on the process utilized and implemented by staff and the results of that process. They allow the public to provide feedback prior to us moving forward installation of a speed control device, and then that the Public Safety Committee provide a report back to council documenting that we did follow the process, and as well as providing a summary of feedback received by the community or presented by the community. So again, question seven, what options do we recommend to consider before installation of speed control devices?

So these are the non physical measures that are specified in the program. Again, that's basic data collection is step one to see if there really is an issue. And then it goes out to public outreach, both that's in tandem between public works and the police department. And then those nonphysical measures such as evaluating where signs are, if new signs are needed, or if we need to freshen up, striping that's in the roadway. And then again, we would reassess with speed.

Would reassess and collect a second round of speed control data in three to six months. And the eighth and final question that council asked is how would these improvements be paid? So staff proposes that the annual roadway maintenance project budget covers this cost of these devices. We would recommend that annually council sets a cap, say $100,000 and if for the year, all the requests that we receive, if that cost is exceeded, then that money gets programmed into the budget for the next fiscal year. And then we would identify what an additional funding source we would use in addition to what the baseline annual contribution is out of the roadway maintenance program.

So with that, that wraps up my presentation, and I'm here to answer any questions.

Well, first, thank you for putting this together. Because I think it's important that we have something in place. For one, not and just for the general public, this is, we needed some kind of process for people, you know, who come out and say, I need a stop sign in my neighborhood. Cars go too fast. We can't be inundated because the concern was with the council was that we open Pandora's box, like, let's say, Adairway.

If Adairway gets speed bumps, then all of a sudden, everybody in their everybody in their neighborhoods all of a sudden wants to come and get speed bumps. So we knew with the conversation of Adairway and the council direction with that particular street that we also, in in conjunction with that, had to come out with some sort of process, some kind of, you know, process to go through so that we can so that other people who wanted things can go through that. And it's not just we're not just gonna be inundated every month with people at the podium asking for stop signs and speed bumps and whatnot. So I do appreciate that. Some of my initial thoughts were, I do appreciate the fact that you would take mitigation measures to see if you can fix the problem without going to the extreme.

Right? So if people are speeding in their neighborhood, we look at, well, is there proper signage? Do we have proper speed limit signs? You know, do some speed control. I'm skeptical with the speed control, because I'm sure putting the radar trailer out there or having, you know, Officer Steele out there on the motorcycle, you know, ticketing people, that's going to make an impact. But then once he's not doing that anymore and the trailer's not there, people tend to go back to their habits. So I feel like that's just a temporary fix. But I do think that we should try to implement some things or, you know, maybe the paint on the street where the stop sign is or maybe the stop sign's blocked by a a tree or something that could be easily remedied. So I I understand that there's probably in some cases, you can take simple measures that can really improve the situation. So I think that's important.

I I just wanna be clear that this this isn't just for any this isn't just for speed control request. This is for anything. Like, so we want some people came forward and said we need a stop sign or we need a crosswalk. Pretty much, it's not just for speed controls. This could this could this could be applied to anything that someone any any sort of traffic measures someone this could be applied to. Correct?

Generally speaking, yes. Generally speaking. Yeah. For stop signs that we would need to collect. It'd be a different process where we collect traffic data, and there has to be a minimum threshold that's achieved before we would install a side stop control or four way stop. So the same general process would implemented. The reason I say same general process is when we go out and collect that data, say it does show we need side stop control, we wouldn't go out to the public and say, do you want us to put more stop signs in? The data already shows there's a need for it. So we would then just go forward with putting the stop signs in.

Okay. So looking at I remember some of these questions I was asking. And so I think two of my initial thoughts, just me thinking out loud, is I think a six month reassessment is a little too long. I like the three month. So I think if we put some do some measures and then we go back out and do another speed check, I think to wait six months is a long time.

I think if there's still gonna be a problem, we're gonna see it in three months. I just would hate for someone to wait because then that just belabors the process and makes it so long. So that would be my recommendation is to stick to the shorter term. However, on the appeal side, I think the 25% is a little low. I think if we go through this whole process and ultimately the denial is we're not putting speed bus on the street, I think we would need more than just three people out of 14 to come back and say, no, we don't agree with that. We wanna appeal. I mean, if it's really if it really is a need and that process failed, we should see more than three people coming forward saying, hey. No. We believe you guys got it wrong. I think it should be more like 50.

I mean, that seems reasonable. If seven people on a 14 House Street said we got it wrong and came back, I would I would listen. Whereas if three people come back, I'd be like, it's just that three people is just such small. It'd be easy to get three people that wouldn't agree. And I thought we're gonna I I feel like with that low threshold, you're gonna get a lot of appeals, in my opinion.

That's just me. And then on the other and then the one other thought was on the on the percentages for the I like the twothree on the first threshold, but I do agree with yeah. The The twothree on the an agreement that they need like, like, to use Adaire, 14 houses. I think two thirds would be a sufficient amount. If two thirds of the people on that street agreed that we needed something, I feel like that would be sufficient.

I would I would feel like that's good enough. But, of course, when you actually go to put the speed bump in, you're asking for 75, obviously, that that is a 100% has to be that because you you're gonna put it you're gonna put something that's gonna directly impact somebody's house by putting a speed bump right on their property line. You're gonna have to have three of those four people say that's fine. So I agree with that one. I just think the other threshold, the two should be two thirds instead of the the 75. I think we should probably lean in. So those are my thoughts. Just throwing that out there in the world to see what you all think, but that was my thoughts. It's a great presentation, though. I like it.

I have a couple questions. On step three, where it's at the final line, says improvements added to the next roadway capital project. What's the timeline on that? I mean, you add it to a list. Does it necessarily I mean, how many things are on this list? When does what's the timeline of actually going to put that speed table in or whatever?

Let's use Adaire as an example. Right now, we are finishing our outreach to the neighbors. We've had people come in as late as this week and ask questions and give feedback. We would take the direction we receive from council, that would get implemented in next year's roadway maintenance program. So we're looking at probably six months to a year minimum before those those are in place. And we could proceed with a separate speed control only project and do that more frequently. The the thought process behind rolling in with the roadway project is hopefully we receive slightly better prices by having a better volume of work.

So you want to wait till you have several requests that go through and then move forward with it?

Correct.

In the meantime, those neighbors, those neighborhoods are continuing to deal with the

issues.

Correct.

I don't know how I feel about that but I'll move on for right now while I think about that. I do have a question about when you actually pull the neighbors, because on step three, in the example you say 75% of the owners must return the form. So is it 75% have to agree you have to get your yes for 75% from three of the neighbors. But what if only three of them submit an answer?

Yes. So for that specific example, if we have you know, we require seventy five percent three out of four, if three submit, two are yes, one are no, we would view that as fiftyfifty.

So we'll assume that the non response is a no?

Is a no. Correct.

I just wanted to make sure. And then the signs or or the markers warning for that you're coming up to a speed bump. Does that have to be a vertical sign or can it be painted on the roadway?

It's both. There are signs as well as pavement markings.

And how far in front of that speed bump does that vertical sign have to be? And let me the reason why I'm asking is if it is the length of a home, now you're actually involving additional homes affected by that speed bump going in because now they're going to have a sign which I would assume will still be at a property line. But it still will be a brand new sign sitting in front of a home.

The signs I want to say two fifty feet, 300 feet. It's based on your stopping distance, or at least, you know, again, the intent is you slow the people will need to slow down, so the sign needs to be far enough away from the speed control device that the driver has sufficient time to slow down.

And I understand that the logistics of it, I just I think we need to consider those other houses now that are not part of those four where the speed bump goes Now they have people down over here now have the sign randomly, and they may have voted no to have any bumps on their road.

Yeah, would hate to see You know I mean? I would hate to see, you know, because you remember at Adaire, we were very limited on where we could do the speed bumps, right? Yeah. So let's say we get the speed bump, and then we get three of those four people to say, okay, I'm okay with having a speed bump. But then we have to put the sign that says there's a speed bump down here, and this guy says, no, I don't want that in front of my house. And then it just kiboshes the whole process.

Yeah, yes. We would

That's what I worry about.

I'm going think out later. So yes, there would be two signs. So we would then have a total of six residents, because you would have the sign on, say, the example for Adair Way, you'd have a sign on the North Side Of Adair and a sign on the South Side Of Adair. So if we're going back to the 75 threshold, that's four and a half out of six. So now we would need five out of six to vote yes if we're considering both the signage and the speed control device.

Actually, if it's on a property line, you'd have two houses for that affecting that sign.

If I put the sign in a property

that Yeah, would go back to you'd have eight. Anyway, to think about. I just know that when I did first moved into Galt's we had a nice front yard and all of a sudden this sign popped up in the middle. It wasn't even on the property line, in the middle of and we had to come to City Hall and fight. That was our first experience. This was twenty five years ago. But, you know, we didn't want this sign right in the middle of our lawn in the front yard. I can imagine where some of these neighbors might not want

But a it did say the signs are recommended. And they're strongly recommended, so I get that. But I'm sure there's I mean, let's just say that we just use a dare. Let's say a dare, we get the speed bumps, we have the four people are like, yes, we're fine, whatever. And then some person throws a fit about the sign. Instead of just, you know, killing the whole thing, we could maybe make an exception with that and say, we're gonna put we're gonna paint the street, and paint we're the actual bump itself would be highlighted with paint or something, but maybe we don't do the vertical sign in somebody's yard. Don't know. I just don't wanna be I don't this is what government does well. We make things complicated.

I know. Sorry.

I wanna make sure. It's a great point.

I anyway, it was just something to consider, something that we that might be someone who does not appreciate what we're doing, especially if you're you know, speaking of Adair, if you are just one or two houses in from, say, East Stockton Boulevard, so you're not you know, that speed bump is away from you, and but you have a sign sitting in front of your yard for it. So I I don't know. That was just one of those things. And then I did have a question on the actual, and I can't it just went. So I might you might have to come back to me. Someone else.

Alright. We'll come back to you. We'll do more opportunity. Anybody else? Tim?

Sure. I'll go next. And I think everybody knows what I'm gonna talk about. What what are we taking into consideration in this policy for public safety response? I know that I've I've had conversations with the police chief and the fire chief about this, but what has the interaction with public works and what was their input on this plan?

So we have discussed this plan with CSD Fire. And their primary concern was, are these speed humps designed for their vehicles? And we're following the same standard of City Velcro. So they were satisfied with that. And the program does articulate, and I didn't spell this out, that we are we will need to coordinate with CSD Fire before we identify before we place any speed control device to make sure that they're on board with it.

Yeah. And I see the the section in here for fire department review for apparently four to six weeks. But my concerns are, you know, in here, it says that the CSD, he maintains a goal of, responding to every emergency 90% of the time in six minutes, which they don't do right now. And so now we're going to put these speed humps or whatever, right, and it's going to restrict their response times. According to a certain individual that I've talked to for the CSD says that it's not because they do the cutouts for the large fire engines, and that's not gonna be a problem.

But, you know, anybody that's been around that business long enough knows that the wheelbase for a fire engine is not the same wheelbase as an ambulance. And so your ambulance is going to have to slow down to go over every single one of these humps where the fire engine doesn't have to. And so that's been my concern a lot of the time with putting these in and just basically the feedback that I've gotten from the fire department doesn't give me warm and fuzzies about this situation. And so I just wanted to put that out there that we, you know, maybe we need to see if there's another option or, you know, or spacing on the on the cutouts or what. But I would like to, you know, have that conversation again with him. And it's one of the things that I'm going to be bringing up in my two by two with them next month.

I would just like to make a comment. I have a lot of respect for what you're pointing out, Tim, but I also would like to say that to slow down and drive over a speed bump to add probably three or four seconds on the response time, I would rather see that three or four seconds added than in hopes that we would eliminate certain ambulance trips altogether because some kid got killed on the street that we didn't have the

right And stuff I don't disagree with you. So I just know that there's a response time problem that we have right now. And in my opinion, it's not being addressed. And this would just add more issues to that problem that we already have.

I do know that driving around in Elk Grove, there's a lot of speed bumps in some of those neighborhoods. I was surprised at how many there was, especially over, like, off of Camera Road, off the newer areas they've been building. I was over there recently. There's a lot on some of the main arteries that go through those neighborhoods. But so mister Pratt?

Sacramento approved 90 in their last meeting. So we know this is a thing. It happens. Right? People drive crazy and we have to do something about it. So just think we're beating it to death here. I think let's move on.

Any thoughts on the thresholds and stuff, Matt?

I absolutely agree with what you said. With

the two thirds and then the 50 on the appeals? Yeah,

mayor. I'm I'm agree with you. You know, that threshold 75 to 66% and that do appeal. 25% is is kind of less. You can increase to 40 or 50 wherever every agree.

I agree with mister Reed, but, you know, that it it all over. If you look at all over, how much percentage is gonna be that slow on going that steep that the ambulance. You know, they outgrow, they adopt that. Their population in in 185,000 is much higher than us. I I I agree with your concern, but we have to move something of the citizen wants.

And I know there is some street they need the the the traffic is too fast. And I think this this process is a very hard process. It's not gonna easy to just put a hump or whatever. We can be a speed control. This this process can be hard.

And I I believe our citizen, this is also concern, I I totally understand, but our citizen wants this something we have to do, something to control this speed. And to me, I'm agree with this a lot of work with the public work, a lot of other staff member. I'm agree with that policy. And there is, you know, that the 66% of a little bit increase on the 25, and I'm agree on that policy.

How do you guys feel about those changes?

No, I I totally agree with those changes. And I don't, you know, I don't disagree with, yes, we need speed bumps in the in the city, right? I mean, you guys all know my concerns, Right? They Consumerist Fire has a report on their website that says right now, 90% of the time, they take over nine minutes to get to your house when they're trying to get there in six. So, like, it's not like they miss it by thirty seconds. They miss it by a lot.

Yeah. There might be we need another channel to address that issue with the CSD. I think there might be another discussion, but that might be out of this policy.

Yeah. No. I I'm totally on board with the policy.

I'm just putting

out there my concerns. And like I said, I'm gonna bring all this up at the two by two next month with consumers.

So I think so I think we have a consensus on the 66%.

Hold on. I want clarity on that two thirds because when you have four, two thirds of four, you're gonna have to round up to 75.

Oh, yeah. That first threshold is only the entire neighborhood. It doesn't Oh, okay. We're only talking about that threshold, not the one where you have to do the four people. So we're talking about a neighbor, a street that has 20 houses.

Okay.

You know, with 20 houses you're looking at, what is that? We need like 12. 12 would be the threshold we're looking for or something like that instead of 15. Just think 15 is pretty high. It's too high in my opinion. But I am concerned about but I would want to raise a concern that she brought up. I am concerned I don't know what can be done, but I I have a real problem with somebody going through this entire process, which would be lengthy, right? And then they get through the whole thing, and they're like, alright. Looks like we you know, you've met all the criteria. Everything's great. So hopefully, we'll get those things implemented in, you know, about a year from now or maybe more. I just think it's too long. I mean Agree. I think we got to figure out some way to fast track that. There should be a shorter time frame.

And I know it could be based on how much money's going to cost. Maybe if it's just a speed bump, it's going to be cheap. Or if it's something more severe, it could be more expensive. But I don't know how to address that. I don't know what to even recommend on that. But I just don't

think Is

there any option do you know, because we see them in parking lots of schools and things like that, temporary ones that can be placed very easily until we get the the contract or whoever in place to do the permanent ones.

I think you might just add more cost. Chris, what are your We thoughts on

still need to install the signs. Regardless, we'd still have to also install You hear what

I said, right? Our concern is, Bonnie and I's concerns, I think we all share the concern is that, you know, this go through this whole process, which can be very lengthy, right? Let's say they get through the whole process and they meet all these, everything, all the boxes are checked. And we actually said, okay, Great. We're gonna put two speed bumps on such and such street. And then now they have to wait, a year because it has to be worked into the next project stuff. I mean, worked into the next budget cycle or something like that, but, I mean, it just seems like

So could we, I'm just gonna drive right out of my lane. Please. Onto the median and across oncoming traffic. Can't we just pre fund a set dollar amount in a rolling CIP that gives spending authority out of the gate for the project as we start?

Absolutely. There's certainly a funding mechanism we could employ when we initially set up the program. You know, council has a discretion to do that. And then if it is a regular ongoing item, it's something that we then budget, you know, every year with an anticipated amount. So you are not, like, waiting that time.

I think that's what the way we need to go, but I think John's bigger concern was if he could have three different neighborhoods done at the same time, it's gonna be cheaper than doing individual neighborhoods. And I and I respect that. Yeah. Except I think that, personally for me, I think I'd rather spend the Yeah. More money to get it done where it needs to get done

Oh, I when it needs agree. And I'm to I'm not sure Galt is big enough to, like, have that massive need where, you know, it's probably more prudent for us to attack those that are in need more immediately.

Yeah, I agree.

It's not Sacramento who approves 90 of them. The

So the last thing I wanted to bring up since we seem that we got some direction here on most of it is and and counsel, I don't know if should or shouldn't. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Like, is there anything I don't see anything in here that says that the council has any discretion to override anything. Are we I just wanna be clear. Are we understanding that this is the process exactly? And if this process doesn't meet exactly, that there's any hang up in there at all that we have that we've that we're not we that we're not gonna say, well, you know what? I think we should make an exception. I feel strongly enough.

The appeal process.

Well, yeah. But that appeal process comes from the citizens, not from the council. You see what I'm saying? Well, when I mean, I know the council can do whatever they want, probably, but I'm just wondering if if I may, we

could Look, write let me jump in on this. I think that's why it's on consent agenda for Sacramento. That way they have the opportunity to look at everyone And that's on if they wanna speak up for whatever, they can. So it does come to counsel, but they don't have a conversation every time it comes.

It's a No. But I meant what I meant I'm actually phrased it different. What I'm saying is, like, let's say that it goes through certain street goes through this whole process, and there's just one thing in there that just doesn't you know, like, let's say we're one house short of the 75% or the 66% or something like that, right?

It's denied for whatever reason.

And it's denied. The council has the authority to say, you know what? We really looked at this closely. We feel strongly about this. We we're gonna we're gonna overlook that for that many I know if we did that, then people would expect us to maybe reopen Pandora's box and they say, well, the council can override this stuff. We're putting these parameters in place so that we have things that have to be checked. But I do wanna just say out there that I do think that there could be a one off or something where we're just like, no. We need to skip that step or something. I don't know. I believe we always

have discretion.