City Council - Regular Meeting

This is the regular meeting for April 15, 2026 convening at 5:37 p.m. City Clerk, can you please do roll call? Council member Bregman, Council Member Nakani here, Council Member Craig Hensley here, Promotei, Mayor Az. Thank you. Um, so Mr. City attorney, can you please introduce the close close session items?

Yes. The first item is a public employee appointment pursuant to government code section 54957B. Uh, one position, the city manager recruitment. The second matter is conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code section 5495 6.92 one case. Thank you so much. Is there any public comments and close session items? No. Thank you. And um so the council will adjourn to close session at 7:38 p.m.

The council is returning from close session at 7:01 p.m. Um, city attorney, can you please report on the close session item? There are no items to report. Thank you so much. So now we're going to move to the uh proclamation. Uh invocation indication. Thank you. Sorry.

Hi, I'm Pastor Robert Tishliff from Radiant Life Church. Good evening, Mayor Yep, distinguished council members, residents, and guests. I would invite you to bow your heads with me in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the bountiful blessings that we enjoy and often take for granted. God, we thank you for this delightful weather that has wiped the rain away. And Lord, we thank you for the tremendous opportunities that we have for growth, expansion, and community building. We thank you for the freedom that we enjoy every day because so many have paid the price for us. Father, I pray today that you would grant wisdom for those who lead, safety for our first responders, hope for our children, and Lord, a special prayer for the Lodi High School teacher who was taken from campus to the hospital yesterday. May you bring healing to him and comfort to his family during this time and to the students and faculty and staff of Lodi High as they feel the weight of his health situation. Lord, may we be welcoming to those who visit our community. May we be hospitable to our neighbors, respectful of our differences, and filled with joy at all the possibilities before us. I pray these things in Christ Jesus name. Amen. God bless you and God bless the people of Lord.

Thank you so much for coming today. So now we'll do the flag salute to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nationy andice for all. This is a regular meeting for April 15, 2026 convening at 7:03 p.m. City Clerk, uh, can you please do roll call, Council Member Bregman here, Council Member Nanishi, Council Member Craig Hensley here, Mayor Prom Hot, Mayor Yopez

here.

Thank you. Okay. So, we have a few uh uh presentation this evening and um so first I would like to invite the chief of police Ricardo Garcia to do some of those uh proclamations. Thank you. Good evening, mayor, members of the council. I'd like to invite our animal services uh representatives that are here today up to join me at the podium, please. So, as they work their way up here, I want to thank you again for allowing us to bring these proclamations forward and recognize um some very important people today. So, animal care and control appreciation week. So, whereas the week of April 12th through the 18th, 2026 is designated as animal care and control appreciation week to recognize and thank all animal services control officers and personnel. And whereas every day in our city, dedicated animal services officers work to protect both people and animals. They respond daily to community needs such as rescuing animals, addressing dangerous situations, investigating neglect, and educating the public on responsible care. And whereas shelter personnel perform critical daily responsibilities by providing medical care, nourishment, and safe, humane environments for animals awaiting adoption or reunification. And whereas the Lodai City Council commends the animal services officers and shelter personnel for their dedication to the health, safety, and

protection of the residents and animals of Lodi. Now therefore be resolved that on behalf of Mayor Yep, Ramon Yepz, mayor of the excuse me, that on behalf of Ramon Yep, mayor of the city of Lodi, we do hereby proclaim the week of April 12th through the 18th, 2026 as National Animal Care and Control Appreciation Week in Loi in honor of the men and women whose diligence and professionalism keep our city, its animals, and residents safe. Thank you. Megan, would you like to say a few words?

All right. Um, our animal services manager, Megan Ramsey, would like to say a few words.

Thank you. On behalf of our entire department, thank you for this proclamation. National Animal Care and Control Appreciation Week is a meaningful way to honor our officers who work tirelessly to keep our community safe and our animals protected. Our team is out in the field every day balancing public service with deep compassion. Whether they are rescuing the neglected or reuniting lost pets with their families, they handle every challenge with resilience. It is a demanding role that requires both unwavering strength and genuine empathy, and I am immensely proud of their dedication. We're so grateful to council for acknowledging their dedication and service to our city. Thank you. You have another one. Kelly, if you please join us. So next we have National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week. So whereas every day public safety dispatchers answer calls for police emergency services and coordinate law enforcement operations throughout the city to ensure timely responses critical to the protection of life and preservation of property. And whereas public safety dispatchers notify emergency personnel with clear and accurate information and ensuring the

safety of our police officers. They keep loved ones calm and assured in an emergency and they offer guidance and support in our most frantic and panic moments. And whereas public safety dispatchers are the single vital link for our police officers as they monitor officers activities by computer and radio and serve in multiple roles to support the department beyond the excellent assistance they provide in the communication center. And whereas Loai Police Department public safety dispatchers have contributed substantially to the apprehensions of criminals. And whereas each dispatcher has exhibited compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their job in the past year. Now, therefore, be it resolved that on behalf of Rammones, mayor of the city of Loi, we do hereby proclaim the week of April 12th through the 18th, 2026 as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week in Lodi in honor of the men and women whose diligence and professionalism keep our city and residents safe. Thank you. So, dispatcher Kelly Michaels is here on behalf of our dispatch team. The other ones are busy answering calls and doing all the great stuff they do to protect our city. We're grateful for their service and they are often the first they are the first voice that everyone hears and they're always behind the scenes. They probably have or they do have the most contact with our residents than anybody else in the police department and they quietly diligently do their job and they and animal services play a vital role in our police department and serving this community. So, thank you, Kelly.

It's up to you. Okay. I sit behind the phone for a reason. Uh on behalf of all of dispatch, we appreciate their recognition and thank you so much to the council. So at At this time, um, I'll invite all the volunteers that were invited to join us today from, um, boards and commissions to public works volunteers to parks volunteers, PD volunteers. Um, please come up so that we can acknowledge all the wonderful things that you do for us. I'm good.

Doesn't make it doesn't make it any less nerve. So, I have one more, so bear with me. This is an important one. All of them are important, but this one is National Volunteers Week. So whereas the city of Loi is fortunate to have many volunteers throughout the city assisting and providing the very best service to our community. And whereas public library volunteers assist as tutors, coaches, and instructors handle general library needs and serve on several boards. And whereas public works department volunteers donate their time to accomplish specific projects from the coastal cleanup to the storm drain detectives. And whereas the parks, recreation, and cultural services department has more than 2,000 volunteers who assist with its youth and adult sports programs, scout programs, boards, committees, commissions, and foundations. And whereas Lodi City Employees Association volunteers have participated in many community events throughout Lodi. And whereas Loi Fire has two volunteer chaplain who are available 24 hours a day to talk with, pray for, and minister to those in need who have experienced the death of or serious injury of a loved one. And whereas the Loa Animal Shelter has 20 volunteers who selflessly dedicate their time, energy, and compassion to the care and well-being of animals in need. And whereas the police cadet program engages local youth volunteers to gain valuable experience during their high school and college years with many transitioning to full-time career in law enforcement. And whereas police chapency program members provide daily support for the LOI police department personnel and the residents of Lodi, administering emergency response and providing emotional support and assistance. And whereas the Partners Foundation has contributed 32 years of service to LOI Police Department patrolling city streets, parks, and schools. And whereas we also thank the

community volunteers who serve behind the scenes on many other boards and commissions. And now therefore, be it resolved that on behalf of Ramon Yep, mayor of the city of Loi, we do hereby proclaim the week of April 19th through the 25th, 2026 as National Volunteers Week. And we extend our most profound appreciation to the many outstanding volunteers and board members who have provided volunteer service to improve the quality of life for all members of our community. And I thank you all for what you do. You make our community and our city a lot better. Thank you. I'm going to be fined if I don't say something now, but I'm in Kowanas Lo Kuanas and that's my president. So, can we give a shout out one more time to Loi Kowuanas Club? Just one more. All right. That saves me a dollar in fines. So, thank you. These are cheap.

So I would like to call progressando.

All right. So um so this is comes from the my account to the progressando and I'm going to let uh the organization talk about the good work that they're doing here in the city of LA and with this money where they what they're going to be able to do.

Well, you're here. Uh good evening honorable Mayor Jeep and council members. Uh my name is Berta Castro uh president of Unitos Progressando. Uh my service to Lai started years ago at Washington School with a food pantry and clothes closet. After retiring, my partner and friend Julie Jensen and I found a group of partners with the same heart. Uh together we opened this nonprofit to continue serving our city. Uh today we are making a huge impact with our literacy program, English and citizenship classes that are changing lives every day. We also have a food pantry once a month and we also work with the Mexican uh consulate in Sacramento to help families uh finding legal representation. We are very grateful for this support but it also shows how much us uh we can work together and achieve more. Uh right now many women in Lorai are looking for answers and safety. Uh they need someone to walk them through court and help them with legal forms. I once again I would like to invite the city council that we can work together to ensure that these families find the help and the healing that they need here in Lorai. Also tonight I want to you guys to meet some of our students. There are two over here. uh they are the heart of our program and uh I want to introduce you Monica our vice president also uh she's going she's a key uh member of our board his

work uh her work is extremely valuable to us and she will explain to us how we going to use that grant to help our students thank Thank you. I'm going to speak in Spanish for honorable Lisa Craig Cameron Breman. classes. particip Gracias.

Yes.

Okay. So, we will present that check now. Go to the picture.

It's It's Ramon. America. All right. Uh, city clerk, can you please introduce uh consent calendar?

Yes, mayor. Tonight we have on consent calendar items C1 to C12. Tonight, our consent calendar does not have any changes um or any pulled items. So, we submit it as is for council's review and approval. Will any members of the council would like to pull an item? Um, mayor. Yes. Item C6, justformational. Okay. Um, anyone else? Um, any member of the public will to pull an item? Seeing none. Uh, Mr. Mayor, I'm going to go ahead and pull C101. Okay, perfect. All right, let's start with C6.

Oh, I'm sorry. Um, all I wanted to do was just note that in reading through the information provided by Transdev Services incorporated if um I might ask Mr. Nathan to just give us it looks like we are actually getting uh a number of services out of that that are extremely beneficial and even a little beyond the scope of work. Might you outline those because I think it's great to hear uh what we're going to be receiving in terms of additional benefits. So I'm actually going to call up our transportation manager Julia Tayak who's here. She can talk about that a little more. Long time no see. Good to see you again.

Good evening, mayor, members of our council. Um, so yes, so TransDev is our existing transit operations contractor, but we did select them and um they'll be starting um the next round, July 1. the um the things that they are um bringing on board at no additional cost um they are providing management and technical assistance with our fleet electrification roll out and our IT project um and then there's a my transit manager app for paratransit passengers um we we still need to see how this rolls out of course but um I think that's a huge benefit um and then um there's a a proprietary tracking tool called shadow for on-time performance we currently definely don't have um a good on-time tracking on-time performance tracking system. So, we've brought that. We've had the contractor take that on with this new contract. And then um we were using the transdev um experience uh it's t dot or text I think is what they call it. Um they did a really good job um during the current contract uh reaching out to customers and um evaluating um how the systems working for everyone. So, um they're going to do that again and I think it's been really good. We're we're really happy with this contractor. They've done a great job. So, um yeah,

and if I can ask, I think that there was just as part of the paratransit u providing educational information out to our senior citizens and um I thought that that was something extremely important. I know our senior citizens committee and um our senior center l center would certainly benefit from having more information about our transit system. And I I was very glad to see that's something that they uh are going to do as part of this contract. Great point. Yeah, they're definitely going to be working on additional outreach and um and information sharing and um education to our residents. We do that as well, but we have limited staff and so we appreciate their their help with that. So, thank you. Glad to hear it. Thank you very much. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr.

Thank you. So, now we'll move to C10. Uh yes, I'm actually going to speak on both C10 and C11 if that is okay. Uh this is a part of my council district funds and long overdue. I've changed a few times. Originally it was going to go to the fire foundation. Unfortunately, I've been conflicted out. Uh and then I was going to give it to the police foundation. Well, my dad's on the board there, so I can't give it there. Um so my mission was to give this to a foundation that is closely related to the city. I don't know if you know my perspective on the nonprofit funds. Um, but that's what I wanted to do. And to date, we have 15,000 going to Loi Partners and we have 5,000 going to the LOI chapency. And so what I'd start out with saying is, uh, chief, I believe we have somewhere around 40 volunteers for our volunteers department. That's correct. I'm sorry to put you on the spot. I believe it is about 40. And I believe at one point the city was around 70. But these are individuals uh some of them passed to law enforcement and they spend their time of day to help alleviate a lot of the duties that would go to officers and again our our parade of lights for instance who helps with that event who helps block and and close down roads. It's our volunteers. Um they pay for their own vehicles. They pay for their own uniforms out of their own pocket. Okay. Um and again these are uh typically people that are on fixed incomes. And so, uh, some of these individuals have even had to resign because they don't have enough funds to afford a $4 to500 uniform. Um, so again, if you are listening to this, uh, thank you for your service to the city of Loi. Uh, and and we appreciate your continued service. Um, and so that does mean a lot and thank a partner if you do see one. The second item is our chapency program and that services both our uh police

department and our fire department. And I'll give you an example. My my brother is a firefighter in in Seattle now. And I I have even witnessed myself multiple car wrecks. I pulled out two kids that had flipped over because of a person on I5 um who didn't see them either. Um I've witnessed things. I've heard stories of some of the things that our our first responders go through. Um, and I don't think that anyone who's not in that line of service will ever know what you're going through. But what I can tell you is you guys deserve to be able to talk to somebody. And uh, as a man, sometimes that's very very difficult to do, right? Sometimes we don't want to bring it home to our wives or uh, whoever. But um you know, God bless the the individuals that are part of that chapency program because um PTSD and everything else that goes along with uh what you guys go through is is uh not easy to bear. So thank you for the things that we do see and thank you for the things that we don't see that you guys go through. So uh God bless you guys and God bless the Lodi Chap Association. So thank you very much and uh very proud to be able to part help direct some of this funding. And again, this is all taxpayer money. So, it is a thank you to our taxpayers and uh thank you to the city to be able to prepare this tonight. So, thank you.

Uh we entertain a motion now. Move to approve the consent calendar.

Okay. and it passes. So, now we're going to move to uh public comments. Uh, city group, do we have any public comments on non-aggenda items?

Yes, mayor. I do have a couple of comment cards and I there are members of the public online. So, I'm just going to u make a statement just real quick. If you are online and you would like to submit a public comment, please uh click the raise your hand button and I will um call on you as soon as I have called on the uh public comment cards or the speakers that are here in person. And with that uh the first comment card I have is from Olivia Miller. Good evening, council members. Um, I'm Olivia Miller and I work downtown in Loi. I'm here to speak for myself and other downtown employees who are dealing with the parking issues, safety concerns while we're just trying to do our jobs. Um, I spoke at not the last meeting, but the meeting before that, and you guys directed me to speak at the LOA improvement committee meeting. Um that was last night and I did and uh all four members voted in support of helping us to work on immediately stopping the ticketing of employees while we're currently at work and then um hopefully figuring out down the line. I know it takes time for these things, but figuring out um a parking permit situation, some kind of safe parking for employees. Um, I know I only have a few minutes up here, but I presented a PowerPoint yesterday with, um, some long-term solutions, um, short-term solutions. Right now, I think you guys absolutely have the ability to stop ticketing people while we're at work. Um, and you could do that by us submitting our pay stubs and our license plate numbers, so proof of employment, and then our cars. At least in the meantime, while we figure out a long-term option for safe parking, uh there's parking permits you can pay for, but it's also shared with public

parking. So, it feels pretty redundant to pay for a parking pass that's shared with public parking. So, you don't have a guaranteed place to park. And then also a big concern with um just safety. You know, the parking garage is not a safe place to park. Even with the third layer closed off, you would think it would be safer. There's less people in there. That's not the case. Um, I had emailed uh today to Jennifer was here yesterday. I'm sorry. I'm not sure what her position is, but um I emailed her a petition I've been working on. It has about 185 signatures from downtown employees who just also agree the parking's an issue. So, um yeah, I've I've done my part in what you guys have asked me to do in terms of, you know, going to the improvement committee and um from what I heard, that's just a process of them to get put on the agenda at a further meeting for city council to show their support. But um yeah, I'm asking for something to immediately be done about ticketing people while we're at work. Um just speaking for myself, I can't afford to get a ticket while I'm at work. A $45 ticket. That that might be some times what I made in a shift. I don't feel like that's very fair. Um and again, a huge safety issue with parking. Parking garage isn't safe. There's not a lot of safe parking, not a lot of patrolling. Um, two different women I've spoken to while going around getting signatures have found men under their cars, under their vehicles when they go to go back to their car in the parking garage. And I just don't feel like that's very safe. I don't want to deal with that. I've been personally harassed walking to my car after work. My car's also been broken into while I was at work in 2023. Um, so yeah, I'm just trying to show you guys how much of an issue this is. And um yeah, thank you.

Right. Thank you for your comment. Next comment.

The next comment card I have is from Lindsay Davis.

Good evening, council and staff. My name is Lindsay Davis. I'm coming to you tonight as just a member of the public uh with the awareness of downtown parking being an issue increasingly. Um I'm not here to speak on behalf of the improvement committee as we do have in the works. ongoing thing that will have to go through due process and I'm sure that hearing the concern on repetition will put the council on due diligence to do something for our employees downtown as without downtown employees we don't have a downtown business situation and we need that for the public and for the thriving downtown to stay the hub of Loi's continuing growth. Um aside from that aspect of it I would like to bring some suggestions potentially to kind of alleviate a future problem. So my I thought about this overnight and granted it's been 24 hours since I've kind of had this brought to my attention. Um the real estate of parking is not going to grow. The amount of land that we have in Loi does not expand just because we need more parking. Um we can't unless we're tearing down businesses to put in uh parking spaces. we really are going to run out of real estate for parking for even just people coming in to do their shopping. And as we increase the desire to come downtown and do our shopping, we're going to increase the cars that come down here. So my thought was um how are we going to alleviate this going forward? Not just for employees but for general public and visitors. Um, and so I was thinking, I'm glad the transportation is here tonight because I had this idea in my mind that uh what if there was a shuttle for employees that would I know that the the excuse me, the grape line goes to and from or goes around the city and collects students for free after school, before school, and I'm not sure of the exact schedule for that. However, um if we can offer transportation for our students, I would assume there's a

potential way to create some kind of discount or even um free access for shuttling between businesses downtown and the garage. I think the garage needs to be utilized. Um but the garage also needs to be safe. So if and I talked to Chad Samra about neighborhood watch as I was interested in implementing that into my own neighborhood but he also mentioned that there's something called business watch and it's free of charge to have surveillance with business watch. So if you can implement business watch somehow if that's even possible into the garage. So you have 24-hour v uh video surveillance and maybe a third party patrol and then you have a shuttle that takes employees to and from the garage so they don't have to worry about walking past the bars at night or even during the day. You never know when people are lurking with an intent to um harass or intimidate you. So for members of our downtown public that wish to feel safe going to and from work, I think it would be wise, if not advisable, to offer that sort of service to keep them downtown. We want to have our businesses downtown. We downtown, excuse me. We want our employees to feel safe. Um, and not to price them out of being able to work. Um, hearing that, you know, a ticket is $45 and that could be potentially an entire shift and you have a ticket, that's really discouraging to want to continue coming to work downtown. So, I'm sure there has to be something soon that's done. Um, another thing I was thinking about was potentially a trolley that would go and and this is for future for tourism for just people who want to come downtown and go shopping. What if you had a trolley that went from Loi Avenue to Lockford and just all day just would kind of back and forth up and down School Street and shoppers can drink their wine and not have to worry about driving around, you know, under the influence because they can have their wine, they can go to restaurants, they can do their shopping, and if they want to go up three blocks, they don't have

to worry about getting in their car, driving three blocks, circling four blocks around to find a parking spot to go into one store that may not even be open that day. But if you had a trolley that went up and down school street just picking up every block, people could utilize that. Even if you charged a fee, I'm sure people would be willing to pay a dollar or$2 dollars just to be able to go up and down downtown for their uh time there visiting downtown. And then after and that's all I have to say tonight. And hopefully we can figure out something quickly for downtown. question for Miss Lindsay or is it question overall about the subject because we can wait until the end of everybody's stories about Miss Miss Lindy. You want to say something to her or

Well, it would be to her point. Okay. So, wait until when all the comments do we have a few comments? Yeah. Thank you. Actually, mayor, that's all the comment cards I have and I don't see any hands raised on uh Zoom. So, you're welcome to move on to um either you could probably move on to the next one, which is comments by city council members on non-aggenda. So, Mr. Begman,

so excellent uh idea about transportation department uh for council and city manager. our transportation department uh is not hurting for funds. Um which is excellent. Um might be time that we're able to leverage that department in general for maybe some downtown transportation items as far as the workers go. And then number two, maybe economic development just for future ideas. Uh some type of trolley for tourism. Just throwing that out there now. Um, but I would definitely be interested to see if there's any opportunity for us to utilize a transportation department. Um, for instance, if we had a taxi cab driver that worked on nights, um, if we did have that individual in contract and allowed our downtown business owners to allow their employees to schedule or call in, and that's a pay for service if people believe there's a safety issue. So, I I think it's a good idea. I think it's one way to solve it. Um I don't believe we can use transportation money for infrastructure. So I don't think we can use it for a parking garage. Um but I'm I'm curious if there's any other infrastructure we're able to use it for. So um might be another item to bring back up to. Thank you.

So now, um Councilwoman Craig.

Thank you, Mr. Um I think it was important that this issue went to the LOI improvement committee because these issues need to first go to the committees that we developed to address these issues or give recommendations or work with council to get that information up to us. So I appreciate Miss Miller you coming in and Miss Davis uh hearing this issue last night and bringing it to our attention. Um, we are not a wellunded transportation department. I know that. Um, we get a lot of our money reimbured through grants and so it does not pay for itself. Um, I'm from a city uh worked in a city that had a trolley for visitors. So, uh, Miss Davis, I believe that's a a good idea, but it has to be part of our short short-term transit plans. And I would say that if we're going to re-evaluate the transit plan that we need to understand what we're going to lose to gain something like this. There is a cost associated with it. So that being said, I also know that um the DBA and the chamber, Mr. Clax, thank you for being here tonight, understand that there's an issue here and have stepped forward to say we'll work with the business owners uh to see what can be done. I I think I'm correct in saying that. So, I would pass this off to our city manager and ask that perhaps working with uh the DBA and the chamber and those concerned about employee parking looking at some of the suggestions that were made um working via or through the loi improvement committee to bring something more specific and concrete back because I don't think we need to have a discussion at the dis. This is not you know spitballing what are the solutions. This is where we make final decisions based on the best recommendations and what we understand can be a fiscal impact. So um kind of turn it over Mr. Mayor to our city

manager. So I think another council member wants wants to say something else. So I will call recommend. I do have a quick question for transportation director. Are you able to give us just a very quick and small rundown of our budget? And I have been wrong before but I am curious what our physical health is

thank you again. Um, so, um, I would, sorry. So, do you mind if I just give you a little bit of background? We actually have done various iterations of a shuttle, um, in the past, a s Santa shuttle, more during the holidays. Um, we've done different pilot projects over the years as different council members have requested. And we also have 247 camera service um, cameras at the parking structure um, that PD has access to. So, just a just a heads up about that. And I Chief Garcia does have some data that um he shared with me about calls for service at the parking structure. So, I do know we have some issues with vandalism. Um but we have we pay a lot of money for our um our security guards, about $20,000 a month to cover the parking structure, all three levels, and then the transit station and the bus parking area. So, um it's a the parking structure is a big cost to transit. Um so, and we kind of hemorrhaged money on it, I'll be honest, especially with like infrastructure like repairs and stuff. So, um so in terms of our you're requesting like numbers about uh like our revenues and kind of how um Okay. So we have an operating budget about 5 million in operating. Um but those we have those are dedicated for um the transit operations contract as well as administration, our CNG um compressors, our facilities. Um and so um the out of that we do pay for the um the parking structure, excuse me, the security guards which operate you know cover the entire transit parking structure and the um transit station. So um we have to we haven't budgeted specifically for um sorry I'm just not

you're you're wanting kind of an idea of our revenue. I apologize. I know this is completely unexpected for me to so um what do we have in our reserves currently for the department?

So I think I think there might be a miss um I I just want to be clear. So we work on a reimbursement basis and so we have federal transit administration funds um that we we have to apply for grants and um for specific ex for operating um and then for capital projects. And so, um, we're in the in the middle right now of, um, applying for another FTA grant, um, that's going to cover our 2526 and 2627, um, operating budget. And then we have specific, it's a best improvement project that we're doing for capital. Um, so the TDA funds are the ones that we have kind of set aside um, and they're, um, maintained at Sanwalking Council of Governments and then we submit TDA claims. And then there was one item on this consent that we just did for that.

I I think I might have cut you off guard. If possible, uh would you be able to just send a some summary and numbers? Okay. To council uh just via email. Okay. And just for our like our current our current uh standing and maybe look and you've given presentations to council before um but again since it is a subject matter it just might be good for us to

Okay. Yeah. there just those funds. We need them for specific purposes is like a critical piece like our especially our um bus electrification process progress excuse me project. So we need to make sure we're um those it's not like kind of slash funds I guess is the key. We I just that when we presented in the past there had been a concern that the transit division was not properly funded and that we couldn't cover our needs like at previous budget presentations. So when we have made that presentation, we wanted to make it clear we do carefully manage our funds. Um but we just we don't have like a a slush fund I guess is the key we want to the point I want to make but absolutely we can present um where we stand with our our various revenue sources.

Thank you. That would be great.

Thank you. Um I think um this is not agenda item so we cannot be discussing this. So I just allow for a little bit. So this we're going to ask our city manager because this topic has been talked about multiple times so many times. So I ask you to look at the practice see what we can do look at all the reports and everything and you will bring that item later. Um we'll absolutely do that. I know that a variety of different city departments are working on this subject. So, you know, we've already kind of been gathering information that we can come back and share with council. Um, does the task also include me reaching out uh as requested to DVA and chamber? Absolutely. Then we'll work with them as well

and the property owners please too because we need them input of the not the property owners but the business owners which we need their input because I think they would rather have parking for their customers than their their employees. So, I guess we need to put everybody's perspective in this. It's not just one side. It has to be all the community.

Mr. Mayor, I think too that maybe we leave it up to the DBA and to the um uh chamber because they're the ones that are connected with the businesses. So maybe they have may have a representative or two and then I would anticipate that the um uh employees would have somebody that they would like to have part of the discussion. But um this issue should come to the business owners and the business owners say hey this is how we work with our employees on this issue or not or you know I think they're as responsible as anyone for ensuring that you know they've got a safe environment for for their employees. So um I really do put it on the business community. So

uh I think working through the DBA is a good idea. That's what they're there for. Um, what I would also mention is I'm a representative of downtown. And so again, if you feel like you're being underrepresentative, feel free to reach out. You don't have to work through them. And just let you know in the crowd just spoke. Um, I'll just let you know that the quorum of it is we can't actually talk to you over the DAS. You're only allowed to speak once. I know city government is annoying sometimes. I'm just letting you know. So, thank you. So when uh when that item you were going to have an opportunity to talk to us or you can email us you can email me today and I will I think somebody else uh met with you but if you are available tomorrow we'll meet with you. Yeah come email me tonight and I will email you what times I can. Okay. Thank you. Yes. All right. So, we're going to move now to um non-aggenda items for council members.

Seeing none. Oh, yeah. Sorry, I'm talking a lot tonight. Uh AB585, wine and labeling. Uh Lisa, I assume you're up to date on this as well. Oh, yeah. We have a letter. Did I sign it?

Yeah. Um, just as a a point of education for the public, as we all know, Loi wine grapes are and or grape vines are being pulled out at every single turn. Um, one of our issues is that uh, again we sell our our wine grapes to Napa and they put 49% of ours in 51 of theirs and they call it Napa wine and uh, the labeling of such bottles uh, using Loi wine and American wine and California wine um, again has to be done in the right light and so again if you're interested in some of the commerce of Loi and uh, that to do with wine grapes look up AB 1585. Um, it should pass through our assembly. Hope it does and I hope our representative wants to pass it as well. Uh, besides that, I did attend Lorraine Kazakian's funeral today. Uh, she was 105 years old. She was actually Bo Kazakian's wife. For those of you that don't know, Bo Kazakian was a former mayor of Loi multiple times over um, and one of the most prominent figures of Loi. So, um, with the family mourning for her passing. So, thank you. That's it.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would just, uh, note that, uh, city council members were fortunate to attend the Sanwaqin Historic Society and Museum, uh, a presentation in recognition to the Daughters of American Revolution, uh, who are sponsoring a, um, American 250 celebration uh traveling exhibit there and it's only there until April 21st. Loi is only the second city in California to receive it and it's a pretty remarkable presentation. So, uh, if you have not, uh, gone to the Sanwin Historic Society Museum, it will be there through the 21st. And I encourage everyone to stop by and learn a little bit more about our American independence and, uh, the various men, women, um, and, uh, diverse, uh, ethnicities that were part of, uh, our fight for independence. So, um, thank you, Mr. Mayor, for attending that event as well.

Thank you so much. Um, Seeing no more comments, we're going to move to a regular calendar.

Mayor, tonight we have three items on our regular calendar. And the first one, G1, is to receive a presentation and report from Hoslet Forensics on the forensic accounting audit of the city's utility deposit account, procurement card charges, and Amazon account purchases. and I'm going to um hand it over to our budget manager Janelle Baker and she will introduce the item. Well, good good evening mayor and city council members. Um tonight we are I am introducing Steve Hoslett from Hoslet Forensics. He was um contracted with on September 3rd by um approval of councel and he was charged to um audit the utility deposit account, Calard transactions and statements and the Amazon business account transactions and he we have been working with him closely giving him access full access to our finance. um Tyler Munice um oh my gosh software program and also full access to the US bank um account that holds our Cal card um all of its functionality and then also our Amazon business account. So he has his findings here for a presentation tonight. So here's Mr. Steve Hoslett. Thank you very much. So if you don't can you change the slides just the next one. Uh so we like like she mentioned we're engaged to look at three different areas. The utility deposits we looked at and we looked at them in depth. Uh the second two cow card testing and the Amazon purchase testing. They kind of go hand inand because almost all the uh the Amazon purchases are on the cow cards.

So, I'm just going to give you a quick overview of kind of what we did uh and what we found and kind of a go forward plan that we that we've discussed with the city. So, if you don't mind hitting the next slide. So, the first thing we'll talk about is the utility testing. Uh back in uh April of 2025, there was a presentation given to the city council uh uh in the city council meeting. And in that presentation, there was a calculation that was done that essentially said, "Hey, we have a,680,000 in the utility deposit fund and we should only have 482,000 in actual deposits. So therefore, we got a difference of about 1.2 million." When we went and looked at this, the way it was calculated to get the 482,000 in deposits, they just simply took the number of new deposits in a 12-month period and then they multiplied it by the average deposit to come up with 482,000. Clearly, when we looked at that, that doesn't make any logical sense because at the end of the day, there is customers that have deposits that are more than one year old. We have we have multiple years worth of deposits. So, when I saw this calcation. I just simply wanted to point out this is there's a couple calculations that were done that created a little bit of confusion back in the April 2025 time frame. And when we looked at it, we think when you look at it that they were just erroneous calculations and the reality of it is in this one is there's customers that have deposits that are 10 years old, 15 years old. There's customers that didn't have IDs and social security numbers. Their customer deposits are held forever. So, taking 12 months worth of customers, a multimillion deposit, it just simply isn't correct on there. So, that's number one. Uh, number two, there was a consultant that was brought in and they

did an analysis and when they did their analysis, they came up and compared and they did it as of June 30th, 2024. And what they did is they compared the general ledger balance. There's first of all, there's two there's a general ledger balance and then there's a there's a a software system that actually tracks the deposits itself and they interface automatically to each other. They should agree. There's no doubt that they should agree and they should reconcile. But what they did is they they took the June 30th, 2024 balance of uh uh of a,543,000 and then they got a report of all the deposits as of March 2025 and for some reason they excluded all the deposits from 2018 and before. And that sounds like a long time, but there's the customers that that just simply have deposits for years and years and years and years. And so they excluded $488,000 worth of deposits that should have been included. That's flaw number one. And flaw number two is because they used a March 25th 20ou March 2025 report and they compared to June 2024, all the people got that got their deposits refunded during that time frame from July 2024 to the March 2025 dropped out of the system. So they weren't in there. So that accounted for about $200,000 worth of deposits that dropped out. So to make a long story short, they came up with that there should be $842,000 in deposits compared to the general ledger or a balance of 1.5 million. And it's flawed. There's just no way around it. Uh it's flawed as well on there. Next one. The second thing uh the second thing they brought up was uh they did they did an analysis of comparing the the the way the load system works and it's done automatically is if you go 12 months without paying without missing a pay or having a late payment you get

your deposit back. So it doesn't matter what 12 months once you hit the 12-month period you get your deposit back and then if they need to charge another one they will. So what they did is they used a a a cell or a a field in the utility deposit system that said times late. That's what the the cell was. So So what it appeared to be was the number of late payments people had. And as you can see with the the item that's boxed, there is 274 customers in that report that are over 12 months over one year that had no late payments in that times late field. So theoretically, those 274 people should have got their deposits back. We started looking at it and it just didn't pass the common sense test because if there's 274 people like that, then they should be asking for their deposits back. You should be getting a lot of requests that are going outside the system. And as I'll state in a minute, that just didn't happen. What we finally did is we started drilling down and looking at the customers in that field and looking at their actual payments. And that feels just erroneous. It says that there's no late payments, but we'll pull a customer up and they've got eight late payments in a year, so they shouldn't get it back. Unfortunately, with this the way the system set up, we were not able to get in there to see how that field actually is generated. But I know that field is not being used to give the dust customer deposits back. So, at the end of the day, when they look at this report or this schedule, that's just not happening. and the city does not owe $230,000 worth of deposits back to people because the system's not working appropriately. This report also points out the other error. There's 27 2760 accounts. The city really has about 6,600 accounts. So that points out again the flaw with the 88 842 uh deposits. So, make a long story short, unfortunately, that consultant's

report just didn't accurately depict what was going on and unfortunately muttered up the water a little bit more in the utility deposits. So, what we did, next slide, please, is two things. We went and looked at all the deposits in the utility deposit module and compared that to the general ledger. And there's a couple things that are that vary in it, but the reality of it is the account hasn't been reconciled for about four, five, six, seven years, probably since the conversion in 2018. And when you don't reconcile accounts, errors happen because there's manual adjustments in there. And so, make a long story short is there's a balance of difference of about 67,000. We haven't nailed that down perfectly because there's some a lot of moving parts every month, but it's not going to be much more than that. And so we're going to adjust the accounting system to that and then reconcile it every single month. The auditor, one of their claims is is that we don't reconcile. When I say we, the city of Loi does not reconcile the count. And that's true. They don't reconcile the count. So reconciling it to this will alleviate that. And every month it's reconciled, it'll get closer and closer and closer and we'll get it down to a point where I mean, it's going to be small enough that the auditors most likely will not care one bit. at the end of the day, they just need it reconciled and and we're going to get it there at the end of the day. The second thing we did is very similar to what the consultant did. It's the bottom chart. We went and looked at the current accounts that were uh that were open and there's 6,624 of them that are open. Those deposits we believe are uh accurate and should be held. The second thing when you look at the report is there's 142 accounts where the customers already closed their account. Clearly, if their accounts closed that either the customer either needs to be refunded the deposit or there's an error in in the in the in the system uh on there. What we found when we looked at these accounts is and we didn't look at all 42 of them. They

still need to be reconciled. But there's some places in the in the system you can put a date in to hold a deposit to a certain date. And if somebody erroneously puts a future date in there or the wrong date, it holds the deposit when it shouldn't be. So, there's some uh accounts that need to be analyzed and they need to be researched. And if there's money that's owed back to people, they should be paid back. I also truly believe at the end of the day that there's also accounts in here where people do manual adjustments. They moved a deposit from one account and they moved into an new house, so they moved it over there. So they've got their deposit, but it's just not reconciled on there. So that amount to 32,000. And then there's six accounts that are negative, which essentially says that we owe people back. I mean, they owe us money still. And those six accounts just need to be reconciled and removed. At the end of the day with regards to utility deposits, two one thing is we also looked at the number of complaints people had for a three-month period and there was nine people that came in and said they should have got their deposit back and they didn't. Out of those nine when we looked at them, what they primarily were is they were just at 30 days early. They would have probably got it on their next bill on there. So, we didn't find any big risk factors of people coming in and complaining saying, "Hey, the utility deposits are are not paying us back like they should be." The second thing is there's about 40 to 60 people that get get their utility deposits back every month automatically through the system. And if the system wasn't working appropriately, we would have more than nine people coming in in a three-month period complaining. So, in my opinion, the system is working appropriately and refunding the deposits to people who uh who need them. If there's anomalies where a date was put in incorrectly, there's going to be controls and we're in the process of implementing controls to just simply review dates in certain fields and it would catch it in a heartbeat. And that just simply hasn't been done. So if

there's a, you know, a date to hold a deposit through 2082 when it should have been 2025 in the system, then we just look at that that we can sort of report and and catch it really easy. So that's what I have on the utility uh deposits on there. I can keep going or take questions however you want to do it, but I'll keep going and then at the end whatever you want to the program is good. Their solution is reconcile basically. Right. Absolutely. That's what leave it like it is. Reconcile.

Yeah. There there's not an accounting any accounting software system or any accounting system that if you don't reconcile it, it won't get be off somehow. There's always issues somehow and and they're minor issues to be honest with you once it it's get gets cleared up for the first time. My next question is why wasn't it reconciled? That seems like it's a it's a practice you an accountant practice you should do. I agree with you. who it is and I and there's been controls put in place going forward. It's going to be reconciled. As to why it wasn't done in the past, I don't have an answer for you on that one. Thank you.

Thank you. Um I find it it's interesting. So customers with deposits, some of them 10 to 12 years old. Is that basically because they can't seem to make a payment on time for a 12-month period? we've been holding it for 12 years because they haven't been able to make a payment on time. Cons, you know, what do they miss three in a row and we hold it or two in a row and we hold it or um how do we how do we deal with those that are just sitting there?

To answer your question is the old ones where the deposit's been holded, it's really twofold. One is yes, there's customers you got to go 12 months straight and there's customers we looked at that just don't make it. They get two or three a year every single year and the deposit gets held. The other thing is if you come in and you do not have a an ID with a social security number, you have to put an additional deposit and that gets held until you close your account. So those ones will always be there until you close your account. Okay. So that's a separate deposit from Correct. So you could pay all of it on time. Your deposit gets refunded except for the one because you have no ID. And is that

is is there a reason behind that one? I mean, I'm not not quite sure if I understand because they they have to come in with something with identification to show if nothing a lease agreement or something that says here's where I live, here's my address, this is my name and so forth. I mean, what kind of identification is typically acceptable? So, so when we looked at it, what we did is we looked at what the current city policy is. And if you look at our report, I think the last couple exhibits actually have that in there. And that's the current city policy. How it came around, I can't answer that question. Unfortunately,

the city manager, I just want to know if that's an industry practice or if that's a practice all across our city for anything that we may require deposits for. That's fine. Well, I was just going to say if we don't have any identification number like a social security number, then we can't send them to collections if they do default on their payments over and over and over again. Yes. All right. So, um that is why we keep the deposit for a guarantee to at least recoup that amount of money if they default on paying us. Um and again, if they're renters, then they can take off and we wouldn't know an address, a boarding address to send those to. How about

Oh, I just had one more. So, the 270 people who should have gotten deposits back, is this just a human error thing? Somebody, you know, as you said earlier, somebody put 2082, it should have been 2025. We're not um reconciling so we don't see that. So it was a human error on the input originally. Is that kind of the idea here? Are you looking at the slide right now that has the the 142 with the 30 with closed accounts? I think it was the previous one I think. Well, the previous one was an error

that was done by the consultant and it was erroneous. where we where we were at when we analyze things is we've got 142 accounts that are closed for about $32,000. Some of them I truly believe are going to be owed back because a date just got input wrong. Like I said, if you input the date and instead of putting in 2025, you put in 2075, the system will automatically hold the deposit to that time frame. So the controls that are getting put in place will re will first of all reconcile and clean this up so it will not be there again. And then every month when uh the account is reconciled, if there is a negative, it'll get looked at. If there's an account that's closed that still has a deposit, it'll get looked at as well. Out of the 142, probably 25% of these are simply in process. You can put in and close an account, but you can close it in the like close it where it's going to be closed a month or two in the in the future. So, the account appears to be closed, but the reality of it is the deposit's not going to go back for another month or two because they're still living there. but they put the date in to get it closed. So, uh, so probably that's probably 25% of those, but the other ones simply need to be looked at. There was also conversion back in 2018

from the old system and the new system. The data wasn't available for 2018. I truly believe that the transition was good, but there's probably still accounts in there at that time frame that need to be cleaned up. At the end of the day, if we reconcile and the city reconciles these on a monthly basis, that number should be zero or whatever down to a very small number of just deposits that are being held for the next month until they actually truly close their account. All the other ones should be reconciled and gone. And honestly, it's not going to be a huge project once it's all squared away. So,

I appreciate hearing in place. So, that that's the key factor. So, of the of the accounts that are above 10 years, how many do we have of those that haven't that they haven't returned their deposit after 10 years? Can you go back two slides? I can get you close. Okay. Yeah, that's good. Uh, right. The deposits that are over 10 years old, if you look at the second line item down, I don't have the number, but the amount is about 488,000 of deposits that are over 10 years from 2018 and prior. Okay. And the policy is that until they make 12 consecutive payments, they get the 12 months in a row. You make it 11 and you miss the 12th, you start the clock again.

Okay. I I would like to revisit like uh city manager as a policy change maybe that after five years we kind of give them the money back after five years or 10 years. Can I put a really good caution in? If you make a change like that, the system they're going to have to go reprogram it all. And it's not a simple you just click a button and it goes it and it unless it's all done manually. The system right now is set up to m to do it all. And it was a very detailed uh algorithm or whatever they did to to do it. So while that that's an idea and I and I like it, it just it's going to be a little more work than just simply saying pay them back after five years.

Can we look in maybe accounts that have more than 10 years? Maybe the group will be less like the group of counts maybe is less. Anything more than 10 years? No. Do you know by any chance? I'm sorry. What was the question? Like before said I say after five years, but I'm saying in 10 years maybe that was going to reduce the number of accounts, right? It would it would reduce the dollar amount by about 480 grand. Okay. I don't know how many accounts it is, but it would be about 480 grand, which I guess if you look at it, it's probably going to be about a third of them or a quarter of them. Okay. Okay. So, right. Councilman Bregman,

I really don't know the right way to ask this, but it sounds like Baker Tilly screwed up by hundreds of thousands of dollars in their assessment. That's that's what it comes down to. Um my and I do appreciate the city and the city should be fixing our errors um as far as systems and checks and balances in the way. Uh my question though is do you think we should be using Baker Tilly in any other services? Um I look at this and I I don't have uh good thoughts to using them ever again. But I I I want to know is this a easy mistake to make or it did they really um just left and right screw this report up?

I will tell you that it it it should have been caught. But also tell you that the cell that they relied upon that says times late that we couldn't figure out how it was actually calculating it is calculating in your system. And I originally spent all the time going down the same path saying this times late column was in fact accurate and therefore we do got a problem until we started looking at the detail and realized that it's not accurate. At the end of the day Baker Tilly and Moss Adams I worked for them for about eight or 10 years and they are a very very good firm. I'm just at the end of the day, one of the reasons it took a little bit to get this done is I do a lot of the work myself and when I do that, I just wanted to make sure it's correct and I and I'm I just I went a couple extra steps.

Well, thank you for your quality. It shows. Yes. One question. Yeah. Any I for my for my education, we know we're doing a for forensic audit, right? How many more audits do you have for audits for our city? For the city? Yeah. How many more do you have? We have two more topics to talk about, but this is the only audit that I have going on right now. That's the only audit. Yes. So, thank you. Oh, then my question is, are we going to have the audit on credit cards? I'm going to show you that right now. Okay. Thank you.

Yep. If you want to go ahead and click forward. So the other two topics were looking at the the cow card or the credit cards and looking at the Amazon. They are one and the same. The Amazon purchases are all done primarily by the cow card. So the purchases all went through the cow card system on there. So when this came about I actually I have don't know exactly how it came about but there were some charges that were brought up that were supposedly personal about a year ago. Uh there was a gentleman by the name of Kevin Harper that was hired. He went in and did an analysis and looked at the cow cards and the Amazon purchases and his conclusion was there's no fraudulent transactions going on, but there might be some transactions that just simply don't go with policy. And there's a difference. A policy one is uh something along the lines of you're supposed to get 25 bucks for lunch and you and you put a bill in for 28 or something like that. fraudulent would be, hey, you're going and buying a whole bunch of p personal purchases and going to Disneyland on the on the on the, you know, the city's credit card on there. So, he went through and looked at it himself, uh, and came up with the conclusion that there was nothing fraudulent. The city then went through and through their own department went and did a very detailed analysis for I think four, maybe even five years. And when they did that, they came up with about $8,600 of quote unquote unapproved, not necessarily fraudulent, but unapproved charges. Uh probably about half of those, give or take, are things such as the meal allowance where you you're supposed to get 25 bucks and you put in 28 or you put in 34. The city has now rectified that. The city has gone to a standard lunch amount that they're going to pay. So you get X amount for breakfast, X amount for lunch, and X amount for dinner. Doesn't matter whether you spend less or more than that. That's what you get. It's a standard. It's used It's used I'm assuming it's used with a lot of government agencies, but it's used in

the IRS approves a lot of those on there. So, they got rid of that issue right there. It also saves a lot of time of people having to approve something and go looking saying, "Hey, did you spend 28 bucks when you should have spent 25 bucks?" So, that's the first thing. They also came across probably about another 25% of travel related charges that once again are not fraudulent but aren't necessarily approved like somebody getting an upgrade in a seat. You go to now Southwest you've got to pay for a seat up in the front of the plane. Somebody pays 28 bucks and it might not be a city policy to do that. Um and then there was another 25% or I'm just going to say they're miscellaneous random whatever they are. Keep to put this in perspective, we're talking about eight I think about $8,600 that was found over a foury year maybe fivey year period. The city charges about 2.2 million a year. So four years is $10 million worth of charges going through and we're talking about 8,600. Now, while every single dollar to the city of taxpayer money is very very important, when you look at it at the standpoint, I deal with embezzlements all the time and fraud things all the time and uh uh that this is what so I'm the third person that's gone and looked at it and I looked at it at a different way. I went through and downloaded two years worth of cow card activity and I sorted it every possible way you could possibly sort it by employees, by departments, by where money was being spent at hotels, uh by any different cap by merchants. You I mean you name it. I sorted it like 15 different ways. And then what I did is I looked at about 50 to 100 transactions on the system. and the ones that I thought were potentially high risk, I went and looked at them on the system, saw that they were approved, and then looked at the actual invoice or support that was with it on there uh on there. When I went through that, I'm going to tell you, I probably wouldn't catch somebody whose meals 28 bucks and they should have got 25 bucks. But I looked at enough transactions that I got

comfortable being the third person that's looked at them that the city does not have a huge issue related to this. One of the things that Moss Adams or uh brought up in their uh audit report is uh the the credit card approve are the charges are not being approved timely. And when I went through I you can see all the approvals at back in the a year ago. You can see that there's sometimes two, three or four months later, but I'll also tell you that there's a couple different people looking at and approving them. So, at the end of the day, we did we did that and then so and then that's been I think rectified and so they're starting to get them approved a little bit quicker. Um, but at the end of the day, we looked at a lot of stuff regarding the cow card transactions and that's kind of where we ended up. We can flip real quick over to Amazon because they go hand in hand. Amazon is essentially like I said the same thing. One of the issues with the Amazon and the city has since changed it is the city has a corporate account with Amazon. They allowed the city allowed employees to use to go on and buy things personally and then use their own personal credit card to pay for them. The city has since eliminated that and it's it's a good decision to eliminate it. We once again we downated two years worth of transactions. We went through and sorted it every possible way. And I started getting all these hits that are, oh, this is a beauty product or this is this and then then it looked like it was personal, but then we sorted them all by the city cow cards versus personal credit cards and they disappeared at the end of the day because they were paid for on a by a personal credit card. So, the city has adjusted that policy to only allow Cal card uh city cards to purchase things on Amazon. It eliminates a lot of headaches and having to check things because at the end of the day, it's it's just easier to do it that way. Um, what else? I think that's about it on the Amazon. Again, they just folded up with the cow

cards, so we kind of tested them both. Again, we looked at well over 100 transactions, you know, which is a small amount of the transactions, but we've isolated them down to the ones that appeared to be uh of highest risk. So, One last question. Yeah. Um, it satisfied me, right, as a city council member. What if a citizens want to see the same records you're seeing? What access to that? Ask the attorney.

City attorney. Well, most of the records that would be underlying this would be um either records related to expenditures uh or records related to inventories or other things and and just about all of that's going to be public information. Uh there may be redactions of of certain card numbers and different things like that. But when you're talking about the spending of public money, you're typically looking at documents that are going to be releasable even small amount. We're talking about thousands of credit card transactions. It's very likely that it's going to be public other than perhaps like I said the credit card. Are we obligated to give that information out if it's requested? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Um you can go back one slide.

Okay. Based on obviously many years of experience working municipalities on this, is 2.25 million a lot? Is that standard to be using Cal cards for purchases. Does it depend on the procurement process? Just kind of getting an idea because I did have somebody that when had read the report and called that number out and said that's an awful lot of Calard use and so um that's kind of one question. And then the other is I can't recall I know we established a new Cal card policy where not as many people now have the Cal cards but is there a standard too relative to how many Cal cards you know responsibly as city should consider issuing dependent on departments and you know procurement policies and things like that.

So I'm going to partially answer your question. I will I will tell you I don't do government work for my entire thing. I'm a litigation guy. I do embezzlements and anytime anybody's needs a litigation guy, that's what I do and consulting projects like this. But with that being said, when I re reviewed it, there are some departments that purchase a whole bunch of parts. Like, let's just take the maintenance department, they purchase a whole bunch of apartment parts on the with credit cards. And I don't know if there's an easier way to do it. There probably isn't. I think this way is probably the the most efficient than trying to issue a check or all that, but but they do it. So there is some of the departments that have a lot of charges on there uh on there. Um with that being said, whether it's standard across different governments, I'm going to have to pass this off to the people who know more than me.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. And just kind of a question because it is, you know, is 2.2 million percentage relative to budget and purchases pretty standard and not a big deal. I think that we feel much more comfortable having had a revisit of the calard policy and doing what we we can but if you know we can do better it's always good to know my guess is that you will see a fairly considerably lower number going forward because the number of cards has been dramatically reduced by department okay um that number doesn't really

scare me I guess um the practice that was mentioned with uh public works and and the yard and everything. That's pretty standard in my experience anyway. Um so, um I think it's something, you know, to continue monitoring, you know, as we've implemented these internal controls and going forward. Um it's not like we're going to say, "Okay, we're done. We're never going to look at it again." This is something that, you know, uh we've been talking about even as recent as today. uh you know about how we're going to continue to monitor the controls show um to the organization to council and to the community that you know we are very serious about you know protecting their money and being good stewards of it. So this this will be an ongoing you know subject that we'll continue to report out.

Thank you. Thank you Mr. H for your work. One more quick slide. And I want to say one thing. I will share with you this since we use the state Calcard program. Um they the state actually has a report of all the municipalities that opt into the program and what the spend is per quarter. So I can share that with you. Perfect. That'd be great. And also can we add what is the budget too so we can compare it because obviously I see that is like millions of people is to add some context to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I I can do a little analytical work for that.

So, one more quick point. When I was reviewing uh all the audits that had happened and the internal control memos for the last couple years, one thing has come up that I just wanted to bring up that you guys should consider going forward is Moss Adams had an audit finding in the last audit. I think the the last audit that the city does not currently have an internal audit department. you guys are a goodiz city. I think you should consider uh either one, there's two options. One, hiring an internal auditor or the other option is hiring an external firm to do the internal audit for the city on there. Um, not that I need any more work, but I've gone out to several businesses and they've been embezzled on multiple times. Brookside Country Club is one of them. not multiple times, but they got invested and I go out there every three months and I simply test every department during the year and go around and make sure that there's nothing happening. It's a very good relationship. So, I I think an external firm uh could give a lot of value and it could have potentially prevented a lot of things that we're talking about today uh on there. But I think it's it's an audit finding by Moss Adams and honestly I think it's a legitimate audit finding audit finding and the city should consider it especially in this day and age where people are getting more and more stories coming out about issues. So that is all I have by the way.

So going in that line of thought I'm going to ask Mr. City Manager to because we have we've been working on some of that stuff so he can illustrate that.

No, I would just echo the u the recommendation that my prior jurisdictions that this is just another layer of checks and balances to protect um you know the the work that's being done and just make sure that everyone's comfortable with the findings and so um where I've been before we used an external service to provide that that extra layer of checks. So I you know I'm in agreement with the the recommendation from both firms and that's something that we're putting before the council tonight and it's are interested in. We can come back at a future meeting with um you know action and updates on what that would look like in terms of moving forward.

Yeah, I I would uh as you stated, I want to start with an external firm. I think we have comfort when we're looking at an external firm uh to start with. I mean down the road if we get better practices in place and with a internal services director for example uh we can go to an internal that's fine but I think we have to start Mr. accept that recommendation. Yeah. No, I I agree. So, any more comments for the council? See not then I think recommendation is to Yep. Next item.

If I may real quick, one more comment. I would like to commend the accounting department over at the city lo. I have worked with a tremendous amount of companies and gone into a lot of different places and the accounting department was very very professional, very helpful and they do a very good job at the end of the day. That is all I have and you owe me $20.

Any questions? I think we need public comments. So I will open it to public comments now. Do we have any any couple of comments? Okay. Yeah, Miss Davis, I have a question about the $44,800,000 that's sitting the deposits over the last 10 years that were not um given back. Um typically when money of that amount is sitting in an account in a regular bank account, doesn't it acquire interest? Is there any sort of interest um accured with that money or how does that money sit? I will return the qu the question to finance.

Yes. Any excess fund balance that's not in that we use on a day-to-day cash is sitting in investments. Um so to answer your question, yes. I mean, but investment income can go up and can go down. Go ahead. So that being said, with money sitting and acrewing interest, where does that money go? And I'm assuming you don't pay interest back to the people who are owed back their deposit. So what do you do with the money that you cut off at the top that was acrewing interest? Who gets that money? And I'm going to finish my comment because that was really something I was sitting with was

Okay, we we've answered your question. Yeah. Well, we actually um we program our investment income now into our budget. So, it actually goes back into our operating for general fund. So, the money that's collected for that or if it is utility payments, then that would go into their fund balance for their operations as well until they need it. And a lot of times they program their fund balance for capital projects or um you know maintaining all of the systems that they have to maintain. Um but until that money is programmed and paid out, we try to keep it in investments. So we do earn that income so it's not just sitting in a cash account making nothing. Um, so we do do weekly cash flow reports to make sure um that we if we need the cash, it's on hand, but otherwise we want to keep as much in the investments making money um to help our operations as possible.

Thank you so much. So, do we have any more comments? No. See none, then we will finally move to item G2. Item G2 is a presentation on credit card convenience fees discussion and council direction um in followup to the February 4, 2026 city council meeting. And again, I will turn it over to budget manager to introduce the item. Well, I'm going to turn it over to our revenue manager, Tara Sumner, and she is going to present to you an overview of the credit card convenience fees.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. Um, today I'm going to go over our convenience fees. Um, this is what we pay out um for credit card fees um that go through the bank. So, um, what we're going to go over is the current operations and cost, city comparisons, options, our recommendation, and then I'll leave it open for any questions. Um, and as Olivia stated, this was um a request during our February 4th, 2026 midyear budget presentation. So, these are all the vendors that we use currently. We have IP which is our utility payments. Open Edge. Um, pretty much anybody that has a front counter and they service customers, they use Open Edge. Um, the only one that does not is uh community development. They use Card Knox. Um, audience view is used by parks and reccks. They already passed the fees on to the customers and they also have active net through parks and recck which um also their fees are passed on to the customers already. Um this is our current um convenience fee cost. This is taken the last 12 months. Um and at this point um we are spending $1.2 million in convenience fees. Now this is across all departments. Um so electric, utility, public works. Um as you can see here, general fund is about $170,000 that is coming from general fund to help fund this um the convenience fees.

Um and the others are coming from the other departments. And um this is a calculation of what we get from the front counter. So right now at the front counter we get um cash is about 46%, credit cards is about 31% and checks are about 23%. Um as far as the checks that is going to also um be checks we get in the mail as well. It's not just front counter. Um unfortunately there's no way for me to decipher what's checks and what's not. I mean checks that are mailed in and what are from the front counter. So that would be consistent of everything that we get as a check. And then we have our online and our ks payments. As you can see, this is our greatest expense. 67% of u the payments made online are from credit cards. um from AC um banking accounts are 24% cash is 2% and then the remaining are various um like PayPal, Vinmo, Apple Pay. So um quite a bit of credit card there. Um so this is what other cities do. They um so City of Stockton they pass on their fees 3% um to % um and then their AC payments are between two 2.99 and 3.99. Um and then city of Sacramento passes um all their credit card fees on to the customer. City of Davis um they have a minimum minimum credit um card amount of 2.75 and a maximum of 9 $9.50.

Uh, City of Houston, um, they have a flat $1.75. City of Fairfield, um, is $2.95 up to $500. And then any miscellaneous payments, um, that would be like, uh, your um, anything we get from like public works and those kind of payments like for their permits, it would be considered a miscellaneous payment. they charge 3%. Um, city of golf charges a flat 2%. Um, city of Elro, um, they only take cash checks and EFT and then El Grove Water District third party biller charges a convenience fee. So, our options are we stay the way we are, the status quo, and we absorb absorbing the cost. We do a partial recovery. That's our option two. Uh where we just absorb a portion of it. Um we would just have the third party processor pass a standard fee and then anything above that we would have to pay. Option three is full cost recovery which would require the third party payment processor to pass all convenience fees to the customer. fee structure may be a flat rate, a percent or a percentage dependent on the vendor. Our recommendation is that we follow suit with other cities and pass the convenience fees on to customers as we're seeing um it's not just government. You're seeing it across the board right now um because the fees are so high. Uh we are currently um in the

last two years from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2026 about a 35% increase in convenes. So it would achieve an estimated annual savings of the 1.2 million. Any questions? Open to council comments first. Um, council woman correct. Um, the different providers, the vendors, are they different structures in terms of their fees? I mean, what are we looking at? What's the range of fees for each?

So, we can set it up any way that we choose to. So, um, if we want to do a percentage or a flat rate, we tell them what we want. They they're going to give us what they think is the best thing to do, but ultimately up to us. So, but right now we pay the full load. Yes. Right now, we pay everything. So, we know how much that is. Yes.

All right. So, that's kind of what I'm asking. If if each vendor has a set amount that we have to pay, if we passed it fully on, that would be the amount we have to pay or that the customer, I'm sorry, have to pay. Correct. But you're saying the vendors would work with us otherwise or are you saying we just set something and we end up some of it but majority gets passed on to no we it would be full cost recovery still be doing that and there's there's only three vendors right now that we are assuming full cost correct correct okay thank you um do you have any comments on this mechanic

yeah it's it's cost of business you know when I go to restaurant three 5% and so forth I could write a check or put a cash. I still use card. Uh I guess what I'm saying is uh it's the uh cost of doing business and and it should just be the whole thing. So actually um a lot of businesses aren't anymore. They're actually passing the fees on to customers. They're charging you now to use their credit card machines. I don't understand it. Yeah. A lot of the um if you go out into business um into local businesses now a lot of them are passing on the credit card fees to you now.

Yes, I know that. That's what I'm saying. Oh, okay. When I go to I get this. So, and the citizens can save money by writing check, right? So, that or pay cash. It see it's it's your recommendation and uh it's we're talking a million how much how much thou 1.2 million 1.2 That's a lot of money and we're looking Well, that's and it's going to only go up every year. That's our expenses that we get, right? So, anyway, that's my thoughts. Well, no, I agree with both of you guys. It's just the way of operation everybody doing, we need to be doing it. But the question that I do have is where can that money be spent? The money that we're recovering.

So only 165,000 70 almost 170,000 is general fund. Okay. So that that's what I was saying. The remaining are um Yes, I was like money but I wish. Yeah. Um but no 170 about 170,000 is the um general fund cost currently. Um but I did have a conversation with electric utility the other day and they did say if we keep absorbing the cost, they're going to have to do a rate increase probably about 1%.

Okay. Well, they're not planning on doing a increase just for the convenience fees. It was noted that the convenience fees, the people that are using credit card, the cash or check payment are subsidizing those fees for them in the tune of 1% of their bill. So, it does have a direct effect on but it also has direct effect on the utility that that's 1% of their um operating costs that they can be putting back into the electric utility. Um and we have large projects as you know coming up. So that is every little bit helps.

I I would just follow up by saying that there there is another option for them. You don't have to pay by credit card. You can do a you can write a check. You can you know pay cash instead. You can um Venmo. You can there's so many other means to pay that don't require any type of a charge or service to it. So I think part of it is just going to rolling out the information to our customers saying that this is a change that's going to have to take place and we set a certain date and time that you're aware of it. Um when I think about it, you know how I choose the convenience of paying by credit card and mode I connect. I could also pay by my bank account if I want to tie that and then there's not going to be a charge for that. So I think we'll need to give people time to understand uh and for them to make their own decision. way to pay if they want to save on that service. And I was actually this this slide's really good because looking at electric utility being the largest chunk I was wondering about community development and how much you know relative to permit fees somebody comes in and pays with their credit card and what the percentage is going to be but it really is clearly more in the public works and utility side that we're seeing big dollars there. So we do need to those funds when we can use that money on some of these big infrastructure projects even though it's not a lot when it's in perspective to those um particular funds it it still is important to use so I I would support it as well

thanks so much I think you do you have a comment still I was just going to suggest that you know we'll I'll check with our our finance team on this in terms of how long it would take to work with the institutions implementing that that recovery charge. But, you know, the fact that we're coming up on the start of a new fiscal year might be an opportunity to start implementing something that the council is interested in that. But again, I'd have to check and make sure that we have the the timing factor working with the the card agencies. Thank you so much. So, now we're going to move to public comments. Mayor, I don't have comment cards. Okay. Miss Davis,

I wanted to comment on the uh percentage of credit being um acrewed versus a flat rate. I'm thinking about people that use credit card to pay their utility bills because they don't have the money in their bank account. And I'm wondering what how much more it would cost on their bill if they were um given the fee to use a credit card on top of a bill that they're already struggling to pay. and if it might make more sense to potentially just have a flat rate or at least have a cap off so that like I saw um uh described as one of the I don't remember which uh city was utilizing that but there was one that was like oh yeah maximum 500 is that applicable to what I'm talking about but um so if you're going to do a percentage maybe have a cap off on what that number might be to keep it within reason for people that maybe are behind say they're behind several months and they need to come up with a payment and so their percentage is going to be higher than somebody that is just trying to make the one month bill with the attached uh 3% to their their bill. So just something to consider.

Thank you so much. U any more public comments? Seeing none, I will move forward to final comments from the council. None. I entertain a motion. Uh I would move to approve recommendation number three. Believe it is. Second. I will second them. I'll second option. I'll second caveat that I do appreciate people who are lack of cash and having problems.

Council member Nakishi, do you see the voting screen? Right. And it passes. So we'll move to our final item of the night. G2 G3. Sorry, that's a typo. Um, so G3 is discussion and direction regarding potential amendment to LOI municipal code section uh 9.18.040 vendor permit caps. And I will turn it over to Cynthia March, our community development director, interim community development director.

Good evening, mayor and council. Uh as we pull up our PowerPoint here, um this item uh was requested to be brought before council as a discussion item. At the end of it, we would request your direction. Uh the item is related to amending our uh food truck uh vendor permit caps. And I'm going to turn the presentation over to our senior community improvement officer, Johnny Andrews.

Uh good evening. My name is Johnny Andrews, senior community improvement officer, also known as code enforcement. Um, LMC 918045. It it limits the allowed number of permitted vendors we can have within the city. Um, right now our standard is going to be one permitted vendor per 2,800 residents, which gives us 25 permitted vendors. um and community improvement processes and intakes all of the permitted vendors within the city right now that operate on private property. Those 25 permitted vendors are not going to include popups or push carts. As of right now, our our vendor permit cap is currently full. Our weight list is 10 people and it's constantly growing. I believe this week alone I've sent out five permit applications to vendors and we get them on a regular basis. So right now we are at 10. Um the implication of this code is that the cap may drive unpermitted vending within the city and it also yeah it it will it may drive the unpermitted vending in city. There's a couple key issues that we have the unpermitted vending it creates uh health and safety risk. the people that we're seeing, they're not being inspected by the county. They don't have handwash stations. They're not storing their food properly. Um, in addition to that, there's an increased enforcement burden on the staff. We are receiving complaints on a almost weekly basis of unpermitted vendors in the city. That's going to include private property as well as people on the sidewalks. Um this creates unfair conditions for the permitted vendors who have done all the proper licensings and paid the fees through the city and the state as well as the county. Um for context nearby cities such as Stockton, Lyther Galt,

they do not have vendor caps. So for the options we have a total of four. The first one is going to be maintaining the status quo. The second one is going to be increasing to one per 1500 residents which gives us 46 permitted vendors in the city. Option number three is one per every 1350 residents which will bring us up to 51. Option four would be to eliminate the cap all together and regulate the permitting and safety operations. The key considerations that that we'd like to bring up is that removing or adding to the cap, it's going to it may reduce unpermitted activity, improve compliance, and it will also align with regional practices the cities that are close to us as well. So, with most things in life, there's trade-offs. for option number one which is maintaining um it gives us a predictable number of vendors every single year and it's theoretically easy to manage. The cons that we have on there is going to be continue weight list and denials. Um, I have people who have been on the wait list for over a year at this point and likely people who those people who've been there for over a year, they applied several years ago and they just keep refreshing their permits and we just don't have the space to to get them in there. Um, being that we do have a cap and it's such a relatively small number, we believe that it drives up unpermitted activity within the city. It's an it's an ongoing enforcement uh burden on code enforcement to regulate these. By nature, they're mobile. They move. So sometimes we get complaints and they're in a different location. Um and it's in addition to that, the last con for maintaining the status quo is out of step with regional practices. For options number two, which options number two and three for increasing the cap, the pros are it may reduce some

unpermitted activity. I know that our department has uh issued notices for vendors that are on the wait list and they they've been waiting for so long they decided to bend without a permit. Um there's going to be a couple cons with that. There's still going to require tracking and it's still an artificial limit on the number of people that we number of vendors that we allow within the city. Um likely the weight list is going to stay intact. And then in addition to that um if we just increase it it doesn't fully resolve the code enforcement issues. Option number four is going to be eliminating the cap altogether. And with that we regulate operations and we impose more um more safety measures such as location spacing hours. The pros for eliminating the cap is going to be it's going to reduce or sorry remove the artificial barrier to entry for people who want to vend within the city. It shifts focus to health and safety and compliance. It will likely reduce the number of unpermitted vendors in the city if if it's if the cap is eliminated. And it also aligns with neighboring jurisdictions. The cons that we have on there, it's going to be less control over the total number of vendors. We could go theoretically one year from 26 to 100. So that is definitely a con. Um, in addition to that, speaking to that same point is we may have an over uh concentration of vendors in a specific area. And then we're also going to have to build out our operational standards to make it clear and concise. And then you're fine. Um, so we're seeking council direction for your guys' preferred policy option.

Okay, that's the end of the presentation. you have another slate. This uh would concludes the pres presentation and so we would ask um that you provide direction. Uh would you like us to come back with an amendment and would you like to prefer one of the options or status quo or come back with a different proposal? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. So I'm going to first ask for public comments because some people have been waiting for this item and then we'll move to council comments after. I don't have any comments cards, but you're welcome to invite them up.

Hi, my name is Amomar Ali and yeah, I've been waiting for to talk about this. So, I'm one of the vendors that are waiting on the waiting list and I ended up operating while I am on the waiting list because of this issue. And as officer Andrew said, he came and gave me a notice that I'm operating while I'm on the waiting list and I shouldn't be doing that. So, I stopped. So, my questions are what are we supposed to do? Like people are waiting. We want to operate. We want to do it the right way. I have all the paperwork. I went through the city to get the permit and I'm getting told like I can't operate. So I have a business. I'm losing money. It's not all just about the money. My community is mostly the Muslims. We have zero food trucks in this whole loai that are Muslim owned or serve halal food. And I want to look out for my people as other people as well. But we have a bunch of kids that are in this community. They go out all the way to Sacramento, all the way to Stockton at late nights to go just eat food, which is not fair for my people, which is not fair for the city. We want to operate the right way, but we can't cuz there's a cap. As he said, there's a cap. What can we do to raise the cap or what can we do to stop people from operating illegally? We can't do anything because people are not getting the chance to operate the right way. There's a limit. the the limit needs to be raised because people can do it the right way then. But if the limit doesn't get raised, people are still going to operate on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when the city is not there to ticket them and no one is there to look because they're doing it after 5. There's a bunch of people on the side. You probably drive by and see they're operating after 5 cuz no one's ticketing them. And that's the only problem I have. I don't want to operate illegally, but I can't do illegally. So what's the solution? I'm just looking for a solution for this problem. That'll be it. Thank you.

My name is Khan. I'm his uncle. And um what I want to add is that um uh this food that he will be selling is unique and uh uh Lord doesn't have this kind of food. I think this will be an asset for Loai uh to introduce um a diverse food. It is a very diverse community and uh certainly Pakistani community is really growing and uh I would ask the city council to uh consider making maybe an amendment for um u certain ethnic um introduction of food that may be good for the city and also for his business. So um this is just a suggestion if you can consider that and uh make an exception. But um otherwise he will be on the waiting list like uh for standard food which are majority um I mean trucks you know that are uh similar kind of a food. So uniqueness of the food may be a consideration you know I will request that uh the city council will consider it. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Any other comments? Seeing none, I now move to council comments.

Um I'm going to follow up with Mr. Andrew. I appreciate the frustration you must go through because there's a lot of these vendors operating. Um I'll just say straight out I'm for no cap. I mean, we are in a time now where we are supporting local businesses to get a start. And the fact of the matter is a food truck is often the way you get a start that ends up in a brick and mortar. I mean, in my shopping center, I have had a coffee shop that started as a coffee truck and became a brick and mortar. And so, it's a good way, an affordable way for small businesses to start out and see if this they can build a customer base and move from there. Um, do believe that we need to look at hours and locations. So, for example, as an owner of a private center, I have that option of saying, well, I've got two restaurants. I don't want uh competition for those folks, but I can choose five or six other types of varieties of food truck that won't that is my decision as a business. I think in other cities I've lived in we've kind of limited and maybe Miss Marsh can address this question, but you know, do we have a limit? We don't see food trucks downtown because that is quite a bit of competition against our existing restaurants. So, we need to be sensitive about not taking away We have quite a number of restaurants and eeries, coffee shops, but instead look at where there we don't exactly have food deserts, but there's not a lot of uh options for restaurants other than fast food, for example, out on the industrial area or even off of lower sack. There are a lot of small uh commercial centers, shopping centers where you could decision of those owners. So in this day

and age, I don't think we need a cap. I think we follow what has been pointed out as a standard practice, but that we because they will have to go through uh their inspections. So health department will require an inspection so that we know that they're operating um Um, I do think we have some value looking at where we would decide as a city not to permit a food truck operator with the exception of special events where they get a permit downtown for street fair or anything like that. So, um, and then again back to the hours, you know, I think it's an issue of no, you you have certain hours that you can operate your food truck and you shouldn't be out in front of cherry sunshine at noon or midnight selling when you have no permit at all. So that should help us get to the point where uh we're cutting down on some of the illegal activity by making stricter hours. So that's my only suggestion.

Thank you. I think Miss Marsh wants to add something. Uh, I was going to clarify would the because we could limit for example by zoning district and so the downtown mix zone known as the DMU um we could say um you know so when we come back uh you know with the draft for you would you want it to specify um you know not not allowable in the downtown XD zone unless there's you know farmers market special event that it's tied to specifically or part of a uh food truck park which um is separate from this ordinance. We have the we allow two food truck parks citywide. Um uh specifically thinking related to the downtown specific plan and potential use of the railroad property in the future. You know, would you allow it there but not elsewhere? Um so just clarification on that point.

Can you clarify? Um yeah, I think I think the zoning district is a good way to look at it. I do think there's a need in the main street area so long as we're not using the mixed use to cross the tracks in that respect. I do think they need more opportunities in that part of town. Um but yeah, I think that's a good way and unless there's another district in particular the concentration. Okay, any council comments?

Do have a question and a comment. So for food trucks right now, are they allowed to be on public property and uh service? And under this new agreement, if we had no cap, would that be the case? So the the vendor regulations are separated by uh private property and then the next section is going to be um public sidewalks. So that is managed by public works. So this code doesn't apply to people on the sidewalk if that answers your question. So for instance, if we take the cap off today,

that policy is not changing. Correct. For the sidewalks. Correct. Okay. And they can currently sell on the sidewalks through public works. From my understanding, there's only one allowable area in the city that's across the street from the post office, but public works would have the the best answers for that. across the street from the post office. Yes, sir. Or at the post office. Sorry, the sidewalk in front of the post office. From my understanding, that is the only place on sidewalks that people can bend. Okay.

Which I would actually prefer. Uh so, I like that policy how it is. Just figured I'd bring it up now because we're going to have an increase in food trucks or food vendors. Uh it'd be nice to have them on private property, right? because then the city doesn't have to worry about all the cleanups and business owners are going to be there on a daily basis cleaning up and make sure their property is up kept. So, um I I like that and I think we've done that the right way. Is that not the case right now? They have to be on private property except for one truck, right? Okay. Okay. So, keeping that in place. Correct. Correct.

Okay. I think um Nathan wants to say something. Yeah, I think I think we have one old one older vendor that was issued a permit that that what Junique's talking about that was in the post office plaza. Not sure if they're still around. I don't I haven't seen them. That's why I was asking. I have a feeling it's it's a fairly older one that you know probably pre-COVID even. Uh but our our preference is also not to have them in the sidewalk. That kind of brings in a lot of other other issues kind of outside of the scope of just them selling food. Okay, I question. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Well, I was just a followup because this becomes an enforcement issue at some point, particularly those late at night and I know she probably has had numerous calls about this was back when we were looking at lower sack and before we put up a barrier over uh on Harney uh there where you know it kept people from actually open fires and all of that. So in some respects it it really demonstrates that um you have a process to go through and you go through the process and you can get your permit and I think that's what's important. So any activity that's going on they need to have clearly right away and you've got to be gone. So part of it is back to the enforcement issue to your um more opportunities for permitted activities. We won't be hopefully seeing as many activities as we question about uh I I ride around the city so I kind of know where the trucks are, right? Uh residential a truck can't come in front of a res and open up, right? certain place right now. I'm looking at district five. Okay, citizens, you know, as as far homeowner, uh we're talking congestion, public safety, we're talking about uh code enforcement, right? As I look at my district, uh it it will affect it only as they travel around the city. So the concept of having no cap at all that floored me you know no cap at all but I can see that as long as not it's not done in the resident of this

yeah I can answer some of the question I think I think we what we proposing is removing the cap and then um regulating through the zoning so for example if it's very residential then they wouldn't be allowed to be there so yeah that's kind of that will make you feel a little better about it. This this is a discussion here, right? Yes. Yeah. Go ahead.

We're talking about code enforcement. We call the code enforcement a lot of things, right? And trash and all the other things. As a city council member, you're going to have more calls coming in. I I think uh then we also talking about public health food is going to be certified. But you know, certification is not it's not what I saw perfect. Look at that. suggestion uh code enforcement all these things and I'm thinking I I would think that the business owners brick and mortar owners would not like this I don't really Thank you for your answers. So, I don't know if this helps or not, but some sometimes when you're looking to go from one past practice to a new practice and there's some, you know, some reservation, something that, you know, you can uh throw out there is that you're you're going to experiment, right? you're going to try a one-year pilot program and see how it works and you know track it and see did it have the effects that you know we've outlined his pros and cons or did it go the complete opposite way and it may result in new issues that we haven't even talked about tonight. So you know obviously if we were to come back with an ordinance that you know

modifies the code and says this and we find out um sooner than later that maybe we we went too far one way we can come back and change it. But at least if you call it a pilot program, we know that it's on the books, that we're, you know, testing it, and then, you know, make it official that at the end of that period, if everything's working smoothly, we just, you know, let that that program go forward as a permanent program. So, just just another option for consideration.

Uh, well, ordinances take time. Um I believe it's an ordinance amendment to the municipal code. So that has to go through the planning commission and then finally to the city council. So um you know I believe that the work is is really now in um putting in the the restrictions in terms of the zoning applications and so forth, but I think we can put that together pretty quick and get that through the process um just as quick as we can. I I'm just wondering for those um businesses that have been on the waiting All of this time you said there's 10 plus right around that. Yeah, 10 as of today.

Is there is there something we can do in a temporary basis to allow those who have been trying to wait and waiting patiently get in place before the ordinance?

Um so technically it is a cap. there is the number and you know as it stands right now our code enforcement is operating under that number. Um you know I I would suggest that perhaps as we get something drafted that it's in the progress and we get it through the commission that perhaps that might be an opportunity to to lift that. That's a good answer. I appreciate the the opportunity there. So um and I'm trying to address those who have been waiting patiently. So

yeah know I think Yeah, I think I think we're going for option four is where everybody's going. But I think yeah, that's a very valid point there. All the the people that are waiting the they've been waiting for so long what we can do in the meantime. So, thank you for doing that. Uh yeah, we're allowed to final comment.

Yes. So, the people that are waiting, it doesn't take anything away from the businesses in downtown to allow people to operate. and we're operating on private properties. We're not on side of the road. Nobody is doing anything to anyone. And it's just couple more trucks and more businesses for the city. We're trying to do it the right way. Nobody is trying to skip any steps or anything. We want to do it the right way. The only way we can do it is by raising the limit or by putting no cap. Stockton doesn't have no cap. People around us have no cap and they don't mind. Only thing is people that are running businesses, they have a problem with it. because they don't want competition. Competition is good for businesses and we should have competition. We should allow young people to start more businesses in Loi. What we're doing is basically telling people you're going to be on the wait list. It could be years. It could be months. Just don't come to Loi and operate here. Or basically don't even exist in Loi. Whoever is already running, they're going to be running the scene. You're just going to come sit on the wait list, pay the bills still, pay the insurance, pay the commissary, pay your payments, and wait. As he said, there's people over a year waiting. So, what what are we supposed to do? Go to Stockton? We don't want to go to Stockton. I grew up in this town. I went to school over here. I want to operate in my community. And we have 10,000 plus people in this community that are Muslim and other people that love halal food. So why would we wait over a year to operate a business? Like it doesn't make sense and the cap doesn't make sense. Like why do we need a cap? We should be able to run a business if we want to run a business. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Uh yeah, we are here very business pro. So no, we are removing the cap but what we are trying to do is that people that wearing the waiting list because we it's a process right now in the books. We have 50 or 25 whatever they're saying. So we have so to change that we need to go through a whole process. So in the meanwhile while we change the process we're trying to help you guys out the US can operate in the meantime. So that's what we're discussing to help you guys. So we are doing that. Yeah. Just just to clarify maybe a misunderstanding. Yeah. My last recognition. Yeah.

The gentleman you spoke about having the sic food very strong very strong message right you're right it is a unique food that supply to a lot of people here. Thank you and thank you for coming in a council today. Actually that's one thing that I wish the broader community would do. Same as you. Um one person in this city can make a difference and you're helping make it tonight. So thank you. Okay. So now I will open it for a motion. We have one. Oh yeah.

Christopher. So I've been listening and I was listening to the potential concerns of oversaturation. And so maybe one option that's not listed that could be considered as an incremental instead of instantly to cap the cap. Maybe you consider incrementally building it up and that way you're not oversaturating and you're being able to see exactly what the impact is on the community. Thank you for your comment. Yes, I need a motion. Is thisformational or do you do you have direction? Yeah. Okay. So, I think that you feel like you have enough direction.

Uh can we clarify? Um, so the direction that I'm hearing is, um, you would like us to look at limiting hours, uh, location by location, specifically the downtown mixeduse area, except for the main street corridor, potentially east of the tracks where there may be less restaurants available, uh, including exceptions for events. And, um, introducing this as a pilot program perhaps, uh, test program that, uh, you know, could be a for a year. Um limiting to residential areas potentially and um no cap. Uh I think that's all um I have. Is there is there any other details that you can think of that I we should

The issue is if we have it as a pilot program then you have all these businesses starting. I don't think it's going to be an option to stop this FYI. And I mean if we start it and then we stop it, you're going to shut down 10 plus businesses and they're going to be frustrated. I think the evaluation of it Correct. Come back with the review

too. Maybe we only have 10 permits or 12 permits. Maybe it's not going to be a hundred food trucks showing up because hey, it is an enterprise to start one of those food trucks. That's a big capital expenditure for somebody. So, uh, not everybody can afford to have the food truck and then staff it the entire time and, you know, be out there and open all the hours you need to be to make a profit. So, um, it's it's like opening a small restaurant. It's not So I would say we're not going to see dozens and dozens of final question. So timelines, how soon can we think we can do the ordinance change?

Uh sure. Um process-wise, typically it takes us six to eight weeks potentially to get on the planning commission agenda from the point in which we have submitted the planning uh commission staff report and the ordinance itself uh to our city attorney. So uh that would probably take us just a couple of months. Um I anticipate this would be a pretty simple um uh draft for us to get done. Uh given the direction that you have given us um from that point we would follow by city council. We have a three-step process when we get to council. Uh one is setting the public hearing. So uh let's say for example we were able to get to planning commission uh two months from now. Um this is April 15th. So uh May, June, say say the last meeting in June, first meeting in July, we get to planning commission and then in the second meeting uh we set the public hearing for city council. Uh then it would be August when we have the actual public hearing at city council. Uh the second reading would take place in the second meeting in August and then the uh ordinance would be effective 30 days later which would be September, late September. And that's best case scenario.

Okay, that's a long process. Is there any way that we can do it faster through our processes? Well, the the process that she outlined is mandated by state law, but the the exception that I threw out to you would have that happening in June. If you're supportive of that? Yes, we're supportive of that. Nope. Nope. Okay. So then I don't see any more items. So I will adjourn the meeting at 9:17 p.m.