City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, time is 6.07, calling to order mildly belatedly this 6 p.m. open session for today's July 7th, 2026 meeting. This will be, in theory, our last meeting until the second meeting in August for our summer break. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll?

I would be delighted to. Council Member Kaldor? Here. Council Member Giroux?

Here.

Council Member Boyles is absent this evening. Mayor Pro Tembaldino?

Here.

And Mayor Pimentel?

Here. All right, with four out of five, Pastor Gerard. All right, from the bridge, will you lead us in the invocation, followed by Council Member Keldorf leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

If you would bow your heads with me. Lord, we thank you for your love of the city of El Segundo. Thank you for these elected officials and for all of these citizens who are here to work together for the very best for this city. Lord, I pray for a spirit of humility, cooperation, and mutual listening with compassion as they work together to come to solutions for the very best for all the citizens of El Segundo. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Please face the flag and join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Pastor Gerard, thank you very much. I think that's your first time with us.

And thank you very much, Council Member Keldorf. All right, we have two special presentations this evening. I will do the first for the El Segundo High School's girls lacrosse team. Whereas the mayor and members of the city council proudly recognize and commend the El Segundo High School girls lacrosse team for an extraordinary and historic 2026 season culminating in the program's first ever CIF Southern Section Division II Championship. And whereas... The Eagles finished the season with an impressive 13 and four record capturing their third ocean league championship while establishing themselves as one of the premier girls lacrosse programs in Southern California. After competing against a demanding early division one schedule, the team demonstrated exceptional determination and resilience winning nine of its final 10 games and four consecutive playoff contests on its path to the championship. And whereas the team's remarkable postseason included thrilling victories over San Marcos, Royal, Roosevelt, and finally Huntington Beach in an unforgettable 4-3 CIF championship game. Throughout the season, the Eagles also displayed their talent and depth with commanding performances, including a 21 to one and 20 to zero victories over Beverly Hills. That's not nice. And whereas fueled by outstanding leadership, relentless work ethic and unwavering resilience and a commitment to teamwork, the Eagles achieved one of their finest seasons in the history of El Segundo High School Girls Lacrosse. Their journey from a program that faced the possibility of shutting down four years ago to becoming the CIF Southern Section Division II champions stand as a testament to perseverance, dedication, and excellence, and represents the very best of the El Segundo community. Now, therefore, on the seventh day of July, the mayor and members of the city council of the city of El Segundo, California, do hereby commend, here we go, Kai McMillan, Caitlin Black, Grace Bietner, Kyra Snell, Bridget Michael, Juliet Legu, Layla Guzman, Tessa Tipton, Riley Clinton, Grace Dominick, Emma Cooley, Lola McFadden, Zoya Khan, Addie Egan, Kyle Duarte, Scarlett Teal, Ashlyn Counts, Violet Debnam, Gianna Lehane, Delaney McFadden, Nico Mangan, Frankie Joubert, Ella McCray, Elliot Richmond, McKenna Burton, Larkin Athy, Sarah Hafez, Coach Shepard, Coach Tipton, great neighbor, and Coach McDonald on winning the 2026 CIF Southern Section Division II Championship and extend our sincere appreciation for bringing pride and distinction to the city of El Segundo through their outstanding achievement. Coach, would you like to say anything? Thank you.

Thank you so much for having us tonight. It means a great deal to be seen and represent the city of El Segundo. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Sure. Coach, you want to bring them up? We'll do a picture.

Thank you so very much.

Maybe lay off the gas in the fourth quarter there, Coach. 20 to nothing? Not UNLV. All right, and now the Parks Make Life Better Month Proclamation. Council Member Giroux.

All right. Whereas parks and recreation promotes physical, emotional, and mental health and wellness through organized and self-directed fitness, play, and activity. And whereas park and recreation supports the economic vitality of communities by partnering with local businesses and nonprofits and offering events for residents' engagement. And whereas Park and Recreation creates memorable experiences through youth sports and enrichment activities, teen centers and programs, senior activity centers, adult fitness and enrichment programs, free community events and beyond. And whereas Park and Recreation fosters social cohesiveness in communities by celebrating diversity, providing spaces to come together peacefully, modeling compassion, promoting social equity, and connecting social networks and ensuring all people have access to its benefits. And whereas parks and recreation supports human development and endless learning opportunities that foster social, intellectual, physical, and emotional growth in people of all ages. And whereas park and recreation strengthens community identity by providing facilities and services that reflect and celebrate community character, heritage, culture, history, aesthetics, and landscape. And whereas park and recreation facilitates community problem and issue resolution by providing safe spaces to come together peacefully and serving as key points of service, helping our communities heal both physically and emotionally. And whereas parks and recreation sustains and stewards our natural resources by protecting habitats and open space, connecting people to nature and promoting the ecological function of parkland. And whereas parks and recreation supports safe, vibrant, attractive, progressive communities that make life better through positive alternatives offered in their recreational opportunities. And whereas park and recreation remains versatile and innovative in providing vital services to communities through local, national, or global emergencies, all while adhering to guidelines set forth by governing agencies. Now, therefore, the mayor and the members of the city council, the city of El Segundo, hereby proclaim the month of July, 2026, as parks make life better month in the city of El Segundo. And accepting the proclamation is Director Ali Mancini.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. I want to thank all of you on behalf of the entire Department of Recreation, Parks, and Library. I'm really happy that we're able to take this moment before the community to celebrate all that we do in Recreation, Parks, and Library. We have a tremendous team of staff. I wanted one of them to come and accept this this evening, but they work all day long taking care of all the kiddos in the community at day camp and running the pools, and they do a phenomenal job. But we do this work because we love it, we believe in it, we know that it makes a difference in this community, and we're very, very happy and very proud to serve the residents of El Segundo. So thank you very much.

And one more. Thank you.

All right, we are on to public communication. I will remind everyone or point out to everyone, we have two public hearings for which there's also public comment available to those. So if you were here to speak on items 10 or 11, you can hold your public comment to them and speak directly at that point. All right, now I'll go with our new legal script, which I will screw up. Now is the time for public communications. Members of the public may address the city council regarding a matter on the meeting agenda or a matter within the jurisdiction of the city council. Beginning July 1st, 2026, SB 707 requires public agencies to provide for remote participation during public comments. Madam Clerk, is there anyone who would like to speak this evening?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, there are six people here this evening to speak during the first public comment. We did have somebody on telephonic, but they dropped off, so we're down to six.

Very well. Public communications is limited to 30 minutes. Therefore, we allow three minutes per speaker.

Molly Pemberlow. I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, one item was not agendized, and the rest are on agendized items. Very well.

Good evening, my name is Molly Pomerleau. I live in Hawthorne just over Aviation.

Move over. Oh, that was like a, oh yeah, yes, yes.

Okay, I live across from Catalina Pacific on Aviation. I want to start by thanking your planning department and code enforcement for being responsive and helpful and helping me understand the situation with Catalina Pacific. What they've confirmed in writing is this facility has operated for over 30 years with no use permit, no conditional use permit, and no environmental review. It's legally non-conforming in an M1, which is light industrial, like the R&D and warehouses nearby. And under current policy, it can operate as heavy industrial forever. So Monday through Saturday, typically starting at 4 a.m. and often until 9.30. It generates diesel exhaust and crystalline silica dust and a lot of noise. These are both California-recognized carcinogens. It's 50 meters from Holmes. It's 400 meters from the Wiseburn Sports Complex. And it's about 470 meters from the Wiseburn Middle School. The community has changed since Catalina Pacific moved in. The science has changed. We now know that children are walking to school and playing sports near the plant and they're breathing in Carson engines. So grandfathered status from over 30 years ago should not permanently insulate this heavy industrial operation. I also want to note that Catalina Pacific is operated by Cal Portland. This is a large corporation with facilities all over Western US. It's not a small family business. So they have resources to modernize, they can relocate, they can remediate. What they currently lack is any regulatory requirement to do this. I think this presents a really nice opportunity that your Vision 2050 process is uniquely positioned to address. My two requests. First, please direct the Vision 2050 team to include this parcel as a candidate for residential or mixed use designation in the land use concept alternatives. These are being finalized now, as I understand it, in July. Second, this is really important. Please consider committing through Vision 2050 to adopting an amortization ordinance for non-conforming heavy industrial uses near sensitive receptors like parks, schools, houses. El Segundo has no amortization policy, meaning there's no pathway for incompatible uses to transition out. DOZENS OF CALIFORNIA CITIES HAVE DONE THIS. ELSA GONOZ SHOULD ALSO DO THIS. THANK YOU SO MUCH. I'M HAPPY TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

THANK YOU, MS. POMERLO.

NO QUESTIONS.

OKAY. JOHN DORSEY.

Good evening. I just wanted to address one of your agenda items, number 19. First of all, my name is John Dorsey. I'm a professor emeritus from Loyola Marymount, retired, still working with students though on some research projects here and there. And what I wanted to do was talk about the environmental committee, which is one of your volunteer committees. I UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR COUNCIL IS CONSIDERING POSSIBLY GOING FROM MONTHLY MEETINGS DOWN TO QUARTERLY MEETINGS AND EVEN SHRINKING THE SCOPE OF SOME OF THE COMMITTEE'S ACTIVITIES AND WHAT HAVE YOU. SO WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT, AND THIS IS SPEAKING PRIMARILY FROM THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITTEE, WHICH I'M A MEMBER OF, I think that that might be a mistake. We have a very vibrant committee, a very enthusiastic committee. We have an incredible membership with lots of experience both professionally and just doing a lot of things with environmental groups and other sorts of agencies including governmental groups. So we have a wide range of expertise and experience on this committee. In going from MONTHLY MEETINGS DOWN TO QUARTERLY MEETINGS. I THINK THAT WOULD DISRUPT THE FLOW OF INFORMATION BECAUSE WE'RE WORKING ON A LOT OF DIFFERENT PROJECTS. SOME OF THE PROJECTS INCLUDE RESTORING BLUE BUTTERFLY HABITAT, WHICH IS VITAL FOR THE CITY. ALSO CLEANING THE BEACHES. FOR EXAMPLE, I'M WORKING WITH THE CHEVRON RIGHT NOW ON TRYING TO AMEND THEIR WAYS THAT THEY'RE CLEANING THE BEACH TO MAKE THE BEACH ECOLOGY MUCH MORE VIABLE ON THAT STRETCH THAT WE HAVE. And some of the other ones are looking at items for the city newspaper, that sort of thing. So I would recommend, when you consider this, to please think about not disrupting the flow of information with our committee, but letting it go on a monthly basis. It's a really valuable committee, and I think we could do a lot for your city and for your information. So please take that into account. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dorsey.

Cheryl Smith?

I AM ALSO A MEMBER OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITTEE. I DIDN'T REALIZE WE WOULD BE SO WELL REPRESENTED. I JUST HAD A COUPLE QUESTIONS WITH REGARDS TO CHANGING THE COMMITTEE MEETINGS. WHY? SOME OF THE COMMITTEES HAVE JUST BECOME FULLY STAFFED LIKE OURS. WE HAVE NOT HAD TOO MUCH PARTICIPATION. WE'RE ACTUALLY STARTING TO DO SOME GREAT WORK. AS THE EDUCATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE, I ATTEND THE MEETINGS AT THE ESUSD DISTRICT LEVEL, AND THEN I BRING THAT BACK TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL. SO WE ARE CONSTANTLY IN COMMUNICATION WITH KNOWING WHAT EACH OTHER IS DOING. SO IT'S REALLY HELPFUL TO HAVE THIS PERSPECTIVE. AND I ALSO WANTED TO ASK, IS THIS CHANGE, LIKE, MANDATORY, OR IS IT JUST A GUIDELINE? BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, JACK SPARROW LOVES GUIDELINES. ALSO I WANTED TO SAY WITH REGARDS TO THE CHARTER CITY THAT I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING MORE ABOUT THIS AND I HOPE THAT OUR CITY WILL CONTINUE TO EDUCATE PEOPLE IN THE COMMUNITY ABOUT THIS IMPORTANT PROPOSAL. AND I KNOW THAT I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT THIS BUT JUST A REALLY SUPER QUICK QUESTION FOR THE MORATORIUM. DOES IT APPLY TO PACIFIC COAST COMMONS OR THE GRAND KANSAS PROJECT WHICH I BELIEVE HASN'T EVEN RECEIVED APPROVAL AND THEY'RE WORKING STILL WORKING TO COMPLETE THEIR EIR. SO JUST THROWING THAT OUT THERE. THANKS.

THANK YOU, MS. SMITH.

JOHN PICKHAVER.

GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL. MY NAME IS JOHN PICKHAVER. I'M HERE TO TALK ABOUT TWO ITEMS TONIGHT, THE CHARTER CITY, AND ALSO I SHARE A LOT OF THE SAME CONCERNS FROM THE PREVIOUS TWO SPEAKERS ABOUT THE CHANGES TO CCBs. ON THE CHARTER CITY, I'VE SPOKEN ON THIS ISSUE A NUMBER OF TIMES, SO I JUST WANT TO REITERATE SOME OF THE POINTS THAT I'VE MADE PREVIOUSLY. ONE IS JUST THE PROCESS. SO MANY PEOPLE IN TOWN ONLY FOUND OUT ABOUT THIS A FEW WEEKS AGO, A COUPLE MONTHS AGO. SOME PEOPLE JUST A FEW DAYS AGO. AT THE TOWN HALL MEETING THAT RESULTED IN the uproar really from residents wanting to see more out of this process. It was such a great meeting and I think we would be in a much better spot if that was the second or third step of this process and the first of many such meetings. And as it stands now, it looks like that may be the last meeting. So I think it's just uncharacteristic of this city and this council to just not do proper engagement that we've done on other issues like Vision 2050, which was brought up by another speaker as well. The motivation behind becoming a charter city has a lot to do with local control, which in theory is a great thing. I think any person in office should want to have autonomy and authority OVER THE AREA THAT THEY GOVERN BUT PART OF WHAT THIS COUNCIL FROM THE MEETINGS THAT I'VE SEEN WANTS TO DO IS TO BE ABLE TO BLOCK NEW HOUSING MANDATES FROM THE STATE AND THIS HAS BEEN SAID TO BE UNREALISTIC BY COUNCIL MEMBER KELDORFF AND MANY MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY I THINK IT'S WISHFUL THINKING AT BEST AND IRRESPONSIBLE TO THINK THAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN AT WORST I MEAN It's been since 1970, since the State Senate was in the opposite party control, 1994 in the Assembly, and that quickly reversed. Even the last governor of California endorsed the Democratic candidate in the last presidential election. So just to think that this is going to ever change, where charter cities would be exempt from housing mandates is just, it's not gonna happen. The other thing, I don't really have much to add on what was said about the committees. I think those points were made excellently by the two members of the Environmental Committee. I THINK THE DEI COMMITTEE WOULD MAKE SIMILAR ARGUMENTS, ME AS THE CHAIR OF THE ARTS AND CULTURE COMMITTEE. I THINK WE DO GREAT MONTHLY WITH MONTHLY MEETINGS. I DON'T SEE QUARTERLY MEETINGS BEING A DEATH KNELL TO THE WORK WE'RE DOING. BUT COMBINED WITH SOME OF THE OTHER PROPOSALS IN THAT, LIKE REDUCING COMMITTEE MEMBERS' then makes that a lot harder, because I think part of this intention is to have work be done in subcommittees, in between meetings. If you reduce the members, that's just a lot of work to put on volunteers, which, Mayor Pimentel, I've seen you refer to volunteers as El Segundo's cheat codes here in El Segundo, and I think we want to harness that power as much as we can.

Thank you. You are at time, Mr. Pickabier. Thank you very much.

Nancy Johns.

Hello, Council. I'm here again to talk about the Charter City. I asked this question once before, but I still believe it has merit in the thought process of becoming a Charter City. What existing expertise do we have on staff at City Hall to handle queries or changes to the Charter? Does this mean we are going to keep the City Attorney busy, or are there others on staff that can manage this change? Would we have to hire a consultant? At what additional cost? The council claims it makes sense to do this now for the November election to save costs. Quoted at over 200,000 instead of having to run a separate election. BUT IF COST IS DRIVING THE CONSIDERATION, IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE THE CITY CHARTER, IT MUST GO TO A VOTE WHICH THEN BECOMES ANOTHER ELECTION AND ANOTHER COST. SO HOW MUCH WOULD THAT COST AND DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO GO THIS ROUTE? THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, MS. JONES.

ANYA GOLDSTEIN.

HI, THANK YOU. I'D LIKE TO SPEAK BRIEFLY ABOUT THREE ISSUES. FIRST, ON THE CHARTER CITY PROPOSAL, I'VE SPOKEN AND WRITTEN ON THIS MANY TIMES, AND I DON'T WANT TO REPEAT MYSELF TOO MUCH, BUT JUST BECAUSE IT CONTINUES BEING A TOPIC, I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT EVERYONE IS CLEAR THAT IT CONTINUES TO BE ON THE MINDS OF RESIDENTS HERE. THE PROCESS FOR PROPOSING THIS CHARTER HAS BEEN RUSHED AND OPAQUE THERE ARE NO APPARENT BENEFITS AND THERE ARE A WEALTH OF POTENTIAL UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES AS COUNCIL MEMBER KELDORFF AND COUNCIL MEMBER DEROUX HAVE POINTED OUT. WE'VE BEEN TOLD AGAIN AND AGAIN THAT THE CHARTER WILL NOT CHANGE ANYTHING, WHICH BEGS THE QUESTION OF WHY WE WOULD BE DOING IT. AND THEN WE'RE TOLD, WE SEE THAT AS DRAFTED, IT PERMITS A NUMBER OF CHANGES TO LOCAL GOVERNANCE AT THE TOWN HALL. THE CITY ATTORNEY SAID THAT THERE WERE TOO MANY CHANGES TO LIST OUT RIGHT THEN. SO THERE ARE SO MANY CONTRADICTIONS HERE AND IT JUST, I REALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY WE WOULD BE DOING THIS AT THIS TIME. Mayor Pro Tem Beltino, I know you were initially not sold on this proposal. I hope that upon gathering this information and further conversation, you are not sold on this proposal. And I hope that a majority of this council votes not to put this, waste further energy on this and put this on the ballot. TWO, I'D LIKE TO SPEAK BRIEFLY ABOUT THE DATA CENTER PROPOSAL. THERE'S A DATA CENTER BEING PROPOSED TO BE BUILT AT NORTH OF EL SEGUNDO BOULEVARD AT NASH AND MAPLE. I KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT CURRENTLY BEFORE YOU. IT'S BEFORE THE PLANNING COMMISSION. THERE'S A MEETING ON THIS THIS THURSDAY, JULY 9TH AT 530, I BELIEVE, HERE. HERE IN THIS ROOM. SO IF PEOPLE ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THAT, THAT'S A PLACE THAT THEY CAN COME. BUT THIS IS A LOCATION THAT IS VERY CLOSE TO BEACH BABIES, DAVINCI HIGH. IT'S NOW IN THE SB 79 AREA. IT'S RIGHT IN THAT AREA. SO IT'S IN AN AREA THAT IS NOW PRESUMPTIVELY ZONED FOR HOUSING. AND IT'S OF MAJOR CONCERN, SO I'D ASK YOU TO KEEP AN EYE ON THIS, KNOWING IT WILL LIKELY COME BEFORE YOU AT SOME POINT, AND KNOWING THAT YOU HAVE POWER TO DIRECT STUDY OF CHANGES TO THAT SPECIFIC PLAN, OR IN LIGHT OF SB 79, WHICH IS REALLY CHANGING THE ENVIRONMENT HERE. AND THEN THIRD, I WOULD JUST ECHO WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ABOUT ASKING THAT YOU NOT REDUCE THE MEETINGS FOR THE COMMITTEES AND THE COMMISSIONS. THE VOLUNTEERS ON THOSE COMMITTEES DO VITAL WORK, AND AS FAR AS I KNOW, NONE OF THEM HAVE ASKED FOR THIS REDUCTION. THEY ALL HAVE VOLUNTEERED, HAVE GONE THROUGH APPLICATION PROCESSES WHERE THEY'VE, YOU ELBOWED OUT OTHERS WHO WANT THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE OUR CITY, AND WE SHOULD GIVE THEM THAT OPPORTUNITY AND CONTINUE WITH THE MONTHLY MEETINGS. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, MS. GOLDSTEIN. ANYBODY POP UP ONLINE? NO? ALL RIGHT. WE HAVE ANY COUNCIL COMMENTS? MIND YOU, IF IT IS AN AGENDIZED ITEM, PLEASE HOLD OFF UNTIL WE GET TO THE AGENDA ITEM, BUT ANY COUNCIL COMMENTS ON PUBLIC COMMUNICATION? I do wanna say that was a very educational piece on the cement plan, which I think that we would have to do a little bit of digging to see when and how that began. But I think that those are comments well made for as we plan the land use element over there to understand the legacy, the impacts and the, certainly with cement, you have to have proximity to where you work. So it's always gonna be tricky, but it'd be interesting to take a look at that as we go forward. Any comments from you, city manager, city attorney?

OTHER THAN ECHOING MAYOR, I DO ENCOURAGE THE FIRST SPEAKER TO STAY IN CONTACT WITH OUR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT AND PLANNING DIVISION REGARDING YOUR COMMENTS THIS EVENING. AND AS YOU ALSO STATED, NUMBER 17 AND NUMBER 19 ON THE AGENDA WILL BE DISCUSSING THE OTHER ITEMS. THANK YOU.

ANY COMMENTS I HAVE, I'LL SHARE WITH THOSE ITEMS.

OKAY. VERY WELL. WE HAVE A PROCEDURAL MOTION TO READ ALL ORDINANCE AND RESOLUTIONS ON THE AGENDA BY TITLE ONLY.

SO MOVED.

I'll second.

Keldon for the second. All in favor? Aye. 4-0. Consent agenda. I apologize, guys. Let's go. Who else has some pulls? Anybody?

I'm assuming you'll... You got them.

I'm going to pull 6, 7, and 9.

Actually, not as many as I thought.

Any others? All right. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve items 4, 5... And eight.

So moved.

Yep. Baldino to second. So drew on the first, Baldino on the second. All those in favor. Aye. Aye.

I forgot that nine has like 22 parts.

Surprise. Okay. Item six, the second reading of an ordinance amending title 15 of the El Segundo municipal code to update and clarify definitions, permitted uses and development standards in various zones. I will say that I hate negotiating in reverse on these things, but after the 4th of July, someone showed me their new rooftop deck on the house, and I am not clear that we got it right by making that on accessory use instead of a permitted use on the primary structures and R1 and R2 zones. Does anyone else want to keep it to just ADUs? Or would anyone else like to say it's okay to have a roof deck on your normal house?

Your argument is that they should not be allowed at all?

No, you should be able to put them on top of your house. I think the concern is that you're looking down at your neighbors, but you can go to 22 feet on an ADU and also look down at your neighbors. So I don't know what the difference is.

We can't stop that from ADU. That's all.

Yeah. Well, we can talk about the roof deck.

We could add more roof decks. We can't take any away.

We can't take any away. So should we penalize people for not having an ADU and not let them have a roof deck? I thought it was a really neat roof deck.

I mean, I personally don't think that every home in El Segundo should have a roof deck, but...

I don't know if they all will, but I just... I'm not going to die on the hill, but I just thought while we're...

It's a second reading. While I did watch your meeting, I didn't weigh in on it. So I'm not going to start now. I think what staff has done is sufficient. You were my lifeline. I know. I always am. All right.

I will move approval to item six, a second reading of the ordinance amending title 15 of the Elson Gunn Municipal Code to update and clarify definitions, permitted uses, and development standards in various zones with no roof deck on the cool roofs. Baldino seconds. Pivotal the first, Baldino the second. All those in favor? Aye. 4-0. Community Development gets out alive on that one. Okay, second, the United States Department of Homeland Security 2024 Urban Area Security Initiative Grant Program Award and Sub-Award Agreement of the City of Los Angeles. This is for mobile security cameras. Chief, I will cut to the chase on this. You know my reservations about living a life under surveillance. Can you please talk about the retention policy, who the software provider is, and what the capabilities are of these cameras? Sure. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council.

SO WE'RE GOING WITH VIRCATA CAMERAS AND THEY'RE GOING TO BE GOING THROUGH PILIUM WHICH IS THE VENDOR THAT WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH. THE CAMERAS WILL BE USED FOR MAJOR ISSUES THAT WE MAY HAVE IN THE CITY. IT CAN BE EASILY MOVED SO IT'LL BE A SOLAR POWERED CAMERA. So if we have a problem in any certain part of the city, we just simply move it from location to location. Just like we do with any data that we share, we do not share with anybody. If any data wants to be shared, it needs to be gone through us and is stored in a cloud, cloud-based, and it will only be stored for 30 days. I have Lieutenant McEnroe here with me who kind of has spun up this project, if you will, and he has more specific uses of what we're going to do over the next several years that we want to use it for.

Just so I'm clear, we're talking about these mobile kind of units that have red and light flashing lights. Correct. You know there's a police camera. It's to deter, like you'll see them at Ralph's or probably at Plaza El Segundo. Exactly. But to put another set of eyes when there's a problem that's been reported. Correct. This is not like some, you know, license plate reader or something that's going to be permanent. It is an as-needed tool that you'll roll out.

It moves around. We've used this in the past. Typically, it costs anywhere from... $25,000 to $30,000 for a six-month use. This is something we're going to own. We're going to own this camera. The only difference is if, let's say, the hardware being the camera is obsolete or it's no longer good, we can just simply replace that camera. It'll be just the cost of the camera. The entire hardware system itself is our property.

Okay. And no sharing of data, no privacy concerns. This is for internal police force use.

Correct. It's not like the typical LPRs like we currently use where other departments request access to it. It doesn't work that way.

Okay.

Corey, do you want to talk about some of the uses we're going to have?

So basically, you never know what's going to come up in the city, but we do host a bunch of major events. So say, for example, we just had 4th of July. I'm sure you all were there. It's very well attended. I think it's one of the largest attendance I've had in the last three years that I've been a part of special operations. That'd be a great opportunity where we could put this up. It has a flashing blue light on top of it so everybody knows what it's doing. So it's obviously a visual deterrent to criminal activity. but say there is some type of event that occurs, it is then where detectives are able to follow up and have some tangible working leads to see if something happens, God forbid, a very catastrophic event. Um, we've even used them for as, as basic as, um, we've had problems with vandalism in the park and, uh, you can set it to cover a certain specific area where say that vandalism is. And if somebody enters that area during certain timeframes, it can even, um, make an announcement, say, hey, leave the area. You're being recorded. And then we stop it from even occurring. So that's something on the very basic end. And it's totally mobile, it's totally customizable, so we can add whatever we want. As you know, Mayor, technology changes on the fly. So we really don't wanna just commit to one technology for a very long period of time. And if we do, we wanna be able to adjust that technology as new stuff comes out in the future. And that's really what I like so much about this trailer.

And you've used this before, you've just been renting it at a cost, and now you're gonna use grant funds to purchase it.

uh sort of we've used a similar product called lvt in the past and we leased that and it's very expensive like the chief said and um it's uh also limited in its capabilities um this we have we have used virkata cameras throughout the city and we contract um uh Like they're putting some in the plunge right now. DaVinci, all their camera systems is for Kata. So this is the first time we're using that on the trailer system. But yes, we've used a similar product.

There is a bit of a difference between going into a city building and being recorded than being recorded walking down the street, not at a city building. Is this data live in the cloud within California and subject to California's privacy laws? Or could it be anywhere, sitting in a server farm in Montana?

You know, again, it's totally controlled by ourselves being the police department.

No, it goes up to Verkada's server, but when they're doing the cloud, where is that cloud? They transmit it outside the state?

No, my knowledge, no. Again, we control all the data. They will not share with anyone. That's data, again, that we control that nobody else has access to.

Is there facial recognition? No. You sure?

Yes.

I'm not sure.

Yes, we are. There's no facial recognition.

Burkata is a very capable camera. You can plug in there, give me the brown shirt, blue eyes, and a hat, and it'll tell you where the brown shirt, blue eyes, and hat are.

There are certain things, again, that we can use if we're looking for a criminal of a certain type. Yes, we can plug that in, but it doesn't necessarily work on facial rec. If there are certain things that you want it to turn off, we can turn it off. The only thing is, again, we're coming forward to you now. If this grant doesn't get approved right now today, the likelihood of us pivoting to another... PROJECT, IF YOU WILL, WILL PROBABLY LOSE THE FUNDING ALL TOGETHER. BECAUSE WE HAVE UNTIL THE END OF THIS YEAR TO MAKE THE PURCHASE. AND YOU'RE DEALING WITH THE CITY OF L.A., ANOTHER ENTITY, THAT WILL PROBABLY BACK US UP TO THE POINT WHERE THIS FUNDING WILL GO AWAY.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

NO. NO, NOT FOR ME. BUT I DO LIKE THE IDEA OF HAVING A CONVERSATION ABOUT THE CAMERAS AND OUR TECHNOLOGY AND WE SHOULD HAVE A POLICY. of what we think is appropriate with all due respect and consideration to what the police need to do their job. I think that's a conversation probably not best done today, but something worth exploring.

Yeah, we're open to any conversation. Again, we're transparent in how we use our technologies. And as was mentioned by Lieutenant McEnroe, that technology changes all the time, which is why we don't like to commit anything beyond two to three years for any particular piece of equipment or software or whatever technology we're trying to purchase.

Anyone else? Is anyone moving anything? Because I lose these battles all the time on these persistent surveillance systems and I load them. So I will not be moving anything except moving no. But if anyone would like to make a motion, please do.

Baldino will move approval.

Baldino on the first.

I'll second.

Giroux on the second. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? All those opposed? No. Three to one. Pimentel loses against the surveillance state again. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys.

They say you're welcome.

All right. Item nine, the ongoing service agreements and blanket purchase orders for FY 2025. These are the ones in excess of 50,000. I don't want to belabor too many of these. I do have some questions. Director Chung, get to my highlighted page. I'm on a roll. I've only lost two in a row. YEAH, WE HAVE RIGHT NOW $350,000 FOR REISTER ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. PART OF THAT'S A $75,000 GRANT, I THINK. ARE WE LIKELY TO, SORRY, I WAS YAMMERING BEFORE SHE GOT UP HERE. DEPUTY SEAT MANAGER, DO WE THINK WE'RE GOING TO RECEIVE THAT GRANT ONCE AGAIN?

The grant is not guaranteed. We have not applied for it yet this year. We've reached out to Chevron. I don't know from year to year whether or not they're going to offer that grant or whether or not we'll receive it. If we don't receive the grant, we would reduce the contract amount.

And we spend a lot of money on Granicus. Can they not maintain our business development websites or economic development websites? Is there a reason we have two different providers?

So Reister does not do website maintenance. We have two landing pages. So to give you the breakdown of the contract, it's a $350,000 contract. $75,000 goes to or is from Chevron. And then 50% of the full contract amount goes to digital advertising for both hospitality and tourism and economic development. So the agency costs are about $95,000 a year. in total, and they do ad development for us. They do our World Cup campaign for us. They do videos. They're doing, with this contract, four videos for social media and digital advertising. And we get a lot of mileage out of them. We show them other places. And they've done two landing pages for us. And the landing pages are specifically, they're not the Granicus websites. They're standalone pages that we drive our ads to that bounce back to our Granicus websites. So they do those, those pages. But they do not do our Granicus websites. We maintain that internally.

Is that something we should think about streamlining so we don't have a number of providers on these things?

Actually, yes, we are looking at that. It's under WordPress, and we have some people on staff who do know how to use WordPress. So we're looking at ways to economize and do some of those updates and changes in-house.

Yeah, that's a substantial amount of money at $350.

Yeah, very little goes to the web pages.

Okay, and KNB, that's ancillary support for your office, for public relations?

So KNB Consulting is Kristen Bergevin. She's been with us for six years. She started as a temp for the website through the IT department in developing content along with me for the new websites in 2020. And each year she has projects, specific projects that she does for both communications and economic development. She secures articles. She got us a Good Day LA segment. It was on Studio Golf. She got us a KCAL segment called Let's Go Places that featured the Old Town Music Hall and the John Van Hammersfeld mural. And there was a tie-in with the John Van Hammersfeld mural to the art at LAX related to FIFA. That was also John Van Hammersfeld. So she finds a lot of connections and media opportunities for us. She also helped us with the concierge tour. She helps greatly with the State of the City event. She did tasting tours with the LA Air Force Base in Raytheon along with Christina in economic development. She audits our websites. So we have a software called Siteimprove that's a few thousand dollars a year that alerts us to things that are disconnected, that aren't right, that aren't current on all of our eight websites. And she's the one who actually goes in, finds out what's wrong, troubleshoots it, and corrects it all. So she has done quite a bit for us in terms, oh, and also we have new hires. She helps them learn how to do Granicus, the back end. She helps them with GovDelivery, which is our communications platform. So for the annual cost of $103,000, she really does a lot for us.

And that's a fixed price contract. It is. The reester is time and material, so up to $350,000 is what we authorize? Yes. Okay. Last one, I think this one's for the fire chief. Oh, thank you. I have a question for the fire chief on... THERE WE GO, CHIEF. ARE FIRE SAFETY ADVISORS DOING PLAN CHECK SERVICES FOR $300,000 ALSO ON A TIME AND MATERIALS BASIS? MY QUESTION OF WHAT? YOU BROUGHT THE FIRE MARSHAL. SO THE QUESTION WOULD BE HOW DOES THAT OVERLAP NOW THAT WE HAVE REPLACED OUR GAP IN FIRE MARSHALING? WHO DOES WHAT AND HOW MUCH OF THIS TIME DO YOU THINK WE'LL USE?

YES, SIR. WELL, GOOD EVENING, HONORABLE MAYOR, MAYOR PRO TEM, COUNCIL MEMBER DREW. Council Member Keldorf, I do have a fire marshal here. She's going to be able to lead way to this, but this is our third-party vendor. We used to have two. We've consolidated two fire safety advisors. She has hit the ground running. She's been great fire marshal thus far. I do have more gray hair. And she has already completed 135 of her own plan checks, and she's hit the ground running, like I said. But I'm going to let her speak to what we're trying to meet here for the next fiscal year with these plan checks.

Hello again. So we do have that pot of money, that $300,000 that we know we're gonna reduce that amount. We know that I'm here, I'm doing plan checks. Last year we did 491, I think, fire plans. In the three months that I've been here, I've done 135 plans. So we do know that that number's going to be reduced. We still need to have them because my 40 hours is dedicated to the plans that I can get to and then also supervising our annual fire inspection program and managing those inspectors and getting them out into the field. So I can't dedicate all of my time to doing plans. There's a good portion that I can do. That 135 was done in I think it was 50 days. I think that averages close to three plans per day that we're doing. But we still need fire safety advisors to take the overflow. There's projects that come in that are very time consuming and we need to be able to ship those to the vendor to take care of. So for instance, the Sparks is a huge project. There are portions of the Sparks that I can do. I want to provide them the best customer service and the quickest turnaround as possible. But there are larger portions of those plans that come in, the fire alarm plans, the fire sprinkler plans. While I do have the capability of doing those, it's very time consuming. So those types of plans need to be sent out to the third party vendor. so I can do the, there's other permits called the comm permits and the building permits. Those ones, we're not recouping all of those funds back into the fire prevention fund. Those go back into the general fund. So when we send those out to that third-party vendor, it's not coming back as a revenue for fire prevention. So we're trying to pull as many of those in-house as we can. So there are plans that will have to get sent out to the to this third party vendor, but that 300,000, I feel that we need this cushion. With me being only in the position for three months, or almost four months, doing plan checks for three, I still need to understand what my capability is with managing the inspectors and doing plan checks and dealing with personnel issues. So we know that that number is going to come down. I just don't know what it is. So my fear is if we were to reduce that number, we would be coming to you potentially and asking for an increase. So right now I'm sort of hoping that we can have this safety net of 300 until I'm here at least a year so we can get some really good data and we can come back to you in the next year and let you know we can reduce it by whatever that number is going to be. But we do know that it will be reduced.

Any questions for the Prime Marshal Sanders?

So we're saying the previous year was the same thing, $300,000.

$360,000.

So you reduced it by $60,000.

Yes, we had two contracts. One was Will Mann and one was Fire Safety Advisors. So Fire Safety Advisors, I think at that time we were just sort of getting our feet wet to see if we liked the services that they provided. And then we didn't renew the contract with Will Dan. And we reduced the contract by 60,000. So we have that in that bucket for fire safety advisors.

Right, but what I'm saying is, so you spent 360, right? We're government, we spend the budget. So what I'm saying is, is that I understand what your ask is. I'm just saying that going forward, if we're only saying it's a $60,000 savings, it would be problematic. You understand what I'm saying? Like if next year you come back and say, okay, we need $150,000 buffer. That would make sense. But if it's not reducing by a significant amount, it raises a flag.

Correct, and I don't think the three months that I've been doing plan check is a long enough time to even have any kind of data to say this is how much money we've been able to reduce. their contract by. So I think if we could have longer than that three months, then I can get an understanding of my job role here for the city. I understand.

I'm just saying that if in the end, at the end of the year, you spent $300, it would be a disappointment.

I completely agree. And when I started in March, I met all of you. the chief introduced me and I did tell you that I will roll out the red carpet for businesses. That's where I came from. That's who I am. I'm very passionate about that. And I think bringing the plan checks in-house is part of that. The contractors, they can call me and I will answer the phone. I will be right there. If it gets sent to the third party vendor, they have to send an email. They have to schedule appointments on their time. I will promise you that I am rolling out the red carpet, and I will bring in more plans into the fire department. We will do them in-house. I just don't know what that's going to look like in the long term. But I know that it has been reduced, and it will continue to be reduced.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, and I would echo that we know that we want efficiency on the plan check piece, but at the same time, we had an issue a few years ago where we were desperately behind in the inspections, which we fundamentally cannot do. That is a life safety issue. So thank you very much. No, I don't think there's any further questions. I wanna highlight that there's almost $3 million worth of contracts on the list here. And I think that's probably inappropriate to have on a consent agenda in the future. I think we should be willing to look at these and peel them apart a little bit. But thank you very much. My questions are satisfied. With that, I will move approval for item nine, ongoing service agreements and blanket purchase orders for fiscal year 26-27 in excess of $50,000 for various departments.

Second.

That was me on the first. Oh, did you have a question? No, Drew on the second. All those in favor? Aye. All right. Any opposed? No. 4-0. All right. Thank you all for your patience with me on that. Oh, now we're in our first public hearing. Sorry. Did we shuffle? This is the time and place hereto fixed for a public hearing. Oops, that's the wrong one. I think it's the wrong one. Okay, the public hearing, sorry. Inclusionary housing policy discussion and extension of urgency ordinance imposing a temporary moratorium on the approval of any land use entitlements permits and other approvers from multifamily residential housing projects with more than 10 units unless the housing project includes an affordable housing component. City Clerk, was proper notice of the hearing given in a timely manner?

Yes, Mr. Mayor.

City Clerk, has any written communication been received regarding the public hearing? No, sir.

All right. Oh, I'm sorry, except for people here.

Yeah, they'll come in for public input after the presentation.

You were asking about written communication.

I was indeed.

Sorry, thank you.

The public hearing is now open. Mr. George, who will make this presentation?

Yes, sir. Community Development Director Michael Allen. Director Allen, the floor is yours.

THANK YOU, MAYOR. THANK YOU, CITY MANAGER DARRELL. GOOD EVENING, MAYOR, MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL. BEFORE YOU TONIGHT IS THE CONSIDERATION, TWO-PART CONSIDERATION. THE FIRST PART IS A DISCUSSION AND SEEKING DIRECTION FROM THE COUNCIL TO FURTHER EXPLORE INCLUSIONARY HOUSING REQUIREMENTS OR STANDARDS. for the city of El Segundo. But that first consideration is on the back of the consideration of extending a potential moratorium beyond the 45, the current 45 day moratorium, which was previously adopted on June 16th by city council. WE'RE BACK BEFORE THE COUNCIL WITH THIS POTENTIAL EXTENSION NOW AS OPPOSED TO CLOSER TO THE 45 DAYS BECAUSE THIS IS THE NEXT REGULARLY SCHEDULED CITY COUNCIL MEETING BEFORE AUGUST 18TH WHEN THAT 45-DAY WINDOW WOULD EXPIRE SO WE WANTED TO TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO ONE CONSIDER ANY POTENTIAL DIRECTION BY COUNCIL TO FURTHER PURSUE THIS BEFORE STAFF TIME IS INVESTED IN GOING TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION, PREPARING STUDY SESSION AND DOING THAT ANALYSIS, AS WELL AS TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXTEND THE MORATORIUM AT A TIME FRAME THAT THE CITY COUNCIL FEELS IS APPROPRIATE TO ALLOW STAFF THAT TIME TO BE ABLE TO DO SO IF THERE'S A DESIRE. to develop or further develop the standards. So I will give a very high level overview of some of the work that's already been done. If the council recalls several years ago in 2022, staff presented some preliminary research based on inclusionary housing standards funded by a grant that the city got in 2020, I think it was a year or two before my time. But by the time I got here in 2021, some of the work had already been done and we presented that research and that study to the planning commission and subsequently to the city council. And as you'll see at that time, the results of that analysis demonstrated that there was potential constraints that inclusionary housing presented for potential housing developments, particularly multifamily housing developments. And so we did not proceed in the further development of that THAT ORDINANCE. BUT INCLUSIONARY HOUSING IS ONE OF SEVERAL OPTIONS OF INCENTIVIZING AND CREATING AFFORDABLE HOUSING WITHIN OUR RENA CATEGORIES. THAT IS THE REGIONAL HOUSING NEEDS ASSESSMENT. CATEGORIES ESTABLISHED BY THE STATE, WHICH TELLS US HOW MANY AFFORDABLE UNITS WE HAVE TO ACCOMMODATE OR FACILITATE WITHIN OUR CITY. THAT'S DONE THROUGH THE ADOPTION OF OUR HOUSING ELEMENT. WE ADOPTED OUR HOUSING ELEMENT IN 2022. IT DELINEATED A HANDFUL OF SPECIFIC SITES THAT WE CAN ACCOMMODATE THE RENA HOUSING UNITS WITH OR WITHOUT ANY INCLUSIONARY STANDARDS. BUT WHAT AN INCLUSIONARY HOUSING ORDINANCE WOULD DO IS IT WOULD REQUIRE ANY NEW RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT and particularly multifamily development. And you can differentiate whether it's a rental product or for sale product. And it mandates a certain percentage of units are held aside or set aside to meet that income criteria within the three typical categories that are associated with RHNA numbers. So that is low, very low and moderate income categories. AND LASTLY, AS MENTIONED, I THINK THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE MENTIONED THE FIRST TIME THAT WE BROUGHT THIS TO COUNCIL IN JUNE, THE INCLUSIONARY HOUSING ORDINANCE IS A PROGRAM IN THE HOUSING ELEMENT AS A COMMITMENT TO THE HCD OR THE DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AT THE STATE LEVEL THAT THIS WOULD BE SOMETHING THAT THE CITY STUDIES AND FURTHER ANALYZES AS WE GO THROUGH TO IDENTIFY IF THERE'S AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADOPT AN ORDINANCE LIKE THIS. THE STATE WOULD CERTAINLY ADVOCATE FOR IT, BUT AGAIN, WE OPTED NOT TO THE PREVIOUS DISCUSSION IN 2022 BECAUSE AT THAT TIME IT JUST WAS NOT A RELIABLE MECHANISM AND IT WOULD RESULT IN INFEASIBLE PROJECTS. And ultimately the study, again, these are based on 2021 and 2022 numbers, but what we found, and I'll show you the following graph will give you a little bit more information, but that single family and townhome units that were the for sale product would pencil and add a margin about 15 plus return on investment, 15 plus percent return on investment, which we believe that the market would support at that time. Unfortunately, for sale products for affordable housing are very, very uncommon. It's very difficult to manage. And as this council might be familiar with the DR Horton site, part of the reason why that site did not end up ultimately setting aside affordable units and paid the in lieu contribution was because of the difficulty in structuring and managing the ongoing for sale affordable housing products in that project. IT IS NOT AS COMMON FOR SINGLE FAMILY OR TOWN HOME FOR SALE PRODUCTS TO UTILIZE AFFORDABLE HOUSING DENSITY BONUS THROUGH THE STATE PROGRAM. MULTI-FAMILY RENTAL PROJECTS DID HAVE A SMALL MARGIN, AND I THINK THAT'S THE FIRST SLIDE HERE, DID HAVE A SMALL MARGIN WHERE AT THE INDUSTRY STANDARD FOR A TYPICAL DEVELOPER, FOR-PROFIT DEVELOPER, IN ORDER TO INVEST IN A DEVELOPMENT OF ANY SCALE, for a multifamily product of 30 units to the acre, 40 units to the acre or 50 units to the acre with a return on investment of about 5%, it's something that they'll typically look at. And so what we found is that with a 5% and 8% low income commitment or inclusionary requirement, we barely hit the 5% margin on 30, 40, or 50 units to the acre. And just for reference, the vast majority of our three zone, which is our multifamily zone within the city, sits at 30 units to the acre. The only locations that the city has currently at a higher units per acre would be on Pacific Coast Highway. The PCC project is roughly 87 units to the acre. ROUNDING, BUT IT'S ROUGHLY 87 UNITS TO THE ACRE. AND THEN THE MIXED USE AND THE MULTIFAMILY OVERLAY ZONES THAT WERE ADOPTED IN THE HOUSING ELEMENT, IF YOU RECALL, THE MIXED USE OVERLAY SITS AT 75 UNITS TO THE ACRE AND THE RESIDENTIAL OVERLAY WHICH IS ON IMPERIAL HIGHWAY AND A COUPLE LOCATIONS IN SMOKY HOLLOW, IS AT 65 UNITS TO THE ACRE. SO WE DID NOT ANALYZE AT THOSE DENSITIES BECAUSE THAT WAS DONE AFTER THIS STUDY WAS DONE. BUT YOU CAN IMAGINE THAT USING 2021, 2022 FINANCING NUMBERS, IT MIGHT BE A LITTLE BIT MORE THAN 5% RETURN ON INVESTMENT AT THAT TIME. SO THIS IS A RENTAL PROTOTYPE FOR TWO BEDROOM. IN THE STAFF REPORT THERE'S ALSO ONE BEDROOM. THERE'S SEVERAL ITERATIONS. But at the end of the day, most of them landed right around this 5% return on investment. And for the for sale prototype, 15% is the threshold that developers will typically look at when committing to affordability on a for sale product and all these scenarios at the 10%, 12%, 5% income levels or commitments. the single family and town-owned products all realized greater than 15% return on investment. But again, this is not a very typical scenario. In fact, in my own experience, the only scenario I've seen the for sale product work and be done is through a Habitat for Humanity project. They're probably the most common users of the for sale product when they do affordable housing. It's the nature of their business. So the current moratorium that is on the docket commits any future housing development for multifamily at 9% extremely low income, 13% very low income, and 17% lower income. And the exceptions to this that have been adopted as part of the moratorium are any exempted structures. And so this does not apply to projects that have less than 10 units, residential units, does not apply to projects with ADUs or any minor remodeling or repairs that are being done as part of existing structures. And then any structures that are being rebuilt as part of a natural disaster. Also, projects that are currently in the pipeline, so projects that have been deemed complete, so the entitlement submittal package has been deemed complete, it does not apply to those projects as long as they've been deemed complete prior to the June 16th action that city council took. And then there's several alternative exemptions that state law provides for rental projects that a developer could utilize. They could pay the in lieu fee instead of provide the affordable units. And so if they wanted to move forward and just pay the in lieu fee, they can certainly do that. The fourth bullet point is not on here, but there's also a path where a developer could simply just come to council and ask for an exemption or waiver to these standards.

Can I interrupt with a question? Do we have an established in lieu fee per unit or that's to be negotiated?

That would be part of the negotiation.

We have to wait till we close the bubble hearing. Sorry.

I won't.

Or it gets 700 degrees in here. What are we doing? It's a $400,000 air conditioner.

So lastly, just a reminder. So the two actions, again, it's two part. The first, actually no particular order. Maybe the council has an idea of what better order to take this in. But one would be to decide whether to continue the moratorium and the other decision would be if we were to continue the moratorium, any direction on the further establishment or development of an inclusionary housing ordinance. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. CITY ATTORNEY MARK KENSLEY HAS HELPED DRAFT THIS AND CRAFT THIS AND IS ALSO HERE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS WITH ME.

THANK YOU, DIRECTOR ALLEN. THE PUBLIC HEARING IS NOW OPEN FOR PUBLIC INPUT. HOW MANY WE GOT? WE HAVE TWO, SIR. TWO. SAME RULES, THREE MINUTES.

THREE MINUTES. JOHN PICKHAVER, PLEASE. AND WE ARE WORKING ON THE AIR CONDITIONING. WE TURNED IT DOWN AN HOUR AGO. IT'S GOT A MIND OF ITS OWN.

GOOD EVENING AGAIN, COUNCIL. MY NAME IS JOHN PICKHAVER. AND I'M HERE TO SPEAK ON THE HOUSING MORATORIUM PROPOSAL. IT'S INTERESTING TO ME THAT IT'S PHRASED AS AN INCLUSIONARY HOUSING. AND LIKE PEOPLE THAT KNOW ME, I'M VERY MUCH FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING. At the last meeting, Council Member Boyles, who's not here tonight, asked aloud, now are we doing this because we actually want to build affordable housing, or is this like a poison pill to stop it? And I think that's a question a lot of people that are paying attention to this had, and I think that's the effect that this may have. It's in spirit, it is to create more affordable housing, but I think the opposite might happen. Developers, based on that presentation we just saw, will see that the math doesn't math. AND NOTHING WILL GET BUILT EFFECTIVELY BEING A POISON PILL. I THINK, YOU KNOW, GETTING BACK TO VISION 2050 AND JUST THE CHARTER CITY TALK AND, YOU KNOW, THE DATA CENTER MENTIONED EARLIER AND THIS HOUSING MORATORIUM, IT ALL SEEMS CONNECTED TO ME AND IT ALL SEEMS CONNECTED TO NOT NECESSARILY BLOCK NEW HOUSING, BUT TO MAKE IT VERY DIFFICULT TO BUILD NEW HOUSING. AND AGAIN, LIKE I SAID, I AM ALL FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING, BUT IF WE WANT DEVELOPERS TO INVEST IN AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND TAKE THAT RISK WITH THE MATH, WE REALLY JUST NEED MORE HOUSING. WE NEED TO SEE VIABILITY SO DEVELOPERS WHO ARE TAKING THAT RISK FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE TAKING IT. PACIFIC COAST COMMONS, I WAS LOOKING THIS UP BEFORE I CAME UP HERE, WAS APPROVED IN APRIL 2022. AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T BROKEN GROUND. A LOT OF THAT HAS TO DO WITH ECONOMY AND INTEREST RATES But a lot of it has to do with that high affordability commitment that they have, which, again, is ultimately a good thing. But at the end of the day, we need more housing. And when I see things like this, the Charter City reason behind it, extending this housing moratorium another year, which is also happening in the backdrop of SB 79, which would allow... PERMITTING FOR HOUSING WITHIN I THINK A HALF MILE OR SO METRO STATIONS, WHICH OPENS UP THAT DATA CENTER PROPOSAL. ALL OF THIS, I KIND OF LOST THE POINT I WAS MAKING ON THE DATA CENTER, BUT ALL OF THIS JUST KIND OF CONTRIBUTES TO THIS IDEA THAT IN EL SEGUNDO WE'RE ALWAYS LOOKING TO JUST MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO BUILD MORE HOUSING, AND I THINK WE SHOULD JUST BE WORKING TOGETHER TO FIGURE OUT THE BEST WAYS TO GET IT DONE. WE'VE MADE A LOT OF PROGRESS IN THIS CITY THE LAST FEW YEARS OF BEING A MORE WELCOMING INCLUSIVE PLACE, BUT WE STILL HAVEN'T HAD AN APARTMENT BUILDING BUILT HERE IN 40 YEARS. I THINK THIS MORATORIUM IS GOING TO HAVE THE OPPOSITE INTENTION OF INCLUSIONARY HOUSING, AND I HOPE THAT YOU DON'T EXTEND IT AND JUST USE THE POWERS OF THE CITY TO CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT TO BUILD MORE HOUSING. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MR. MCCAVER.

ANYA GOLDSTEIN.

GOOD EVENING. SO JUST SUMMARIZING SOME OF WHAT I SAW IN THAT REALLY HELPFUL PRESENTATION, IN 2022 STAFF PRESENTED PRELIMINARY RESEARCH ON INCLUSIONARY HOUSING ORDINANCE AND THEY REALIZED THAT IT PRESENTED CONSTRAINTS ON HOUSING PRODUCTION. THAT IT RESULTED IN INFEASIBLE PROJECTS. THAT INSTEAD WE CERTIFIED A HOUSING ELEMENT THAT IDENTIFIED HOW WE COULD MEET THE REQUIREMENTS WITH OR WITHOUT AFFORDABLE HOUSING REQUIREMENTS. FOR SALE PRODUCTS FOR AFFORDABILITY, WITH AFFORDABILITY REQUIREMENTS ARE VERY, VERY DIFFICULT. THEY DIDN'T EVEN MAKE IT ON THE CHART THERE FOR MULTIFAMILY. And multifamily rental have a very small margin, 5% return on investment, which is, I mean, just put it in a ETF at that point, for 8% low, whereas what we're proposing here is 17% low. Not what's being proposed and make it on any charts there because it's completely infeasible. This all lines up with the discussion on this issue at the last public hearing on just the 45-day moratorium in which it was completely clear this was just a poison pill, not about creating affordable housing here in El Segundo. I rarely differ with Mr. Pickhaver, but I'll differ here in saying that this intention is about affordable housing. It was abundantly clear on the record last time that this was about stopping SB 79. It went in as an emergency right before SB 79 went into effect. Mayor Pimentel talked about how he advocated vociferously for SB 79 to have carve outs for areas around Pimentel. REFINERIES WASN'T ABLE TO GET THAT THAT'S WHY WE WERE DOING THIS NOW ON AND ON AND ON THE RECORD WAS CRYSTAL CLEAR WHAT WAS SPOKEN ABOUT WAS SAFETY RELATED TO THE REFINERY IN THE BLAST ZONE I EMAILED YOU MAYOR PIMENTEL DIRECTLY AFTER THE MEETING ASKING WHAT YOU MEANT ABOUT THE BLAST ZONE BECAUSE THAT WAS NOT A TERM I'D EVER HEARD I GOOGLED IT I COULDN'T FIND ANY INFORMATION ON IT YOU DIDN'T RESPOND I FOLLOWED UP YOU DIDN'T RESPOND I'VE DONE SOME RESEARCH AND IT IS COMPLETELY WITHIN THE CITY'S POLICE POWERS TO PROHIBIT THE BUILDING OF HOUSING WHERE THERE IS LEGITIMATE DOCUMENTED SCIENTIFICALLY BASED SAFETY RISKS. SO THAT IS THE CORRECT LEGAL PATH IF YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT THE BLAST ZONE OF THE REFINERY. having a pretextual housing, inclusionary, exclusionary housing ordinance is a recipe for massive litigation risk for the city. HCD is gonna come after the city. Builders are gonna come after the city. There might be a risk that the housing element is decertified. If you need to think on this more, do like a 15 more day moratorium. Do not extend this to a year and open yourselves up to this massive litigation risk. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Goldstein. Anyone else?

No, sir.

Do I have a motion to close the public hearing?

So moved.

Kildall for the first. Baldino seconds. Baldino on the second. All right. All those in favor? Aye. 4-0, council discussion.

Can I ask Director Allen a couple of questions? Sorry, this new structure is... Are we allowed to do that?

We're allowed to do that, right? Here we go, city attorney. All right.

You just want to have the public comment before. Got it. I got it.

Okay. No. So the in lieu fee, I jumped the gun on that question, but that would be something that we would negotiate going forward. There is no set per unit.

There's currently no set per unit. We could adopt and study a fee as part of an ordinance. It's not, I've seen it multiple ways because the fees frequently are formula based based on RATES AND RESALE VALUES AND LAND VALUE AT THE TIME THAT YOU NEGOTIATE USUALLY IT IS SOMETHING THAT'S DISCUSSED AND NEGOTIATED AT THAT TIME BECAUSE OF THE VARIABLES THAT INFLUENCE HOUSING COSTS.

THANK YOU WOULD YOU MIND CAN WE PUT THAT SLIDE UP THAT TALKS ABOUT THE INCOME LEVELS. THE BREAKDOWN. And this is a question that I have in my day life too. So these are qualifiers to get RHNA allocation, but this differs from state density bonus law. And I think, right, because we have slides in our packet from 2021. So those income levels will be higher now, but they do vary quite significantly. For instance, to get, RHNA credit for a for sale townhome at low income, that townhome would sell back in 2021 for between 400 and 450,000 versus density bonus, that number is in the 300,000s.

And those numbers would have to be adjusted for 2026. I don't know off the top of my head that 2026 HCD published affordability rates,

And I guess just maybe this is going into the discussion part, but if we were to move forward with this, something that I think is important is to just clarify those percentages and what is RENA approved versus state density bonus law, because it's a pretty big swing. And Ms. Goldstein rarely differs from Mr. Pickhaver. I rarely differ from Director Allen, but I will say that I WORK FOR A COMPANY THAT IS CURRENTLY SELLING TWO PROJECTS, ONE IN GLENDORA, ONE IN CYPRUS, AND IT HAS FOR SALE AFFORDABLE UNITS AT MODERN INCOME. THOSE UNITS ARE SELLING FOR THOSE TOWNHOMES FOR $400,000. IT'S ALSO A LITTLE BIT OF A MISNOMER IN THIS SPACE WHEN PEOPLE HERE ARE VERY LOW INCOME OR LOW INCOME. TO THINK OF A CERTAIN CATEGORY. IF WE MOVE FORWARD WITH THIS, I AM A PROPONENT OF INCLUDING IT IN FOR SALE. I THINK THAT RENA, MEETING RENA NUMBERS AND THEN MEETING WHAT THE COMMUNITY NEEDS ARE A LITTLE BIT OF TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. I THINK THERE'S A TREMENDOUS NEED FOR ATTAINABLE FOR SALE HOUSING. I like the idea of keeping it at that moderate income level for for sale product for sure. And I think that why we're not seeing multifamily projects being built now is because our cost of capital way exceeds that threshold, right? So if you're lending money for 7%, you're just never gonna get there more so than it is the inclusion of affordable units in that PCC project.

Absolutely. I mean, that was a development deal where we negotiated and talked about how much would be inclusionary and they agreed to it and they had their numbers and their bankers lined up and then the markets changed. This was included in our housing element, wasn't it, Mr. Allen?

The idea of having these type of requirements on new- The program to study it and consider it was in the housing element. That's correct.

Okay, and the ask today is, you wanna know if you have council direction to put in this moratorium for 10 months so you can actually do the new calculations and study it and then come back to us with some proposals? It doesn't mean that we adopt it. We're just giving you direction to say, yeah, why don't you look at this and let us know if it for sale housing makes sense or if an in lieu fee would probably work it out. But you're coming with us now, just giving the information we did from back when we first looked at the housing element, correct?

That's right. There's an alternative where you could give staff direction to further pursue this, but not extend the moratorium or change the length of the moratorium if the 10 months and 15 days was longer than you thought appropriate and you wanted us to come back before then. You know, there's a couple different alternatives. You don't necessarily have to do both.

But you could also do it for the 10 months and 15 days, but direct us to come back in 60 days or 90 days to see where we are, and you could adjust. You could, at that point, either get rid of it or adjust the numbers. I mean, it's not... It doesn't have to be a static thing for that entire 10. It doesn't have to end up running for 10.

No, that's what I understand is we're just saying, look, let's hit the pause button, allow staff to take a look at this and then come back. I agree that I don't want you waiting 10 months and then coming back and us having a bunch of you know, armchair quarterbacking and changing things, it'd be best to get a status report so that we can see the numbers. You can be frank with us about what's working, what's not working, how would the aloo fee work, all that stuff, because we need to make sure if we're going to implement this, that it actually makes sense. But as far as what we're being tasked with tonight is, should we have the moratorium so that you can have the time and direction to actually study this and come back with some possible solutions? I think that makes sense.

I always find it interesting that when we take the time to discuss things, there becomes a conspiracy theory that we're trying to do things that we're not, but I digress. On this, when we voted to continue it for 45 days last time, it was specifically so I'd get a chance to get our arms around this a little bit. I just would like to remind everyone that we don't get the staff report and the agenda until the public does. SO THIS IS A 504 PAGE STAFF REPORT THAT I RECEIVED LAST THURSDAY. OKAY, THE SAME TIME YOU DID. SO WE DON'T HAVE SOME DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION MEETINGS ABOUT HOUSING AND THINGS LIKE THAT TO BE ABLE TO DISCUSS THAT. IT WOULD BE ILLEGAL IF WE DID THAT. SO WE'RE ACTUALLY DOING THIS IN LIVE TIMES SO YOU CAN SEE WHAT WE'RE DOING AND WHAT THE PROCESS IS. THAT BEING SAID, I AGREE THIS IS A COMPLETE POISON BILL AND THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING BECAUSE WE STILL HAVEN'T HAD ANYTHING BUILT EVEN THOUGH WE'VE AUTHORIZED IT. I BELIEVE THAT BY DOING SO WE UNNECESSARILY HANDCUFF DEVELOPERS THAT WANT TO COME IN AND MAKE THE INVESTMENT BECAUSE THEY CAN SEE RIGHT AWAY THE CHANCES OF THIS PENCILING OUT ESPECIALLY WHAT THE CAPITAL MARKETS ARE RIGHT NOW ARE ESSENTIALLY ZERO WHICH IS WHY PACIFIC COAST COMMONS IS NOT BEING BUILT. IT'S NOT THAT WE HAVE DECIDED NOT TO BUILD ANYTHING. We don't own anything to build. We need developers to come in and build. So we're not saying no to anything. Has there been a project, I've been up here for seven plus years, have we said no to any housing project? In my recollection, I don't believe we have. SO I ALSO BELIEVE THAT HAVING AN AFFORDABLE ELEMENT IS VERY IMPORTANT. I MEAN, I'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THAT FOR YEARS BECAUSE I KNOW THE NUMBER ONE THING THAT BUSINESSES TALK ABOUT IS THAT THERE'S NO PLACE FOR THE YOUNG PROFESSIONALS TO LIVE. SO I'M WITH YOU ON THAT. BUT I BELIEVE THAT THE BETTER WAY TO NEGOTIATE THAT IS IN THE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT. 99.999% OF THE TIME EVERY ONE OF THESE PROJECTS HAS A REQUEST, AN ENTITLEMENT. THEY WANT TO ASK FOR SOMETHING. I BELIEVE IF WE HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY AT THAT POINT, THAT IS A BETTER OPTION THAN DOING THIS. SO I DON'T PERSONALLY SEE THE REASON TO CONTINUE THIS FOR TEN PLUS MONTHS AND FURTHER RESTRICT ANYONE FROM ME WANTING TO COME IN AND ACTUALLY BUILD BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT SOME HOUSING IS GOING TO BE BETTER THAN NO HOUSING.

Thanks.

So, Lance, to that point, if we undertake this exercise now, the next time there is a large project and we start the development agreement, we'll have more up-to-date information about what the market can bear, what low-income housing would look like. Right now, if we had that conversation, we're going off these 2020 numbers. A lot has changed since then. So, and again, we're not saying we're gonna do this, or it's a good idea, or we think it's a bad idea, we're not gonna do it. We're just saying, does it make sense to hit the pause button and let staff do the work, put the time into it, and then report back to us? And they could say, look, you can't do low income. Maybe you can do low or you can't do extremely low. Maybe there's a compromise in there, but we haven't been presented with anything that I feel safe saying this is a completely waste of staff resources and time. If anything, it might educate us more about what is possible and what's not. And the other concern is that if we don't have some type of requirement to meet these numbers, we can't rely on the goodwill of developers and we can't always rely on there being a development agreement that where we're gonna have this kind of negotiation back and forth play like we did with Pacific Coast Commons. Pacific Coast Commons, they wanted certain entitlements, they wanted certain density. And so that was a nice long protracted negotiation where everybody kind of got to come to terms with it. So again, I think there really isn't any harm, especially if you say they haven't built anything in 40 years. You know, what is the harm in having staff work on this for five, six months and come back and then we can decide at that point, is this making sense or should we just not do it anymore?

I guess my comeback to that would be without this requirement, no one's coming in to build it. With the requirement, how does that entice anyone to come in right now to do that?

SO I WILL SAY IN REGARDS TO THE DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT, THE LANDSCAPE HAS CHANGED CONSIDERABLY OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS. I MEAN, I THINK PLANNING COMMISSION HEARD THIS IN 2021. SINCE THEN WE HAVE A HOUSING ELEMENT, WE HAVE ZONE SITES. SO AS A DEVELOPER LOOKING AT A HOUSING ELEMENT SITE, you are not really gonna have a development agreement because you're gonna use state density bonus law to get a concession out of parking, out of open space, out of height, out of density, with the intention that you don't have to go to the city and negotiate a development agreement. That is, I think, hugely different from what it was when we looked at it even five years ago. The only, and please correct me if you think differently, but that a development agreement might come into play if somebody was proposing it on property that would require a general plan amendment zone change. but not on property that is currently zoned for mixed use or housing. So to me, the development agreement, while maybe a good idea at the time, it's just changed considerably and it no longer really gives us any negotiating power.

I'll just add to that, Sacramento, when you see the legislation, is going more and more towards by right development and giving cities less and less authority over the developments. Again, if there's a zoning change, that's different. There might be authority then. It is very confusing from a legal perspective to look at what Sacramento says it wants, affordable housing, IT NEVER ACTUALLY REQUIRES IT FOR MOST OF THE THINGS THEY DO. IN FACT, SOME CITIES WITH THE ADUs WANTED TO MAKE THEM REQUIRED TO BE AFFORDABLE, AND THEY SPECIFICALLY GOT LAWS PASSED THAT SAID YOU CAN'T DO THAT. BUT WE'RE REQUIRED, BUT THEY DO WANT AFFORDABLE HOUSING BECAUSE IT'S PART OF THE MANDATE THAT WE GET THROUGH THE HOUSING ELEMENT. I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU SQUARE ALL THAT, BUT THAT'S KIND OF THE WAY IT LOOKS.

TO ADD ADDITIONAL COLOR TO SOME OF THE SENTIMENT WITH RECENT LEGISLATION AND TO COUNCILMEMBER KELDORFF'S POINT ABOUT SORT OF A BY RIGHT DEVELOPMENT AS MARK IS REFERENCING IN OUR HOUSING SITES OVERLAY. IF THE COUNCIL RECALLS HOW WE STRUCTURED THOSE DENSITIES, THEY WERE STRUCTURED AT A AT A RATE THAT WOULD INCENTIVIZE THE EXERCISE OF THE STATE DENSITY BONUS IN ORDER TO FACILITATE THE PRODUCTION OF AFFORDABLE UNITS. NOW THOSE RATES WOULD BE PROBABLY IN THE 10 TO 12% RANGE OF SOME COMBINATION OF THE LOW, VERY LOW AND MODERATE. BUT THIS WOULD BE AN OPPORTUNITY TO ESTABLISH WHAT WE WANT THOSE RATES TO BE OUTSIDE OF OR IN ADDITION TO THE BASELINE THAT SOMEBODY MIGHT EXERCISE WITH STATE DENSITY BONUS. BUT IF THERE WAS A DEVELOPER WHO WANTED TO DEVELOP A PROPERTY THAT IS IN THE SITE'S INVENTORY AND NOT EXERCISE THE STATE DENSITY BONUS LAW, THEY COULD DO SO. based on our analysis when we developed those densities, those are not projects that would necessarily pencil today, and that could certainly change. But this would be an opportunity to lock in an inclusionary requirement so that if it ever did pencil, then we'd have this sort of mechanism to facilitate the affordable unit production.

THE LAST THING MAYBE I WILL ADD ON THIS IS THAT PROJECTS ALSO ARE NOT GETTING BUILT BECAUSE LAND OWNERS ARE HOLDING VERY FIRM ON THEIR LAND VALUE. SO THAT'S A QUESTION OF WHO WINS AND WHO, QUOTE, UNQUOTE, LOSES, BUT PROJECTS WILL GET BUILT IF LAND OWNERS come down in their pricing. I mean, that's why we've had projects like the old Stickenstein sites that vacant for 15 years because there's a dollar amount in mind. Those projects work, just not at what the trade value is.

I mean, look, in the end, I completely get where you're coming from. I'm not saying that it's off the rails. I just think there's two ways to get here. And I just don't agree that this is the way to do it. That's all.

But if we don't do the work and figure out what works and what doesn't work, we won't know. You see my point? What's the harm in asking staff to come back and say, take a look at this, look at what we did in 2020, put today's numbers on it, so that we can try to get our arms around what can we do as far as an allocation of what we expect.

Because we can decide what we want to all day long up here. We're not the ones building it.

Oh, no, I agree. I don't disagree with you there. I'm just saying that as we sit here today, we're using six-year-old information on affordability and six-year-old information on what the market will bear as far as how much they're going to put into it, how much they're going to get out. I'd rather see those today's numbers. And if it doesn't make any sense, then it doesn't make any sense. But right now I can't tell you one way or another. So that's why I am all for staff taking the time to, I think it's a useful exercise. I think it'll only give us information we need, whether we're doing a development agreement, which I agree. We don't see those much anymore. We don't have the leverage we used to have with large developers, as far as having a conversation and negotiation and getting public benefits. And so I think it's, it's a good use of staff time to try to figure this out and tell us what makes sense and what doesn't make sense.

Yeah, I'll weigh in that this is, the housing piece is the never-ending challenge that we've had, whether it's PCC, the by-right development at Stickenstein, which this will be our third go-round with hoping somebody actually builds it there. A lot of the work we did getting the overlay reinstated, overwork catalyst will be at Kansas and Grand. any potential development at the Rite Aid where it could go up 50 feet with opportunities for housing on top of that. We worked with Hermosa and passed the South Bay Housing Trust to try and take the sting out of all these projects, not penciling. It is really, really, really difficult. We may even want to revisit what we did in 22, which is waiving impact fees on affordable units, which, I mean, we came one vote away from doing just as a way to try and get them included and make it pencil out. My concern is that We have this addressed in the zones where we currently allow it. Do we need to be, is to the Mayor Pro Temp's point, is the issue that we can end up in a zoning change environment on the east side, right? And then end up with buy right development at only market rate housing? Because that was mooted, you know, eight years ago we had a developer that wanted to build effectively Playa Del Rey combo complex, condo complex over there. could we end up with all market rate housing in a spot that the state has told us that we have to do affordable?

Well, they've said that we have to do housing, not.

So we can end up in housing where we as a city have said we don't want it in the past and end up getting nothing that we want out of it.

I am not familiar with this most recent one, but the one that allowed you to take a strip mall and build housing by right, the only requirement is that you pay prevailing wage union wages. And that was the- The groups who want to build housing are those who are in the business of building housing. And so the benefits typically flow, so.

A market rate apartment in the city of El Segundo would lease for somewhere between $4 and $5 a square foot. So these are not by any stretch. affordable or necessarily attainable housing units if they don't include some affordable component.

Yeah, because market or moderate comes in at $76,000 a year for a family of two and very low comes in just behind it, like what, $74,900 or something. Why does this take 10 months to study?

10 months and 15 days is the extent of what state law allows the city to extend the moratorium. It certainly wouldn't take that long.

But I pointed out that this is, it doesn't have to stay in.

No, yeah, let me finish my thought though. If we have places, because if we peanut butter spread this across an entire city and we have projects that we know are going to come online, and I'm thinking of the Stickenstein property, They're not into planning yet, right? So they would be affected by this moratorium, even though we're going to get like 90 units out of it?

Yeah, they have a completed application. Their application has been deemed complete.

I don't know. I defer to a bit of expertise on my former planning commission colleagues over here, but a 10-month moratorium in a city that's crying out to have people build things for places to live seems long.

Well, do we have the flexibility to ask for it to come back in a much shorter time period? And also, it would have to go to Planning Commission first, I'm assuming.

Yeah, this would be a- Does that signal to, if someone's out there who's gonna plan it and they see the word moratorium on El Segundo, are they gonna stop planning? Well, there's, is there- I mean, not Planning Commission plan, but stop there, like, oh, well, I'll just shop this somewhere else.

Well, I think what we can do is agree to the 10 months, instruct staff to come back in five months after you've gone to the planning commission. So we've had public hearings and people have been able to give their point of view on it. And then we can decide at that time if this continues further conversation and study, or if it's just not going to make sense.

But why not just make the moratorium like two months and revisit it in two months? I just feel, it would seem to me as a human factor, I'm not a builder, that if someone was like, oh, I have a plan, you know, I'm looking at Pacific Coast Commons, I'm going to finish the acquisition, I've got the capital for it because there's tons of dry powder at Blackstone or wherever.

Those entitlements are locked in for a very long time.

Take that out of it. Let's say somebody wants to buy the Rite Aid or something, and they look and say, oh, there's some place I'll never be able to develop within a year. Are they going to not make that acquisition? Are we sending a deleterious message?

I don't believe that we are because... Rite Aid is part of the downtown plan. They've got their development rights, but same with the Pacific Coast Commons and apparently the Stegenstein site. Application is complete, but no discretionary approvals. Understood. But again, we're just asking staff to study it. We haven't adopted anything. We haven't done anything except hit the pause button so they can come back. I would like to be optimistic and say something of this importance can be done in two months, But based on my history and experience, I think you're not going to get a thorough understanding and go to planning commission and come back to city council in two months. It's going to be three months, maybe four months before they're going to be able to have anything tangible that we can, you know, really roll up our sleeves and figure out what works, what doesn't work.

Why would this go to planning commission?

No, it does.

Why? But this part right here, why didn't it go before it came to us right now then?

land use and zoning?

You can send it to Planning Commission for their opinion. I mean, until there's an actual final ordinance, it doesn't have to. It can just come back to council.

My point is this seems to be, the point you made was the financial numbers are very different now than they were when the study was done. So what does an update of that information, why does that necessitate it going to Planning Commission over here?

Oh, I'm just a fan of more public communication and more public hearings.

I think the Mayor Pro Tem and I though, real quick, we're talking about the same thing in different ways. Why wouldn't we do a shorter moratorium that we can continue if we don't, if we're not getting the data or the data's not ready yet, that wouldn't deter people from planning projects in the city of El Segundo, vice putting a longer term moratorium and then telling them, oh, surprise, it's over early.

I can be persuaded either way.

Oh, I'm not necessarily trying to persuade you. I'm just thinking out loud. I mean, this is you guys' business.

What would happen if a developer came in tomorrow and you said there's a moratorium on projects above 10 units that don't include affordable? We don't have that affordability defined yet. Then what would you do?

we'd probably discuss the nature of the moratorium, the timing, and what's being considered. And more than likely, they would just want to be kept apprised and they would sort of keep the temperature of what the discussion is pursuing, you know, ensuing after that. And they would come back and decide once the moratorium expired and there are either standards in place or not, then they would, decide whether they were going to pull the trigger on their development, it's unlikely they would invest anything until they had a good understanding of what that end result was going to be.

I mean, I will tell you I look at projects all over LA County outside of El Segundo and it is for sale developer and it is just automatically assumed that everything we look at that has underlying residential zoning is gonna have state density bonus law. So from just in my limited space of who I work with, it's assumed and it's part of the process. I don't know of any projects that are teed up and ready to go that we haven't talked about up here that somebody is gonna pull out of, but I do think that 10 months is too long, so I have no problem setting whatever we think is a realistic timeframe to get through the process.

Sure. Did I say it right? We need a unanimous, right?

The threshold is 4-0 today.

I think it's gonna be tough.

but we're gonna compromise on 10 months. We're going down to what? Five, four, what do you have? Three.

Look, if we're talking about a discussion over financial matters and numbers, that should not take that long for you to figure out. It just shouldn't.

So let me ask you this. What if we separated these two things? I mean, I was a fan of an inclusionary housing ordinance when it first came to planning commission. I was disappointed to see that it didn't make it through council at the time. So is there still an opportunity to direct staff to look into that? Is there value in that? Or is it only a value with a moratorium on development? And I guess my caveat to that is what would be the defining moment? Would it be when a developer came in to talk to the city or it would be upon permitting?

Triggering what exactly?

Triggering before, so say that we did not do a moratorium, but we had an inclusionary housing ordinance discussion resolved in the next six months and sometime between today and six months, a developer came in to bring up a project. At what point would they be beholden to an inclusionary housing ordinance?

Their application is final. Yeah, they're vested once their application is determined complete and final.

I just think we're throwing up barriers in a situation where we can't afford to throw up barriers. We don't have them now and we're not getting things done. I don't know how adding barriers is going to get things done. I'm just using a logic-based argument on that from what I've seen. That's all. I get where you're coming from. I understand. I just don't believe that's the right way to get there based on what we're seeing. We can't get anything built now.

I THINK IT'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUILDING ANYTHING AND BUILDING WITH SOME ASSURANCE THAT WE ARE GOING TO GET SOME TYPE OF LOW INCOME HOUSING, WHICH THE STATE HAS MANDATED WE DELIVER. SO OUTSIDE OF THIS TYPE OF EXCLUSIONARY HOUSING DISCUSSION, WHETHER OR NOT WE ADOPT IT, I DON'T SEE ANY OTHER WAY WHERE WE DON'T JUST SEE BUILDING FOR THE SAKE OF BUILDING AND GETTING NO low income or affordable housing out of any new developments, unless we have this conversation and we go through this process. And again, it may not work. It may not make any sense for El Segundo, but I think it's worth having that conversation exploring.

I think that's a valid point that we don't want to go through a giant exercise and end up with getting a nasty gram from HCD about how we bungled the process. So if we do three months calendar wise, that gets us to the October 6th meeting, that gets us to planning on November 12th.

Again, the only argument I've heard here so far is that we have old numbers and we need to see what the new numbers are to be able to make that decision. That was the thing that stuck with me that you said. And I'm like, okay, I get that. There's no way that takes five months. There's no way. That takes, I honestly, to be able to crunch that should take, I mean, our next meeting that should be here. That's 45 days. That's a 45 day project to crunch numbers. It's not a five month process. I could get behind that, but I don't wanna sit here and be constantly looking for a reason to continue it into the 10 and a half months that it was gonna be to begin with. That's all, I'm not interested in that. If we want to sit there and say, okay, let's update the numbers and look at it, but even then, we can update the numbers all we want and look what the projected return is, unless a developer comes in here and says, that's what I want to do, it doesn't matter. And what they're telling us right now is that it doesn't make sense without this element. So,

We're never gonna meet or we're never gonna even come remotely close to meeting a fraction of our RHNA numbers unless we require it to be a component because the next person who acquires the entitlements for Pacific Coast Commons, the first thing they're gonna do is come back in and try to get out of that affordable component.

If we require it and nothing gets built, how close are we to our RHNA numbers? we're in the same spot. And then that's what I think what we're talking about is that we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. Let's be honest with ourselves here, because we don't make the decision on what gets built.

We influence zoning, which is why there are sites that I'm sure people want to develop, but they're not zoned for residential. So, yes, we've never denied a project, but certainly the city controls the volume of housing based on our land use elements.

Well, that illustrates, like, there is that project, right? The Kansas Grand one, where we've gone back and forth on our desire for affordability and their desire for marketability and trying to find that happy medium. I mean, how many thousands of hours of our lives have we spent trying to square that circle? And what if we tucked a unit over here and a unit over there? I mean, that's a super valid point that this is the horns of the dilemma, right?

I mean, with all due respect to that group there, it's a negotiation.

Take this particular group out.

To any developer, though, if you give flexibility and desire, then they're always going to negotiate for more market rate units. So there creates some development. some uncertainty for developers. I mean, I guess the devil's advocate argument to that is that a developer who knows what the standard is going into it is more likely to proceed with the project because if you go to the city and your first meeting, they go, well, we're gonna want some affordable, but we're not really sure what that looks like. You just go, this is a headache and it's a process and it's undefined. Whereas if you go in and you say, this is the target, then you're gonna make your numbers work to that target. and you're gonna go back to the landowner and say, this is all I can pay you because we have this affordability requirement.

Yeah, I agree. I think the more information we have about this, the better we'll be prepared for what other developments come because now we'll have at least up-to-date numbers that we can have an honest conversation and be transparent about it. So, Mayor, what did you say? Three months, what did you say?

If we do two months, it goes to planning on 10-8, presuming we have a decision. So if we go to 9-15, if we go to three months, we would see it on 10-6, and it would go to planning on 11-12. Which, to Council Member Giroux's point, seems a bit long. It feels long. Well, just know that if it goes to an ordinance, if we do decide for an ordinance, future council decides for an ordinance, and we have five of us here, then it has to go to planning before it comes to us. That's a Jerry Brown decision. Talk to me.

I haven't spoken to EPS, who is the firm who prepared this initial analysis for us. I don't think it would take more than four to six weeks for us to go back and forth. And this is a product that they've already provided us. It's about updating based on current market data. So it should not take more than a few weeks and then scheduling maybe a follow up discussion with city council. IF THERE'S DESIRE TO HAVE THAT VERY SAME CONVERSATION BEFORE CRAFTING AN ORDINANCE FOR THE SAKE OF PUBLIC DISCUSSION, GOING TO PLANNING COMMISSION AND THEN BACK TO COUNCIL, THAT COULD PROBABLY BE DONE IN THE AUGUST, SEPTEMBER TIME FRAME, AND THEN WE CAN DECIDE WHETHER WE WANT TO RE-EXTEND THE MORATORIUM TO ALLOW TIME TO DEVELOP THE ORDINANCE. SO WE COULD BREAK IT UP IN THOSE TWO PARTS AS WELL.

SEEMS TO MAKE SENSE.

60 DAYS OR 90 DAYS ON THE

I mean, look, so Michael, this is your world, right? So are you in your professional opinion? Is this information that you really feel that we should have before making a final call? Is it going to make that much of a difference?

In order to consider an inclusionary ordinance, this information is vital.

That's correct. Okay, so I just don't want us to have enough latitude in what we do to extend this out to 10 months, because we are really good at that. So if we want to sit there and say, we're going to bring this back in, what'd you say, in two months? Because we got the break. So it's going to be, you said six weeks.

Yeah, there would be 9-15. Now the first one's 9-1, it would be 9-15.

Okay, so a 9-15, so we're saying a 9-15, with that information, we make a decision.

That'd be the idea, to get it to planning on 10-8.

I will play nice in the sandbox if we can agree that we are not going to use our generous means of delaying things to go past that timeframe. Because in the end, you're still going to need a four-fifths vote, assuming all five of us are here. And I'm pretty sure I know where he's going with that.

No, that would be a normal ordinance. So we just need three out of five. Like once we get there, passing an ordinance, an urgency ordinance is what takes four. So that would be normal. So we just need three. Unless we want to extend it or take four.

If I vote right now to capitulate to that, we wipe out the four-fifths.

No, you're right. If you wanted to extend the urgency ordinance again, it would take four votes. Right. The mayor's saying that if it goes to planning commission back to council.

No, I'm saying just the extension out to September. That September 15th meeting, you're still going to need four votes up here.

If we, the September, no, September 15th. Let's say we come back September 15th. If we decide to your point, like, oh, we want to study it more. We need another urgency ordinance. You'll vote no. I'm guessing because that's probably two no's. I'm not really allowed to count votes, but I'll make vague gestures. So I don't think, I think there's no chance of it being extended in a practical term after the September piece.

Okay, I will play well in the sandbox and give us until September.

So that gives us what, how many days from here to September 15th? 60 something, 70 days or something? I don't know. I was told there'd be no math. Can we give a date instead of a number of days, City Attorney? Does that qualify?

So long as it's less than 10 months and 15 days.

Well, this is substantially less. So I will amend. And City Attorney, can you read the urgency ordinance by title only with the modification to 9-15? 9-15.

AN URGENCY ORDERS TO THE CITY OF COUNCIL THE CITY OF EL SEGUNDO ENACTED PURSUANT TO CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT CODE SECTION 65858 EXTENDING BY, EXTENDING TO I'm sorry, once again. September 15th, 2026, the terms and provisions of ordinance number 1683, imposing a 45-day moratorium, that's a reference to the last one, on the approval of any land use entitlements, permits, or other approvals for multifamily residential housing projects with more than 10 units, unless the housing project includes a specified affordable housing component, And finding that the adoption of this urgency interim ordinance is exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act is ready for adoption. We're gonna take four votes.

May I have a motion to adopt the urgency ordinance? So moved, Baldino. Baldino on the first, may I have a second?

I'll second.

Kilduff on the second. All those in favor?

Aye.

That's 4-0, the urgency ordinance passes. Before we go to item 11, can we take a five-minute recess to get our body temperature down from 40,000 degrees in this orchid?

Maybe by 9.15 we'll have the AC working. Just proceed, we don't need a direct staff. They've already got enough direction from us, right?

Just to let you know, there is a technician on the roof working as we speak. They're trying hard.

I'm sure that's free. Okay, back in five minutes. All right, at 7.58, we are back. Before we go to the next public hearing, I want to point out items 12 and 13 will be continued until our August meeting. 12 and 13 will be continued. All right, look at my next script. All right, Madam Clerk, this is the time and place heretofore fixed for a public hearing. We will now conduct a public hearing on the implementation or suspension of the measure C sales tax. The city can continue with prior direction to collect the full amount or spend all or a portion of the sales tax that the city council desires to spend all or a portion of the sales and use tax. We will adopt one of the two resolutions at the end of this. The public hearing is now open. Mr. George, we'll make this presentation.

Yes, City Attorney Mark Hensley will make the report on this, Mayor.

The floor is yours, City Attorney.

Mayor and Council, pursuant to direction Council gave in, I think it was your May 19th meeting, OF THIS YEAR, WE'RE RETURNING TO THE COUNCIL TO DISCUSS MEASURE C, WHICH THE COUNCIL PREVIOUSLY DIRECTED STAFF AND TOOK ACTION TO START THE IMPLEMENTATION OF. I'LL PROVIDE SOME BACKGROUND AS TO HOW THAT CAME ABOUT, WHAT MEASURE C IS AND KIND OF THE VARIOUS STEPS WE'VE GONE THROUGH. BACK IN APRIL OF 2018, THE VOTERS APPROVED MEASURE C IN EL SEGUNDO, WHICH ESSENTIALLY PUT A .75% SALES TAX, OR IMPOSED A .75% SALES TAX IN THE CITY OF EL SEGUNDO ON TOP OF THE SALES TAX THAT WAS ALREADY IN EFFECT IN L.A. COUNTY. AT THAT TIME, APPROXIMATELY, I DON'T KNOW, I DON'T HAVE THE EXACT NUMBER, 60 CITIES OUT OF THE 88 CITIES IN L.A. COUNTY HAD ADDED A .75% SALES TAX. AND THERE WERE VERY FEW CITIES LEFT THAT HADN'T. AND L.A. COUNTY WAS AT THAT TIME TALKING ABOUT GOING BACK OUT TO PUT ON ANOTHER HOMELESS SALES TAX OR THERE WAS TALK ABOUT ANOTHER SALES TAX BEING IMPLEMENTED BY THE COUNTY. AND BUT SO THAT'S WHERE THAT WASN'T AN EMPATHY. MEASURE C SALES TAX WOULD NOT BE TRIGGERED ACCORDING TO ITS TERMS UNLESS ANOTHER TAXING AGENCY, WHICH WOULD LIKELY HAVE BEEN L.A. COUNTY, PLACED A SALES TAX MEASURE ON THE BALLOT. AND AT THAT POINT, IT WOULD TRIGGER MEASURE C AND THE COUNCIL COULD AT THAT TIME IMPOSE MEASURE C And Measure C would stay in effect as long as whatever sales tax was on the ballot by some other agency passed. In November of 2024, LA County did indeed put on a homeless tax of 0.5%, but recognizing that in most jurisdictions, because 60 approximately other cities had taken up the rest of the sales tax cap, they would not be able to collect that 0.5%. They went to the state and got the state to increase the cap by 0.5%. So after that, the council decided not to impose the 0.75% because the cap had been raised. FAST FORWARD TO THIS YEAR, L.A. COUNTY ONCE AGAIN PUT ON ANOTHER TAX. THIS WAS MEASURE ER, AND THEY WERE SEEKING ANOTHER .5% SALES TAX INCREASE. And at the time when we came to the council in May, which again, the city already had the right to put on the 0.75% sales tax, but this was triggering another potential where this county was gonna take the remaining sales tax. And so this would block the county from taking that 0.75% that the city could take. At the same time, the county went back to the legislature again, and was able to get the cap increased once again. And so, which is why council at that time, because it was known that THE COUNTY WAS BACK IN FRONT OF THE STATE LEGISLATURE SEEKING THAT CAP INCREASE. IT WASN'T KNOWN WHETHER MEASURE ER WOULD PASS. WE NOW KNOW THAT MEASURE ER DID PASS. WE KNOW THE STATE DID INCREASE THE SALES CAP AGAIN. AND SO WE WERE DIRECTED TO COME BACK TO COUNCIL AND GET DIRECTION OR HAVE COMMUNICATION ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT YOU WANT TO, THE CITY WANTS TO CONTINUE TO MOVE FORWARD WITH IMPOSING THE TAX AS YOU PREVIOUSLY DIRECTED IN MAY. PAPERWORK HAS BEEN SENT TO THE STATE. THERE'S A COST OF APPROXIMATELY $175,000 TO PROCESS THAT. WE HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED THAT COST YET. The state said it would be approximately, and Paul, correct me if I'm wrong, I think they'll start imposing that in October, just because it takes about that long for them to get the wheels moving. And so with that, the city can, council can leave that action in place from April. You can suspend the tax again, or you can suspend a part of the tax. And we've got resolutions ready for whatever the council decides to do.

All right, Madam Clerk, the public hearing is now open for public input. Do we have any speakers?

We do not have any speakers, sir.

All right, do I have a motion to close the public hearing?

So moved.

Kellner for the first. Second. Giroux on the second, all those in favor? Aye. 4-0, council discussion.

Can we start by confirming, is this a majority vote or does this also, because it relates to a tax measure, have to be all or nothing?

It's gotta be three.

Well, the current direction is that- The tax already exists.

It just has to be three.

Well, the last action taken by council was to impose the tax. So at this point, if the council wants to change direction and suspend it or reduce the amount of suspension, it'll take three of you to do that.

Hey, I was right.

Thanks. Thanks.

Okay, so I'll start. The way, and we talked about this before, last time we kind of rescinded this, was that the spirit of the ballot measure that we did back in the day was that it would not be an additional burden on the businesses in town. It was a way of keeping the tax dollars here instead of them going to the county. That was what it was. So if it went up by half a percent or three quarters of percent, then we would immediately put ours in, it would go up against the ceiling and we would be able to keep it here. It is becoming increasingly apparent that there is no way the state of California is gonna allow us to do that. So I struggle with a couple things on this. Number one, if we, the tax is going to 10 and a quarter for us, regardless. If we, and out of that 10 and a quarter, we don't get anything additional. If we then, let there be air. If we then implement and start recouping our tax, it's gonna be an 11% for the city. And if I'm not mistaken, that puts us, Paul, at the top of the food chain for the South Bay. Is that accurate?

It would be us at 11, and it would be Hawthorne.

Hawthorne. Manhattan Beach, Redondo, where are they at?

Torrance would be at 10.75, Redondo would be at 10.25, Manhattan Beach would be at 10.75, Inglewood with a comparison 10.75, and Hermosa Beach would be at 10.25, but they do have a half cent sales tax measure going on November.

Right, so basically it seems that the overwhelming majority is going to be about 10.75 when all is said and done. So I do think, as much as I hate to do this, I do believe based on what the current market is and what's going on with the surrounding cities that we are competing with, that I don't believe we should go all of it. I believe we should consider going a half a percent and get it to 10.75 and be on par. And that, it does hurt my heart a little bit and my business sense to say that. I just feel that at some point in time, you know, it's almost like with the TOT tax where we're the lowest ones. At some point in time, you have to get up to what the market value is. And right now, I believe that's what it is. I believe if we should consider anything personally, I think it should be at a half a point maximum.

Other council discussion?

That is kind of where my thought process was going as well. I asked specifically about Manhattan Beach and knowing that they're at 10.75, and I don't know that that precludes people from going to Target. So at the full 0.75, we would estimate an additional $9 million in revenue, so... Simple math. Can I just extrapolate that if we raised it half a percentage that we'd be at an additional $6 million a year projected in revenue going forward?

Yes.

So I concur that's really aligned with what I was thinking when we went into this.

Mayor Pro Tem.

The fact that 83% of the voters approved this Before the county got cute and went to the state and raised everything up, I feel like it's kind of an administrative obligation for us to implement what the will of the voters are and to consider. What the county is doing. To avoid it. You know it's unfortunate, but it wasn't. wasn't what a majority of folks wanted. And so as much as I don't want to increase taxes, I feel like if we don't do it now, there's going to be another ballot measure. There's always going to be something coming from the county that's going to put another sales tax, and we'll have this conversation again. So not a fan of taxes, but I think the 0.5 is a compromise that I'd be willing to live with.

I STRONGLY DISAGREE. THE WILL OF THE VOTERS AT THE TIME WAS TO NOT HAVE A REVENUE MEASURE. IT WAS TO KEEP ANY REVENUE MEASURE EXTERNALLY IMPOSED WITHIN THE CITY, EXACTLY AS COUNCILMEMBER GERUE STATED. AND WHEN THIS CAME AROUND, WHEN THIS NEW COUNCIL WAS FIRST SEATED, MY ARGUMENT WAS WE SHOULD REPEAL MEASURE C, AND IF PEOPLE WANT TO DO A REVENUE MEASURE, for 0.25 or 0.5, then we should have the courage of our conviction and put that to the voters instead of a bait and switch of them having a non-revenue measure, which this was previously. And it just pains me to think that no one would ever vote in an insulative tax measure like that again, because there were people of those 17% likely who were like, it doesn't matter what you say, you're gonna find a way to do this anyway. Because there will always be a need for government money. So I think this would be wholly disingenuous for us to collect any portion of this tax in addition. What we should do, if we want to do that, is put a separate measure on there and repeal this. Because I think that is a fair way to let voters... That is the spirit of... of frankly 218 legislation of letting voters approve general and specific taxes, not approve it under one aegis and then use it in a different one later. I mean, that's wholly unfair to the electorate that we made a deal with. There's a reason they approved it so overwhelmingly. It's because we went to them in 2018 and explained exactly the motivation and exactly the intent of the rule. And that motivation and intent is not what we're describing tonight. It's wholly disingenuous.

I appreciate your point of view, but I also feel like we would be ATTEMPTING TO UNDO WITH FIVE OR FOUR PEOPLE UP HERE WHAT THE VOTERS ALREADY DECIDED. IF THE COUNTY DOES THIS, THEN WE WANT TO DO THAT. IT WAS NEVER UNLESS THIS OTHER THING HAPPENS.

NO, IT ABSOLUTELY WAS. IT WAS ABSOLUTELY THERE TO INSULATE THEM FROM CONFISCATORY COUNTY TAX MEASURES. AND IF WE'RE GOING TO DO THAT AND SAY, AHA, WE GOT YOU. Council Member Keldorf and I were up there at the town hall around Charter City where, unbeknownst to us, people thought there was some grand conspiracy. I'm like, who would think we could have a conspiracy? Well, I'll tell you, if we pass a tax measure in 2018 under one logic and then impose it in 2026 under another logic, I mean, that feels like a conspiracy. Like, we fooled you. Now we'll just put it in our back pocket and wait until we want it. I mean, that is not cool.

But at the same time, I don't read anything in what was voted on that would say, unless council doesn't want to do it.

I think I wrote the, I think I wrote the argument for the, for the ballot measure. Right. That would, I mean, trust me, we went out and flogged it. Nickel and I and, and council member Boyles.

I open my statement by saying, I agree with what you're saying. I'm saying that the market forces have changed. And that is undoubtedly what's going on. And we are, our businesses compete against the surrounding towns here. And I don't think us having a quarter percent or a half a percent less is driving people to here versus somewhere else. If I thought so, I would vote no, because I voted no on this last time to not input any of the tax. But when I look at the data and look at what the surrounding areas are, that's who we're competing with from a business perspective. And if I thought this half a percent was going to be going to hurt our businesses here, I wouldn't be voting for it. But I do believe, based on this current market force, that this is the right thing to do. And look, we all know we go through budgets all the time. Cost of everything's going up. Cost of everything's going through the roof. It is difficult to generate revenue anywhere, any additional revenue anywhere. If our costs are going up by 10% across the board, you need to generate 15% revenue to cover it. That's just... simple math of it.

Yeah, but our fees go up with that too. We adjusted by the CPI as well. And I know we are a sliver from being balanced right now. And I think with wise decisions on our economy and my beloved tax audit that the CFO works on, I think we get, this just feels like found money sort of scenario. And I just hate the concept that we're pulling a rabbit out of the hat on people who voted for things under one logic that we stood on our convictions for and then using it in a different way. If we think we need a quarter percent or a half a percent, we should do a ballot measure for that and ask them for it under this logic, not use people's former logic against them. It just doesn't feel right.

I will keep talking it. I mean, I do think we're looking at a structural deficit based on what we last saw projected, what, three years from, three to five years from now? Two. Two years from now. We only have so many levers at play. I do think that we pride ourselves in being a business friendly city and that goes a long way, but we're not gonna adjust, although we have an item kind of related, but not necessarily because it deals with nonprofits, but we're not gonna adjust business license tax to try to exact more from businesses, commercial operators in that way.

So we will impose the most regressive form of tax that we can do. I mean, this is the classic economists have projected eight of the last three recessions. Like, I mean, city manager, when was the last time you saw a city forecast a balanced budget or a surplus ever? No, zero. Like peddling doom is part of the job. I mean, we can't play it both ways all the time.

The sky is falling and also it's fine. It's hard to do both those things simultaneously.

Like I said, if you guys want to put something on there to put a sales tax there, lock yourselves out. We can do that and put it to the voters, but using this one against them is totally inappropriate.

I think to Council Member Giroux's point, that's the first thing I asked for was just a snapshot of where all of our neighbors and South Bay cities are. And even with 50 basis points, we're still going to be not at the top and steadily in the middle. And Hermosa will be probably at 10 and a half come November. And none of those cities have a similar piece of legislation in play. Like, is there any chance that that any of our other neighbors who are at 10 and a quarter have something that they're discussing like this in the works. Just Hermosa.

Hermosa has a sales tax measure on the ballot because they're structurally in severe deficit.

Look, I get it, man. These are the tough decisions we got to make. And I was on that side and I still am on that side to an extent. but market forces change and it has to be looked at. And as much as I hate to, I'm definitely not someone who believes in additional taxes, but in this situation, we only have X amount of things we can rely upon. And I think it makes sense with what the surrounding competing cities that we have are doing. But I do not disagree with your assessment.

This is, I will go back to the wonderful George H.W. Bush. I feel like I could do the no new taxes spiel that got him elected, and then all of a sudden, like Jim Wright gets in his ear. Further council discussion? I mean, the only thing to be done here is I will move to adopt the resolution to suspend collection of Measure C. City Attorney, will you read the resolution by title only?

A resolution of the City Council of the City of El Segundo, California, suspending the imposition of a three-quarter cent, .75%, transaction and use tax, sales tax authorized by the city's voters in Measure C. is ready for adoption.

Because I don't believe in building further distrust in government, I will move approval. May I have a second? Very well. Is there a substitute motion that anyone would like to make?

I move to implement the half a percent, not the three quarter percent of our That's what I'm looking for. Is it tax? Tax measure C. 0.5%.

So bigger than New York City. City attorney, will you read that resolution by title only for 0.5%?

So it's section two of this resolution on the title. What would be added in there is the imposition of 0.25%.

0.5.

Oh, yes, suspend. 25% of the three quarters set sales tax and stated otherwise authorizing 0.5 or half a percent, 0.50% to be implemented. So the sales tax rate in the city of El Segundo will be 10.75%. So that will be added to section two of the resolution that reads, a resolution of the city of El Segundo, California, suspending the imposition of a portion of the 3.75% transaction and sales use tax authorized with each city's voters in measure C is ready for adoption. Who would like to move adoption?

So moved.

Giroux on the first. Would someone like to second that? I'll second. Baldino on the second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? No. 3-1. I'm elated to see where we will wisely spend the public purse. Unbelievable.

Resident services.

All right. Item 14, the request for qualifications for the Teen Center Public Art. Director Gann, you're up.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. Tonight staff is seeking City Council's approval of the request for qualifications for the Teen Center Public Art. Since the establishment of the Cultural Development Fund, one of its primary goal is to commission public art as part of the city's capital improvement projects. A SUCCESSFUL PRESIDENT IS THE MOSAIC MURAL AT THE PLUNGE. FOLLOWING THE SIMILAR COMMISSIONING FRAMEWORK, STAFF HAS DEVELOPED THE RFQ FOR THE TEEN CENTER ART PROJECT. THE RFQ IN FRONT OF YOU TONIGHT IS THE FIRST STEP TO INITIATE ANOTHER IMPACTFUL PUBLIC ART AT THE TEEN CENTER. AT THE COUNCIL MEETING ON MAY 5, 2026, CITY COUNCIL APPROVED A 100,000 BUDGET FOR THE TEEN CENTER OF PUBLIC ART. THIS BUDGET HAS DEVELOPED BASED ON STAFF'S RESEARCH OF THE INDUSTRY STANDARD TO ENSURE THE SUFFICIENT RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR A HIGH QUALITY PUBLIC ART. AND ON SCREEN IS THE PROPOSED RFQ TO HELP ESTABLISH THE, WE CAN GO THROUGH IT AS WELL, TO HELP ESTABLISH THE ART THEME, REC PARK AND LIBRARY STAFF CONDUCTED A COMMUNITY SURVEY AMONGST LOCAL TEAMS. THE THREE MOST POPULAR THEMES WERE MUSIC, COMMUNITY AND SPORTS, PROVIDING A SOLID FOUNDATION FOR ARTIST SELECTION AND DESIGN DEVELOPMENT. AND TO MAXIMIZE THE IMPACT OF THE ARTWORK, STAFF IDENTIFIED THREE PROMINENT INSTALLATION AREAS AT THE TEAM CENTER. THE NORTH FACING ELEVATION AT THE PARK AND REC COURTS, YOU CAN GO TO THE NEXT SLIDE OR THE NEXT. RIGHT. THE SOUTH ELEVATION FACING EAST GRAND AVENUE AND AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE Upon City Council's approval, the RFQ will be published on City's website to solicit qualified artists. Staff in an art jury panel will select three finalists to develop site-specific design proposals. The proposal will be reviewed by City staff, the art jury panel, and the Arts and Culture Committee. staff will then return to council with one recommended artwork and seek approval of a professional services agreement. And this agreement will allow city to formally commission the selected artists and proceed with the recommended design. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Council questions.

Just so I'm clear, the budget, all three of those highlighted areas are gonna be done by one artist. Is that correct?

We in the RFQ, we said it could be done by one artist or an artist team, but that doesn't change.

They would submit together. Exactly. Okay. And then I'm assuming the ACC would evaluate these proposals.

And yes, we follow the exact same step as the plunge mural art. So first we'll have the art panel select three finalists. they will develop a art proposal that's site specific and that proposal will be reviewed with ACC and they will generate one recommended art to bring to council.

Okay, I'm fine with what you have. It's just in the future, you've got qualifications as one section that you're grading and then the proposal as another and they're of equal weight. And I would just caution you that execution when it comes to public art is much more important than someone with a great idea. So I know you've got it equally weighted here, but the idea that someone has actually done this before, they're familiar with weathering and the environment so that we're not getting a great idea that... five years from now looks terrible. It has to be able to last and be enduring. So, but I'm fine with what everything else you have written here.

Understood. Thank you.

Further council discussion. Would anyone like to approve the request for qualification proposal for the teen center public card? Sure. I'll move approval. Baldino on the first.

I'll second.

Keldon for the second. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you. 4-0. Item 15, the Fourth Amendment to the City Manager's Employment Agreement. Director Reddick. Fresh from your Newport Beach beach party.

Mayor, members of the City Council. The item I have for you tonight is the fourth amendment to the City Manager's Employment Agreement. Per the City Manager's Employment Agreement, each year the City Council conducts a performance evaluation, and per the agreement, the City Council may adjust the salary in the contract in the agreement. So his evaluation was held on May 19th, 2026. And during his evaluation and secondarily the negotiations for his salary range adjustment, the fourth amendment to his contract, which I have to point out there's a typo. In the packet it actually says it's the top 30%. THIRD AMENDMENT ON THE TITLE. IT'S THE FOURTH AMENDMENT. TO INCREASE THE SALARY TO THE ACTUAL LEVEL FROM 302,253 PER YEAR TO 314,343 ANNUALLY. THAT IS AN INCREASE OF 4%. ADDITIONALLY, TO EXTEND THE TERM FROM THE EXPIRATION OF JUNE 30, 2027 TO DECEMBER 31, 2028. That is a annual fiscal impact of $19,504. Included with the fourth amendment to the city manager's agreement is also a resolution for CalPERS. The city manager's actual salary is included in his agreement, but we have established a salary range for the classification of the city manager. With the new agreement, the salary, THE ACTUAL SALARY FALLS OUTSIDE OF THE ESTABLISHED SALARY RANGE. SO THE RESOLUTION HERE FOR CALPERS PURPOSES EXTENDS THE SALARY RANGE BY 4%. SO THAT WOULD BE AN INCREASE AT THE TOP FROM 308.880 TO 321.235. THIS IS JUST A SALARY RANGE FOR THE POSITION. THE CITY MANAGER SALARY, THE ACTUAL SALARY IS IN THE AGREEMENT ITSELF. And with the 4% increase, again, that raises it to 314, 343 annually. Thank you, Director Reddick.

Do we have any council's questions? I know we've talked this thing to death.

City Clerk, can we take both of these at once?

If we have the City Attorney read the reso and approve the Fourth Amendment at the same time, or do it twice? All right, City Attorney, will you please read the resolution by title only?

A RESOLUTION OF CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF EL SEGUNDO, CALIFORNIA, MODIFYING THE ANNUAL SALARY RANGE FOR THE CITY MANAGER JOB CLASSIFICATION. AND THAT AND THE AGREEMENT, AMENDMENT IS READY FOR APPROVAL.

WHO WOULD LIKE TO MOVE APPROVAL? SO MOVED. SO I'LL SECOND. KELTO FROM THE FIRST, DREW ON THE SECOND. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? AYE. 4-0. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, DIRECTOR REDDICK. All right, rolling along. Item 16, consider placing amendment to the city's business license tax ordinance on the ballot for November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election. Director Chung, will you present on this or city attorney?

I think I'm doing this.

City attorney will present on this matter. Director Chung, stand by.

IN 2022 THE CITY COUNCIL PUT A BALLOT MEASURE ON CHANGING VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE BUSINESS LICENSE TAX. ONE OF THOSE WAS TO MODIFY WHAT HAD BEEN A TAX EXEMPTION FOR CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS AND MAKE OR OPPOSE A TAX ON A FLAT TAX ESSENTIALLY ON ALL NOTHING PROFITS. IT GOT RID OF AT THE TIME THE CHARITABLE EXEMPTION. WHAT RESULTED WAS THERE WERE NONPROFITS THAT WERE PAYING SIGNIFICANT TAXES THAT WEREN'T OPERATING CHARITABLE FUNCTIONS, WHICH WAS NOT, I DON'T BELIEVE, THE INTENT OF THE COUNCIL, AND IT WAS DISCOVERED, I DON'T KNOW, MONTHS OR A YEAR AFTER THAT HAPPENED. THE MAYOR BROUGHT THIS BACK AND ASKED FOR THIS TO BE placed before the council for consideration. And so what is being put in front of the council is essentially undoing what was done in 2022. And it would want to give, just give an exemption to all charitable organizations, but it would tax as other businesses would be taxed nonprofits that are not engaged in a charitable function.

Council questions. Well, yeah, this is one of those ones that's a painful thing to put in front of voters. This is just a language cleanup from language we're imprecise with in the previous piece. So, counsel, we have a labyrinth of items to put on here. I see it on you. I got the joke. I got the joke. All right. So, first, we have to have consents to appoint council members to draft ballot arguments in favor of the proposition. Well...

Actually, the resolution to... Does that go first? No. This thing is just a sea of highlighter. Oh. I'll take you if it's okay.

Yeah, fire away.

I'll get this backwards. And we can't disclose the businesses that were subject to this and the amounts. It's protected. I can say the city manager met with one of them and they're not opposed to this. if I can say that. A resolution of city council of the city of El Segundo adding a proposition to the ballot for the previously called November 3rd, 2026 general election pursuant to election code section 9222. I do need to make one change to the ballot question and that is, and it's on page three of the resolution. and it's the ballot question, which is uppercase B, and that is to insert the word, after the word thereby, insert indefinitely, and then, let me find my language here. restoring and the reason for that is you have to put the term of the tax in and it's indefinite and I did not put that in when it was drafted. So with that, the resolution is ready for adoption. Who will move approval?

Aldino so moves. Second. Giroux on the second. All those in favor? Aye. 4-0.

The next is, and this is discretionary, if the council wants to have the city attorney draft a impartial analysis. It's a resolution of the city council of the city of El Segundo directing the city attorney to prepare an impartial analysis of the proposition relating to an amendment to the business license tax ordinance. It's ready for adoption if the council so chooses. I'll move approval. Baldino seconds.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Now, is this the part where we adopt or designate who's going to write it?

Next, a resolution of City Council of City of El Segundo establishing requirements for ballot arguments filed with the city clerk to be included with voter information for the general municipal election on November 3rd, 2026 is ready for adoption. Pippin Delso, move. Baldino, seconds.

All those in favor?

Aye. This is where the council has the ability to appoint one or all of its members to work on the ballot argument.

Not me. If only we had an attorney.

That's to mean you can appoint someone to draft it or two of you to draft it or whatever and then authorize whoever wants to sign it. This is where you do that.

I'm happy to do that. Do you feel like writing it? The attorney will write it. The mayor pro tem is our writer. Do we have consensus for the mayor pro tem to do the writing? Yes. All right. Consensus. Consensus. And now we have to direct you to do the impartial analysis.

And you're authorizing all council members to sign it? Those present, unless, yeah. So you can still authorize him. And if he does, he does. If he doesn't, he doesn't.

Okay. Do we have to vote on that? Or we can just by consensus? Yes, you should vote on that. Okay. Can I have a motion to have us all able to sign the ballot? So moved. Okay. I'll do it on the first until second. All those in favor? Aye. 4-0. That's the end of the item. Now, don't we have to test you to do the impartial analysis? You just do it. We did that, okay. Rock and roll.

Excuse me, sir.

Ma'am.

I do believe we may have missed the consolidation resolution.

Did I miss one? We voted four times. I have four tick marks on my thingy.

Okay, I may have missed that.

No, let's do it.

No, you're right. Let's double consolidate. No, you're right. We did miss one. A resolution of the City Council of the City of El Segundo requesting the Board of Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles to add a ballot proposition of the previously consolidated general municipal election to be held on November 3rd, 2026 with election, the general election to be held on that date pursuant to election code 10403. Is ready for adoption. Pimentel moves adoption.

I'll second.

Kilder for the second.

All those in favor?

Aye. 4-0.

Thank you, city clerk.

All right. Yeah, nice work. Item 17. Consider placing a ballot measure for a city charter for consideration by the city's voters at the November 3rd, 2026 general election. City attorney. Do you need time to rehearse? No.

I want to roll now. THE COUNCIL HAS HELD FIVE MEETINGS, INCLUDING THIS ONE, ON THIS TOPIC. THE MAIN PURPOSE FOR THIS TOPIC BEING BROUGHT FORWARD TO BEGIN WITH WAS THE DESIRE TO CONTROL LAND USE OR POTENTIALLY CONTROL LAND USE SHOULD LEGISLATURE OR THE COURT SOMEHOW RESTORE LOCAL ZONING LAND USE TO LOCAL GOVERNMENT. Whether that's going to occur or not, I think it's been a lot of discussion. Don't know. I mean, currently, there was a lawsuit brought by Redondo Beach and some other cities that they won initially at the trial court level and got sent back by the Court of Appeal. It's back at the trial court level. What's going to happen with it? I don't know. The state legislature took action to try to thwart it. Does that mean it will? Probably, but that's not 100%. These are the kind of battles that occur and that could restore land use zoning to the city, but again, no guarantee and no predictions. Let me just get to that actually. IT'S VERY CLEAR IN THE CHARTER THAT THE CITY IS ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL, MAINTAIN CONTROL OVER LAND USE. BUT IT'S ALSO VERY CLEAR THAT THERE'LL BE NO CHANGE IN THE CITY'S PROCEDURES FOR PUBLIC WORKS CONTACTING AND PURCHASING, THAT THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE IN THE CITY'S REQUIREMENTS TO PAY PREVAILING WAGES FOR PUBLIC WORKS PROJECTS, ET CETERA. THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE IN THE CITY'S COUNCIL'S ABILITY TO RAISE ITS OWN COMPENSATION. IN ACCORDANCE WITH CURRENT LAW, THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE IN CITY COUNCIL'S ABILITY TO SET THE COMPENSATION OF OTHER CITY OFFICIALS, WHICH THEY CURRENTLY HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO. THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE IN CITY ELECTIONS AS THE CHARTER APPLIES TO ELECTION, KEEPS THE CURRENT LAWS IN PLACE, AND THAT THE CHARTER MAY ONLY BE AMENDED BY A MAJORITY VOTE OF THE ELECTORS. AND SO WHEN YOU COMPARE THOSE TO THE MATERIALS THAT HAVE BEEN PUT IN PRIOR AGENDAS ABOUT WHAT THE MAJOR TOPIC AREAS ARE OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GENERAL LAW CITIES AND CHARTER CITIES, ESSENTIALLY THE CITY OTHER THAN THE LAND USE AREA IS STAYING VERY MUCH A GENERAL LAW CITY. THERE'S BEEN STATEMENTS MADE THAT, YOU KNOW, IF THAT'S THE CASE, WHY DOESN'T THE CITY JUST SAY IT'S GOING TO BE A GENERAL LAW CITY IN THE CHARTER? WELL, THAT'S NOT THE POINT. THERE IS AN AREA THE CITY DOESN'T WANT TO REMAIN A CHARTER OR THE POINT OF THIS IS TO ONE AREA AT LEAST TO NOT BE A GENERAL LAW CITY. AS FAR AS A STATEMENT THAT I CAN'T IDENTIFY EVERY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GENERAL LOSS CITY AND A CHARTER CITY, THAT'S TRUE. I DID MAKE THAT STATEMENT. THERE WAS DISCUSSION ABOUT FEES. UTILITY FEES ARE THE SAME. THAT'S WATER, WASTE WATER, ET CETERA. THOSE ARE THE SAME AS BETWEEN CHARTER AND GENERAL LOSS CITIES. But there are some fees, for instance, misdemeanor fees and other fees that might be different depending on what kind of misdemeanors, et cetera, there are. There are different laws the state passes where, like I think food cart vendors and just a variety of things that I can't go through and identify each fee and what the difference might be. And there might be some other areas. But as far as the significant areas, we did address those. And so with that... What is before the council tonight is whether or not you want to proceed to put this on the ballot for the electorate to consider. I'd be happy to answer any questions. I didn't go through all of the issues I've gone through before with regard to the charter city.

Yeah, I'd say we're close to the ad nauseum point. I'll lead off because I think I brought this one up the first time. I do not share the grand sense of pessimism that good governance is wild and dead in California and that we're incapable of it. But certainly that is a sentiment of great pessimism that this would do no good. I will say broadly, when you speak to people who work in Sacramento, it's like, oh, what a good idea to try and put charter on there to have a bit of an asterisk by your name that said uh when we talked about putting this on november the idea is that there would be a low cost efficiency to it and no doubt we have spent more staff time and energy discussing this than the ink we would put on all of the ballots uh the last thing we needed was a distraction uh also more broadly i guess in the spirit of measure c i think typically when things go on a ballot in el segundo they go in with broad consensus both around the voters and the council uh certainly the fire service was an 80 some percent measure c was 80 some percent uh this has become what seemed like a routine exercise in civics into a somewhat divisive issue and caused a great deal of concern about ulterior motives that do not exist. But I understand we're in a political climate that creates boogeymen. So that being said, this would need three votes. Again, we're not supposed to count, but I don't think there's three votes up here for it. And the last thing I do is want to make a tempest and a teapot out of this. So unless someone feels passionately that somehow they're going to be swayed, we might get out of here before midnight.

Yeah. Again, I just want to bring up that number one, As with the last one, there are no double secret probation meetings on charter cities. You can public request all you want. The way things work is that someone comes up with the idea, they decide to agendize it, and we talk about it here in front of all of you. That's how it works. We don't mean behind closed doors. That would be illegal to do so. So the accusations that that's happening, you're basically accusing us of crimes. That's not what's happening. So ironically, someone comments, well, that when you defend yourself, but I'm not talking to you, maybe it sounds that you're guilty. So, you know, the reality is There was no power grab. This was actually a very good discussion because we got to learn what was good about it, what was bad about it, what was possible, what was impossible. And I appreciate you bringing it up. I mean, you've been talking about it a while. The concept is good. It didn't turn out to be something that I think the majority of us felt would be a good idea for the city. But I do not, I really dislike the fact that this has become a conspiracy theory about a power grab. It's just ridiculous. But as you mentioned, this is the political climate we live in. So I appreciate you bringing it up, but I agree with you. I do not think there is a consensus for this. My position stays the same on it, which is a no.

If yours stays the same and one other person stays the same, then we are not advancing. What sayeth it that way?

There's another person here. But yes, I've not changed my position, although I really appreciate you being there with me during our last town hall. And I think it's kind of the fun part of the process. So now my biggest issue is Ms. Stolnack's going to have to tell me what to talk about at Rotary on Thursday because we were supposed to take this show on the road.

You just put a half percent sales tax out there. I think you're going to have plenty to talk about. You're going to be talking all night.

I HAVE HAD MORE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT OUR CITY SINCE THIS CHARTER DISCUSSION STARTED. LITTLE LEAGUE, BARBECUE, LET'S TALK CHARTER CITIES. WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT IT? WHAT'S BAD ABOUT IT? AND SO I'M GRATEFUL TO HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY JUST TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION AND SAY, YOU KNOW, WELL, WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT THIS CITY? WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE IF YOU COULD ABOUT THIS CITY? So I appreciate the fact that this was brought up. I appreciate everyone who sent in the emails and made public comments and the people who stopped me at the store to talk about it. I will nerd out on this stuff all day long with you, but I don't think you have the support of this council to move it forward, but I do appreciate the opportunity to have the conversation about our city.

The over-under on votes lost by me in one meeting was five, and we are getting close to it. Okay, with that, I don't think we have any consensus to move forward at all, so I think we just move on. All right. City Attorney, what are you going to do with all your free time? All right, item 18, announcing the appointments to the Recreation and Parks Commission, Planning Commission, Senior Housing Corporation Board and Library Board of Trustees. Much to an earlier point made in public comment, these are people who are our cheat code, right? Who volunteer their time and we appreciate it. So to the Rec and Parks Commission, we have Amy Smith and Jamin Griffith. Planning Commission, Melissa McCafferty and Steve Taylor, two incumbents. Arts and Culture, we will do those on August 18th. I'm gonna skip that. Senior Housing Corporation Board, Paula Rotolo, back on. Library Board of Trustees, Bonnie Yatabe and Sophia, excuse me, Sophia Goldade. So we are delighted to have them and especially the returning incumbents who are willing to donate their time. All right, reports. City Clerk.

Some of you may have heard we've got an election coming up. And there are two positions, city council positions that will be on the ballot. And starting Monday, July 13th, we will have our binder packets available for the candidates, potential candidates to pick up. You can come, please make an appointment and come during city clerk hours, which are seven to five, Monday through Thursday, seven to four on Fridays. And... The filing period ends on August 7th. And thank you to Elias for fixing the air conditioner. Are you kidding me?

God, this is like the Disney Jungle Cruise up here. It's unbelievable. Council Member reports. Council Member Kelldorf.

In the spirit of democracy and transparency, just wanted to tell everybody that Planning Commission, it came up in public comments, but July 9th, we have two pretty significant land use issues on the agenda. So... watch it, come participate, learn about it. And yeah, I'm kind of nerding out on it too. So I appreciate the sentiment.

All right. Council Member Bajuru, you have item 19 under you.

Yes, I know Barbara, you're making the presentation on this staff report. I just want to kind of remind everyone why this was brought up and why this is agendized. It was something I brought up, I think about a month or two months ago. And that is, you know, we've had some people that have recently transitioned off of boards and with, you know, kind of an exit interview, so to speak, disillusioned a little bit. And I think part of that is SETTING THE EXPECTATIONS OF WHAT THE COMMITTEES COMMISSIONS AND BOARDS ACTUALLY DO WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO HOW IT WORKS. AND I THINK WE MAY HAVE BEEN A LITTLE BIT RETICENT IN DOING THAT AND I THINK IT'S TIME TO KIND OF CLEAN THAT UP YOU KNOW BUT THERE'S ALSO SOME EXPECTATIONS I THINK THAT NEED TO BE MANAGED YOU KNOW IN THE END. WE APPRECIATE VOLUNTEERS. WE APPRECIATE THAT ALL OF THESE BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS ARE SET TO BE ADVISORY. YOU KNOW, I KNOW THE PLANNING COMMISSION IS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT OF A SITUATION, BUT IN THE END IT'S ADVISORY. WE HAVE STAFF THAT IS EITHER A LIAISON OR ATTACHED TO THOSE COMMITTEES. THE COMMITTEE IS THERE FOR THE STAFF. THE STAFF IS NOT THERE FOR THE COMMITTEE. And I think that's something that has to be talked about because I think there needs to be set a reasonable expectations. The committee is not there to instruct the staff what to do, not to give them more work. We give you guys enough work. But the input is valuable. I'm sure that my colleagues can agree, the amount and quality of people that are coming in to apply for these commissions and board positions is amazing. And we're getting people from all walks of life that have been here for 50 years and have been here for three years. And it's really been great. So what I really want to get to tonight is let's look at kind of cleaning this up a little bit. The other thing is all these commissions, all these meetings is a big strain on staff. This is just yet another thing that they have to do. So, you know, I asked them to look into what do you recommend? What would be the best way to go about putting these together? So we very much appreciate anyone that is on these and that participates in them, but we do feel it's time to clean things up and make it a little bit more efficient. So Barbara, if you could.

Thank you, Council Member Giroux. Good evening, members of Council. I wanted to go through the proposed bylaws. As Council Member Giroux mentioned, we have staff here who are staff liaisons and department directors who are the contact with city staff to the CCBs. So if any questions come up for staff, they're here to provide clarification. Wanted to start with the purpose of our committees, commissions, and boards. We do have nine committees, commissions, and boards. Some are required by state law. Others are JUST FORMED FROM COUNCIL'S DIRECTION, BUT THERE IS A TOTAL OF NINE. THE PURPOSE IS TO SERVE IN AN ADVISORY CAPACITY TO COUNCIL. I THINK MOST IMPORTANTLY TO PROVIDE COMMUNITY INPUT, SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTISE. WE HAVE A LOT OF REALLY SMART, WELL-EDUCATED PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPERTS ON THE TOPICS OF THEIR BOARDS OR COMMISSIONS. THEY MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS ON MATTERS WITHIN THEIR ASSIGNED AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY. AND THEY SUPPORT INFORMED DECISION-MAKING AT THE STAFF LEVEL AND AT CITY COUNCIL LEVEL, STUDYING ISSUES, REVIEWING POLICIES AND PROGRAMS, IDENTIFYING COMMUNITY NEEDS AND OFFERING RECOMMENDATIONS. SO THERE ARE SIX PROPOSED BY-LAW AMENDMENTS TO DISCUSS THIS EVENING. WE ARE IN COUNCIL DISCUSSION PROCESS. ONCE COUNCIL PROVIDES DIRECTIONS TO STAFF, IF ANY CHANGES TO THE BYLAWS ARE FORTHCOMING, THEY WILL BE RETURNED TO COUNCIL ON AUGUST 18TH FOR CONSIDERATION. SO FIRST ONE, NUMBER OF MEMBERS. CURRENTLY WE HAVE A RANGE OF 5 TO 11 MEMBERS DEPENDING ON THE CCB. THE PROPOSED MEMBERSHIP RANGE is five to seven members. Selection of members. The selection process currently is the chair and vice chair do review the applications and make recommendations and then council conducts interviews and selects the members. With this change, the chair and vice chair will still continue to review applications. They will make the recommendations to the department director And the department director will evaluate applications and they may, optional, depending on the number of applications, the level of expertise, they may conduct first round interviews. And then they will make recommendations to city council. And city council will conduct interviews and the department director would be present during the interview and provide feedback. And then of course, ultimately it is the city council's decision to make the appointments.

So just quick on, sorry on that one. The reason why I'm bringing this up, I'm not sure everybody knows, but the interviews, it's like speed dating. It's 10 minutes long. And sometimes it's very difficult to be able to interview, do a 10-minute interview for a planning commission or boards like this. So what we're trying to do is get the liaisons and staff who are responsible for these committees to be part of the interview process because in the end, you are the individuals that will work with them the most. So that's why that's more of a cleanup and give you a little bit more eyes and ears on it.

Thank you. Okay, so number four, frequency of meetings. Each CCB in its bylaws has its own frequency. The proposed adjustments would be to the regular schedules of the Arts and Culture Advisory Committee, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and the Environmental Committee moving from monthly meetings to quarterly meetings. And then for the Recreation and Parks Commission, maintain the monthly schedule that they currently have, but do not meet in December and July. Agenda preparation, there is currently no language in the bylaws about how the agenda is decided. So this adds clarification to the agenda preparation process. Added language, I just said that. So staff liaison prepares agendas in consultation with the chair or the vice chair. Any CCB member can ask for something to be agendized on the following meeting or a future meeting. and the department director ultimately is responsible for the final approval of the agenda, and then staff prepares the actual document and sends it out as required. Subcommittees, some CCBs have subcommittees, others don't. We're recommending here that all CCB subcommittees shall be ad hoc, which is roughly six months in duration, created for a specific limited purpose or project, composed of members of the appointing body, and automatically dissolve upon completion of the assigned task or project. Next steps for this evening, City Council discussion of these six items, and then if directed, staff will present amended bylaws at the August 18th regular City Council meeting. We can go back to... the six items for discussion?

Wasn't there also a recommendation to dissolve some of the current subcommittees? Oh, I'm sorry, yes.

Yes, so after subcommittees, there was the recommendation to DISSOLVE THE FOLLOWING SUBCOMMITTEES, THE AQUATICS SUBCOMMITTEE, THE REC PARK RENOVATION SUBCOMMITTEE, AND WITH THOSE TWO SUBCOMMITTEES, THEIR WORK HAS BEEN COMPLETED AND THEY WOULD BE PART OF THE, I DON'T KNOW IF THE MEMBERS ARE PART OF THE, THEY ARE PART OF THE REC PARK COMMISSION. SO THE REC PARK COMMISSION WOULD CONTINUE ANY WORK RELATED TO THOSE SPECIFIC ITEMS. AND THEN THE SUSTAINABILITY COMMITTEE AS WELL HAS COMPLETED ITS WORK.

These are council consensus items, so we don't have to vote on them. So we can take them in any order we would like.

Let's start the beginning. Number of members.

Sorry, you're done? Not done? Did I cut you off?

I skipped something. Three. Yeah, I skipped three. So the third recommendation is that the chair and vice chair would serve one year terms and they would not serve consecutive terms. So each year you would get a new chair and vice chair. Sorry about that.

We're back to number one. We're back to number one. And Leslie, we want to take the very end thing because it's a little bit different. We wanted anybody oppose or in favor of dissolving aquatics and rec park renovation? Those are already done. In favor.

Well, here's the thing. I was on aquatics on Monday. And now that the plunge was done, I questioned, and I spoke with Joe Lorman about this, who's our aquatics manager, and said, this is on the agenda. What are your thoughts? And the... the feeling was that, yeah, now that the plunge is basically complete, these were just, and the aquatic subcommittees also got the business plan in order. They, they've done a lot of groundwork to kind of set up the aquatics department to run. And so, uh, I am not opposed to dissolving the aquatic subcommittee because I feel like the heavy lifting that that was tasked to do has now been completed and anything left as far as programming or any issues with lane allocation can go through the parks and rec committee.

Consensus for dissolution? Consensus.

Consensus. Consents aye. The renovation of the parks is not completed. We've done the teen center, which is phase one. We still have to do Brett Field and the softball fields. We've got an issue with the county. So I am not in favor of dissolving that because I don't mind being involved on construction plans, issues that come up. And so I would be against dissolving the parks renovation subcommittee meeting. But if you want to go down to one council member, I'm fine.

Here's my thing, instead of it being a monthly meeting, can we change it to an as needed?

Well, it kind of is now because we gave direction to staff for like, if you're just having us, if you're just reporting things and you don't need a decision, then don't call the meeting. And we haven't had one in months because there hasn't been an action item where they're like, we need to get feedback. Like we did with the skate park. You know, we had the issue about, are we going to do stamp concrete? Or is it cheaper to paint? You know, and like, we have questions about that. And I think it's a very productive means of getting that done because that's all we're focused on. Um, but I think as needed is kind of the program we run right now.

Is there a reason that that's not handled by the rec and park commission in total? Um,

I THINK THE REASON WAS WHEN THIS FIRST STARTED, WE WERE EMBARKING ON MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS. AND THAT WHEN YOU'RE DEALING WITH A SUBCOMMITTEE THAT HAS A COUNCIL MEMBER, AND THIS IS WHAT AQUATICS TOLD ME, WE ARE MORE EFFECTIVE BECAUSE THERE IS A COUNCIL MEMBER HERE. BECAUSE THINGS CAN GET DONE. BUT THERE IS A DIFFERENCE IN MENTALITY IF YOU'RE ON THE PARKS AND REC COMMISSION AND YOU'RE ALL ABOUT PROGRAMMING. then I'll call it the burden of being on council and thinking about money and dollars and what makes sense. And, you know, so I think it's worthwhile, but, you know, I'm open for a conversation on it.

If we're already at a point where it's on an as needed basis and obviously we have a lot going on in park and rec as far as that renovation goes, it's fine to keep it. Okay, appreciate that.

Who's on that subcommittee? Is it members of the rec and park and two council members? So there's people who are already on the commission. And there's a member of the ACC on there too, right? And one ACC. Can't you go to the normal meetings anyway? Like there's nothing that says council members can't go to a parks commission.

No, but if there's more than two of us, we probably can't. There's only two.

There'd be only two, right? But the point is to just focus on the plans and the questions about the layout of how is this going to work and not have to wait or just to have that resource available of people who have expertise in construction or expertise in parks and programming.

Chris, and I'd have to say that this committee's been really good at, if there's nothing to meet about, they don't make a meeting just to make a meeting. So you're right, I think we haven't had one in like three, four months. No, we haven't because- So, okay.

And not to go backwards, but I guess for me, this just brings up a question of kind of what falls under, maybe we'll get there, but what falls under the advisory decision-making capacity of the Rec Park Commission period? Is it just programming? Is it- not then things that have a financial component to it that are budget related.

No, they do everything from trees to when it comes to renovations, they had that joint meeting with council about are we going to consolidate into one or so it's not just the programming aspect of it. It's all of what parks and rec encompasses.

And so the subcommittee meeting never feels duplicative.

I mean, I'm not on Parks and Rec, but no, it's not a waste of my time if that's what you're asking.

But I think to your question was, again, that is still a committee that makes recommendations. It's not decisions.

Yeah.

Right, so I think that's just one of the things I think gets lost sometimes. And it's look, I mean, we're on a situation where we give advice and give recommendations and not everybody follows it. It gets frustrating, cuz people put a lot of time in it. But in the end, it has to be understood that they are recommendations. And that in the end, staff's gotta make those decisions, or we have to make those decisions, those final ones.

And how does a subcommittee get created?

So, great question. I believe that only city council can create an actual ad hoc committee. that all of these CCBs, they either have a work plan that council approves as far as here are the projects that we're gonna work on. And then they have working groups that will either deal with environmental, the blue butterfly planting or whatever those projects are. So even on planning commission, we could not create a subcommittee to look at parking in downtown. It always had to come from council. And I think that's the way it should be and as it has been. So I've got issues with the agenda preparation because I believe that the tasks for these committees are to advise on a finite set of requests that have come down either through the old THEIR OWN WORK PLAN THAT THEY DEVELOP AND PRESENT TO US OR SOMETHING MORE HANDS-ON LIKE PLANNING COMMISSION. THERE'S SO MUCH THAT STAFF IS NEEDING HELP ON, BUT IT'S NEVER, YOU KNOW, THE VICE CHAIR OR THE CHAIRMAN OF PLANNING COMMISSION SETTING AN AGENDA ITEM BECAUSE NOW WE'RE GOING TO DO THIS. THAT IS POLICY THAT I THINK ONLY SHOULD BE DONE HERE AT CITY COUNCIL. SO I WOULDN'T APPROVE ANY CHANGES IN AGENDA PREPARATION BECAUSE STAFF PREPARES THOSE AGENDAS BASED UPON THE POLICY AND THE WORK AS DELEGATED BY CITY COUNCIL.

in all of those committees and in planning commission. I mean, aren't there times when the committee members are asking staff, can we look at this? Can we research this? Can we add this to the agenda? I wouldn't want to handcuff planning commission from asking our planning department to look into something.

Can I say that this is precisely why we have elected liaisons to these? I mean, so if a chair says, can we put this on an agenda? That elected official can task the staff to put that on the agenda. I agree. Planning commission falls entirely out of that. Planning commission is a totally different animal, but all the remainder of them Like there is the ability to have, we have elected official liaisons to them who can provide that functional level of this. Yes, that is a good idea. You have a good idea. Let's put it on the agenda and discuss it.

Yeah, like the Hyperion ad hoc. RIGHT? WORKED WITH TRACY MILLER-ZARNICKI AND CAROL, BUT IT WAS A CITY COUNCIL DECISION TO START IT, AND THEN WE DECIDED WE'RE GOING TO GET PEOPLE FROM THESE COMMITTEES, AND THIS IS GOING TO BE THE ROLE OF IT. THAT'S HOW AD HOC SHOULD WORK. commission or committee level then if you have an idea or you want to change the focus or bring something new up then yeah it needs to go through the liaison to city council and then council can give direction on whether that's you know something we want to do or not so there's always that avenue of approaching someone on council or your liaison to say you know we should be spending time on this and it's not in our work plan so we want permission to do it

the name of efficiency and i'll stay a little bit on topic so we'll go slightly out of order what do we think about the item of making all these subcommittees per this ad hoc so they don't require an agendized item and don't have to be regularly so subcommittees for ccbs can be at will all be ad hoc and only last for six months or have to be reinstated well i think they're not

I THINK THEY'RE JUST WORKING GROUPS.

LET ME EXPLAIN.

PARSE THE DIFFERENCE.

THERE YOU GO. GET THE LAWYER. A SUBCOMMITTEE VERSUS OR AN AD HOC COMMITTEE VERSUS JUST A COMMITTEE IS UNDER THE BROWN ACT, IF YOU APPOINT MEMBERS, IF THE BOARD, IN THIS CASE THE COUNCIL, IF YOU APPOINT TWO OF YOUR MEMBERS, LESS THAN A MAJORITY, AND ONLY YOUR MEMBERS, TO LOOK AT A SPECIFIC ISSUE FOR A SHORT DURATION, GENERALLY SIX MONTHS OR LESS, THAT'S AD HOC, NOT REQUIRED TO BE BROWN ACT. THE OTHER COMMISSIONS, COMMITTEES AND BOARDS COULD DO THE SAME THING SO LONG AS THEY ONLY APPOINT PEOPLE FROM THEIR OWN BOARD FOR A SPECIFIC PURPOSE FOR LESS THAN SIX MONTHS AND THEY CAN DO SOMETHING WITHOUT HAVING A BROWN ACT. AND I THINK PART OF THAT IS THAT It saves staff a lot of time if they don't have to do the agendas and all of that for limited duration, things that people are looking at. And I know that some of the committees, commissions, and boards sometimes split into groups and have a couple people look at this issue or one issue and a couple people look at another issue. And so those are kind of ad hoc as long as, again, they're specific and limited duration. A regular committee can be comprised of council members, staff, members from other committees, commissions, and boards, but those have to be Brown active.

I don't know. I think approving something to continue every six months just creates... NOT A LOT OF CONSISTENCY, CLEARLY, AND WE JUST SPEND MORE ENERGY DISCUSSING WHETHER SOMETHING IS GOING TO EXTEND. FOR INSTANCE, ACC, IN MY MIND, HAS EXISTED PRIMARILY TO GIVE DIRECTION ON PUBLIC ART, SO I JUST PLUNGE, THE TEEN CENTER, THEY'RE GOING TO BE INVOLVED IN THAT AND THERE'S NO END POINT. IT'S TIED TO CDP, WHICH IS ONGOING. I WOULD NOT BE IN FAVOR OF JUST MAKING ALL OF OUR COMMITTEES SIX MONTHS IN DURATION.

I'M SORRY, THAT'S SUBCOMMITTEES.

THAT'S ALL SUBCOMMITTEES. MY APOLOGIES. GOT IT. NEVER MIND. I RETRACT ALL MY THINGS.

I may have said committees, and I may have confused you.

I appreciate you giving me a little lifesaver there.

So we're good with the way it's written. This is what we're saying. We have consensus that six is good as written. Wait.

Right? I don't think so. Six is written right here, or six is currently written?

He wants to change it.

He wants to change it.

I want to leave it as it is.

It sounds like we've got to leave it as it is.

You're not crazy.

Okay.

I mean, it might be, but not because of that.

All right, so six, it sounds like six stays the way it is. They can have committees. We're not going to ad hocs. I would caution be ad hocs. I don't think you've got... That's the proposal. That's the proposal. I'm a no. You've got disagreement on it. Two disagreeers on it.

We're keeping it the way it is currently.

No, no, no. All sub... how it's written is all subcommittees are six months in duration. Agree on that. His proposal was that all committees are only six months in duration. ACC, DEI, environmental.

No, no, no, no, no. So here's what we need. Let's start again. So your committee, you want to have a working group underneath you. Do we want them to be able to call them subcommittees and last in perpetuity as like in some of the ACC ones? Or your proposal, do they all last six months and dissolve and then have to re-rationalize themselves? I would caution that when you have standing subcommittees at times, as I suspect the case is with Breck Park, that subcommittee does more than the commission it's designed to support. And I think that is a hazard if we overuse standing subcommittees. Deputy city manager, you have commentary.

Just some observations that I've seen from working with CCBs. As I think Mayor Pro Tem mentioned, the park renovation subcommittee is a city council subcommittee. It's not a rec park commission subcommittee. So that is a different thing than a working group within one of the CCBs that doesn't meet regularly, that doesn't have a fixed schedule, that's maybe less than a quorum, of course, getting together to go into more research or more detail on a specific topic, coming back and supporting it and reporting it to the full CCB. So I think that's a distinction that

you may want to consider is... Is working group a term of art in the world of the Brown Act? They would require agendas.

I think that that's the same. Again, as long as it's not, it's limited in duration for a specific purpose, then that's an ad hoc committee and it doesn't need to be Brown Act. It's... IT NEEDS TO MEET THOSE TWO CRITERIA. IT'S GOT A SPECIFIC SCOPE AND LIMITED IN DURATION. AND WHAT I'VE SEEN FROM LOOKING, I DO WATCH THE AGENDAS GENERALLY FROM THE VARIOUS GROUPS AND THEN PARTICULARLY I NOTICED LIKE ON DEI THEY HAD A WORK PLAN AND THEY BROKE IT INTO SEVERAL areas and they signed a couple of members to work on one area, a couple of members work on another area. And they did that over the course of probably about six months. And so, you know, that's, and I think that other committees are other, yeah, other committees have done the same thing, um, to break up the work. So those I would consider to be ad hoc, so long as again, their specific purpose and they're not going on for extended period of time.

Okay, so no working groups. Ad hoc subcommittees.

Well, working group is the wrong term. It's just muddling us. So it's between subcommittee and ad hoc. What say you on the left?

Exactly however Mark just articulated it is what I agree with.

Which is that?

Perfect.

Okay, so now we have consensus to advance item six as written. Yes.

Well, the three of you agree, so that's fine. Three out of four. Three out of four ain't bad. Let's go. I was looking for input on it. I think putting it's fine. Let's move on.

All right, then let's go back to item one, because this is one we're gonna spend five hours on. Let's talk about the numbers on each committee.

So when I did some research on this, from Manhattan Beach, Redonda Beach, all these, it's no more than seven. Seven is the most I've seen on any committee. Now, there is a situation now where we have certain ones that have more than seven right now. I'm not saying kick people off a committee. I'm saying if we're going to limit it to seven, let it run out. We just wouldn't backfill it. Once it gets to seven, it would stay at seven. And I think this was also a recommendation from staff. Is it just become more efficient? Is it easier to work with seven versus nine or 11? Again, because I didn't write this report. I know that's what it looks like. I did not. But there's a lot of things I agree with on it.

No, I just think that kind of WHAT HAPPENS IS WHEN THERE'S SUCH A LARGE GROUP, IT'S VERY CHALLENGING TO GET THROUGH A LOT OF ITEMS. WHEN IT'S A LITTLE BIT SMALLER, IT JUST SEEMS TO BE A LITTLE MORE EFFICIENT, AT LEAST IN TERMS OF WHAT WE MANAGE, I THINK. AND MOSTLY BECAUSE WE JUST DID RESEARCH ON IT, TOO, TO SEE. BUT WE DON'T WANT TO KICK ANYBODY OFF. WE JUST THINK MOVING FORWARD, MAYBE SEVEN IS A MORE REASONABLE NUMBER.

The only thing I will say on this is that for me, it ties into both going quarterly and this idea of ad hoc subcommittees, working groups that I think if you're gonna meet less frequently as an entire body and the idea is to take a work plan and chop it into parts and actually make progress on that and not run into having to have every member on every working group that something closer to nine gives an opportunity to have groups of three or four. So I think it becomes tight to actually do the work. Certainly with five, even with seven, I would propose a minimum of nine. or a maximum of nine?

I'm just saying if that was the magic number, then every city would have that. Why is it literally only seven or five to seven and everywhere else around? Because it's a manageable working group.

I think the groups that have more numbers, DEI and ACC, are ones that we expect those volunteers to kind of roll up their sleeves and do the work and actually... you know, implement the direction and policies as opposed to. But their job isn't to implement. Staff's job is to implement.

I will say I've had my first experience on the subcommittee that I, major event subcommittee that was, you know, my brainchild of being a working member of that group. It has kind of dwindled to five and it's, It is like when there is something like a watch party, an event, a specific thing that you're working towards, it becomes a lot of work for a group of five to take on. I completely understand what staff's saying. I don't wanna overtax them and I think Having less frequency is okay if you're creating an opportunity to do the work in between meetings. And you're gonna run people out if it's five people doing all the work during that time.

But you're saying that you need more people to run events, but staff runs the events. That's the way it should be, right? That's what you, right? Am I right or wrong on that? Now.

That's not how it does. I mean, DEI doesn't have a budget. So when they put on an event.

Why would they? Actually, Arts and Culture doesn't have a budget either. It's a cultural arts fund.

But then staff can't run an event by themselves because then we would be using city budget to make that happen.

And for like environmental that I'm a liaison for, like they actually show up to plant the blue, but like they think of these things and then they implement those things. So, I mean, you're not reducing anyone environmental.

No, I mean, environmental has seven people that you're actually proving my point.

Well, do any of these have trouble with quorum? No, we're doing okay on quorum.

Okay. No, that's been fixed, right? It's been, the meetings are pretty consistent. That's been great, right? Yeah. I'm not gonna just die in the vine on that. My big thing tonight is we need to understand what the hierarchy is of sorts when it comes to the commissions and boards and staff. I think that's in some cases where things have gotten clouded and it's caused some friction. So I think it's very important that everyone understands that the commissions and boards are there to advise and recommend, but it is staff that has to implement, it's us that has to decide or however you want to put that. I think that's an important piece of this. So I'm not going to die in the vine on number one if I can't get consensus to go to seven and you want to keep two committees at 11 and what is it, nine on DEI?

I would ask, for our elected liaison, is there a manageability issue with the meetings because there's too many cooks?

Is it?

So it adds an inefficiency? I mean, you're the staff. That was a likely question, but I can grab you in a second. It's like pick one. None of the large ones are in my purview.

Yeah, I don't know that all 11 members are, I don't think that we've had all 11 members at any meeting that I've been to. It is a large group. I think for the work, WHEN I STARTED AS THE LIAISON ON DEI, THERE WERE VACANT POSITIONS. WE ROLLED OFF THE SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS OR SCHOOL, Yeah, to create more volunteers who could then do the work. And I feel like they're kind of just getting to a place where that has been working well. I would hate to see that rolled back. I do think 11 is a lot. I would propose maybe seven to nine and give us some discretion there.

Look, I'll compromise it at nine. It's fine. It's a move in the right direction. It's fine. I'm not, again, there's not anything here I'm married to. It's just what makes it a little bit better.

Director Mancini, your two cents on the good governance part of this?

On the seven to nine?

Or on any of the, about the unwieldiness of larger committees.

Oh, I think if we get clarification about scope and who does what, then having a bigger group is not as difficult. No offense to everybody, but it's hard to have five bosses here, five bosses at the commission, 11 people in this group, seven over here, because it's very hard to get everybody kind of on the same page. So if we can manage those things, I think that would be helpful.

Yeah, I think one of the tough parts that we learned in the interviews, I think it was Brian who mentioned it. He says, look, at the beginning, the ACC didn't have a cultural arts coordinator. They were running all that stuff on their own, making all decisions, making it all happen. Well, things have changed. So the scope of the work is going to change a little bit, and the way it runs is going to change a little bit because M's in charge.

Right.

That's all. I just want to make sure that that's the case because we need to support her in her role. That's all. But if we want to sit there and go to nine for right now on those two, I'm fine. If that makes life easier.

I wanna make sure that's something that you're comfortable with.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think I'm fine with nine. Again, I think it's more about understanding what everybody's doing that will help. Got it.

And is it possible that this is something that's written as a maximum of nine, but as with the committees in general, it's still at council's discretion? Yes. It doesn't mean that we have to fill all nine spots all the time.

So then if we went in interviews or at that time we were a working group of seven and we're like, hey, we're good, we're rolling.

So change that from five to nine and we're good, right? Can we go good? We're good on number one? Consensus there, yes.

All right, we have consensus on item one. Item two, the selection of member process where we have directors evaluate applications, the option to conduct for the may conduct first round interviews and then make recommendations and then have the department director participate in the interview process.

As I look at this, I think it's a little too cumbersome. I think what I really wanted was to make sure that the directors and staff was in on the interviews themselves. That's all. It was actually really good to have your input. So I think that's what I would like to see in there. I don't think there needs to be two rounds of interviews necessarily.

Yeah, I think we're putting more burden on staff by, I mean, it's already a lot for us to sit down and read all these things and do the interviews. So I'm not in favor of staff having to read these or make any selections if they're available for opinions. Great, but I wouldn't be in agreement with, I'm okay with chair and vice chair making recommendations. They've already done that. But the other two I'm not crazy about.

Yeah, I think we just wipe out the director. Yeah, I just think that you should be in on that final interview the way we did the last time. That's all I think it worked out well.

For that third item, do you want the director to be asking questions in the interview process or do you want them just deliberating and providing us insight?

I gotta be honest, it's helpful for you sometimes. You will definitely know the questions to ask more than I will. you know, planning commission, I'm lost most of the time. I mean, I kind of let you two do that. I think it's good to have your input in what the questions are that you want asked.

That would be more helpful than reviewing the applications. And I think the chair and vice chair can give us good recommendations and then we can flush it out there. But I agree. I thought I had questions I wanted to ask at those that I think would be helpful.

Well, let's not lose sight that these commissions serve for city council. They don't serve for staff. They help staff implement the policies, but let's not go too far afield to where we've got staff.

I'm not saying we shouldn't ask questions. I'm just saying that in the end, staff spends way more time on those committees than we do.

Yeah. No, I understand.

All right, so we have consensus that 2A and 2C are a go. 2B is not.

Quick question, if I may.

Ma'am.

I think currently it's make recommendations to city council, and we're saying they'll make recommendations to the department director. Do you want it to remain as city council?

Remain as city council. To city council, yes. And then make the participation discretionary, may, as opposed to, you know, you guys are busy enough, right? If you want.

A may and not a shall. There you go. There we go. Guess who's the attorney? Who's the attorney now, Mr. Big Shot? All right, item three, the chair and vice chair rotation terms. Can we click through? There we go. The one-year terms and may not serve consecutive terms.

I think it's important to rotate and give everybody an opportunity. Again, as we're seeing more and more people come in, it's good for everybody to have a chance to run these.

But the bylaws now call for elections every year, every two years, so they can vote a new chair or a new vice chair. I think when you have a mandatory rotation, you're going to lose some institutional knowledge or possibly some momentum of someone who's used to running a meeting actually run the meeting. I'm just thinking about my experience on planning commission. There is a learning curve there. And if you've got someone newly appointed who now is rotated into chair, that's going to make the whole process a little bit more cumbersome for no reason.

Right. But I don't think I'm saying it has to rotate to everybody. I'm saying that if you have a committee of nine people, The problem is that when one person becomes the chairman for a long time, it just stays that way and nobody wants to upset the apple cart, even though they want to do it.

Well, they're allowed to vote. They select and nominate their own chair and vice chair. I'm just saying if you put a one-year term on it, you are arbitrarily limiting someone's participation and role because you're saying you can only be chair for one year and now you can't be chair. And I think that's kind of arbitrary. I don't understand the problem you're trying to solve for here.

I just explained the problem that we're trying to solve.

Yeah, I see both elements to it because there are committees where you get some incumbents who are there and at some point you capture so much institutional knowledge that you become almost irreplaceable, right? So I don't know if the answer is one year term or if it's a two year term or which part of the bylaws, but I do think that there is an element to, there's a logic to it that I could see. Did you have something Director Sassoon?

I JUST WANTED TO MAKE ONE COMMENT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR THOUGHTS AND YOUR INPUT. BUT THERE ARE TIMES THAT FRANKLY OR AT LEAST THAT HAS HAPPENED IN ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITTEE WHERE THE CHAIR IS REALLY KIND AND NICE, AND SHE WANTED TO ALLOW OTHERS TO BECOME CHAIR, BUT NO ONE WOULD WANT TO TAKE THE CHANCE TO BECOME THE CHAIR OF THE COMMITTEE. SO THERE ARE, THIS IS GREAT TO PROVIDE THE OPPORTUNITIES, BUT YOU MAY NOT HAVE A TAKER.

WHAT SAY YOU, MS. KELNOR?