City Council - Regular Meeting

Alright. We will go ahead and get started. Good afternoon. Welcome to the 02/03/2026 Salinas City Council meeting. We'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. Patty?

Sorry. We do have a Zoom translator online. She's not here physically. So for those that need Spanish translation, translation is available in Spanish. For those that request translation, translation devices may be obtained in the foyer.

Okay. Margaret DiRigo may join us via teleconference, so pursuant to California government code section 54,953, this meeting should include participation by council member DeRigo. Zoom webinar participation is available for members of the public. The Zoom webinar ID and link are available on the posted agenda on the city website. With that, will everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of

The United States Of America and to the republic for which stands one nation under God,

All right. Okay, we're gonna call a few audibles at the line of scrimmage. One of our City of Champions recipients is not here. They thought their time was 04:30. So is anyone here to receive the Black History Month proclamation? Okay, will go ahead read and and then we will

Mayor, can I do a roll call first?

Oh, sure why not?

Thank you, sorry. Council member Barajas? Yes. Council member Barrera? Yeah. Council member Diego? Councilmember Dela Rosa? Here. Councilmember Salazar? Here. Councilmember Sandoval? Here. Mayor Donahue? Yep. Thank you.

You didn't think I'd say no to that, did you Patty? No. All right. All right, let me, we'll go ahead and do the proclamation and then we will do public comment. Depending upon how long that goes, we may pause and do the City of Champions and then return.

So anyway, everyone will get their opportunity. With that, February is National Black History Month, whereas February is designated as National Black History Month, and whereas Black History Month recognizes the contributions of African Americans to US history and are essential to the ongoing story of America. And whereas in 1976, the week long event officially became Black History Month when US President Gerald Ford extended the recognition to honor the too often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every every every area of endeavor throughout our history. And Black History Month has been celebrated in The United States every February since. And whereas 2026 marks one hundred years of black history commemorations and is thereby officially noted in this year's theme, a century of black history commemorations.

And whereas this theme highlights the significance of celebrating, promoting, and preserving black history as a part of American history, and whereas the city of Salinas recognizes African Americans' contributions from the early days of pioneers to our present day leaders and honor their courage and contributions. Now therefore, mayor Dennis Donahue, behalf of the Salinas City Council, hereby proclaim the month of February 2026 as National Black History Month throughout the city of Salinas and call upon our community to observe this month and that's dated this February 2026. Okay,

all right.

Before we go to public comment, we'll go ahead and recognize any new employees. Does anybody have new employees to announce?

And

in January, we welcomed Raul Correa as a code enforcement officer one to our code enforcement division. And Raul was previously working from for Wildan consultants. So he was already providing weekend and after hours code enforcement through their services. So we're glad to have him on our permanent team. Adam Garrett was promoted from assistant planner to associate planner. Adam has been with the city since 2017. So we congratulate him on his promotion.

Alright. Good evening, mayor and council. I am excited to be stand before you and introduce to you Nathan Q. He is our new deputy director of economic development. He'll be working across the departments in the city to to advance our economic development strategy and the working to manage our properties and our assets. So I'm really excited to have him. Before coming to Salinas, he worked for the city of Santa Cruz. He worked for the Santa Cruz County and the city of Long Beach doing economic development and workforce development work, and helping employers and small businesses get through COVID. He's a US Air Force veteran with a background in economics from UC Riverside and an MPA from USC focused on economic development. So I wanna say welcome to Nathan. Thank you.

Good evening, mayor and city council. I'm pleased to announce three or two new employees and one promotion. First on our park maintenance team that's out there day in and day out making sure our parks are safe and well kept for our residents. We have Ireneo Chavez. We also brought on a new neighborhood service coordinator, which though as you many of you know, those coordinators work closely with each of you in your districts to build community and build neighborhood supports. So we have Lizbeth Garcia, and then finally, we have a promotion on the library side. William Strong was promoted to librarian too. So, pleased to have all of these employees in promotions.

Good afternoon. Salina Andrews, finance director. I am, pleased to announce that Frank Reyes Junior joined the city, in January. He, holds an associate's degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting, and, he is local. He previously worked in Salinas, for a law firm for about nine years as their accounting manager. So, very happy to have him join the city.

Good evening, mayor, council members, city attorney, city manager. I'd like to report Carlos Casa, Salinas Police Department. Somebody says I didn't recognize you. So we're excited to announce four new hires at the police department in this month. They will join the San Jose Police Academy on February 17. So first one is Ulysses Hernandez, David Perez, Robert Sanchez, and Jaime Silva. They're excited getting acquainted with the Salinas Police Department family, and they're ready to start in just under a month. Thank you.

Good evening, counsel. I'm here to let you know that we had four promotions within the Public Works Department. Leonardo Alvarez Chavez was promoted to Public Service Maintenance II. James McCann was promoted to the public service maintenance worker three. Fernando Rizzo was promoted to the division manager over development engineering. And Andrea Rocha was promoted to engineering aid one. Thank you.

All right. With that, we are going to proceed to public comment. We are now open for public comment on items not on the agenda that are in the City Of Salinas' subject matter jurisdiction. Comments on consideration public hearing items and the consent agenda should be held until the items are reached. Public comments are limited to two minutes per speaker.

Each person who addresses the city council during public comments shall do so in an orderly manner and shall not make any personal, slanderous or profane remarks to any member of the city council, city staff, or the general public. Any person who makes such remarks or who uses threatening personal or abusive language or who engages in any other disorderly contact which disrupts or disturbs the meeting may be asked to leave the city council chambers. With that, we are open for public comment.

Okay. I understand there's a money problem in city Of Salinas. I do lots of service requests and I don't think you should just give that as an excuse and close it. You should put it on hold. Until you can actually do something, put it on hold. I'll keep on putting it back in the queue if you keep on not doing anything. And I get tired of you guys not doing anything. There's a tree I just saw over there by KSBW. I think it's pretty sad that a worker put asphalt against the tree. I mean, where's how's the tree gonna grow?

I mean, that's the kind of people we have working for the city. They need they need to able to think. And you don't do that. You give them room to grow. And then also too, I replied to one of my service requests and said in the comments, I told them to, what I just told you, in the future, put them on hold. Well they gave me another service request acknowledging that they said that, but they didn't say that they were gonna stop start putting on hold. So if you're not if you can't do the work, then don't take credit for it. And I get tired of the roads not doing anything. And you replace sidewalks with cement, not asphalt. So we had a perfect one at my mother's house, 20 feet should be cement.

The tree is gone, so it's not going to crack. So they didn't asphalt, they didn't form it. It should've been side concrete, it'd be there for fifty years. So why wait until twenty five years when it's gonna way before that, you're gonna have to replace that asphalt or repair it. That's why you don't use asphalt for sidewalks, just for streets. So I get tired of you guys getting away with using substandard material for the obvious. I've never seen asphalt put on sidewalks, and it shouldn't be done. And I don't know why you guys get away with it. So the public works, they need to start doing their job, or or somebody should be telling mister Jacobs to tell his guys to do do the job right. Thank you.

Yep. Thank you.

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Good after eve, everyone. My name is Kimberly Bryant, I'm just here to pray and to just release the shalom of heaven over this room. Father, I just ask you for your presence here tonight, that you would release peace.

Release peace over the dais, over every heart and mind of the council members and our mayor, and every person in this room, in this rotunda, just peace over it, peace over our public comment. Father, I ask for your hope, hope to fill each heart here for the future of our city and the plans that you have for it, father. But most of all, I ask that you fill each person with your love. Your love casts out all fear, all anxiety, all hatred. So let love prevail here tonight. Amen.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Community. Gentlemen, once again, let's let's start getting the streets in order, man. They're they're pretty bad. I just got alignment today on my truck and not even half an hour, forty five minutes later, I hit a bump and the bump was pretty bad. We gotta start somewhere, know. When are we gonna? Tony, when are you gonna reach out to? Help them out on the East Side. Let them know. Give them a ride or something. Pick them up. Hey, Look at look at how bad my roads are. Don't you care about me? They built your beautiful park. You're getting there. But your streets look like crap. Excuse my language. They look bad. And if you don't live on the East Side, God bless you.

You probably don't care. I don't know if any of you guys even live in town. No disrespect, but some of you probably don't. And, you know, you have to take into account that, you know, we're the taxpayers. We pay for all this. We need it done. We need it fixed. We're not asking you because, you know, we're we're trying to be mean. We're asking you because we need stuff done. We need our roads fixed. Our lights. We have no lighting down there. It's dark. And if you don't live there, you don't care. Know, out of sight, of mind, right? That's what they say. Gloria, you live on the East Side, right? By Sanborn, I mean, you know what it's like out there. I don't I don't know where you live, mister, you probably do too. I know Tony does.

Tony, you complained about the streets three years ago, and they haven't done nothing in your area about the streets. I still see them all messed up. Come on, guys. And this, guys gotta put that to sleep. You guys are gonna get in trouble. Be careful with the brown eye guys. It's like you guys are talking amongst the county. Be very careful. Because we we find out that you are doing that, I'm I'm gonna sign the petition to you. Dismiss you guys. I'm gonna have to do that. Don't do it. Be careful what you do, guys. I'm not threatening you. I'm giving you a fair warning. Be, you know, productive. Do things right, guys. Please. God bless you guys. Have a good day.

Good evening, major and city council members. My name is Susana Barrios, I am a resident of District 2. And this evening I stand be stand in front of you as a resident and the general coordinator for or also known as its abbreviations FIOB. The committee is composed of volunteer members in the community whose purpose to is to bridge and connect indigenous communities with local and state authorities and institutions in Salinas. Our goal is for our communities to be recognized, heard, respected, not only to be visible, but also to have safe spaces where they can live and share their traditions and ways of life and preserve their culture.

I am pleased to be accompanied here tonight by some of our members and also wanna note that within our community members that are composed of group, we have members that speak Chatino, Mixteco, Zapoteco, and Triqui. And as a new committee here in the community, we are pleased to share with you and the community that we will be organizing an inauguration event to introduce ourselves and share more about the committee's mission and vision. This event will take place on February 21 from four to 05:30, and I hope that you can join us. In the next few days, our communications coordinator will connect with you to share a brochure and more details about the event. And for more information, you can also contact the team at pheob salinasgmail dot com.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We hope that you can join us.

Thank you.

Okay. Good evening, City Council Member, City Attorney, City Manager. I'm John from District 3. And I want to thank you for the, I believe it was the January 10 proclamation for Martin Luther King Day that myself and the members of the Interface Alliance received. As you know, we had a wonderful event on Sunday, January 18, candlelight march and vigil in honor of Doctor.

King. Thank you for the allowance to use some of this wonderful space here, including the courtyard. We had a beautiful ceremony. Our, if you didn't, if you weren't able to make it, I understand the ceremony did post on YouTube recently. Thanks to our wonderful city videographer Wes.

The emphasis of the day was remembering both Chavez's and King's approach toward nonviolent action and practices so that we're careful in our the direct action that we pursue. We at the interfaith council see that there's potentially violence every day that we see and the specter of that is on the horizon and we wanna prepare the community to be non violent in our responses. We ended with King's Six Nonviolent Practices as a reminder to the community. It was really cool. It turned into an open mic event which was really cool to see people had a chance to speak about relationship with Chavez, speak about personal relationship with King.

But everybody circled around to our hopes for a peaceful 2026 in Salinas. So, once again, thank you for that proclamation. It got the whole ball rolling. Thank you.

Thanks, John.

Okay.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Okay.

Yes. I'm part of the ones that were doing the survey, and we were surveying what we needed for our community. And what we ask you to please prioritize, what is gonna make our community look pretty, what is gonna be, like, better, like, the bark, the side, the curbs, and all that, that's what we really want you to prioritize when you're, putting this money in. Thank you. Hello.

Yes. I'm part of the people that are also are doing the survey, and a lot of people say that we need more lights. Like, mostly in Sanborns, there's a lot of traffic accidents. There's a lot of accidents. A lot of people are being affected because of that.

So we need more lights in that crossroad. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Nidia So to. Good afternoon, mayor and city councils.

I am part of economic justice and BHC. And once again here, I am giving my comment regarding the survey. We have, we started with a survey regarding the budget. The volunteers in Esquelita, we've have been talking to our bases, for a week now, and we want to know what the community needs and what they mission what they need. And we have heard about better resource centers, libraries, safer crosswalks, economic development, better salaries, houses, better security.

What we have never heard them say is that they want an arch in Alisal that says Alisal. Nobody says that they want that. Nobody needs that. That is a lot of funds that are going to that. And for example, it's the constitution part that is part of the district from council member Barajas and Visaljo.

There's that park there, and we should have a safer crosswalk there. A lot of youth like to go and practice their their sports there, so the safe crosswalk would be a better investment or our funds so they can play at the park, and then they can park in front. There's a parking lot there where there should be, like, safety signs or beacons so they can cross safely. But $700,000 on an arch, please, I've never heard of that. Thank you.

In line, it says that the surveys that we have been submitted are 495,000. I'm not sure, but we have 900,000. So, I'm not sure if the amount is correct.

Hi, good afternoon. City Council. Just wanted to bring some focus and really like appreciate the city for being able to print up these hard copy surveys. This was like the previous speaker, my colleague, Niria So to had explained. The effort, you know, to be up in the nine hundreds, you know, within I think it was what?

We started on January 25, I think it was. And so, yeah, it's people people are really receptive to the idea of how they wanna know how their money is being spent, Especially on the East Side with, know, we all understand the value of money. Right? It's it's what dictates a lot of our choices. And, sometimes when it's When it doesn't correspond, well then, then it's something that we have to make sure and advocate on behalf of our community. So, now, we want to go ahead and turn these

these. No.

Oh, was that? Oh, el puebix? Oh. So, what we'll do is we'll turn these in on Thursday. I believe that's the final day.

So, you can turn them in on Thursday. We would like to start populating the data though. So, if you do have them now, we would be more than happy to take them. The survey, I believe, according to our finance director, will be staying open until February 12.

And when would and the last day to turn in? February 12. February 12. Okay. So, we have until the twelfth. All right. So, wow. We got, yeah, we got how many more days? We got nine more days.

All right. Well, thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Looks

like a lot of work. Name is Eric Peterson. Last couple of meetings I pointed out that Mr. Barajas is more interested in utilizing city resources against somebody he doesn't like than actually doing his job. And, I don't know if he's caught up on appointments yet.

I wasn't able to check. But, based on some of the questions he's asked on agenda items this thing is not working right. Based on some of the agenda items, the questions he's asked on agenda items, it seems there's a very good chance he's not reading staff reports. And mayor, he's your protege. Hopefully, you can get him to start doing his job. That would be something not just good for District 1, but good for the whole city. Thank you.

Yes. Good afternoon. My name is Elizabeth Chavez. I thank god I was able to get here. It's my day off. I had to do some errands, feed my daughter, but I'm here. And I'm here because I'm a volunteer, and for me, it's important to come and talk to you about the survey. I have been talking with people about the survey and minimum salary is very low. It is not enough and I think this is a priority for all of us. Also medical.

A lot of us have medical, but even though we have medical, we have to pay out of pocket our medicines and some expenses. So the problem is that we don't have enough money. We have to pay medicines. We have to pay rent, and that is just not enough. I went to Natividad because I had some issues with my right foot, and the thing is that at Natividad, they told me that they have a specialist, but he only comes two times a week.

So they gave me an appointment, but it takes so long to be able to get seen by them. So I think if you have money there that you can invest in health, that would be something that would really be beneficial because there's a lot of people that don't even qualify for medical, so they don't even have insurance. I had to get a surgery, and the problem is that I wasn't able to pay it. So I had to ask for my brother-in-law to let me pay the surgery with his credit card, and I'm paying that surgery little by little. That is my case, my story. But a lot of people don't even have that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, City Council and Mayor. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Michelle McCarty, and I am the senior program manager for Brighter Bites. And Brighter Bites is a non for profit. We receive all of our programming funds through either donations or grants that we've written through our development department.

And what we do is we partner with the local schools here in Monterey County and Pajaro. We do schools have to be title one and they need to be at least 80% free and reduced price lunches. And we partner with the principals and have the teachers licensed so that they can teach catch lessons, which is a nutrition education program. And then we do a food distribution either once or twice a month at each of the schools. It's all produce, fruits and vegetables, most of which is donated through local producers here in Monterey County.

And yeah, we do our best to educate the parents during those distributions as well because they're the ones that, of course, cook for those children and buy the food for those children and prepare the snacks for their schools, you know, lunches and stuff. So, yeah, we try to educate the whole family. And if you would like to learn more, I would love to hear from you. You can go to brighterbites.org and look for Salinas. And Michelle McCarty is listed under there, I'd be more than happy to meet with you.

Currently, the one Salinas school that we're working in is Virginia Rocobarton, is in the Alisal School District right now, and then of course we have others throughout the county. So yeah, I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know that we're doing great things here, and if you are aware of any grants for which I should apply, I would absolutely love a little heads up off of the, you know, you can get my email off our website. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Good evening.

Just wanna take a moment to praise Jesus with none of this is possible

without him, and

and I wanna praise Jesus on his residing over my bond as a heterosexual, having six children, six sons. The only way you can have children is man and woman. And I just wanted to praise him here to start things. You know, great work by Iago and his crew here, the rugby team that was huddling the decorum, double dipping, all that. Decorum really kind of failed tonight, it looks like.

But, we have conjecture. We've talked about Bruce Taylor donating money to your campaigns. You giving back the money, going into closed session, working on some property deals with him. And and I love that idea, to be quite honest. I think Bruce Taylor's a great great member of this community. But with that, let's help them do that. And let's have them match the money for investment over on the East Side with this group of billionaire friends. Why don't we do that? Can we broker that deal? Let's broker a deal with our community and our great member Bruce Taylor who's invaluable.

And let's broker that deal and let's get that investment from our people here because it's the greatest community in the world. It's greatest city in the world and we're gonna make this city great again. Regardless all the bullshit and the trinkets up there, some sexuality. Because I love you no matter what Jose Luis, no matter what you might think about me, that's so wrong. So wrong. Because I love you for who you are, but you're not here to sell the sex. Thanks.

Hello. My name is Joe Alvarado, district five. I wasn't gonna say anything about this, but it's kind of in the back of my mind. Over the past six months, I've been coming to these meetings pretty regularly, kinda getting some of the insights of what goes on up here and the decisions that are made on this dais. And over the last six months, I've heard the same thing from people who come up here and talk to you. They ask for better police presence. They ask for more lighting to improve public safety. They ask for stronger code enforcement to protect neighborhoods and property values. They asked to repair roads and infrastructure. And they asked for traffic calming to improve pedestrian and neighborhood safety.

Like the survey that that just got displayed before you guys, not one of those people ever asked for an arch, a decorative symbolic greatness to Salinas. In 2020 when that arch was erected, the closest number that I can come up with was that that arch cost about $600,000 in Downtown Salinas. That spanned the two lanes. That's all that's public. So, using that figure in today's money, we're looking at about $786,000 if that arch same thing was being built today.

If the arch cost 600,000. When you stretch that thing over six lanes of traffic, you're looking at 2,360,000. Well, it was great that Mr. Alejo chipped in 100,000 to get it started. But until there's a clear way of making that arch work, I think those funds need to go somewhere else. Again, to the things that are important to the people of Salinas. It seems like it's going in one ear and out the other. I hope that, you know, might be you know, by saying this, you guys listen to the constituents. Listen to the people who ask you for help weekly. Thank you. Good

afternoon, mayor, city manager, city council. Piggyback what my friends here said. He's been coming here for six months. I've been coming here since 2008, and I've been repeating the same thing, just like the rest of the people here. And, it hasn't gotten us anywhere.

We applied for speed bumps, 02/2010. We didn't get them. We reapplied a couple of years ago, submitted all the paperwork and all the requirements. We get a meeting last October, or we can't do that because city council only approved $250,000 and we have twenty years to go behind, and you need to go to city council and ask for more money. Here I am. We need money for speed bumps in Monte Bella that we have been requesting since 2008. Thank you.

Wes Wise, Leeds, Smarter County Homeless Shooting Co President. I want to bring up the fact that Rita Acasso, Make a Difference, his book from 2012, the year they had Tents by the Garden. And, you know, 2012, dude, it's like fourteen years ago already. So, these are stuff that we did during the Chinatown Sweep in 2015. And, basically, it just says like, don't take away the only thing I have, you know.

And, this from 2015. And it's just, it's like we talk about a peace breakfast and stuff. We want to talk about our faith, but it's works, man. Know, faith without works is no faith. You know, and this, like I said, this is stuff from 2015. And it's like why is being homeless a crime?

Does this pertain to the consideration item we're going to discuss?

No. Dude, do I come here every week and talk about stop the sweeps, man? So

Okay, but this this

I'm telling I'm telling you this is from 2015.

I understand that.

Why you

guys are doing silly stuff. So, please, don't interrupt me. It says, show me where can I go to be homeless? And here we are still.

This this is an item public comment is for general this is an item that we are you're gonna have plenty of time to speak on.

Okay. So there there's Union Pacific tracks. No. No. No. This has nothing to do with the ordinance. I've not mentioned anything about So what you're doing is taking away my time. I need my time back.

You can have your time.

You're interrupting me, dude. You shouldn't be doing this. Okay. So there's Union Pacific tracks going on right now. It's all private property since June '23. You you pushed April '23. The city pushed everyone off of Chinatown, off of Solidarity, off of Market, onto the train tracks. And, they're and they since it's private property, that's the way you like it because now you don't even have to post a notice. So what do you do? Luckily they call the Coalition Home Service Providers and they're going, hey, you know you've to go. But where do they go? Like I said, 2015, stop the sweeps, you're killing people.

Okay. So

it's just stressful because I know that Rita has lost over 200 people. We have a list of people that died outside waiting for services. In 2015, it was about cars. You've to sign people up for services. Nobody wants services. Now, just about everybody in here has got services. We've tried to do like a licensed what do you call that? Livability license. You know, to where, okay look, you sign up for services, your place is clean, it's not a health and safety risk. What is the problem? People need afford this is affordable housing already, what they can afford to have. What they need is an address, they're not homelessness, it's addressless. They need somewhere to be twenty four hours, seven days a week, stop the sweeps.

Am am I ready? Good afternoon, council mayor. I plan on commenting later on a particular subject. I just kind of want to set the tone today after hearing a lot of the public comments here. And over the last few months, I just really want to encourage this council to to really be open minded and listen to what people are saying. Because I hear what they're saying and I don't see the action corresponding to what the people are saying. And so, that's all I ask today is that when we hear these comments that you take these things into consideration and really take action based on what people are saying. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Right. Is there anyone on Zoom? Okay. Ozzy?

Hello? Hello?

You're on.

Are you able to hear me?

Are you able to hear me? Hello?

Yep. You're good.

I do want to call him right now. Hop into I'll hop into West White being a sensor for his speech. It's unacceptable. As you can see, West White didn't mention the agenda. He was talking about homeless sweep. And, again, with fight, didn't cross the line. So as of you guys by leading West Vice President right now, which is unacceptable. And also doing a kind of weapon to the ball, Caboose Bill. And the sense of Anderson, the ball was pretty as well. And the sense of Anderson, the ball was pretty unacceptable as well. I thought that was pretty well just straight to, like as as opposed to ascent. In general, Amber's appoint Amber Amber's appoint with the city council has handled business right here. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm I'm I'm I'm at the at the November team meeting. I thought I thought they were just crying over nothing, but especially about they were just crying over nothing. And so, yeah, for the city council members and valiant free speech. So thank you. And so I would say for the moment, you. So I'll have to say for the moment.

Ozzy, just as a reminder, please no profanity. This is publicly broadcasted. You have forty six seconds.

Is it Catherine? Yeah, Catherine. Katherine, are you there?

Katherine, go ahead, two minutes.

I'm sorry. Can you hear me?

Yes. Okay.

I was born and raised here all my life, sixty two years, and I wanna just bring a light to this decorum. You know, we we are not stupid people. We are your constituents. I live in Creek Bridge. The city planted or approved these big trees when back when the development was built.

They didn't anticipate for the trees to go 30 foot high and the roots to grow into our lawns. I put in a work order because your tree is growing into my sprinkler system. Your tree is tearing up my sidewalk, and someone's gonna trip and get hurt. I put in a work order. I got a response. It was canceled, and it would be twenty years. We own our own business. I drive over to Sao Salinas. They're fixing sidewalks. Something is wrong with this city hall or city council, And you guys need to start talking amongst yourself because we, the people, are getting tired.

It doesn't take rocket science. All you gotta do is get off your chair and walk around your district, and you would know the things that you need to be working on. An arch, we don't need no more arches. We have one, and it's beautiful. We don't need to have an arch in every city, county, whatever. That is a waste of money, and it's despicable that it's even on the table. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Alright. With that, we will close public comment, and we will yeah, Jose is your group here? Yes. They are, okay.

Alright, thank you mayor. So tonight I have the opportunity to recognize a pretty neat group called the crew runners and if you guys wanna make your way up to the podium in the meantime while we get our comments started. So the Crew Runners is a running club based in Downtown Salinas born back in September 2023. They're a free runner's club that has over two twenty one local members. They meet every Tuesday at 06:30 here in Downtown Salinas.

They jump around from business to business bringing their group of runners to them, meaning they're supporting that local business, going on a run and then just building general community around healthy activities for local families and youth. They provide extensive opportunities for community engagement, doing everything from fundraising over $10,000 since their inception for local nonprofits through the Salinas Pal for organizations like Jacob's Heart and Relay For Life. Notably, if you remember Relay For Life this past year, they were the folks that organized the run around Salinas with the purple balloons, right? So, if anything you guys can definitely remember them for that. But tonight, I have an opportunity to recognize them for all the great work that they do and that they will continue to do because they are deeply rooted in our community and are all about giving back to our community.

So with that, I want to give the floor to Marlene and a few of other folks who wanted to share some things about the Crew Runners Club.

Hi, my name is Marlene Garcia. I am the founder to or co founder to the Crewrunners. Started off as a small adventure trying to bring in people that, into my small business, I share the same love for running. And it's just grown into something so beautiful here in our community. We were born in Downtown Salinas and we stuck to Downtown Salinas and it honestly is just to have fun, run, get people moving and while we do that, our local businesses, support our local organizations, and we invite every single one of you to stop by our runs.

It's honestly grown, I don't say this because it's ours, but it's just grown into something so beautifully, so beautiful and everyone's super supportive, super inspiring, and they all come, they're all different phases and paces. And, yeah, like I said, we invite you to invest in something like this, a local group that is full with local individuals or that just have the love for Salinas because we have people that come from Hollister, from Gilroy, from Monterey just to run-in our run club. So thank you so much for this recognition.

Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Alejandro So to. I'm also a member of the Crew Runners. And I just wanna say, first of all, thank you for welcoming us here and helping us preach the message of our team.

As somebody who's been part of several other run clubs throughout Monterey County, Monterey, Seaside, Carmel, I would say that the Crew Runners really offers a very unique experience in the year and a half that I've been a part of this team. It's turned from just a regular weekly run club into really a family that's really immersed itself, not just amongst each other, but with our own local community in ways that I haven't seen with other clubs. As has been previously mentioned, we partner up with different local businesses on a weekly basis, organize several charitable events. So it's not just a couple of individuals getting together and running, right? Obviously, the health and fitness and the wellness aspect of it is very important.

It's very key. But at the same time, it's about building community. It's about building partnerships and building trust amongst each other. Several of us didn't know each other when we first started running together, now we've just kind of grown into a big giant family. And every week, it seems to be growing in a very fruitful, very organic way.

And I very much love the messages that we send out where it's like, we're looking after each other's health, we're looking after each other's wellness, but above all that, we're looking after our own community in ways that we find are unique and that that makes us very special and a key component of our city. And we encourage everybody, whether you're a beginner runner, whether you're not interested in running at all, we have several people that just walk, that bring their dogs, bring their their children in their strollers. So we it's very inclusive. We welcome everybody of all backgrounds to come and join us every Tuesday night to bring our community together. And especially in this time of great tension and great division, we bring unity in a very special and a very exclusive, very special way to Salinas. So thank you very much for having us.

Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Kat Marquez. I've been a part of the crew runner since about March. For me, personally, I not being from the city of Salinas, it was really hard at first trying to find, I guess a group of people that I could hang out with or even like talk to and I was never a runner, I was actually very intimidated to run.

If you had told me to run a mile, I would probably ask you, can I just do half of it? And, if not, the other half I'll walk, you know? But, the first time I ever went to the crew runners, I felt nothing short from being welcome like, it was the most amazing experience and since then, I Every single Tuesday has been that same feeling, I feel so close and I'm so so proud and honored to be a part of this amazing group. I can get emotional, but like, I feel like I found my people in this runt club and this is the thing that I feel like the city needs the most is community, and giving out a power and a message of saying that like, we're here for one another, no matter what your story is, and it has nothing to do necessarily with running, like half the time, we're really just bonding about our life stories, about our day to day lives, and it's just that one hour that we get together on a Tuesday, and just kind of forget about everything else that's going on in our lives and just kind of taking a breather.

I know like many many of us sometimes go through life and just feel like have a million things going around, my head is going like a 100 miles per hour, but to me, the way I kind of see it is like, when I go to the crew runners and when I go to this run club, we kinda have an inside joke sometimes where we say like, Esteeya, we're gonna take it easy depending on the pace, but it kinda is what we feel like, it's like, yeah, we're gonna take it easy. Like, it reminds me to take things like one mile at a time, kind of one thing at a time, and if that's my one hour that I dedicate to just being free, to just kind of clearing my mind, I'm just really happy that I get to do it alongside this group of people, and I'm just really proud of what we're doing for the community, and I feel proud of now, you know, to be able to serve my community that I've only been a part of not even three years, but I'm just hopeful that we're gonna continue doing great things for the community, and I really hope that we spark a new energy for the future generations as well, because this is the kind of things that I feel like we can, Like I said, these are free free runs and if we can do something like that and continue to opening up, you know, different runs throughout the year, different events, we talked about the RealLife for Life, other opportunities that we can do to bring in the community together, this is the place to be and like I said, I'm very honored to be a part of this group.

So, thank

you. Awesome. Thank you folks for sharing some of those words with us. So with that, we would like to present you a certificate of recognition on behalf of the City Of Salinas to the Crew Runners Club for your dedication to community wellness, your support, and local engagement in the City Of Salinas community. Thank you and if you'd like to join us, we'll shake your hands and we'll take a picture here in middle.

All right. Do I have the youth council in the house? I do not. Okay. So we will hear from them soon I hope. And then in terms of public hearings, we are continuing the establishment of a zone of benefit in the central area of the North Of Branda future growth area. That will be continued indefinitely. We we will now head to consideration items. Consent item 26,020.

Did have the Hitch cock Road Animal Services presentation?

Nothing, it's not on my list. It's not on my list. That's fine if we do, I just Yeah, do.

Okay. Get a presentation from Hitchcock Road Animal

Services. Okay. Great, you're up.

Hi. Thank you guys for having me, council mayor Donahue, city manager and city attorney. I'm Cindy Burnham and I'm the administrator at Hitchcock Road Animal Services, which is the joint powers agency between the city of Salinas and the county of Monterey. 2026 marks our third year as an official joint powers agency. And today, I'm here to present our first strategic plan, which is really exciting in my time on Hitchcock Road between the city and the county.

We've not yet we've never done a strategic plan, so this is very exciting. As a review, city manager Mendez is a director on our our board as is council member D'Arrigo, and then for the county we have supervisor Church and CAO Della Rosa.

Let's see here.

Which way do I point? Point there. Okay. Oh, back. Okay.

So in August 2024, we were tasked with finding a facilitator for the strategic plan, and we were able to get Raymeet Associates to come and provide that strategic plan. We had a pretty short timeline, we wanted it done in just under six months. And so, Raymeet Associates had also done the county's health department and Natividad strategic plan, so they were well versed and able to help us with our timeline. We started in November 2024. Into 2025, we met we had some strategic planning meetings, we did our planning interviews, we only had four in person meetings, and so we were able to get things going and moving along in that six month period, so that at the June 2025, we had our first strategic plan.

Some things we considered for the strategic plan for animal services is we reviewed other shelter strategic plans to see what were some of the key components in that. We did an analysis of best practices, operational excellence, policy governance, community engagement, animal welfare and outcomes, as well as data driven decision making. We wanted to make sure that we were getting all the key topics for this plan. We also did a SWOT analysis done by the board of directors, staff, and advisory to look at our strengths, which was dedication to the team, compassion for animals, our weaknesses related to most of those related to budgetary and staffing constraints, opportunities. There's always room for more partnerships, community outreach, and education, and threats to such a plan, rising costs, politics, veterinary shortages, processes, job competitiveness.

So, a wide range. We did some stakeholder interviews and focus groups. We wanted to make sure we could capture as many people as we could. We checked in with our core leadership and staffing groups, we checked in with our advisory committee members, we spoke to the State Animal Welfare Association, we invited local welfare groups within Monterey County to join in on the conversation, we offered it to our volunteers for input, and we did put it out to the community to get some community feedback. So, our plan, we've got an overview of Hitchcock Road Animal Services, our mission, vision, and values.

We've got a brief description of the process that we participated in. We came up with three goals and identified some strategies and metrics for those goals. And then, looking ahead, just brief description of how the plan will be implemented and monitored. So, our vision that came about came from this, ensure a high quality of life for animals and people through education, compassion, pet retention, advocacy, collaboration, and effective enforcement in Monterey County. There's not one mission that we do.

All of these things tie into what animal services is. And, our vision is animals and people thrive in Monterey County. Our first goal, deliver the highest quality animal services. So, we wanna ensure that we've got high quality animal intake management and best practices, practices that support animal well-being, and expand their use of data to help us guide those long and short term decisions so that we can also communicate with the public and our partners. We looked at outcomes, what does that look like?

Maintain high caliber animal well-being services, increase pets return to owners, that's a really big goal, our goal, but something we do on a daily basis is can the animal go home first? That's our first question. Improve data collection and transparency, we're always looking to see what can we add to our website, what information can we share. So, are how we came up with these metrics. Average length of stay by species, live release rate meaning how many animals are leaving by adoption, being returned to their owners, being transferred to a rescue partner.

We're also looking at being very specific on the number of animals that are euthanized. As well as, can we take some foster to adopts? Meaning, you maybe are not sure if you want to adopt or can we turn a foster home, a temporary foster home into an adoption. Our current process, a lot of these we were actually in process. So strategy one, looking at our intake, two out of five strategies were done.

We're already tracking info and our animal surrenders. We're improving resources for pet owners, and we're looking at ways that we can help share resources. Longer strategy of a community based stray cat and dog management plan, that's something that we've identified that down the road we'd like to get our advisory group participating in. Enhancing practices that support animal well-being, two out of four of those are done. We've got adequate housing for shelter animals, we're doing vaccine and microchip requirements as required for both animal health and state requirements, and we're in process to reduce our length of stay and increase our live release rate, which is animals leaving through the the life through the shelter.

And, expanding our use of data, we've done all those. We've refined we're constantly refining our metrics, we're trying to share publicly, which use our social media, our Facebook page is probably our biggest outreach for the community. Goal number two is expand community engagement and partnerships to enhance animal well-being and ensure community health. We want to expand the education to our communities throughout the county. We actually just added a second educator and volunteer coordinator with the focus of community events and enhancing our foster program.

So, if anybody has events that you want animal services at, please let us know. We wanna increase the volunteer base to support services. With adding a second person, we now have a volunteer coordinator who's got some capacity to increase our base, and so we're always doing volunteer orientations and trying to get more folks on board to help us. We've currently got over 90 volunteers that help us each month. Expanding our support and training to retain volunteers, we're actually having a training this week for some of the new volunteers that we've onboarded, but with expanding that base is all expanding our training because we need to have them trained to help us.

Develop inclusive culturally responsive messaging and targeting outreach strategies. We're using some of our data of where animals come from to target where we go, and we've also are working to make sure that we're providing information in multiple languages so that everybody is able to access our resources and information. And then, strengthen and initiate strategic partners to address community needs. We're always looking for partnerships. I'll talk about it a little bit later, but we have a new Friends of Hitchcock Road Animal Services that we're also working to build some more partnerships within our community.

So, some of our outcomes is expand culturally responsive outreach, expand and strengthen relationships with community partners, enhance community awareness and education. We're going to be counting some of our community events, counting our volunteers, the type of volunteer opportunities, and our hours and capture the partnerships that we build. We've got some great progress going on these for our expanding education and prioritizing outreach. We've been disseminating resources, community engagements, events, and messaging. We're trying to put those on our website, on our social media.

We've got a bullet some bullets and words in the shelter for those that actually just come to the shelter that they can see. We've got some longer term strategies of expanding efforts into the schools and youth, but with a volunteer increased volunteer base, we want to build that through our volunteers. Let's see, we've got some we've already done utilizing our social media. I think our Facebook page has hit over 10,000 viewers that we reach on a regular basis, so that's really been great. Longer term or partnerships with with others for for more outreach, we've got some longer term goals of doing just more again in the schools.

For increasing the volunteer base, two out of two strategies enhancing our volunteer program reducing barriers. The onboarding process with our current county policies is a little long, so even this year we've already worked to reduce those because we know that we don't want to have any barriers for people to volunteer. We want them to come in, we want to give them the training, we want them to do the great work, And so, that's actually in progress and we're working to shorten that onboarding process. And then, let's see, strengthen and initiate partnerships, they're all in progress because we're always collaborating to expand opportunities, we're really looking to see how we can increase access to low cost vet care in our community. We keep hearing that's a huge resource, if any of you have pets, you know how hard it is to one, get an appointment with your vet or to for the cost of what that is, and so we're looking to increase see what we can do to increase that, whether it's share resources, build our own clinic, or expand our own clinic, we do have our own spay neuter clinic.

We continue to provide low cost spay and neuter opportunities. Just two weekends ago, we partnered with Animal Balance with funding that we received through the city and the county, and we spayed and neutered 189 animals in a three day period. We've also been providing feral cat clinics with our partner, The Snip Bus, throughout the communities to try to fix as many feral cats as we can because that's where the kittens are coming from each year. And, our last goal is to establish sustainable funding to enhance operations. So, we're working to secure sustainable funding, ensure the highest quality facility management practice and and shelter ops are in place, improve staff recruitment, hiring, and retention, expand our facility as staffing and resources allow.

We have a twenty year old building and we are using every single inch of it, but we've got a lot of ideas for what we'd like to expand in the future, and advocate for more effective county wide animal well-being policies. So, for our outcomes, increasing funding and diversity diversify funding sources, strengthen facility infrastructure, improve policy alignment across jurisdictions. Currently, as an example, you know, we're looking at now that the city and the county are working through our JPA, are there ways that we can streamline some of our policy alignments for that. So metrics, number of community member donations, member of community spay neuter microchip events, or staff retention and description of well-being. For the outcomes, for funding like I mentioned, we do have a new Friends of Hitchcock Road Animal Services that is about three months old now, and so they're already planning some events and looking at grants they can apply for, and so that's a really great opportunity that has been much needed for animal services out here on Hitchcock Road.

Ensure the highest quality facilities management, works. Like I said, we're exploring our vet services for critical care. Obviously, longer term would be looking at how we can do an overall facility enhancement, and we're always we're always going to be asking for more staff because we need we need more to do more as most other departments do. And then our last strategy, improving staff recruitment and hiring. We're working with the county to improve our recruitment and hiring process, and this will support the need to increase staffing and promote working environment that supports well-being.

We have a really really great staff and so how can we further enhance their staff morale. So what's next for our strategic plan? So we've identified year one priority activities, some of the ones that are already in progress. We've reviewed the plan with our leadership team so that as we develop plans throughout the year, they're in line with that strategic plan. We're sharing it with the broader community such as presentations like this.

I did present to the board of supervisors in December. We've got some internal signage, it's on our website, we're sharing it on our social media, we've got some things at our community events that we're sharing, and then we're just gonna keep moving forward and we'll review it as the end of the three years comes up, and then we'll adjust and see where we're at by then. And I'm just sharing and ending with we got a nice surprise a couple years ago. There was a contest between UC Davis for more pets and people, this art contest, and anybody that submitted their artwork representing pets and people earned a $5,000 grant. So, a local gal, Scarlett Bispo submitted her drawing and it says, when people are down, pets are around and she earned us a $5,000 grant.

And, so we actually put her artwork on t shirts and we hand out the t shirts at events. So that was pretty cool. And with that, I thank you for your time.

Okay, thank you. This is a presentation item, but we will take comments from the council. If anyone has comments, feel free.

Tony. Ms. Burnham, I appreciate your work because I know you had your highs and lows in this department and then bringing two governments together, that's another major task. So you got over 90 volunteers. That's not an easy task in itself, and I I appreciate you commending your staff.

I think what I've seen in the neighborhoods, less and less dogs and cats running the streets anymore, and I think the spayed and neuter programs that you've put out there have been very successful. I know there's a lot of people that really get involved. So to your credit, and I sincerely mean that, I think you've done a phenomenal job here because a lot of times we don't know about this department unless we're into animals of some sort, but that one thing to bring the county and the city together and work together, to your credit, I want to say thank you.

You, Tony. Jose, anything?

Yes, more so a question, hopefully. My question, first of all, you for the presentation and thank you for the work that your agency does. My question is pertaining to the enforcement component, particularly on Goal three. What sort of financing mechanisms or revenue generation mechanisms does Hitchcock Road Animal Services have available to itself? Like are you guys able to do some sort of like fee for service and collect and generate revenue in that way or is there like a benefit assessment district? How do you guys foresee increasing revenues?

So, our current main source of revenue is our licensing program. All dogs are required to have a dog license over the age of four months, and so we do manage that system and that's for rabies control. So, we have that, we do charge fees for any permits or adoption fees, so we do have that. As far as looking at other sources of revenue besides just increasing fees, those are some things we're still exploring. There are I guess larger base, some agencies are doing some kind of long term tax, we've not explored that yet.

We're also looking at what we can have our friends of Hitchcock Road support us with as well. Like I said, they're really new, but we're just starting to look into that long term funding, like a long term goal.

Okay. And then, as it pertains to staffing levels, is there a general like national standard or state standard for a number of enforcement officers per population similar to like police or fire or other services?

There is a very broad one that says one officer for like every 20,000 people, which would mean we would need a lot more, but that's just kind of an antidotal one. What we tend to do is kind of look at our service load and see what would help us kind of reduce call times, so we don't necessarily use that national formula. So we've been exploring, and we have received additional staffing to bump up what we currently have, so it's something that we explore every year.

Okay. Those are all my questions.

Okay. Thank you. Gloria?

Cindy. Yes, we see less animals out running in the streets, but in some neighborhoods it's still happening. And, in our website, we do advise people that if they find a stray cat or dog to return them to Hitchcock. Yeah? We're telling people where to take the animals, but sometimes they don't know.

Yes. So stray lost dogs from Celine is Yes Come To Us. With cats, we ask people to call us. As far as a policy, a stray, a healthy thriving cat does not necessarily need to go to the shelter because there's no law that says they need to. Dogs are not allowed to run loose for sure. So, we like people to call us because if it's sick, injured, abandoned, by all means we want to help that cat. But, for dogs, yes, dogs are not allowed to run loose.

So, do we have that service in weekends?

The shelter is open on Saturdays, and people can bring animals too, but I do not have currently animal control on the weekends.

Okay. Because sometimes that's the problem. They don't, you know, I wouldn't know because we're taking animals sometimes.

Yes, do currently have animal control Monday through Friday. The shelter's open Tuesday through Saturday. Sunday is the one day that neither of them are working.

Okay. And another question, do you have a lot of reptiles?

Hope not.

No. Like, I know we take them in, right? There's somebody

It depends on the case, but yes. Owner surrenders, those would be referred to the SPCA most likely. We have taken in. We currently have a really cool duck, but no reptiles.

Okay. Thank you, Cindy. Thank you for the presentation.

Aurelio.

Excuse me. I'm just curious to know, could you tell us a little bit about the history of your facility, right, being on Hitchcock Road? Always found it very interesting, you know, it's in our city outskirts, so you really have to commute there. So question number one, would like to know the history of the facility. The second one being, have you heard either from staff or volunteers or residents of that being a possible barrier like having to travel that extra distance to view and possibly adopt a cat or dog or?

Yes. So the history, there was the city shelter and the county shelter out on Hitchcock Road. County shelter was built, I believe, in 2003. The city shelter was built just prior 1999, I think when a law passed. And so, I think the county facility is actually on a city property with a long term lease. And so that's kind of how they ended up there. There was a law that passed in 1999 that extended the length of time that jurisdictions had to hold animals. Prior to that, they were all at the SPCA. With that law changed, SPCA was no longer able to house animals. So that's when the city and the county shelters were created.

In fact, the first county shelter was at Rancho Cielo before it was Rancho Cielo. That's where one of my first offices was, if that dates me. But as far as barriers, we do find that's a barrier. Buses don't go out there. It's not necessarily a safe place to ride your bike. I've tried it only once And so, but we do have folks take Ubers and taxis and and you know get rides and stuff, but we are out in the fields.

Last question. Then I'm just curious would there be an opportunity then? Hopefully there's not another barrier in terms of transportation. But bringing some of the animals over here, maybe the dogs to the local dog park here and set that up so that people can come and volunteers can also be out and getting those waiting for adoption to have some free time?

Absolutely. We do go out in the community, we call them just off-site adoption events. We're always looking for more places, so if folks have events they want us to come to, we'll be more than happy. We're we're also starting kind of internally and seeing how it goes, offering some Cuddle Zone events where we'll bring some, you know, some cute puppies and kittens. You guys some of you will see it here at City Hall on Thursday. So, yes, we are we are aware that folks not always wanna come to the shelter, so we are always looking for opportunities to bring critters out to the community.

And lastly, thank you for all your work. We adopted from your site out there and had a wonderful lengthy relationship with our chihuahua. We named them Rio aka little papas. And so I know that those that come and adopt are really in for a treat. So thank you for all your work in protecting and safeguarding them and everything else in between.

Thank you. Thank you.

Margaret, anything?

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yep.

Okay. Great. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you for the work that you and your staff do. I'm very new to the board, I'm just learning about the challenges you're facing, mostly resource related. Having such a limited staff and being able to do so much good work is really impressive. I think your cuddling program is great. What a great way to volunteer to hold a little kitten or a puppy. I think that's a beautiful thing. So keep up the good work and come back to us when you need more support because I think we all recognize the healing effect of pets in our lives and that they're very important part of our community as well as people. So thank you for everything and a great presentation as well.

Thanks Margaret. Okay.

And thank you. Okay.

Well done. All right. Very good. I like to cuddle a bit. I told my wife about the puppy that came to City Hall today. I was too late. But maybe next week.

You can bring it back.

Okay. That one she might one she might like. So very good. Thank you. Alright. With that, I think the youth council has shown up. So, you're you are you are up.

Good evening council members and mayor. My name is Ariana, and this evening we are here to provide a few updates. The youth council asked for the city council to proclaim April 27 through May 1 as National Youth Violence Prevention Week due to recent events happening in the city. We would like to raise awareness on preventing violence against youth. We are also going to work on a campaign hoping to partner with schools to target students. As well, this fall is the Amor Salinas five year anniversary. We will be working on a new PSA and updating messaging. We will also begin Amor Salinas High School Challenge. Earth Day is coming up, so we would like to encourage everyone to start thinking about our city's beautification.

Hi, I'm Sabrina, and I have an update from the school district superintendent's advisory committee. They're currently working on four problems that they've noticed around their schools and those are restroom cleanliness, courses, and mental health. Do you guys have any questions?

Well, let's see. Any comments? All good? Thank All right.

Thank

Thank you. We're glad you made it. Okay. With that, let me see where I am here. Okay. We are going to proceed to consideration items. No. Okay. Alright. We will go ahead and jump into the we'll look for Selena for a staff report. Consent item twenty six zero two five approval of 2026 fire equipment please and direct purchase requires a presentation from staff as such we will take that item first as a consideration item so Selena you're up.

Good afternoon, Mayor Council Member Celine Andrews, Finance Director. The city's financial advisor, Craig Hill, NHA, is also here, and he'll be available for questions after the presentation. Thank you. The item before you is the an equipment lease. It's a financing arrangement for the purchase of new fire apparatus.

As outlined in the staff report, this finance is being effectuated through the current master equipment lease purchase agreement with Bank of America Public Capital Corp. You may recall that this is the same agreement that we used for the 2024 equipment lease purchase. The fire department is in need of two new Pierce Enforced type one engines. One Pierce 100 Enforcer tractor drawn aerial, and a new BME type six engine. So, one Pierce Enforcer type one engine and the BME type six engine will be purchased with cash from the sale of land proceeds, and that equates to about 1,477,000, and one Pierce enforcer type one engine, and the Pierce 100 Enforcer tractor drawn aerial will be purchased through a tax exempt lease financing for a total of 3.232.

Shown here is a breakdown of the financing. As you can see, that first item and the last item are expected to be covered with cash and reserves, and the other two would be the ones that are being financed. The financing includes securing a 13.2% discount, which is about 500,000 by prepaying for the two vehicles that are being financed. So the city plans to utilize the tax exempt equipment lease with Bank of America Public Capital Corp to purchase the tractor drawn aerial and enforcer type one engine. Under the city master equipment lease purchase agreement that has been in place since 2012, and the current draw schedule of property number four, under the current schedule of draw property number four.

So, there's a seven year term, and the final payment is approximately twelveonetwenty 32. The amount borrowed in total is about 3,261,000.000, and this is a lot fixed annual debt service payment of 530,000, with the first payment due in 12/01/2026. So, here's a summary of all the legal documents that will have to be in place in order to get this lease financing deal executed. And so, that's the resolution, which is what we are working on today in this meeting, and that authorizes the legal documents and city staff to execute those documents, and identifies the not to exceed amounts. The 2012 MELPA, which is the master lease that I've mentioned, was approved and executed back in 2012 and provides for the ongoing line of credit relationship with Bank of America Capital.

It's for Public Capital Corp. The schedule of property number four, this identifies the terms related to the specific equipment financing, and it includes the amortization repayment schedule, and prepayment terms. And then there's the escrow agreement, which is the agreement between the city, BAPC, escrow agent, governing the process by which funds are withdrawn from the escrow to pay for the equipment. We started this process back in mid December twenty twenty five, where NHA submitted a bank RFP, and in early January, bank bids were due and selected in consultation with city staff. Mid January, we finalized structure and the terms of that lease, and then that brings us to today, where we will, we're asking counsel to consider the equipment lease purchase, and we are expected to close in mid February of this month.

And so that's when we will then be in escrow, close escrow, and be able to purchase the equipment. So with that, staff and NHA are available for questions.

Thanks, Selena. Okay. I'll start over to my left. We'll start over to my left. Margaret?

Yes. Can you give us an idea of how you financed this type of equipment in the past? I think this might be slightly different and what those lead times look like compared to how they are today?

How we have I'm sorry, the question just to make sure I'm understanding How

have you financed the equipment for the fire department in the past, and how have the lead times changed? I have the answer. I just want people to know how long the lead times are in today's world.

Oh, okay. Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, the past, we have staff, internal staff has gone out and actually checked in, did their own RFP process, ran our own RFP process. And in the past, the lead times were not what they are today. So very similar process, this time we did we did work with NHA because they have a much broader reach, and they were able to help us through this process. Does that answer your question?

It does, yes, thank you. I appreciate that. That's all I have.

Okay, Gloria?

I have no question right now. Have a comment at the end.

Aurelia?

Excuse me. I seem to be all choked up this afternoon. I wanted to ask, I'm a little bit unfamiliar with fire trucks and the construction of fire trucks and their immediate availability. And I see the fire department coming up to the mic. You probably know what question I'm gonna ask. Typically, long does it take to make one of these fire trucks? I think I've heard that it may take several years and sometimes it's difficult for cities and other municipalities to get their hands on these kind of vehicles. Kind of question number one. Question number two being, once we make these purchases, how soon will we see them in our in our city?

Good question. Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'm Shane Benervine, your deputy fire chief. Currently, the lead time on fire apparatus is five years. So if we purchase those this month, we won't see them for five years.

For five years. Okay. Thank you.

Previous orders we are still waiting for.

Jose? Thank Thank you for the presentation, Director. My question is starting off with the master purchase lease agreement, the MPLA MELPA adopted back in 2012. How frequently do we go out to redo that? Is that like a bid process that gets done and we solicit interest from various financial institutions or how does that work?

Thank you for the question. I'm gonna start responding to that, and then I'm sure Craig will be able to add to that. So it is done at the time that we go out to we put out an RFP, and we essentially say that we want to work with a bank, and this is where NHA comes in, and depending on who is selected, if we don't have one of these agreements in place, we would have to enter an agreement. We just happen to have an agreement in place with this this bank and that's why we're able to use it, continue to use it.

Okay. So in the timeline itself, an anticipated aiming for equipment lease, mid December Send Bank RFP and then early January twenty twenty six, bank bids due when lender selected. When we issued that additional RFP back in December in relation to the MELPA itself, are other financial institutions also eligible or did we only receive solicitations from Bank of America which was the holder of the MELPA originally?

So, other institutions also submitted bids, but they were not as favorable as this bank. And so, that's why the bank was selected. It's similar to an RFP process for work or in any other type of RFP that the city would put out there, only this is specifically for certain types of products.

Okay, thank you for that clarification. Also in your presentation you mentioned quote, that a good portion of this funding was quote coming from the sale of land proceeds. Is this referring to the properties sold to MCOE last year and is that

the proceeds we're talking about?

That is correct, yes.

Okay, thank you. And then I think Councilmember DiRigo kind of touched on this, how does leasing, does leasing offer any advantages to actually getting the equipment online and on the ground faster than a direct purchase does?

So, the way this purchase arrangement or this lease arrangement is we are able to prepay, so it is essentially we're borrowing the money upfront, so we can pay for the vehicles and they can start being built, so there is no delay. The only delay is in how we pay for it over a period of seven years, specifically for this lease. So, is no delay and we're able to take advantage of that payment upfront, which is about $500,000

Okay, awesome. And then what would be our purchase capacity right now if all we did was pursue a purchase route rather than this creative financing of purchase and leasing some equipment?

So, there is a trade off, right? If you take any if you use any of your our current budget, that would then tie our hands for other projects. So, this is an advantage where we're paying it off over a term of seven years instead of having to pay it all up front. So it's really just a balance of when we pay all of the money. I think I understood your question. Yes, And thank you for

my last question is relating to the BME type six engine itself. Just for my clarification, because I did my ride along with fire department recently and I learned all about the different terminologies. The type six engine is the type that goes into the creeks, correct?

That's correct. The type six engine is also known as a brush rig. It's like a four by four Ford F-five 50 truck with a skid mount pumper. So definitely its advantage would be used in the Tippodad Creek Park and other grassland areas.

And then currently do we have any of those type six engines that are currently operational?

We do not currently have any. We have another type engine. It's called type three, which is a much larger four wheel drive fire apparatus. We did have type six engines in the late nineties and early two thousands, and those got phased out over time. Type sixes are becoming popular again and that's why we're pursuing them.

Thank you for the clarification. Those are all my questions.

If I may clarify a couple of things. Thank you for those questions and I get this is complicating a lot of money. But just as we call, the reason we're here is you gave us the authority a few weeks ago to bring this back to you where we discussed the nature of the financing, the nature of what we were gonna purchase, the time it took to get the vehicles and so forth. So, because I've experienced here that we folks have sort of a perspective on how they approach things, this is not here because we're just bringing it today. We got permission to bring this to you today and we also got the authority on the financing mechanism that we're gonna bring forward.

So, just wanna remind everybody of that. And, the other conversation that we had at the time was the idea about do we finance it all, do we purchase it all, or do we do a combination of both. And, it's like purchasing a car. Many of us typically don't have the money to put down to buy the car, but you get the car and then you pay it in payments. That's in essence what we're doing here, much larger numbers.

So, again, just wanted to sort of clarify. And the one thing that we're encountering now is we're probably over the next five years going to see a little more of this coming because the lead time for our equipment is so long now that we'll probably be in here in a couple years or sooner saying, hey, we need to buy another three or four apparatuses. As a reminder, we have six stations. And, six stations has at least two to three apparatuses. So, when you do that, six times three is 18 and we're constantly refreshing this, we will be before you in the future asking, we need to start replacing vehicles.

This will come online in 2030 and we're gonna be replacing these that are gonna come online in 2031, 2032, February. So, I think as a city, we need to look at financing opportunities as well. So, just sort of I appreciate those questions just to remind the public that this is kind of what we're doing. This is not something and we're talking big dollars, big lead times. It never used to take five years to get a piece of equipment. You know, we were talking maybe a year or something, we able to buy something, we're not, that's not happening anymore. So, we're going to start seeing this a little bit more frequently. So, appreciate the questions.

Thank you. We'll take that.

Ronnie? Yes, thank you. Miss Andrews, thank you. My question is, I do know we need this apparatus. My question is going be for the city manager.

I appreciate what you said, Mr. Mendez, right now, but just so the public understands, I believe I understand it, but when we're dealing with financial institutions, sometimes we've been challenged that sometimes we're not good stewards of the people's money. In this purchase that we're doing, which is needed, you believe, as well as the finance director, this is the best option as far as cost savings, is critical. If I understand the numbers correctly, just on the interest, it seems like we're gonna be able to, we're paying for two, but no, excuse me, we're buying two, but it looks like with interest we're gonna be paying for four to some degree.

So, the short answer to your question, and maybe Craig can help us here, is yes it is based on what we have available. So, if we're going to buy million dollars worth of equipment, we can't, then we're dipping into our reserves, we're dipping into other sources. So, I think it's a balancing act of can we finance with a good rate, a good interest rate, which the fact that we used our financial advisor, they have a bigger reach and they have much more of a pool that they can reach out to banks than we can. And, but the local banks can also participate. So, they all, everybody's contacted.

Not all banks have the same capacity and not all banks do this type of leasing, this type of financing. So, all that happens and then we get the best rate through a competitive process. So, that comes forward as a recommendation and our financial advisor working with their finance director brings forward the best cost effective. The other thing that it allows us to do, it allows us to have some certainty in our budget. So, we know what our payment's going to be.

So, we can now factor that into our five year plan or four year plan. So, we know what that is as opposed to these spikes because that's what sometimes cities would do, know. When the equipment breaks down then you have to go buy it, right? And so, this allows a little bit more certainty and a little bit more ability to plan over four or five years because we know we have to make this payment. So, it does give almost a little bit of discipline that allows us to keep up with the modernization of the fleet. So, I guess the short answer to your question is we feel that this is the best financial method of getting the equipment that we need to get.

Thank you. Andrew?

Sure, prior to the December sale of our property, because this purchase was already in the works, it was kind of part of our plan. How did we plan to pay for it prior to the December sale of the property?

I think we had would a similar conversation. We would've had a conversation about do we finance it all, do we dip into our reserves, or do we reduce other parts of the budget? The ability of the sale of the property given us an opportunity because it's one time money to use to replace equipment as opposed to putting it out to ongoing operations. It's an opportunity that presented itself. So, we brought that before you.

It should not, should, if we had not sold the property because that would have never come forward, we would be still having the same conversation other than the difference would have been, okay, maybe now we need to finance all of it as opposed to we can make a down payment, or we're going to dip into our reserves and you know, maybe use our equipment replacement reserve to a higher amount. So, the same conversation would have occurred. The fact that we sold the property, it gave us some one time funds that we could consider making a recommendation to the council to help pay some purchase of down.

Right. I remember when we sold this property originally, there was a conversation had that maybe the use of that money would come through like a mid budget review you know, where we could get a little more input. I understand that because of the prior agenda item we gave you that authority to find resources, but one thing I have been sharing with the community, because that was my understanding that that's how this, the sale of this property, because it was unexpected funds, We didn't expect these funds that that there'd be an opportunity for the council to select objects or direction on it. I'm not saying this isn't a great investment, I'm just saying my understanding was that us as a council would have a discussion about how this unexpected funds was going to be used. The reason I mentioned that is because that was my understanding.

That's what I've been telling folks is that, you know, we had this unexpected funds and, you know, what do you think we should be spending this money on? So that's just my thoughts on the situation. Thank you.

All right. Let's go ahead and go out to the public on this.

Hey, good afternoon. Segada, Montevac community. Know we need this equipment. I mean, I know it's necessary. I just don't know if we're going the right way of how we're financing stuff because I did some numbers. I mean, the interest alone will be 116,000 a year. That's just the interest per year on this loan. I mean, I might be a little bit off on the numbers, but that's money we're throwing away. That's what, a road or two we could fix? Can can we repair these?

Can can we do something different? Is there a different way of looking at this, where we can have what we have and make it work? Or if we need to replace it, can we find a different way on how to finance it? I mean, 3.49 is not really high, but for 3 point whatever million dollars, that's that's a lot. And I'm not a math expert. That's just basic math. That's a lot of money. $116,000 per year. So we're looking at five years, seven years, something like that. That's you're getting up there almost another million.

You're gonna pay just in interest. We we need to find I mean, you have all these people that work at the county I'm sorry, at the city, that are financial experts and and people that do financing. They gotta figure out a better plan than this. This is money we're throwing away, guys. It's our money. I mean, it's the taxpayers. People here that that pay taxes. And if, you know, when we sell property and stuff like that, I mean, you guys never let us really know what you guys really do with that money. There should be that should be transparently shown to everybody. Should be documented somewhere where someone can look it up or you can send it to us.

You know, all the members from different districts. Get a copy of that and know what's going on with the money. I mean, you're playing with our money. I mean, I don't know what else to tell you. But thank you. Good luck. I mean, I we gotta find a solution. God bless you guys.

Alright. Anyone else? All right, we'll go to Zoom. Okay, seeing none, we will come back. This is an item, an action item. Any, is there The proof. Okay, is there a second?

Yeah, Mayor, can I make a comment? No more comments?

Sure, yeah, no, there's a motion on the floor, just is there a second and then we'll go to Second. Okay, and then any additional comments? Absolutely. Yes, please go ahead.

Thank you, sir. You know, a couple of months ago the city manager had asked me, we had a good meeting like we always do, and he says, you know what, at a certain time you gotta trust staff. And because, just like Mr. Guerra said, they are the professionals. Knowing financial institutions, credit, I mean the numbers on the credit is low, but when you're talking millions, it's a lot of money.

And I'm hopeful, because I did hear the city manager, he said this is the best way to do it now. I do agree it is a lot of money, but hopefully we will be able to not only be able to pay our debts, but at the same time support the fire department. So I do support this motion. So thank you Mr. Mendez.

Right, Let's go ahead and call for the question.

Council Member Barajas? Yes. Council Member Barrera?

Yes.

Council Member Di Arrigo? Yes. Council Member Dela Rosa? Yes. Council Member Salazar? Yes. Councilmember Sandoval? Yes. Mayor Donahue?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Thank you everyone. Thank you. Okay. All right. Let's see. We are looking for Lisa Murphy. We have found her and we will be talking about amending chapter 16 of the Salinas Municipal Code and a resolution updating administrative procedures pertaining to unlawful camping and storage of personal permits.

Good evening, mayor, council. Lisa Murphy, assistant city manager. Tonight, the honor before you is the amendment of two existing ordinance pertaining to camping and storage of belongings on public property. So I want to give a little background before we roll into the actual ordinance amendments. Salinas is home to 50% of the county's homeless population.

In the last PIT count, the count was 1,240 homeless individuals. And as you know, the PIT count that point in time count also happened just last Thursday. So we'll have updated numbers pretty soon. In response to these pressing issues, the city has initiated various programs and services that really form our strategy to address homelessness. And the pillars of those are prevention, outreach think of our sort team, shelter, the sheriff center, the collaboration with community based organizations, and encampment removal.

All of those pieces really make up the strategy to address homelessness. Again, just a more a little context context. The city's been pretty amazing in obtaining grants to help address homelessness. And to date, $57,600,000 in grant money has been expended on these various programs, housing acquisition, administration, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, and homelessness prevention. As a reminder, the city is also, as part of those expenditures, has really leaned into providing permanent supportive housing to the unhoused residents in Salinas.

There's the Fairview Inn, which will be opening soon, The El Ray Motel, which will also be we're waiting on grant funding to rehab and open that. The city also has several single family homes with residents that have come directly from the SHARE Center living in them. A total of approximately two twenty two units. Now while this slide isn't necessarily complete, want to draw your attention to why we're going to start really looking at the general fund cost and data going forward, and really start tracking staff cost time, encampment cleanup cost, calls for service, and the cost of shelter. Because as you heard last May, a lot of this grant funding is going to be running out, and it will be shifting to the general fund.

So the purpose here this evening is to address the ordinances that we have in place currently. The city has a responsibility to protect the public health and safety of the entire community. It has a responsibility to preserve access to public facilities, to prevent damage to city infrastructure and our environmental resources. But it's a balancing act with compassion and kindness for people who are community residents who are experiencing homelessness. Selenso has experienced an increased number and size of homeless encampments.

It has created a number of challenges that affect both the unhoused and the broader community, such as obstruction of sidewalks, streets, public buildings, the accumulation of human waste, trash, hazardous materials in our creeks and our waterways, increased fire risk, and diminished quality of life for residents and businesses and visitors. There are currently two ordinances that the city has that address camping and storage of belongings on personal property. But over the years, legal standards have changed through court cases. Our operational experiences have taught us how to operate more effectively and to protect the community. And these changes will require updates to both the municipal code and to our administrative procedures that guide us on how we do encampment cleanups.

And all of these combined will ensure that our actions are lawful, they're effective, and they're compassionate. So the first ordinance amendment is the prohibition against camping. The proposed changes clearly defines where prohibited camping activities and structures on public property at any time by removing the ability to camp from 7PM to 7AM. The changes protect critical infrastructure and sensitive environmental areas by preventing camping within 25 feet of critical infrastructures. This the changes reduce public health and safety hazards associated with encampments and ensures public spaces remain available for their intended use.

The second ordinance we're asking for council approval to be amended pertains to storage of personal property on public property. Three notable changes. One is reducing the noticing requirements for removing encampments from seventy two hours to forty eight hours. This is in alignment with the governor's proposed best practices. This will allow our staff the opportunity to react a little quicker in removing encampments that pop up in the parks or in the waterways.

It will also prevent obstruction of sidewalk, streets, and public right of ways. It'll help to address that. And it also, by amending this ordinance, address public safety and sanitation concerns related to unintended unattended and excessive property storage. Along with these two ordinance amendments, we are also asking to adopt our revised clean encampment cleanup procedures. Over the past year, the city's team has worked really hard to work coordinately together to coordinate our activities, and when you think of how many folks are coordinating their activities in encampment cleanups, you have the city attorney, you have community development, sort, you have public works, PD, myself.

There's a number of folks that go in code enforcement that are involved in a homeless response strategy, and how we coordinate our efforts in cleanups. So, having really experienced this for the past year, the team has revised the cleanup procedures to guide us how to implement these ordinances. It's a collaborative approach, again, between sort, public works, PD, code enforcement. It involves outreach and noticing processes, how to handle hazardous materials, how to remove unlawful encampments safely and compassionately, and then the storage and retrieval of belongings has been clearly outlined. All of this is an attempt to do, again, a balanced approach, be compassionate and caring for those folks who are unhoused, and how we treat them humanely.

That concludes my presentation, and I'm available for any questions you have about the ordinance amendments or the resolution adopting the administrative procedures.

Okay, thank you. I'll start. Andrew, any questions?

How do we currently handle when a resident requests storage of their property?

So if they if it's doing an encampment cleanup, if they request the storage of property, we arrange we have public works there arranged with bins. So if they want to take advantage of bins and to store it and then retrieve it. But this update will really clarify those procedures and actually really define better for us how to do it better, because we can always do better. So that's the process.

Could you walk me through what it looks like? I mean, someone says, I'd like you to store my stuff.

Are, yeah.

Keyshia Lopez, homeless services manager. So the current process is in the emergency response team meetings when there is a planned cleanup effort, the public works team and the sort team coordinate a bin day prior to the encampment removal. So the residents in the encampment are notified when the cleanup will take place, and then we notify them when we will be going. It's usually a day or two prior to the encampment removal so that they can actively start packing up. And so the sort team goes out with public works, there is an actual form that needs to be completed if a resident determines that they do want to utilize the storage.

There's a form that they would need to complete, they don't need to have ID to collect their things, not that I remember at this moment but So they're noted and tagged and boxed essentially they're put in a storage bin and then they're boxed at a Salinas yard site where they have so much time to come and pick up their belongings before it's discarded of.

Thank you. And with the closing of the China navigation center, what percentage of those folks do we think will be housed or impacted by if we make these changes to these ordinances?

We are committed to housing 100% of them whether that is through transitional housing, alternative emergency shelters or permanent supportive housing.

And what is the logic behind reducing it from seventy two hours to forty eight hours?

So the logic behind that is to allow to prevent large encampments and even when we call onesie twosies from gaining a foothold locations. So for example, in the parks, so let's say Sherwood Park, if a homeless individual sets up an encampment there, we have to notice them, give them seventy two hours to relocate. So, in a situation like that, it's preferable to reduce that time to forty eight hours to move them from a park where maybe there's children playing, there's other uses in the park, or we even find folks who dig into the hillsides and really do some pretty serious damage. So, it gives us a little more time so that we or reduces the time that they can continue, maybe there's some damage that's happening in that location. So, that's the intent.

And also to prevent, like I said, if we can prevent large encampments from forming quickly, we can respond quickly, it will benefit not only those folks, but also the community and the city as well.

Is this in line with, for example, neighboring jurisdictions or, you know, the coalition homeless service providers? These reduction and There's

a variety of response times. Some the county has seventy two hours, other cities have forty eight, some have twenty four hours. So it's really all over the map of where jurisdictions finds best for them, but the governor has issued best practices, it was last year and forty eight hours was the recommended time.

Great, so if we pass you know these more restrictive places on where people can camp and they're noticed, where do we expect them to go after we notice them we don't have shelters?

Well, will tell you that's a great question. That's always the question that comes, well, where would they go? Well, the first thing that we do and SOAR does is try to offer them services and offer them shelter. When they refuse shelter, where they choose to go after that is not I I don't know. It's up to them to choose where they're going to proceed, but we try to get them placed so that they don't have to stay unhoused. So where move off to is their choice.

Right. And let's just say that we're going to clean up, you know, do an encampment cleanup of 100 folks. We have the capacity to offer those folks a place to stay?

Typically we do, we do, but I will tell you from past experience and I think Kecia can as well, the number of folks that will accept it is maybe one, maybe two. We just had the experience where three accepted out of an encampment that had a little over 50 individuals. And then we also try other things such as connecting them with family or other other opportunities to to become housed. But to be honest as well, we have 1,250 homeless individuals. There are not 1,250 beds available in this city. Right. Yeah. Absolutely.

I think one of the things that I just wanna point out, you mentioned what do you do if there's an encampment of a 100 people? So these ordinances are giving the Salina staff, public works, police department the tools in order to do their roles and responsibilities. If you take a look at the administrative policies and procedures that miss Murphy has developed in conjunction with the public works team, the police department, and the sort team. If there is an encampment larger than 15 or 10 individuals, we are requesting sorts enough time to be able to engage those individuals. So the policy, the ordinance is saying that we have the right to do it within forty eight hours, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every cleanup will take forty eight hours.

There's some encampments that are relatively long, larger that are gonna require a lot more coordination. And so based off of the assessment of the vulnerability of the encampment, the individuals residing in the encampment, all of those factor in to the actual timing of the cleanup. And so I just wanna acknowledge that there's the administrative procedure for how we operate on a day to day basis and the ordinance is a tool.

And my last question is for the city manager. It was in 2023 where council member and I requested an agenda item or presentation for the consideration of the sanction encampment. Where are we with that presentation Or when would that be agendized?

I don't have a date for either right now, but we'll bring it forward.

Those are all my questions.

Thank you. Tony?

And Ms. Murphy, to that question, because I did hear a former department head said that she didn't recommend sanction area. Do you know, you folks that work with this, is there a reason why that's not favorable?

A sanctioned encampment?

Yes.

Well, one, think well, it's it's absolutely doable. It and the but it's it needs to be resourced. So to open up a sanctioned encampment, let's say maybe it's 30 to 40 people. It could cost anywhere between 3 and $4,000,000 because when you to operate annually. Because when you think about a sanctioned encampment, you will also need to provide security.

You have to provide bathrooms, rest showers, food service, sometimes transportation. And then the larger part is the operator. You need a person there to a team to operate it. You also need case management to help move these people to a more stable housing situation. So if the city wanted to choose to do an assessment to see what it would cost and land the start up cost too.

Don't forget the start up cost, right? The land purchase if you don't own the land, the installation of whatever infrastructure has to be installed, even if it's just tents or have to do infrastructure or pallet shelters, whatever the choice may be. So there's a number of costs associated, and if the city had the the desire to invest anywhere up to 3 or $4,000,000 a year, then that's what that's it would cost.

Expensive. You know, and this is this is a hard subject. We've been working on this for many, many years. Would you say I am sure there's a small percentage that really needs help. They're not homeless because they're mentally ill or addicted to some kind of substance, but they just fall short on maybe a divorce, maybe hardships in the family.

I am sure those folks do need a place to live. What would we say to people that just tell us, leave us the hell alone. You know, I don't want you here, but they create you know, I I did go on a cleaning one one one day in Chinatown. Literally, there was rats, not mice, but rats coming out. So it is a health hazard.

I've I've witnessed that. But but I wanna share something from my good doctor Silva, whom I respect a lot. He has been out there with other doctors. How can we answer this where we can say he's asking this counsel either for a public hearing or a host of homelessness summit of some kind where we can look into the substance abuse treatment placement, tiny homes, etcetera. Do you believe we've I think we've done this in the past, haven't we? Haven't we had these types of summits in the past?

I don't know if we've had some type of summit in the past before. No.

Probably we have.

We haven't had one over the last year and a half, but we probably have.

Now to that request, what would you say to be getting involved in something like that as well?

Lisa was just letting me know that the Coalition of Homeless Service Providers does do an annual summit. So I think what's important is we don't operate in isolation. It's just the city of Salinas trying to carry forward a summit or programs. It's really a county wide approach that we need to be looking at. And that's why one of the pillars that I said of our strategy is working with our other nonprofit service providers as a holistic approach.

Because they don't just stay in Salinas, you know, move around and come back and are transient. Right? So what I'd say is that as the coalition, you already have a venue and an avenue by which to have that type of summit collaboration.

You know, to that, a segue to that, how's our relationship because I know we're going to go clean up areas. Where would you say and I think I've asked this question before. What's our relationship with mental health? Are they out there physically? I know somebody said some of us are on the phone or something, but are they out there physically working with these people that do have providers of some sort?

Yeah. So I I wanted to go back to a point that you had said, which is like a small percentage wanting services. I wanna acknowledge they all want services, they all just look different to each and every one of us. So some people would wanna move to directly immediately housed over emergency shelter and that's a personal preference. So there's some people who are still residing outside not because they want to be homeless, but because they wanna wait for the housing opportunity.

And so they still still may be very well involved in case management services and not accept an emergency shelter referral on the day of, but it doesn't mean that we're not actively working on trying to help them navigate. Yeah. So that's that piece. And then the second piece is that this is this is a collaboration with behavioral health, mental health, know, the the street outreach team is the first responders to the encampments. We identify an individual who's having an active mental health crisis.

We are contracted with Monterey County Behavioral Health and we have, you know, the direct numbers to be able to call them out and meet us out there. We've done it a couple of times already to be able to link our underserved population to that service because the traditional going into the office doesn't work. You gotta bring the services to the individuals in the encampments.

Yeah. And that sounds compassion to me, but to those my last question here. To those folks that'll say, here we're going with the bulldozers, we're we're taking advantage of these folks. It sounds like we are compassionate. I mean, we're giving them enough time, we've got the team that's required out there.

My concern, Ms. Murphy, because you did say we don't know where they're going to go, but then we have business, I know several businesses that are calling us, they have somebody in front of their store when they're getting ready to open up their shop, there's feces, there's somebody sleeping there, there's trash. So we

We are not these ordinances will not end homelessness, and they will not end encampments.

Yeah.

It they just won't. And they won't end folks going into a doorway or a garage to find shelter or find a place to to sleep. So don't expect that it will end it. It's it's a tool to help us manage and help us to meet all of the balancing act between the community that needs. Right? The homeless residents, they're residents, they are community members. So trying to balance their needs with folks who want to use the parks without being coming across needles or human waste, you know, that type of thing. So it's trying to find that balance.

Thank you.

Jose?

I'll reserve for comment.

Okay. Maria?

Questions at this time. Thank you.

Gloria?

So Lisa, they're notified. The residents are notified. We're gonna come in, we're gonna do this. Their belongings are removed and put in a bin, correct?

Not quite. They are noticed, so we do the noticing. We say when the notice is gonna happen when the cleanup will happen, where where what the area is, and if you want to have your items stored and how how to do that. Then and and we have sort. That also goes out to to engage.

And then on day of, anything that's left behind will be taken and disposed of. Anything they take if they and then they take what they need to with them. And as earlier described, if they ask for storage, then we go through the storage process. But anything left behind is disposed of. Because you have to remember, there's drug paraphernalia, human waste, there's a lot of debris. But one thing that's really important I think that our team does is to make sure when they are doing their outreach, do you have your important papers? Do you have your medications? Yes. Do you have your valuables? Do you need us to store those?

But it's very important to remind them, take your important things with you.

Okay. My other question is for the sort team. While we're doing the cleanups, do we have a mental health person working with us?

On the day of, no. So I am an associate clinical social worker, so if there is a crisis and the need and we cannot have crisis respond, then my team will call me and I'll go out in the field.

Oh, okay. Because, you know, some of them

Some of it can be a really actually tricky pain

confuse the situation. But, yeah, that was that question. And the next question is, a lot of times when we put all these belongings in bins, because of their mental health situation, this is where the compassion comes in. And, I know we're trying to do the best you can, but a lot of times, they can't remember to go back to get their things. And, those are the only things they had, you know?

So, again, I I understand these ordinances are important. I know our businesses that are out there, you know, they they feel that, you know, we need we need they're being as compassionate as as they can, And, I get it. But, I'm going to make a comment. I was gone, I come back, and here we have, I'm seeing the same problem again. We need to, after we, you know, we do whatever we need to do tonight, we really need to start looking at the conversations on finding housing, housing for them like other cities because we said it years ago, tiny homes, look at what other cities are doing, we're just moving them.

They need a place. We move them from here, and then they go into the neighborhoods. And then, do, you know, it's not safe for them being in the neighborhoods, and it's not safe for the residents that live in the neighborhoods because of, you know, they have to get warm and they start fires. But, until we start really being proactive on housing our unsheltered, it's just going to be ongoing, ongoing and it's frustrating for everyone. Right?

I'd like to just add a comment. So you had mentioned that some individuals with severe mental illness will forget forget about their items. The benefit of having sort go and help them with the bins is they actually keep a copy of the document that they complete in their file. So as they're engaging with them in case management services, they'll get that reminder, hey, did you go pick up your things? So I just wanted to say there is that that compassionate resource there is that twenty twenty city of Salinas, we didn't have the Salinas outreach and response team, cleanups were not organized, they were not coordinated.

And so where we are now versus where we were in 2020, we have a lot more compassionate approach to how we address health and safety issues in encampments.

And, I thank you for that. I thank the team, but we need to really look at housing. Looking at housing and especially when a lot of these residents, and I see Doctor. Silva, you discharge a patient from the hospital with, you know, where do they go? They don't get treatment. We saw that for many years. I didn't know where to send patients, you know. So again, just so that the community knows and hears that we as a city need to be the lead on this soon, I hope.

I would say it's a nationwide issue. The city has put $57,000,000 in grant money, more than any other community in in the Santa Cruz County, San Benito County, Monterey County. The purchase of the homes, the the five homes, work with Fairview. This city has done far more than any of the neighboring jurisdictions have. Far more. So it's a it's a pleasure for me to be able to point out that to my neighboring jurisdictions, how much Salinas has invested. It it's a lot. And and there's more. Right? There always can be more.

And I wish, again, as a nation, nobody has yet to solve this problem.

Margaret?

There we go. So thank you for all the questions. Those were great. You answered most of mine. I would just I'm really excited to hear you talk about data, Ms. Murphy, because I think that's what's going make it a lot easier for us to make these really difficult decisions that I know we're all struggling with, doing the right thing, but recognizing that public safety is an issue. So when do you think you might be able to share some really good hard data with us as a council?

I didn't hear that part the question. When? Did you ask when?

When did you share some

You hard know what will be nice is from the point in time data that will be probably take about five months, think, after they do all their follow-up. We'll get a lot of really good data from there. It tells us who's unhoused, how they became unhoused, where did they originate from, what are some of the challenges they are facing. So we'll get some really a deep dive into who who folks are, but the data I'm looking to start really tracking is some of the metrics of how much the tonnage of of debris we remove, how many people have we serviced, which in our presentation last May, we had a complete listing of all of the the different resources, but how many people we have serviced. So we'll bring that back again and how they've achieved housing.

And then also to really start talking about what the general fund commitment is going to be going forward, and that's going to be a big commitment. We'll also start really tracking our data on calls for service from police and fire. And we've just recently coordinated talking and coordinating with Caltrans and Union Pacific, so how we could be better collaborators on on the issues that they're facing as well. So I I look forward to working with the rest of the team to then start coding hours differently and really getting a good handle on what we already we're already spending as a city general fund when you think of staff time associated. We're probably I'm going to just estimate in staff time probably close to a million to 2,000,000 between public work staff, my time, city attorney time, short time.

They're not when they become general fund, because they will. But the and PD, PD overtime, public works overtime, encampment cleanups, yeah, it's a lot. We're already spending.

Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that.

Thank you, Margaret. All right. Let's go ahead and go out to the public on this.

Good evening. Looks like we're looking for new and different ways to kick around our most, needy residents. Mister Vrajas, last year, you said we shouldn't be spending any money on the homeless. Is one of your hobbies watching people die on the streets? But more important than that, when I lived in my car, I had a car. I had a roof. I had doors. Ms. Mercy, we really don't know each other. We've never had a real conversation.

But I'd like to have a conversation with you later. Present here tonight is the mother of a man who is 45, about 45 years old, paranoid, schizophrenic, alcoholic, homeless, diagnosed in Tyvodad. And maybe we can tell you a little bit about what it's like. We're the lucky ones. He's been on the streets for over two decades.

And I'd like to have a little chat with you. When I was on KRXA radio, I covered one of the homeless sweeps live on on radio. And there was a guy there who was upset because he didn't understand that seventy two hours notice that everything was getting taken meant everything was getting taken. And he was quite upset as he watched all his stuff go away. And lastly, we used to have a council member, much more aligned council member, who lived out there Mhmm.

For a few months in tents. With the help of another council member who didn't actually sleep here, we were feeding homeless people in front of this building. We were feel he was going to Chinatown and helping feed people, always on city council. And that is the most I've ever seen out of this council to actually help homeless people. It's not fun. Thank you.

Thank you, Eric.

Good evening, city manager, attorneys, city council, great staff report. In the big picture, this seems to be moving too fast. There's a lot of gray. There's a lot of data missing right now. And in the big picture, think, some new eyes might be helpful.

My concern is the approval of this ordinance, this amendment, and the effects it will have on unnecessary suffering and death, which are preventable. I've had the benefit of providing primary care for some of our unhoused neighbors. I have cared for them at Dorothy's kitchen, at First United Methodist Church, at the c u s m CSUMB Learning Center, and in the Tivadet Medical Center. With young doctors in training in combination with faith leaders and social workers, we've prepared meals, we've served them, we've washed and care for their feet, provided free vaccines and otherwise educated. We did care.

Post pandemic, since the pandemic, many medical and public health studies have come out regarding this population. There are health consequences to these sweeps. Because of the disorganization ensuing after a sweep, there are ruptures in continuity of care. More of our homeless are becoming senior, by the way. Studies show increased ER visits and extra deaths often related to discontinuance of meds, most notably those meds for substance abuse.

The substance abuse data shows that for four hundred people getting substance abuse treatment, sweep occurs, one of them dies. Societal costs increased 5% after one sweep compared to a no sweeps policy. The shortening of sweeps notice arbitrarily from seventy two to twenty four hours will make these harsh realities worse. My ask is that you consider this ordinance change which is not based in science. Call for a public hearing to hear voice and and or host an intergovernmental homeless summit.

This is where the new eyes might be helpful. Exploring what's new and temporary placements, tiny homes, substance abuse treatment. Your professionals, please don't act in haste. Don't let haste get in the way of equitable, just, and nonviolent policy for Salinas. Thank you.

Thank you, doctor. Doctor. You.

I talk? Well,

I feel it is my name is Salvador. I was like a nervous bird previous week, but I feel a little bit better to speak up. But I think it is a very urgent matter to figure something out because I feel like when some homeless people are given a choice, oh you'll know what you'll do after this, I feel it's not that. It doesn't really change, challenge morality like that. I feel it needs to be more effort and I'm not judging it.

Nobody is perfect here, but I think it could happen to anybody. Like I have ADHD, it's very severe and I feel like right now, I have a roof over my head because of my father. But, I don't know what I would do and it's a really urgent, could just happen. Life isn't predictable to happen to anybody and we need to challenge our morality every day like we really and one thing I think I would like to hopefully know that there's more efforts that they, that there's recommendations to the homeless, oh you could go here, people who actually try, but that thing about like, oh, you don't know what you do, it's like an easy way out. And, one thing more, I was talking with a friend, he says some, he thinks maybe some homeless people have a hard time leaving drugs because they're scared of the withdrawal.

So, maybe that's something to look into it. And, I feel with psychology, maybe if you guys invest in psychology, you could find a better tactic to persuade homeless people to have a more lighter, you have to motivate them. And, a lot of you guys seem really sophisticated, I know you guys could do it. I'm here in the raw. I had poor education and I feel like it's a long story. Maybe I'll have more things to say in the future, but thank you for now.

Thank you.

Good Good evening. Evening. It's Chuck O'Harais for Building Healthy Communities. And just to echo Doctor. Silva's recommendation, in terms of public hearing, more community outreach.

It's I think what we always see missing is the actual voice of our unhoused neighbors helping I wouldn't say helping, but but giving direction. I know that there was one summit maybe like almost two years ago. And since then, there was a big effort led by mister West White here just a few weeks back. Folks from other communities being able to convene and share ideas, express their hope for a better world. And hearing that leadership from them, hearing their direction. It's the

one

piece that's missing. We know that the city staff is doing everything that they can with the tools that they have. But coming from the neighborhood, we see what's missing and those are the folks that are experiencing that in real time. And that's the leadership that I believe you all here are ready to take in under my opinion. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Wes Wisely, it's Warner County Homeless Union Co President. For the ordinance, you know, you should make it forty eight business hours, at least two days of business, because what we see happening often is it'll be posted on a Friday for Sunday, or a Saturday for Monday, and there's no possible way to confront you directly. And, I mean, we're certainly taking a step backwards, obviously. We're not wanting to do anything different. What you need to do is validate people.

If you see curb appeal, it's not a health and safety risk, it's not a blanket of trash, it's just tent and ground, maybe even a little fence around it. You know, 400 square feet in the structure is what people really need. An address. Where do they belong? How can people register to vote and vote for their their elected representatives if they can't even prove where they lay their head? That was my problem. I could not run for office for that reason. So, you're really violating a lot of lot of people's rights trampling on personal property versus real estate property. Obviously, personal property needs to lose every time. So, you're paying yourselves to rob other people, strong armed robbery, because you're coming with a badge and a gun threatening arrest.

And you it's a gang. You guys are gang, dude, and you're basically KKK. You talk people worry about ICE nationally, and this is what happens in every single jurisdiction. Cops come. You can't be here. Where can I go? That's above my pay grade. That's your guys' choice. And, what's your choice? Get rid of them. We ain't got nobody to help them. Oh, we can't afford security. Every apartment complex has security? No, of course not. But, you know, these people got to treat like little children, like toddlers. You know, I did preschool, and I know how to scaffold. I know how to raise and and make these kids inspired to learn and be cooperative members and productive, and, you know, take turns, share all the things you learn in kindergarten. But what what are we doing now? Well, we have to legislate. If you can't afford the rent, then we're taking everything you got.

And you see with the rent stabilization, the way you guys are going, that's exactly what you wanna do to everyone in the city.

Stop this meeting. Alright.

Thank you. Anyone else? Alright. We will go ahead and see who's on Zoom. Okay. Tim?

Good evening, mayor and council members. Can you can you all hear me? Yes. Can hear you.

Yes. Fine.

Okay. So, yeah, my name is Tim Heaven, CSP leadership council member, CHSP board of directors. I'm also a governance committee, co chair of the monitoring evaluations committee, CSH, California State Policy Advisory Committee, Interagency on Homelessness Committee, and also Bring California Home Coalition. So I come here before you today not in anger, but in deep concern with a moral question that I believe this body must answer honestly. What are what you are being asked to adopt today is framed as compassionate, orderly, and legally compliant.

But when we strip away the language and look at the outcome, we must ask, who is helped by this and who is harmed? Because the people most affected by these ordinances are not abstractions. They are elders. They are people with disabilities. They are people with severe mental health conditions.

They are human beings who do not have a home, and yet nowhere in these documents is there a real plan for where people are supposed to go. These policies expand prohibitions on camping and storage of personal property, shortened notice periods, authorized repeated removals, and normalized displacement, yet they offer no new shelter capacity, no guaranteed relocation, and no pathway to housing. So I asked plainly, when the city speaks people, where are they supposed to go? Because what actually happens, what I have seen over and over again is this. The city comes, belongings are taken, sometimes people are arrested, they are released days later, and then they are back outside only now with fewer possessions, more trauma, and nowhere left to exist.

They are pushed from city land to county land, from county land to state land, from state land to railroad property, and then swept again. This is not solving homelessness. This is chasing human beings in circles. And it's gonna keep doing the same thing decades after decade knowing it fails, knowing it costs more, knowing it causes harm, expecting a different result is not policy. It is institutionalized insanity. I want to speak from lived experience. During COVID, I lived in a managed outdoor site in Seaside right here in Monterey County on Colonel Durham's seaside. We had porta potties. We had trash

Thank you. Okay. Amy? Amy, you're up. You're on mute.

Can you hear me now? Yep. Fantastic. Good evening, mayor and city council. My name is Amy Salmina. I'm a property manager here in Salinas, lifelong resident. Many I manage many commercial and residential properties here in Salinas. I strongly support this ordinance. I see firsthand how unmanaged camping and the storage of personal property on public spaces impacts public safety, accessibility, and the overall health of our community. Clear updated regulations and consistent administrative procedures are necessary to protect residents, businesses, and individuals affected while ensuring our shared spaces remain safe and usable for everyone.

Our community needs this. I really encourage you to adopt this ordinance, help protect our city, help with the homeless, and help what's truly the issue, which is our mental health illness. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Amy. Jose?

Hi. Good afternoon. Can you guys hear me? Yep. Jose Guerra Montoya community. First of all, let me start off with the money there. $58,000,000. That's just the city. 58,000,000. What did the county spend? That's another good question. And we still haven't solved this problem. Another thing, you wanna set up an ordinance for an item that you can't even control. We can't we can't even do the park ordinances right. We can't do any ordinance that you guys do right.

You don't have the capacity to run it. Why are you trying to do everything you cannot do? You're spending money. To me, it feels like you guys spend money on yourselves and pay yourselves off, and then you think about the people around you. That's not helping people. You don't have medical doctors out there, do you? When you do sweeps? Answer ask yourself that question. Not one city council member asked that question. Okay. Do you have social services out there, which you should have? No. You don't. What do you have? Do you have three of the city officials out there with no disrespect to the police department.

They gotta do their job because you're scared to go out there by yourself, of course, like everybody else in the city. That's what you do. And that's all you guys get do is is that. You don't get anything done. You move people from here to there, there to there, you never help them. The lady that says she can house a 100 people, I call that BS. Excuse my language. I doubt it. I don't think so. You don't have the capacity to house a 100 people. I wanna get a 100 people together and just say, hey, we're gonna spend that in this in the shelter. I wanna see I wanna call her bluff. I wanna call everybody's bluff in the city. You guys, you know, I wish I could be there in person to tell you how I feel. My emotions are different when I'm in person.

You guys need to do your job. Please do your job. Stop spending money. Stop paying yourselves, and help these people that need help. Mental illness is a very important thing in our society. Take care of it. Stop spending our money the way you guys do. I'm not gonna stop guys. I'm gonna cut

Okay. Jason? Jason, you're up.

Alright. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. I am in a strong opposition to the proposed amendment changes and the resolution accompanying it. After reviewing the staff report, I am deeply alarmed not only by the substance of the ordinance, but by the dehumanizing language used to describe unhoused residents who are already surviving without the most basic human necessities, access to bathrooms, potable water, medical care, or a safe, stable place to sleep. According to the 2020 HUDD point in time count, Salinas has nearly 1,250 unhoused residents. The city has approximately 200 shelter beds with long wait lists.

These numbers alone make enforcement of anti camping ordinances indefensible. When there is no realistic alternative, criminalizing people for existing in public space is not policy. It is punishment. There are proven and humane alternatives. Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, offers a clear model.

Through the use of sanctioned encampments paired with services, bathrooms, wash water, trash mitigation, street medicine outreach teams, and housing case management, Over 200 people have been successfully housed in transition from sanctioned camps into permanent supportive housing. These are stabilization sites that reduce harm, improve public health, and create pathways indoors. Unhoused residents are not a problem to be swept away. They are your constituents. They are Salinas residents.

They are your neighbors. Policy rooted in enforcement without capacity is guaranteed to fail and expose the city to fiscal and moral consequences. I urge the council to table the changes, conduct a serious review of sanctioned cabinet models and other evidence based approaches, and commit to solutions that prioritize health, dignity, and housing over punishment. Please do not move Salinas backward. Do what is right and what is proven to work. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Robbie, you are up.

Yeah. I wanna invite the council to go on the Google Scholar and spend thirty minutes looking at the science and research about the effects on involuntary displacement of unhoused people that this ordinance enhances. And if you do spend thirty minutes going through scholarly research, you're gonna find that the policies you're promoting tonight increase rates of death and injury of unhoused people, increased rates of of violence against women, cause people to suffer injuries and unnecessary death. It is proven. And so what this council is doing with this this ordinance the city manager is proposing flies in the face of all the evidence.

And I think it's important, you know, responding to that property manager earlier, it's it's important to differentiate your role because you're supposed to be professionals. You're supposed to govern. You're supposed to look at the evidence and make informed opinions and decisions based on that. And by ignoring the science, you're just wasting all of our money. And taxpayers are we are frustrated how cities are continually not solving the issue because all you're doing is pushing people into doorways.

You're going to be pushing people into those properties that that woman manages. And while they might be frustrated and they think that having a hammer down is gonna help them, the evidence speaks otherwise. You know? One of the biggest things that happens, right, is is breaking up camps makes it harder for people who are unhoused to access services to get them off the street. That's why it's shown to increase homelessness in communities when you pass these ordinances.

Okay. Thank you. Colleen?

Yes. Thank you for taking my comment. I've written in an email, so you have that. I didn't have the presentation available to see, and this is what I'm going to speak on. When I read the resolutions, it was really painful because it was so dehumanizing.

If we think about where we live in my house, if I didn't have my plumbing, if I didn't have that service, if I didn't have trash pickup for a month, do you think it would be like at my house? So how do these people how are they expected to have a clean space when they don't have services? Earlier, you know, we heard about the Monterey County animal shelter who was allocated over almost $3,000,000 for 2,526 for their animal services. And then we're going to hear about later or the consent agenda for the landscapers that are increasing their extra work budget over $400,000 and that's to help clean up areas that could have services for much much less. And using governor Newsom's making homelessness a crime a a crutch to point to while we're following the guidelines of the governor is a cop out.

There's a lot of talk about collaboration with enforcers, not with supporters. So I don't see a balance there. There should be more collaboration with the supporters. And in the whereas is, there should be some humanity. Thank you very much.

Thank you. All right, Marisol?

Hi, everyone. So

if we prioritized housing and caring for our unhoused neighbors, we wouldn't need these types of ordinances to begin with. So I think a prioritization change needs to occur here. I'm also I wanted to give kudos to Gloria for bringing up that, yes, this issue has been going on for a long time. And, Gloria, I ask you to please ask for a buddy. Right?

At the end of this meeting tonight, you could ask for a buddy. You can bring this up. You could prioritize additional funding. You can talk to folks. You can figure out different programs. You are our city council member. Right? You have that power. I also want to commend Diarrigo for also mentioning how important data is. Data is incredibly important. I think the problem is we're not asking for the correct data. We need a complete mock up of all the resources that we're spending, all

the

time, salaries, the departments that are specifically working on this homeless issue versus what is the cost breakdown of having a sanctioned encampment. Right? We need to see those two side by side. The people need to have that information. We'll be on your side if it's if you're right. Right? If you guys are right and it's just completely unfeasible, show us. Prove it. Do do your guys' jobs. And Margaret can ask that. Right? You can ask that tonight. At the end of this meeting, you could ask for a buddy. Right? You guys have the power.

Don't forget. We we do not forget. You guys have the power, so please don't let yourself forget that you have

the power.

Thank you. Larry? Larry, are you there? You're on mute.

There you

I'm here.

Okay. Good. Can you hear

me now?

Yep.

Thank you. I sent the email, public comment, but I wanted to after hearing, then I stated, I got out of my meeting and wanted to hear this, discussion. This amendment is not a not a, you know, not a finance bill, so, you know, it's not creating any priorities. And it's, unfortunately, it won't cure homelessness either. But from my perspective as a person that works down there, it's part of the, Buddhist temple in the Chinatown area.

You know, we have some serious problems down there, and they need greater tools in order to create a situation there that we business and property owners can actually operate down there without impedance. So keep those things in mind because hopefully, you know, we we try to operate and revitalize the area. So we're we're very concerned about making sure that we can operate in the public areas and also in in and operate our businesses. So thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Larry. Caroline? Caroline, you're on mute.

Hi. Caroline. Carol.

Okay.

Caroline. Carol. I just wanted to give comment on the ordinance that we should really follow the same language as, the county encampment resolution. And, I would hope that we challenge our not challenge, but that 3,000,000 a year for the sanction encampment number, I would just wanna fact check that, and cross it with another report. And the estimated for, like, the startup costs and stuff.

Like, as Tim was mentioning earlier, there has been, within the county, a, like, a sanction encampment that he was able to also, be a part of, and that was in, the city of Seaside. So, I just hope that we could align the language with the county resolution, and I'm really happy to hear that we are trying to deploy a outreach response team. But, yeah, just like the numbers, like, three out of 50 will receive support. I just hope that we do align it with the seventy two hour, notice and that we do give, take into consideration business days. And that when we do deploy, outreach teams that it is when they put up the notice so that way they can explain to the unhoused residents what that means, not just putting it up and waiting for them to show up when it's time to clean up because at that point, they don't have time to just grab the important documents.

So if we can please take into consideration and think very thoughtfully of this, and act in a humane way. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Alright. Lewis? You're on mute.

Okay. I guess Hello. Can you

hear me?

Yes. You made it.

Oh, goodness. Okay. I just hi. How are you? I just wanted to thank everyone for everything that you're trying to do with this whole situation.

I know it's a headache. But basically, I think that, you know, doing the sweeps basically might as well be might as well just send people to, you know, like a concentration camp. Like, be a Nazi or not. And I think that the community should at least be able to vote if they wanna be that or not, you know, because it's it's a horrible thing that is happening over and over. But I agree with Caroline and Tim on, you know, I don't know, it's just such a headache but I don't agree with the sweeps because it's basically like might as well just you know kill like your son or daughter because someone like the doctor said, the statistics show someone will die and I think that just an educated knowledge of the situation like some people mentioned is good and that's all I want to say.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. All right. All right. We will go ahead and close public comment on this item. This is an action item, so we will come back for comments and proposed action. Jose? Alright.

Thank you, mayor. So thank you everyone for the presentation tonight here at public comment. And I heard a lot about tonight about the 1,240 homeless residents that we have, but I don't really hear us talking about the other 164,000 residents that live in the City Of Salinas and what their needs and what their rights as taxpayers, as people who live and reside in the City Of Salinas have. You know, in the staff report and in the ordinances, the recitals are pretty clear about what exactly it is that we're facing, right? And it's not just humans facing homelessness, it's people shooting up publicly, it's people taking a dump in public parking lots in front of our schools, in front of, you know, public facilities, in front of our libraries.

It's people using the bathroom where there is no bathroom. Again, in public parks, on our streets, in our business corridors, in our business centers. It's also people that are as cited, you know, selling methamphetamine and no. These aren't exactly girl scout cookies, this isn't exactly ibuprofen that they're working with. There's crimes that happen in these encampments.

As you see in the resolution themselves, particularly in District 1 in Carr Lake, over 100 individual encampers in 2023. In 2023 alone, in that encampment, the city picked up over 100 tons of debris. Right? This isn't a few bags of trash, this is hundreds of thousands of tons of debris for free, mind you. Right?

I don't think any of these people ended up paying for what it cost to actually haul all that waste and put all that sack together. Also, I want to remind us of all the additional costs of homelessness. Right? How many structural fires have we not had as a result of homeless encampments in the past year, in the past two years? How much cost is that in, you know, police response times, in fire response times, right?

How much cost and lost economic productivity do we have from ending up with warehouses, ending up with facilities, ending up with homes, ending up with infrastructure that's rendered unusable and sometimes useless for years on end because then we have to go in and do the remediation work, the decontamination. Right? Also, when I remember the pregnant lady, Marina Purado, who in 2019 lost her life a few blocks from here. Right? In South Salinas to a homeless man.

Right? In Salinas, we have a very strong issue with homelessness, but I also wanna argue that, you know, the families that live in Daishi Village in Chinatown also deserve a sense of peace. They deserve a sense of peace when they're going down the street on to to church on Sundays. They deserve a sense of peace and security when they walk their kids down the street to the bus stop. They deserve a sense of peace when they're walking to downtown to make their purchases.

They deserve that same sense of peace that all other residents have come to expect and expect the city to provide for them. So, not only that, but also again in District 1 on the Tivaduct Creek Park, I'll speak to that. Did you guys know that the high schools had to reroute their running routes for their track practices and their cross country practices because the homeless folks along Natividad Creek Park were exposing themselves to these minors, masturbating in front of them, shooting up drugs in front of our youth and these are the types of things that happen day in and day out. Right? And although this is not meant to be silver bullet to solve homelessness, it's definitely a very useful tool because I will tell you for the residents in District 1 that live along the Tivaduct Creek Park, homelessness continues to not allow the folks there to let their children play in the evenings because there's illicit activity going on.

For all the families, the tens of thousands of people that use the soccer complex on Constitution, the number of fires that I alone have seen just as I'm passing by right adjacent to that complex, the amount of activity that goes on in those areas, incredible. We've spent north of $57,000,000 in the last three years on homelessness, divide that amongst twelve forty residents, it's around $46,000 per individual that we spent so far just to address homelessness. I guarantee you that on a per capita basis, we come nowhere near to spending that on all of our other residents and in general services. We spend way more on providing these services to these homeless individuals, which is 1,240 people out of a city of a 165,000 people. So with that, I'm happy to support and make the motion to adopt the two ordinances presented along the resolution as presented by staff.

Is there a second? Second.

Okay. Any additional conversation? Okay. I saw Andrew first then Tony.

Sure. This ordinance is not a tool to address homelessness. That that that it's a false statement. This is a tool to remove folks faster, but this is not gonna solve homelessness. We we heard it.

They're gonna just shift from place to place to place. Reality is a lot of Salinas is probably one paycheck away from being homeless, unhoused, living in their car. I understand the health and safety concerns, but this ordinance is not going to eliminate debris because we give people twenty four hours less notice to find another place where we're likely to remove them as well. I've had concerns for my residents too and I've assisted in reporting encampments that sometimes are on private property. The coordination between the state, the county and private property is a heavy lift.

We heard a lot of public comments today that we I heard my colleague, council member De La Rosa and I agree with her wholeheartedly. She was here, she came back, we're doing the same thing over and over and over again. This ordinance is not gonna change that. If the council doesn't take an innovative approach to address homelessness. You know, three years ago, one of my requests, my first thing I request, when I'm on my first, I'll have to check on that.

But was the creation of an in house committee. Because what's missing here is what we've heard from my colleagues is the folks affected are missing from this conversation. This is the same thing that happened, I don't know, four or five years ago when there was implementation of the RV band. It was about to be approved. And I was not in government at the time, but I saw this and I said, wait, how could they not have discussed or gathered input from those that are gonna be affected?

That vote ended up getting postponed and then four or five days later I remember council member Barrera and council member McShane held a meeting right here to gather input. So I know that we've had the discussion about a sanction encampment. It almost came to council agenda. It was I believe October 2023 and three days before that presentation was to come before the city council, it mysteriously got pulled. No explanation, no rescheduling.

We've had discussions about tiny home villages. I think we had it last time when some of my colleagues sat here and said that, you know, we shouldn't be funding homelessness. Folks are not gonna go anywhere else. Council member de la Rosa, you're correct. They're gonna go into our neighborhoods. They're gonna affect our residents. This is not This ordinance is not gonna do It's not a tool. I'm glad that there's procedures and things that were not in place before and we've gotten much better in the last three or four years. I recognize that and those things are important. I remember one time I think it was a year and a half ago where I heard something about no go zones.

I'm thinking what the heck is a no go zone? It was areas that were identified where people were not allowed. It's not even like legal. I remember hearing a staff member one time say well when folks move their stuff to another place, then it's abandoned and then we can just go ahead and take it. And I thought to myself, these are people's belongings.

Don't make a mistake and don't believe that I don't take the responsibility of the other 165,000 residents. I believe it too. We get flagged on social media, we get contacted about trash and debris, I recognize that but without any, heard our city manager, we don't even have it scheduled. Without any concrete, at least outreach or presentation from, let us at least hear the information. Let us hear the data.

And some somebody said, where are you gonna put this encampment? Where are gonna put this tiny home village? It was up to me. What I'd do is I'd start outreach with the community now instead of doing what the typical typical thing is happening between the county and the city is saying, hey, this is what we've identified. And then we have all residents going, my god, what's happening to my neighborhood? So if we don't take any of these innovative approaches before we do this, 24 is not gonna stop an encampment from growing. Show me the data to prove that. You know, I'm gonna support, I'm hoping my council member that also supports a quick presentation on a tiny home village, a sanctioned encampment. Let's look at models that have worked across. Let's look at the data, let's make data driven decisions.

Like I said, the missing part of this is the residents that this is gonna affect. And it's not just the unhoused. How about the community? Let's bring the community together. So I'm not gonna support the ordinance as it stands because twenty four hours is not gonna change how our encampments grow.

And until we bring the community together that's gonna be affected by it, this is ridiculous. But I'll say it again, this is not a tool to address homelessness. Sorry, that's, they may go from the Tipidade Creek to the other side of the Tipidade Creek and then we're gonna be doing the same thing again. And I recognize that a tiny home village and a sanctioned encampment that may only support 40 to 100 people may not have an impact on 1,200, but if we don't start taking some of these innovative steps, all we're gonna do is increase this funding for cleanups and we're gonna be here year after year after year. We're about to close our China navigation center and my colleague said well maybe he'd consider funding it if we moved it to District 5 or District 2.

I mean what kind of comment is that? That's not addressing the issue. If we don't try something innovative, we're gonna be here again and again and again.

Tony? Thank you, sir. When I heard Mr. Peterson speak about his early life being living in a car, take that to heart. And those are serious issues. In in listening to every person that spoke today, whether it's here from the dais or public or in Zoom, it seems like we're all after a solution. I think we're headed in the right direction. I really do. My my good friend, council member Sandoval, says we need an innovative approach. Council member Dela Rosa has been here for years.

My colleague has been here for four years. I've been here when Jesus was born. An innovative approach, we're seeing miss Lisa Murphy. How long have you been here?

One year.

One

year. I think Ms. Murphy, in seeing her passion, her compassion, her professionalism, and Doctor. Soboye, you used the word professionals, she's the professional. And I think she's putting a team together that we all agree here that this is a health and safety concern. I heard that from different people. It is a health and safety concern. Let me just share this quick story because I don't wanna be redundant and I don't wanna be here all night, but you know what? I went in and there was this young woman that needed help. She was living under the one of the highways or freeways here, and some business owner says this girl needs help.

So I took my truck thinking I'm gonna go help her with a bunch of trash. Well, I kid you not, I took trash bags with me, and I know a lot of you have done this. So I'm I'm not a saint. I'm not even close to it. But in wanting to help this young woman, I started asking her what what things do you want me to put in the bag?

So she said, well, this one. Did you know by the time it was over and done with, I didn't take anything because everything presented value to her. It was and it was all to me, I'll be honest with you, it was all the stuff that needed to go to the dump. But to her, every item had some kinda value. So we did put everything in the bags, instead of me taking it to the dump, guess what I did?

I took it to somewhere where she felt she was gonna be safe. I I moved what I thought was trash into another location where she felt safe and go to the dump. But, miss Murphy, you have a heavy I I I think you're leading us in the right direction. I would like, and I think council member Sandoval and Council Member Barrajas are on the same page here, even though we may disagree a little bit on this, but look at, I'm going ask my good friend, Council Member Barrajas, and I don't want to put more work on you Mr. Mendez, but I would like to support the motion because I wanna support our innovative approach.

I think miss Murphy's taken us to a good, compassionate place. And I hate the word sweeps. No, that's not even the word here. The word is health and safety concerns, not only for the individual there, but for the people that are around them, because I've seen it. But I'm gonna ask council member Barrajas, and to doctor Silva's point, I would like and the amendment, and miss and mister city city attorney, this is where I need your help.

I I would I would like to support the amendment, with a host an intergovernmental homelessness summit exploring what's new in temporary placements, tiny home substance abuse treatment. I don't know how much work that'll, but I think, and to council member's point, let's invite the residents. Let's invite the unhoused. Let's invite everybody so they can give their input. But we need to do something.

Because I don't think we should be here for many years. And no, this is not gonna help this is not gonna solve homelessness. It's not. But at least we're gonna have safe areas where children can go to a park and feel safe. You know, at Closter Park, again, quickly, did you know there was there was a group of people that took over the bathroom at Closter Park? Mom and the children couldn't go into that bathroom because that's how afraid they were, and there was some unhoused folks that had substance abuse. I'm I'm not putting them down, so don't don't even think that. But what I'm saying, it was a problem where mom and the children can't go to the bathroom, a public restroom. Barajas, would you entertain that?

I'll entertain it. Yeah. Council Member Salazar.

Also accept the amendment.

Yeah, it's a friendly amendment to also direct staff to bring forward the intergovernmental event at a future date. My one ask would be that it just kind of get consolidated with the like what they did last year with November being housing month, perhaps this year the topic where the focus is on homelessness.

So just to clarify, that would be in addition to the motion to you made on the adopting the ordinances, but you want us to schedule a summit, we can add to that.

Yeah. Thank you. So

the amended motion just for everyone's understanding is approving the two ordinances and the resolution as is presented by staff with the amendment being that staff coordinate an intergovernmental conference on homelessness at a future date.

Yes, that all makes sense. But we would ask that you deal with the resolution separately from the ordinances because the ordinances are on a separate approval track. As the resolution can be approved by a majority vote tonight, the ordinances will require unanimous consent to be approved tonight. So I would just ask there be separate motions with respect to the ordinances, the resolution, and we would tie your request, Council Member Brajas, for the intergovernmental agency collaboration to the ordinances and not the resolution. And Patty, I think understands that, so we'll make sure

it's Can

we still make comments? I'd like to make a comment.

No, we can do comments, but it's it is it should we have Patty read what the motion is in discussion?

All right, let's see if I got this, if not I'll request for assistance from the motion makers. But anyhow, so motion made by council member Bratajas and second by council member Salazar to approve the ordinances as presented by staff and also request or provide direction to the city manager and direct staff to come back to the creation of an intergovernmental summit at a future date to address homelessness. So that's the first one for the ordinance and the additional direction to the city manager. Second motion would be also made by council member Barajas, second by Salazar to approve a resolution approving updated administrative procedures and removal of unlawful campsites, bulky items, and personal belongings.

That's we're discussing in terms of a motion. Okay.

There's two motions.

Okay, I'd like to make a comment. First, I would like to thank Council Member Sandoval. Thank you for your support. And, I want I want everyone to know, I support my unsheltered residents, I go and feed with a lot of public health nurses at least once a month, but I also, when I go to feed, I see the surrounding, what's going on, what's happening outside the businesses, you know, the properties that are owned by the, my Chinatown community. So, we need to work together, and we need to move forward, like I said, and it's been approved now on going forward on bringing the residents together and looking at the tiny homes and so forth.

But I just wanted to make that statement that I support the businesses in that area too. They deserve respect too, just like our unsheltered, and let's work together. Thank you.

I'd like to thank all my council members for their comments. And I I just wanna chime in and and and add into the to the record. You know, my my personal feeling is that in terms of at the state level, it really does feel like the state has turned its back against the the homeless homeless community. Within the last four yeah. Probably within the last four to five years, regardless of what city you live in in the state of California, the homeless population has grown significantly.

And cities and other municipalities have been trying to trying to keep up their state funding that is available, which positions cities and counties to compete for that. That funding is nowhere near what it will take to help somebody out of homelessness. So here we are as a city and at the county level faced with this huge challenge of how to address an issue that we traditionally haven't taken on. Know, throughout the years, I mean, we know that homelessness exists. There are people that experience homelessness.

But never to this degree and in this volume, right? It's a volume. So honestly, is. It's cities and counties just struggling and putting a band aid on an open heart wound that it's not gonna hold. In terms of this ordinance, you know, when I hear about the health and safety, for me that's one of the reasons why I will be supporting it.

One thing I do wanna continue to ask of staff is that is that we don't re traumatize the homeless community. Because that that that is what happens. And, you know, there are homeless people that do have mental health issues. Right? If we have over 1,200, you may have one or two or 20 people who are hoarders, right?

And it is a mental health disorder. I think that's what we heard from Council Member Barrera. Hoarding is a real issue, and it does create separation anxiety. So when you take everything from someone, here we go, we've retraumatized a person, we've retraumatized an encampment, we've retraumatized a community. To our homeless advocates, I hope that you're hearing tonight that we wanna make sure that you have a seat at the table in terms of the decision making process and the policy creation.

Having worked in the field of philanthropy and nonprofit sector for twenty years, there was a publication that we often refer to which was, I believe it was titled, Don't Do Anything About Me Without Me. And so to speak to that second motion, I I wanna make sure that the homeless community is present at the at the table. Wanna make sure that we continue to receive their their input and their insights. They are clearly the experts in in this particular issue. And if we don't have them at the table, then we fail in our roles as council members addressing addressing this issue.

Ideally, you know, kind of what I would envision, and I I know that our city manager and staff, you know, you have you have a workload, so I wanna also make sure you hear from the city manager in terms of a of a reasonable time, probably some proposed issues. I think council members here need a you know, send their respective email to our city manager saying, hey. I wanna make sure that this gets discussed and make sure that we reach out to all stakeholders in having this this convening. It's very important that we that we have it, and let the discussion lead our way in creating policies that are beneficial. But lastly, you know, I will be supporting the ordinance because the last thing that I would wanna see is that, you know, the accumulation of what some of us may see as trash, you know, really go up in flames.

You know, it's it's very concerning when we hear about these encampment fires. And when you have a a high volume of trash, you know, you could have a a blaze that just goes out of out of control. And and and that's a real issue too for people, you know, living near and around encampments. So, I really hope that there's some understanding as well in the homeless community that, you know, it is not in any way, shape, or form our intent to take away personal belongings or that, things of value to them, things that are sentimental in value, but also to make sure that we're ensuring the public safety of our residents, both those who are our residents and homeless community. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Margaret, anything?

Yes, I'll be brief. Thank you for presenting a compromise tonight. I was having a really difficult time with this situation, having to vote. I felt like it was a little bit rushed. I want to thank Lisa Murphy and her staff for doing the good work that they're doing. At the same time, I think that we need more time to come up with some solutions. And I agree with you, Mr. Salazar, Counselor Salazar, that trash and personal belongings are not in the same category. They're very, very different. So we have to make sure that we separate those.

So I like what's being proposed on the table. I don't like what our business owners are having to suffer through in downtown. So I've been working on that a lot with PD and other departments to try to get that under control so that people can run their businesses effectively without fear, without litter and trash and personal belongings and things like that left behind. But I think this is a good step going forward. I want us to have some more time. I want to see more data. So I definitely support the direction that we're all heading in tonight. So thank you.

Thank you, Margaret. Alright, Patty, let's go ahead and call for the questions. Okay.

I'll call for the vote on the ordinance and the direction to the city manager for the housing summit first. Council member Barajas?

Yes.

Council member Barrera? Yes. Council member Diego? Yes. Council member Della Rosa? Yes. Council member Salazar? Yes. Council member Sandoval? No. Mayor Donahue? Yes. Thank you. This item will have to come back for a second reading at our next meeting. Calling for the vote on the resolution establishing the procedures, councilor amending the procedures. Council member Barrajas? Yes. Council member Barrera? Yes. Council member Diorigo? Yes. Council member Dela Rosa?

Yes.

Council member Salazar? Yes. Council Member Sandoval? No. Mayor Donahue? Yes. Motion passes.

Okay, thank you. All right. Okay, let's see, let me get. Alright. We will now we're gonna go ahead and proceed to the consent agenda. Matters listed under the consent agenda may be enacted by one motion unless the member of the council requests a separate vote or discussion. Members of the public may comment on the consent agenda items collectively during public comment. Are there any or any items that council would like to discuss before we go out to the

public? Okay.

592. Okay, all right. Anything else? Council Member Sandoval.

203 and 2092.

Okay, all right. I'm fine. Tony, you're good? Okay.

I have a question on 2092. It's a question.

Okay. Okay. So you're Okay. Bruno, anything?

I have none. I'd like to thank staff for their hard work.

Okay. Margaret, anything on the consignment calendar? Do we still have her? Okay. We'll see if she comes back. Okay. I'll do 592 also. And with that, we will go out to the public. Is there anybody who would like to speak to the consent calendar in public? Okay. We're open for public comment on the consent calendar.

Name is Eric Peterson, and I'm $5.92. And that's $3. That's a lot of money. Shouldn't it be going out to bid or something? And hold on. I'm having trouble here again. Shouldn't it go out to bid or something? I mean, that's a nice sweetheart deal for somebody who's got connections with counsel. If you want to throw money like that around, I got a suggestion. I don't represent Joy, but Joy and I both live on Cherokee Drive.

The predecessors, mister Sandoval, Kimberly Craig, and Christie Kominas, both voted to put a signal in at Maine in Cherokee, which increased traffic dramatically and the speed dramatically. And, staff didn't even send a notice to the HOA, which owns property just a few feet from the intersection. And why don't we take that money and do traffic calming on Cherokee Drive? Make it more useful than what was reported in the report. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else from the public? Okay. Anybody on Zoom on the consent calendar? All right. We will close public comment. And we will come back. Me just follow my okay. Andrew, you wanted to discuss '23? So we'll start there.

Sure. Well, this a great investment both in Burunda Road. Adriana, could you speak a little bit about what these funds will be used on Buranda Road?

Sure. Good evening. Yes. So these funds really, what they are is to assist us with the continuation of the construction of phase one construction project. And what we're trying to do, what was happening was this funding was available through the transportation agency. And and what they want is projects that are in construction or close to construction. So we had this opportunity to request these funds in order to move the project a little bit farther.

Yeah. Thank you. Those are all my questions for you. Yeah, this, these, the other, just to give you all a little context, I used to be the representative on the transportation agency of Monterey County and this opportunity for projects to be submitted came because there was about $13,000,000 in funds that were available to be used. And what happened at that meeting was that some jurisdictions were weren't told that they could submit multiple projects.