City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, residents of Tulare, staff, and fellow council members. Welcome to the Tulare City Council meeting for Tuesday, August 4th. As we start our meeting, we will start off with the Pledge of Allegiance and Invocation. Our Pledge of Allegiance will be led by our Fire Chief, Mike Ott, and please remain standing for invocation by Greg Peterson, Pastor of Sunrise Community Church.

Good morning, everyone.

i didn't confirm do we have pastor greg peterson with us council members sarah would you mind leading us in a quick invocation thank you let us pray

Our Heavenly Father, we come before this evening with gratitude in our hearts. We're thankful for the abundance of unity that we share in our city. We're thankful for the members of council and for the staff of the city of Tulare. We're thankful for the constituents and their concern and their activity within the city. We pray that this evening We will be able to listen to, understand, see, and hear those things that the constituents are concerned about. That we'll be able to make decisions that are based upon reality and logic. We ask you to be with us throughout this meeting. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

All right, moving forward on our agenda, this is the time for public comment. Members of the public wishing to comment on any item not appearing on the agenda may address the city council at this time. State law prevents council from acting on any matter not on the agenda. However, your comments may be referred to staff for follow up. This is also the time for the public to comment on items listed under the consent calendar or to request an item from the consent calendar be pulled for discussion purposes. Comments related to public hearing and general business items will be heard at the time those items are discussed. In fairness to all who wish to speak, public comment is limited to a total of 15 minutes with each speaker allowed 3 minutes, unless otherwise extended by the Council. Please begin your comments by stating your name and providing your city of residence. For those that wish to provide public comment while attending the meeting remotely, press 9 on your phone to raise your hand or just click Raise Hand in the webinar. for public comment I will start off with yellow cards that I've received and I have for James Cardoza Mr Cardoza welcome hello thank you for letting me speak um I just want to speak briefly about the proposed annexation of

matheny track palo verde school and that surrounding area between page and avenue 184 and south eye or the railroad tracks and road 96 specifically related to a couple things naming of streets and community involvement there i've never lived in matheny track but i did attend palo verde school so i have a lot of old contacts from there and i know a lot of history of the neighborhood um Regarding naming of the streets, something I see in a lot of areas is you name streets and parks and such after politicians. It would be nice to see in that annexation, if it goes through, I think it's a little bit big project to be taking on all at once. But anyways, it'd be nice to see the streets named after either some former students who lost their lives early, such as April Hawley or Manuel Tosti, or some of the teachers or staff members such as Davis Harp. Dolores Mendez, Janice Weiss, and some others there. Second thing, it would be nice to make sure that that community is fully represented in any decisions that affect them, that they get properly noticed. In addition to regular statutory notice rules, it'd be good to see that notices of actions such as committee formations, there's like a citizens committee, I guess it's being formed, It should be noticed by posting also at CNE Market, which is kind of a central place there. I think there's a church out there. I don't know the name of the church. And also at Palo Verde School with the cooperation of Mr. Anderson, the principal out there. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Cardoza. The next yellow card I have is Esmeralda Addington. Good evening, Esmeralda. Welcome.

Good evening. Good evening, City Council. My name is Esmeralda. I live in Visalia but work in Tulare and I have friends and family in Tulare and I'm concerned about the 100-year contract with GlobalStack being decided by only the Board of Directors of the Agricultural Association. GlobalStack wants to build a data center at the Tulare for our grounds on only a 100-year On a 100-year contract, this is a decision that affects all of Tulare greatly. Global Stack as a company is only three months old, established in March of this year. How can we decide on a 100-year contract with a company with no established longevity? I ask that you get involved in the decision and oppose Global Stack. Any little research can show that Data centers are bad for communities and animals. Data centers emit micropollutants in the air and low-frequency auditory hums that can be heard from 5.5 miles away, and animals hear it more intensely. Alton Fowler from Fowler Farms in Texas reports that the auditory hum has caused animals to not want to breed, and if they were pregnant, to deliver stillborns. Quote, it causes grown cattle to lose 30% of their body weight, and they are not able to conceive. It does the same thing in goats. There is so much potential harm that can be caused by this data center. Tulare is a residential area and is only eight miles long. If the data center is allowed to be built, over 60% of Tulare will be affected. I urge you as our council members to get involved with the board of directors of the Agriculture Association and oppose this contract. This does more guaranteed damage than it will do good. Thank you for your time. I do see that on the agenda later. We do have for future, which thank you, Mr. Sagala, for addressing that. I hope we can talk about the pros and cons of data centers. I think there's way more cons than pros. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Esmeralda. Is there anyone else in chambers who wishes to make public comment? Okay, Madam Clerk, do we have anyone on the phone or online?

Sure.

All right. You're welcome to come up to the podium. Good evening. Welcome.

That's a little bit of a walk, huh? Hi, my name's Rosie Espinoza. I do live a little bit behind the tracks on the west side. I'm not sure if you're familiar of the intersection on J Street and Prosperity. It shares possibly, I think it's about five businesses. There's A's Audio, Jalisco Tacos, Dollar General, you have the distribution center, and then you have a recycling center. Down the street, you have an elementary school. I'm here today just because to me it is a concern that the traffic lights don't have a yield sign or a turning light and because of that I think it's causing it's causing accidents and you know me living nearby I do see this it's avoidable but because the proper signage is not there you have people that come in from sorry I'm so nervous to talk in front of you guys You have people that come in that are absolutely unaware of what Tulare is, where the nearby stores are. And if you don't have this proper signage, you're going to see a lot more accidents. So my question today is, who do I ask to get that fixed?

So what we will do.

Sorry, I'm so nervous. I don't do stuff like this. Sorry.

You're good. With that is just one is you're just asking who we would contact to get that. Yes. By you mentioning it here, we will put that on the list with our staff. The clerk will have that information in the record. Okay. And then what we will do is through engineering traffic and the appropriate staff and team, we will have that information relayed back out to you. So the team will get back in touch.

Yeah, okay. Um, I did send an email like an inquiry through the city of Tulare. Um, Tulare is getting bigger, you know, it's, it's, it's blossoming and that's great. Um, I, you know, just a concern for the families coming across the tracks to heritage distribution center, everybody exiting. So he's growing fast. And so I just was like, Hey, we gotta get that fixed, you know? So I appreciate the time that you guys are taking to help me out. But thank you. Absolutely. Thank you for coming.

Thank you. Ms. Espinosa, can you make sure the clerk has your contact information?

Who, the clerk?

Sure.

If you would please provide your name and contact info so we can stay in touch with you. Is there anyone else in chambers who wish to make public comment? Okay.

Again, since I'll ask it, all right.

Moving forward on our agenda again. If you are here for items on the agenda, as it's stated in the explanation, perhaps general business or public hearing items, we will have public comment available at that time as well. Moving forward to number four communications, Mr. Mondale.

Yes, just a couple items. Council, we received the letter from the Tulare Historical Society Banking Council for its ongoing financial support of their efforts. I believe each of you received a copy of that letter. And then I just wanted to ask a couple of staff members to update you. It was already discussed this evening, but as you recall, there was recently a meeting. the fairgrounds regarding a proposed data center i'd like mario anaya who was present at that meeting to share his comments in terms of his observations and what he shared on the record again acknowledging and recognizing this is not a city project to be reviewed and approved by the city at this time we don't have a lot of information about the project but i'd like him to share a little bit about what he understands and his comments he left on the record and then there was a follow-up meeting with assembly member MCEDO that several staff members and council members attended. And I'd like Thomas just to provide a brief recap of that meeting. So, Mario.

Yes, good evening council last Tuesday. I was not here in the chamber, but I was present at the meeting for the fair board. Um, and so on the record, uh, just the item was tabled. It was the 100 year lease with the global stack company. Um, essentially the comment I made was, we understand there's not a lot of information right now, and it was mentioned that there's a feasibility study, I believe, in the materials that were on the agenda. That needs to be conducted to determine exactly where, like, the parking structure would go where exactly this, um, I forget what they referred to them, but they refer to them as container sized units would be located and a little more details of the proposal. So I just said, hey, we've been getting a lot of questions from concerns residents here at the city. And so we just look forward to seeing more information when the feasibility study comes out. We also understand, as we know, as a city, a lot of big infrastructure projects are subject to CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. And typically that's the document that your council is aware of when we have projects come forward. That presents the potential impacts to things like water, energy, other types of concerns to the community. So, I just kind of put it on the record that there's a lot of concerned residents about the proposal, but there's not a lot of information out there. And so we'll continue to engage in good faith to receive that information and look forward to evaluating it as it comes forth.

Um, and then following that, um, I attended a meeting along with, uh, mayor and council member Sagala that was hosted by assembly member Macedo, um, and had representatives from the county, other state elected officials. Um, we talked about this item and the anxiety and confusion that it's caused in the. Lack of pre communication from the fair board assembly. Remember, Assembly Member Macedo's office is going to be preparing a letter to transmit to the state since that's the jurisdiction that The fairground sits on state property and how the fair board is structured about the need for better local communication engagement on this process as well as what they envision for sequel and other required approvals. So we'll continue to monitor this situation from their end.

If I may, can I ask a few additional questions on this communication? And Council members might have additional questions as well. Mario, perhaps, can you give maybe some more specific insight on what exactly did we request at that meeting? What exact request did you make?

Just more information, and we look forward to that being released. I mean, there's not, yes, we understand they're a state agency. but typically there is for any major capital project at least some information available regards to CEQA and similar to like a school district school district if it's tied to education code and educational purposes they're not subject to city zoning for example fairgrounds operate in a similar manner but it's not quite clear with this project since we don't have a lot of information and there's a private entity involved whether that would qualify and so we just encourage them to share the information as it is made available that we would you know just there's a lot of information out there some of it may be misinformation so we're trying to just make sure that our residents and community members have the most up-to-date and accurate information available so uh i think mr mark you had said before that we had done a public information request act to get information what what was that information for

Thomas, um, so this, uh, the meeting that Mario attended, um. Last month was not the 1st time it was on the agenda. It was agendaized at the prior meeting. Um, and if you've been to the fair board website, they just put the, um. They just put the agenda on without attachments or that kind of thing. So we'd submitted a public records request to the fair board for the, um, the materials that were associated with that item. And, um, it was the, the draft contracting kind of information sheet that was shared at the July meeting. So we, we don't have any additional information from them yet beyond what, um, was shared at that July meeting and those print materials that you may have seen circulating.

So in summary, we're asking for the draft contract information, and then we're asking, if I'm correct, when the feasibility information is available, we want the feasibility information. And then that helps us to understand better of the future if this progresses a CEQA study. And of course, the reason why we're asking those questions and want those documents, because that helps determine the role of our engagement as a city.

And I would add to that and monitoring city staff's opinion about when the CEQA process should be initiated and what things may trigger the CEQA process relative to land use on their state property. That's the other thing that we're going to be monitoring so that they're initiating CEQA when we believe it should appropriately happen based on the scope of the project as we continue to learn more.

And I think to Mario's earlier comment, you know, part of the question ultimately is. To what extent will the city have any jurisdictional authority over the project? Right? And as has been stated when you're dealing with a state agency. Often state agencies are exempt from local control. They have their own permitting and review process that they go through, but not always. And it can be a situation where, under certain circumstances, a facility might have exemption from local control and under circumstances, they're subject to local control. And so, until we have more of the facts. It's hard for us to be able to make that determination. Obviously, if more facts come out, more information comes out that appears to us to mean that we should have the city itself should have some jurisdictional responsibility and authority to review their project. You know, we would assert that at that time.

If and help me I think maybe the public might ask this question as the public speaker mentioned in process would the the feasibility and the sequel. Go first, or would you sign a contract and then the feasibility and the sequel come second, could you kind of explain how that process would normally work.

Well, I'll defer to the city attorney, but I would venture to guess that usually you might have a preliminary contract, a term sheet, or maybe even a full contract, but it would be subject ultimately to CEQA. It may be subject to city zoning and other requirements. Those are examples of things we need to understand and see so we can better advise council.

Sure. And I, and the reason why I asked that is I think, so the public understands of, I think our city role is not so much sit back and we'll see what happens. No, there's a process that they're working through through the state, through their perhaps preliminary contract, but that contract would be subject to those actions. And that's why we want those items. So we know how the timeline and process is going to work.

Yeah, and they who knows, I mean, they might come back and and say, you know, here's all the information and based on the information we, the state. Believe that it's not subject to city review and control, or we'll ask our city attorney to review that and render their opinion about that. And. We may have a very different opinion than theirs and then where it goes from there. Well, you know, it could be interesting, but we'll have to wait and see. We don't know that yet. It's still too early to know that information.

Sure. The second part I want, I'm not hogging all this. I'll let Council Member say other questions as well. Thomas, and as our Assistant City Manager noted, Council Member Sagal and myself attended a meeting with Assembly Member Macedo. And I think the one part, maybe to add some of the details, and I think it helps for the public information, and for other Council members that took place as well, is the Assembly member, and jumping on this issue, brought the County Board of Supervisors together, brought our City Council together, brought the Senate members, Assembly members, and brought the group together, which was that initial absolute concerns, not just as a city, but regionally. Concerns of what's the project status, where this project is at, concerns of electrical use, everything that I want to say people have mentioned, the assembly member brought this group together to touch on this. it was really a uh i i think the meeting uh was very important because as the speaker had said even though it's state property and even though we're city of tulare it is regional and especially in the community and it was a a great collaborative of fact finding uh we set up some agenda of action items of getting information and process the county was doing some research the assembly staff would do research and of course Thomas was there to represent what what the city would do so I just want to share with Council members um it was a discussion session it wasn't about the decisions it was what are those concerns how can we regionally address these concerns and I think as the public would want to know where's where's Tulare in this uh Tulare is very concerned but as well We also need to research this collaboratively. I would just say, what's the county policy? What's the state policy? What's all these overlapping? So I really want to share that the meeting was useful and that meeting had action items, which was as we do research, let's get information from the companies. Let's get more information of exactly the project at that point. The. John Potter, The collaborative group would release kind of this fact finding a message in this fact finding kind of information that shows to the public, all of us are researching this on the same, same page. And that would be the facts and I'll surely let Councilmember Seagal if you want to touch on the meeting or other elements with that.

Yes, and I had a couple other questions as well, but the meeting was very good, productive, learned a lot. Like many of my neighbors and residents in Tulare, I'm learning a lot about data centers. I hear the horror stories back in the Midwest and East. But the one thing that I feel very comfortable is that Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee is not California. California has some very strong environmental protections that need to go through. So, you know, looking forward to that. But, you know, I appreciate the assemblymen putting the meeting together and us participating through our staff. And look forward to whatever other issues come up from that particular meeting. Um, as some of, you know, I've, uh, later on on the agenda and requesting that we, as a council, you know, take the opportunity to turn more as through a study session. So hopefully we'll be able to have that conversation at that time. But I think the questions for for staff, um. I know it was a difficult. time or cumbersome time to get the information through the public records request. What kind of relationship do we have with the executive director? That shouldn't be a loophole, a hurdle that we have to jump through given that she should just provide the information. Do we have a relationship with the executive director to that point where just give it to us?

We do have a relationship with the executive director and obviously we work closely together with them during the fairground activities, emergency events, et cetera. I guess what I would say to that is this, is keep in mind that this is not a singular proposed project from the state's perspective. I think I shared with council an article that this particular entity has proposed to put data centers at fairgrounds throughout the state of California. So from our perspective, staff perspective, this appears to be a state driven uh, activity, not a fairground director driven activity. And so we certainly can reach out to the director, but we suspect that the information they have is very limited because it's likely being driven by and controlled by the state at this point in time.

Um, I, I would just say that, you know, whether it's the state, some little person in a little office up in Sacramento or whoever is directing this, she has the responsibility of providing her board. information you know we today's 640 page document you gave or the clerk prepared for our council meeting is what she prepares for her board and my understanding is she's like tcat where she has to do it 10 days before not like us three days before all i'm asking is whatever she gives the board members she should be able to give us a copy without having to jump through the state public records act hurdle yeah that delayed it and so that i'm not questioning who's Running the show, but she does get documents. Yeah, she does give out.

Yeah.

So what I'm saying is she given to us at the same time?

I'll personally reach out to her and ask her to provide us the same information. She's providing her board. My comment only had to do with. I suspect she has a limited information because she's not driving the show. Somebody above her is so she'll only be able to provide me whatever it is. That person is providing her, but I'll personally reach out.

whoever provides it as long, whatever board member gets, we should, the public should be able to see, and we should be able to have a copy of it. So that's all I'm asking. I'm not figuring out who's driving it or not. Just whatever public documents available.

Okay. Council members, any other comments or questions? Okay. Mark, do we have any other communications?

No. Okay.

John Potter, I was noted in Council members to go ahead said later on the agenda we have 9.2 request for a future discussion on the pros and cons of data centers. John Potter, I would look to counsel, I would like to move that item up to right now current action and in doing so would see if I need a consent from the Council, if you are open to amending the agenda and putting 9.2 forward. John Potter, Right now, with communications. I would have a consensus. Okay. So with that, I'm going to put forth 9.2, request for a future discussion on pros and cons of data centers. Councilman Segala.

I'm trying to pull it up here on my packet, but Council, this is just a basic request for us to put this on a future agenda item, hopefully sooner than later, that would allow us to have a robust discussion, public discourse on the Council having the ability to have a presentation on what are data centers. I mean, I've learned that there are various types of data centers. I mean, uh, you know, people tell me they have a data center right here. People tell me there's data centers in the hospital. There might be data centers in the police department, and then you got miles long data centers in Utah, and then you got a little container, small container, one of these, as it's been described to me, that'll be at the fairgrounds. So those are the types of things that I'd like for council to have that information, the pros and cons. I mean, Is it issues with water, noise, pollution, water quality? A number of things. And I think it's appropriate, given not only the conversation nationally, but the conversation locally, that we should schedule a study session to allow us to do that. So that would be the request that we have at least a majority of the council say yes. We will put it on the agenda for us to have a more broader debate, allow for public comment, and then at that point decide whether we do want to have a study session. So my motion would be to move that forward.

I will second that.

OK. We have a motion and second. Is there comments or discussion?

Basic principles that I've dealt with throughout my legal career is specifically that you you don't make decisions or get into issues in a vacuum. I know this is a request to have more information, but at this point, I don't think the issue is ripe. I certainly think in the future when we have more information, the time will be appropriate to get into these issues. But what we'd be asking staff to do is operating in a vacuum as to what, you know, I mean, we could have data centers at the vacant property the cemetery has, the high school has, the city of Tulare has. I mean, that's purely speculation at that point. I'm not adverse to getting into these issues. I just think we need to do it at the appropriate time. My understanding based upon what Mario's indicated and also What Thomas has indicated is that this issue is being, has been discussed at the fair board and there was quite a few people that were there. How many people would you estimate were there?

Probably at least 300.

300 people. And did a significant number of those people have an opportunity to voice their opinions?

Yes. I think the public comment went on for two or three hours even after I left.

Okay. So it wasn't like the will of those who were there wasn't expressed under the circumstance. So I'm not prepared to have this. I wouldn't be of the opinion that we should put it on the agenda at this point to move forward under the circumstances. I think the time will be ripe at some time in the future, but not at this point.

I agree with Councilman Medeiros. It's extremely difficult to make a decision on something that you don't have any information on. To date, my information has come from the Fresno Bee, and even the Fresno Bee article conflicts its information. It says that the parking structure and the landing pads will be at a data center in the Santa Clara area. And then it goes back and says, it's going to be the size of a. A C train container here, so there's no consistency in the information. Whoever it is is driving this like city manager said is Sacramento. We just we, this is a very touchy issue and a lot of it is driven by social media without any facts. We don't have the facts and without the facts to be able to make a good decision for the best interest of the people of Tulare. I don't think this should be agendized at this time. We should wait until either Sacramento comes out with information or the fair board comes out with information to let us be able to decide what is this thing? What is it going to do? Is it a data center or is it what they're calling a emergency operations resiliency center for communications for police and fire up and down the state in case of a disaster, earthquakes and things like that. Which one is it? They're talking two separate things again. And there's nothing coming from the company. There's nothing coming from the state. So until they do that, I don't feel that we can make an adequate decision.

decisions this time what to do with it so i support mr uh madaris's position maybe i misunderstand what uh councilman skull is asking for i don't think he's asking us to make a decision he's just asking for information if if if i may and and with that i think thoughts with that and i think mr madaris had said an item of

It's important. I think we just had a report and we just walked through the information of what we need from the fairgrounds. And there is a fact finding regional group that's including the city council, the county board of supervisors, the state assembly, state senate. There's this fact finding group. And I think to what you're saying, Vice Mayor Harrell. The part maybe looking at that is, and I think my viewpoint too, is placing it on August 18th agenda. That it seems there's probably a consensus of having this information, but it's more the timing. That the timing ought to be, and we could, and I, and this is your request, Mr. Segal, but there's a consensus of the council. This is an important issue. We want to have it. We need information. and perhaps it's directing that it be August 18th, but that the bell's rung, we would have a presentation, we'd have that information, but when this fact finding is all together, is that a little bit of, that comes back to you?

When we have more information and at the appropriate time. Now it just isn't, the word we use, Mario, is ripe. Is that correct? With the courts, It's too speculative at this point to know exactly what it is we're dealing with. The issue is too broad. Once it's narrowed to where we see more what the fair is doing, if anything, and also we see what's happening in other jurisdictions, then we can narrow the issue so that the public has a better understanding of what it is John Vile- That's going on out there and what we potentially could deal with and what areas of concern we're able to exercise as it relates to CEQA and connection to water. You know, I sit on the mid-queer GSA and I'm very concerned about the amount of water that's used in these things. But I want to be in a position to where we're having a study session at the right time right now. I don't think if it's appropriate if I may.

I know you got a couple of things. I want to. Mark, you had said you'd asked for a call and then that way you get everybody's perspective.

Well, just food for thought. Um. It is a, it is a, it's a really complex topic, right? Because it's. There's so many different varieties that we're learning about in our own individual research efforts. It's sort of an emerging technology, right? As we know, technology changes so quickly. So many of the issues that people are raising, that industry sector is working to address those issues. I will share with you something I'm aware of that's coming up in the near future. So the Central California Division of the American Planning Association. So the American Planning Association is a national organization. It's made up of planners from all around the country, and they often study issues that impact the built environment. they do a conference once a year, it's like a weekend retreat. And every year they bring up a topic and they bring a bunch of people from all different walks of life that are all planners though, people who are typically experts and have experience with land use planning type issues. And they bring a topic together and they bring some experts into the room and they talk through these issues, not to solve any problems, not to vote yes or no, it's to have a better understanding of whatever that topic is. This year that conference or retreat will be held August 21st and 22nd. The topic is the impact of potential data centers in this in the Central Valley. And so there will be an expert from utilities. Who actually is the 1 calculating the impacts of data potential data centers. On the grid. So they have a perspective on it. There is a data scientist that is part of that panel. There's some urban planners. There are some city representatives. There's a consultant who works with data centers. And so 1 of the things I was thinking about is maybe if we can get that discussion transcribed, and I can provide it to council. So you can. And I'm sure they'll have reached, like, they'll have articles and things that they can reference. Maybe if we started there, and we provide that to council. So you have a chance to read through that discussion, read through the references they provide. That might help counsel not only get some of the information they're looking for, but maybe narrow the scope of because they're going to talk about 3 data center projects in the central valley specifically. And so the fairgrounds isn't 1 of them, because we don't nobody has enough information on that 1 yet, but they're going to talk about other projects that are actually going forward and going through the process. So maybe that would be a good starting point. You can get that relatively soon. And after we have attempts to digest that, then you may be able to give staff a little bit more direction. Because I think right now, for example, if you say. No, let's just bring in a bunch of experts to talk about data center. I'm not exactly sure what experts you're talking about where to start. Am I, am I bringing in 10 different experts that focus on different types of data centers? Right? So I think it may be helpful as a primer. To maybe approach it that way 1st, but, you know, whatever council's prerogative is.

Thank you. Mr. mayor 1st of all, I think for me, what's really important is that. What I'm asking for is to have this on the agenda the 18th to have this conversation, probably part 2 at that meeting about whether we should direct staff to have a study session. Now, staff can come back and say, we're not prepared. We're going to go to this event. We're going to read this article. We're going to watch this video. We're going to go talk to this person so that we can be prepared to provide counsel the pros and cons of data centers in the city of Tulare. Well, the city manager may come back and say, you know what? I think I can schedule that in June of 2027. Or I think I can schedule that in January of 2027 or November of 2026. That will be a discussion we have when this item comes up. I believe that we owe it. I mean, I don't know about the rest of the council, but I've gotten hundreds of emails or someone put me on change.org and seen all these people that are concerned. This particular item has nothing to do with the fairgrounds data set. That has been very well explained. It's out of our hands. Can we have an opinion? Yes. Can the City Council, like we do on anything, take a vote to oppose it or support it or whatever? Yes. That's down the road. I agree that we don't have that information at this point, but I think it's totally appropriate that we have a public forum where this can be put out there so the public understands. Assembly Member Macedo is not going to invite everybody in this audience to that one meeting she's having. It's a collaborative working group that I don't believe is a public meeting. The event that the city manager just described, I don't believe is a public meeting where the public can come and give public comment and so forth. This is the public forum. This is the place where the residents of Tulare can come and express themselves. So all I'm asking is that we put it on the agenda for the 18th to discuss whether we have one in the future or not. City managers, city staff can come back and say, we're not prepared. It's going to take us a year to put this thing together. It's going to take us three months. I don't know. Whatever they decide. But I think that we need to have a public process and that on the 18th, the council will decide with the recommendation from staff when this thing could be put together. So I would ask that, you know, my council colleagues reconsider and support this for the agenda on the 18th.

The one part I just want to share in that and in the process that we have to put this on the agenda, true, this is just to put it on the agenda, is your submitted form gives specifics. would ask for your support in placing on August eighteenth specifically, and then it has this the supplemental that the Council direct the city manager to prepare and present a study session that will provide the Council with information on data centers in the impacts and or benefits they may have on the community. That's not subjective. I mean, that's very specific. And I would say, at least from my position, I don't think there's any disagreement with that whatsoever. There's no disagreement about the public forum, absolutely 100% with you. And I think the public wants that. But it's August 18. And everything that we shared, if you have some collaboration on your thoughts with that is, I support this. Yeah, we're going to direct city staff to put this on the agenda, but there's a lot of homework going on. And I think to what a couple of council members have said, it's August 18th. Your request is very specific to be August 18th. Are you willing to amend that?

To answer that, Mr. Mayor, I have been putting these requests forward for years. Not until today have I been asked, well, why is it specific? If anybody in the public goes and looks at all the requests I put in for the last, since we've been doing this last 10 years, eight years, there are specifics in there that say, when other council members say, hey, I would like a specific stop sign on the corner of such and such, that is a specific request. So I don't know why all of a sudden it's different today. But and then to answer the other question, Mr. Madero has even made this recommendation years ago. He probably doesn't remember this. When I would bring items forward to put on the agenda, my agenda items would come back two years later, a year and a half later, three years later, come back to council. So Mr. Madero said, why don't you put in a specific date? And I do, I put in a specific date so that August 18th would be the date where we put it on the agenda, discuss it, and if there's three votes to kill it, there's three votes to kill it. If there's three votes to pass it, there's three votes to pass it. So I don't understand why all of a sudden today, my request to put some money agenda is now different than what I've been doing for years.

Actually, I will agree with you. The request is to put it on the agenda to determine whether we want to go forward with the things that he's suggesting. That's how it was set up. I don't believe, and that's what I've indicated, I don't believe now is the time to put it on the agenda for that purpose. I think his process is correct. But we make a decision now whether to put it on the agenda to go forward with all of that. I think that's premature. I certainly think when the time is right and the issue is ripe, that we can then go forward with what he's indicated. Now it's just not. Now is not the time to even put it on the agenda, because there isn't enough information. If we wait a little longer, we will see what the fair is going to do. We'll get more information from staff, and we'll find out what's happening with Assemblywoman Macedo's issue. So it's not objecting to what it is you're proposing. It's the timeliness. There is no... There is no specific urgent reason to deal with it now. There's none.

Well, I think to answer that, I just want to make it clear, this has nothing. ITS OWN ENTITY HAS BEEN STATED HERE, ITS OWN PROCESS, ITS OWN ACCOUNTABILITY FROM ITS BOARD. THIS IS FOR ME AS A COUNCIL MEMBER AND HOPEFULLY FOR THE REST OF MY COLLEAGUES IS TO HAVE A GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT DATA CENTERS ARE. MAYBE AFTER WE HAVE THE STUDY SESSION, WE PROPOSE TO BAN THEM. MAYBE WE PROPOSE SOME COMMUNITY BENEFITS AGREEMENT SAYING IF YOU'RE GOING TO BRING A DATA CENTER IN, YOU GOT TO DO X, Y, AND Z. THIS WILL ALLOW US TO DO THAT. I THINK IT'S ALWAYS BETTER TO BE PROACTIVE THAN REACTIVE. I mean, I would ask the city staff, particular Mario, you know, particular Mario, like, can a data center open up here through a process?

Thank you. Mr. Mayor, can you let the audience know that this isn't the fairgrounds? I mean, we are not going to have people clapping. We're not going to have people. I mean, we have decorum in our chambers. True. Just as we work through this.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, The part just the gala. I know you're looking, but you had mentioned in your form as well. You mentioned the fairgrounds. as the public interest sitting at the one at the fairgrounds. So your request says that. Again, it's an important issue. We want it. The part is, I think the concern is a little bit of unattended consequences. We put that on the agenda. Folks are going to come and want all this information. And as we put it on the agenda to approve it and we get that information, they're going to come. It's like we don't have it yet. Kind of like you said, a 2.0 conversation. So I'm just wanting to execute The element here of doing what we're doing, but with the specifics of of August eighteenth. That's that's the trouble if to to Medeiros's point. If you're telling us you want to put on the August eighteenth, I would say that's not the right date. But I think you have a consensus amongst the council another, and you can put in another request if you feel obligated to, but sharing in front of you, and there's a consensus here. We'll have it on the agenda. I'm sorry that you're frustrated with your past request, but we're all on the same page here. It's just the point of putting it on the eighteenth.

What is it? What is it? What is your problem with eighteen? What do you do? What is it? Do you understand it's going to be on the eighteen? What do you think is going to be on the 18th?

The 18th and putting that on is people are going to come and they're going to want those answers. They're going to ask those questions. And rather we could do it at the same time saying, here's a public forum, here's a public workshop, and we're going to walk around.

So you're concerned that putting it on the 18th for us to discuss whether we should have a study session in the future on the pros and cons of data centers, the public is going to come out and demand some kind of answers? Is that what you're telling me? Why now? Why now?

I'm confused as to why we would address this issue now.

It's an issue that's relevant. It's an issue that's out there. It's an issue people have concerns about. It's an issue hundreds of people have emailed me about. Thousands of people have- Not one person has emailed me on this. What is- Okay, you said there was 300 people at a meeting that were concerned about- No, but I understand.

But why now? I haven't heard you give any explanation John Potter, For an issue that hasn't been been specifically identified, nor have they moved forward with what the assistant, let me finish. John Potter, Nor what the assistant city manager has indicated we don't have any parameters whatsoever i'm i'm indicating that i'm concerned to. I want to deal with it in the future, but I want to deal when it's appropriate. We're just not ready for this. And I want to resist the temptation that I keep hearing from people that we don't want to put it on for the wrong reasons. I think now is just not the appropriate time.

I'm not disagreeing with you. There's never not a time where we can be educated about things. And so this is an educational process where we are going to be provided information. And again, if a city manager comes back and says, you know, what, after the 18th, you guys do a study session. To be honest with you guys, I need 6 months to do it. Then it takes 6 months, but. Mayor Mrakas, The time I think is always right to try to be educated about issues that the Community have concerns about and all i'm asking is this put it on the agenda on the 18th. Mayor Mrakas, Have a conversation there may be an amendment comes out that it does happen within a certain time and. Mayor Mrakas, But you know I don't want to keep elaborating this point, Mr mayor's at this point I just I know there's a motion I just asked for a vote.

I'd agree with that. Let's let's determine whether there's consensus to put it on unless the Vice Mayor. Go ahead.

I agree with, you know, being educated. But this issue is driven by the issue with the fairgrounds. What if we agreed to this had probably Thomas would be the lead on this. Do all the research, everything that's required to get this done. And then the one at the fairgrounds falls through. And then there's no interest in anything like a data center around here. That time's been wasted. The time and the money has all been wasted. I agree with Mr. Medeiros. Now is not the time.

Just because you said it doesn't mean it happens.

Let's find out. She decided to vote on herself, Mr. Medeiros.

No, Mr. Sagala, let's make this clear. She asked me, I didn't say anything to her except respond. She asked me if she could withdraw the motion. And I said she didn't have to. She could vote whichever way she wants to.

So I think with that, that's the council then to call to question towards placing this on the agenda for August 18th. We have a roll call vote too. Council may do that. Request a roll call vote.

City Council Chambers, Council members to go. City Council Chambers, Council members there. City Council Chambers, Council member madaris. City Council Chambers, No. City Council Chambers, Vice Mayor Harold. City Council Chambers, No. City Council Chambers, Mayor issue with.

City Council Chambers, Then I would say no, it doesn't have consensus of Council. City Council Chambers, Thank you guys very much. So I think with that, this is not the time for actions with that, though, is I would say this issue will absolutely continue of everything that we established. And as more information comes available, we will surely have that in front of the public. And I would say this council is in consensus. We would have the study session when that happens. Okay. Moving item forward on our agenda. Well, they're still communicating. We didn't do items of interest yet, did we? We did not. Council reports and items of interest, number five. That's where we're at on that. Vice Mayor Harrell.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On the 22nd last month, attended a downtown association meeting with business owners downtown regarding some issues with homelessness. On the 24th, the ribbon cutting on the International Agri-Center Way at the Ag Center.

Just wanted to bring up the issue of the cooling centers. We do have an official cooling center here in the lobby for the city of Tulare. This Saturday I went by and came by and looked at it and was glad to see it was open. Unfortunately, there weren't too many people. who were using it. There were no chairs available. We have a bench for three people, but if a fourth person shows up, they got to sit on the floor or something. So there was no chairs. So I hope that there's chairs available for future days. And then on Sunday, It was closed, and so I was just trying to figure out what happened there, why it was closed. I drove around encouraging people to come to the cooling center, but it being closed was difficult. I did see three or four people were not able to get in. So I just want to make sure that we do our best to provide some signage. Uh, I know that the policy goes through the fire department. I know right now it's 4 to 6. I see other coding centers to 2 to 10 or 2 to 8. Sorry, or open a little bit longer. So I'm not sure what the process would be to have that consideration. And then also, um, maybe we can, uh. Tap into our, I think we have a 6 figure marketing. consultant that's on on working with the city so that maybe there's ways to uh get get the information out there maybe some flags or some a-frames or flyers that can be issued to folks saying hey cooling center's open so i'm just hoping that there's ideas that we can do to try to to do that and then finally the the one over at the encampment i believe the buses are still running is that is that the cooling center over there yeah i just want to make sure that um Maybe we take a look at them. I drove by and they looked like somebody was taking batting practice with them, you know, broken windows and this and that. So I think it would be difficult for any of us to maybe sit in there for 10 minutes in the cooling center. So maybe we can take a look at that because it's just horrible, horrible weather. And it's difficult to be out there for that long, for decades. For that many stretch of days when it's one hundred and eight hundred and six. So if staff can take a look at those things, we certainly will look at.

Unfortunately, the the buses at the encampment are being destroyed by the guests who are intended to use them. They're stealing the copper, they're breaking the windows, et cetera. So we will work. We will continue to repair them as we do always. The snafu that occurred here on Sunday was that. in the past it was always the fire department contacting the parks department to open the cooling center but on the weekend on a sunday the parks department didn't have staff available for that and we needed to contact manny's team general services but that communication didn't occur so we've now corrected that issue and we will look to try to add more signage social media posting and add some more chairs very briefly

John Potter, On the 22nd. John Potter, I attended the international anchor Center board meeting I sit on that board and also the downtown meeting. John Potter, With the chat at the Chamber trade room, there was several of us that attended that set quietly and listened. John Potter, Also on Friday the 24th. John Potter, attended and. John Potter, was pleased to speak at the agri center interchange ribbon cutting the. John Potter, Last week. I spent. John Potter, With my family on vacation this morning I went to the to fresno the at the citizens advisory committee meeting for the San Joaquin valley air pollution control district and had a two hour meeting there. before I returned, ate lunch, and went to my meeting at City Hall. So it's been busy, despite a vacation in between.

OK. Councilmember Serra?

So on the 22nd, I attended the downtown meeting at the chamber. On the 24th, the ribbon cutting at the International Agri-Center way. And on the 21st and today, I attended the Tulare CARES meeting at City Hall.

I think as well as attending a lot of events over the couple of weeks, it's been a busy schedule in the community. And I think just to touch on is I think our 10 new baseball all-star team will be heading to Alabama. And so we wish them, of course, the best of luck. Moving forward, item six, consent calendar. All matters listed on the consent calendar are considered by the Council to be routine and will be enacted in one motion without discussion. If discussion is desired, that item may be removed and considered separately. Council, do we have an action or request on consent calendar?

Make a motion to approve this consent calendar.

I'll second that. So we have a motion to approve consent calendar 6.1 through 6.6. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Consent calendar is approved. Moving to item seven, public hearing. Comments related to public hearing items are limited to three minutes per speaker for a maximum of 30 minutes per item, unless otherwise extended by council. Again, for those that wish to provide public comment while attending the meeting remotely, press nine on your phone to raise your hand or click raise hand in the webinar. Item 7.1, amending the established speed limits in the city of Tulare. Mr. Miller.

Good evening. Mr mayor members of council at your last meeting on July twenty first, you received the presentation by Nicole span of world and engineering regarding the findings of our twenty twenty six city wide engineering and traffic survey report. As you'll recall from that presentation per the California vehicle code, it's necessary for the city to conduct engineering and traffic studies that serve as the basis of establishing speed limits within the city. Speed limits that aren't supported by the findings of such studies cannot be enforced by the use of radar or other speed measuring devices and citations issued would be subject to dismissal in the court of law. The city's current speed zones were largely based on studies conducted in late 2020. State law requires that studies be updated every seven to 14 years to ensure that they reflect current conditions. Given the substantial growth the city's experienced in recent years, it was prudent to conduct a timely review and update of all speed limits established by the city. As such, a total of 161 roadway segments were included in the 2026 report. As a reminder, the engineering and traffic surveys evaluated several key factors. The first is determining the 85th percentile speed through speed sampling of traffic on the roadway segments. In California, regulations governing the establishment of speed limits are based upon the assumption that 85% of the drivers will drive at or below a speed that is reasonable and safe for normal conditions. To avoid creating a speed trap that would penalize an inordinate number of drivers, speed limits should be set at the nearest five mile per hour increment of eighty-fifth percentile speed. If special conditions exist that are not readily apparent to the driver agencies may apply a five mile per hour reduction to the 85th percentile speed. And if the roadway segment is identified as a safety corridor based on high crash rates or pedestrian and bicycle activity. Additional reductions may be applied, provided the speed limits within 12 miles per hour 85th percentile speed. So all of that said, of the hundred and 61 roadway segments that were studied 63% would not change. 15% would actually decrease, 9% would increase, and 13% were new speed limits. At this time, staff recommends opening the public hearing to receive comments on the 2026 Citywide Engineering and Traffic Survey Report, the recommendations contained therein, and the proposed ordinance amending the established speed limits in the City of Tulare in accordance with those recommendations. Following that, staff recommends that council pass to print the ordinance amending the speed limits.

With staff's presentation on the item, I will open the public hearing for 7.1 amending the established speed limits in the city of Tulare. Is there anyone in chambers who wishes to speak on this item, which is amending the established speed limits in the city of Tulare? Do we have anyone on the phone or webinar? Good evening, welcome.

Hi. I'm just a little confused because we had 9.2 for the future discussion of pros and cons of data centers, and you guys moved it to the front. Will there still be public comment for that item or no? Because we didn't have time for that.

So, no, I did not go to that item. 9.2 has passed. The reason which didn't go to public comment was because there was a vote and a second made, and then vote and a second went into discussion and then led the discussion with that item.

All right, thank you.

Is there anyone in chambers who wishes to speak on the 7.1 item? Welcome.

hi my name is patty and i'm a tellerian and my question is i guess it's not even a question i'm trying to figure out i am on oaks and i believe these two city council people one is on one side and one's on the other i love my street i love this town that is a thoroughfare to the west side which i love the west side the street is a mess which i've already contacted trish about that to find out why the nice streets behind me were all repaved and yet oaks is like something that cattle would drive on. And yet they're saying that the speed limit for most people are 40 miles an hour. That's completely inaccurate. I know my husband's home during the day and he saw when they had the uh whatever the little conductor thing to take the minutes of what they're doing it's a easily 80 miles an hour up and down that street in the evenings god forbid seven in the morning we've already had somebody i believe killed there maybe six months ago on sandra and oaks from a car If anything, I would like to find out how do we go about getting a stop sign maybe between, what would that be, Prosperity and M Street to at least force people to slow down? Because it's very busy and all of our homes up and down that street that I can think of have our driveways, so you better get the heck out quickly and get the heck in quickly. God forbid you have grandkids or if you have animals that get out. I'm just not comfortable with that speed, the fact that there's not like a break in between. And I'm probably not verbalizing that right, but it's very, very busy. And I think that somewhere down the line I've read where Eventually again, it's not for sure, but we're going to have more building out there and you guys have all addressed over here where the ad center is. Yay. Great. We did that now. I'm sure it's all going to shift. This way, so I'm just sort of concerned that the more traffic we have. And the speed limit was not adjusted. They're saying to us. That 40 miles an hour is good and that nobody goes past that and that's the average. I'm telling you it's not. I live there. I'm on Oaks and Dickens on the corner. It is not. That is not the speed limit.

I don't want to take away from your public comment, but you're asking kind of a point of information, and could have staff explain that quickly. I think this was on the Council meeting previously when we went through the details and the information. Mr. Miller, I think the question of perhaps how they were determined or understanding that North Oaks would I think that's your question kind of it's saying 40, perhaps if you would share as we had the last meeting quickly of addressing what that process is for oak street.

Exactly. Yeah. Um, so, as was mentioned, they put out, um. Hoses basically that are capable of mechanically measuring the speed of traffic going down the road. Um, they look for a sample, um, typically a road like oaks is going to be several 100 vehicles for a sample to come up with that 84th percentile. Um, I will say 80 for the percentile means that there's 15% of people going above that speed. And we definitely tend to notice those people. If you're out watching cars go by, those are the ones that are going to catch your notice and they're going to have a, they're going to stick in your mind more than others. Um, I don't believe there was any discrepancy in the data collection. I'm confident in the numbers that were measured and how that came up with that 85th percentile speed. Um. As far as the potential for a stop sign, we do occasionally get asked for that and it's very specific. The California manual uniform traffic control devices, which we have to follow its state guidance specifically states in bold text stop signs shall not be used for speed control. So.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, Do they have a do they have a I work in the state of California so i'm just curious what is there. PB, Lupita D Montoya, Is there some other what is their thing that we can do. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, To correct for me. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Enforcement.

Okay, if I can, I just appreciate your questions. I just don't want to be a debate part, but 2 is with your questions and I know I took some of your time. If you have some other questions, what we can do is take your questions and then staff can get back to you with some additional information.

Bottom line is there's really nothing we can do about the speed that because that's really my thing. That's my question. There's nothing at this point we could do about the speed. It's going to be forty. Um, the state of California says we cannot do a stop sign to do speed control. I mean, I just want to make sure I don't want to waste everyone's time if that's really what that is.

There are traffic control measures, you know, traffic calming measures. We're currently looking at some on cross Avenue. Um, the ways that you could. Reduce the width of the, the striped width of the roadway, potentially slowing traffic other things you can look at. Um, that's something that we could also look at in this location.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, if they could just put me on a something just because Trish did answer my question about my road. I'm like, Okay, streets behind me all got covered. What what's going on out here? She responded, and we are on the agenda now to be looked at to have it repaid.

So if what I give my information to who to what I would what I would suggest kind of in the process is, if you would give your name and contact information to the clerk, and then that will put you in the queue, you know, as you had said with your questions and staff can communicate.

Thanks.

All right. Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak on 7.1 amending the established speed limits in the city of Tulare? Okay. With that, I'm going to close the public hearing. Council members, questions? Comments? Vice Mayor Howell?

Just wanted to find out if those issues that were brought up at the last meeting were addressed the ones on West making sure.

Yes, yes, they did go back and look at, and we basically have the greatest reduction we can take in the speed limit on West street. So we couldn't reduce that 1 segment. From 45 down like you asked us to look into.

Okay, thank you. Council members in the other council do you have an action. Is this just the public hearing, but the public hearing is the action, is that correct, Mr. Miller?

The public hearing and then pass to print the ordinance.

So moved. We have a motion to pass and print the ordinance, amending the existing speed zones. We have a second by Vice Mayor Harreld. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Okay, 7.1 approves 5-0. Moving forward to general business, comments related to general business items are limited to three minutes per speaker for a maximum of 30 minutes per item. For those that wish to provide public comment while attending the meeting remotely, you may press nine on your phone to raise your hand or click raise hand in the webinar. Item 8.1, Proposition 64, Public Health and Safety Grant. Mr. Bolling.

All right, good evening council, um, just quick background on this item back in 2016 prop 64. um, the adult use of marijuana act was approved by California voters legalized adult recreational use of cannabis. Um, prop 64 created sales tax on cannabis cultivation retail sales. A portion of these taxes and revenues are distributed by the state of California through grant programs. Um, they're only eligible to California cities and counties that allow retail cannabis sales. In March 26 to the county office of Ed, uh, approached the city of and requested to partner on a project. Um, that would be eligible for prop 64 funding. Um. With the city's approval, TCOE prepared and submitted an application with the city as a lead agency. In late June 2026, TCOE and the city were notified that the city with TCOE as a sub-applicant were awarded $4.5 million. Performance period is 5.5 years from July 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2031. Um, 1, small change for this evening is we're not asking you to adopt a resolution. You're just going to receive a presentation. Um, and we will place the resolution on next, uh, meetings. A consent calendar for approval. Um, there's a couple of changes that we're still waiting for the state for the contract. Um, with that, I'd like to introduce a couple of members from Tulare County office event. Um, got Nani Dotson, Brittany and Bob Mayo. So, thank you guys for being here.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for allowing us to attend again. My name is Bob Mayo and I have Brittany and Nani Dodson here with me as we kind of guide us through and go through our presentation. I just. Um, so truly, we understand that there is a, that the city of Tulare has a good positive relationship with their dispensaries. Um, we are just really looking, and this is an opportunity to help us help prevent youth from accessing, um, and then also help prevent illicit, um, cannabis or, you know, truly that, that non-regulated sales. Um, and so the, the, the idea of this grant is that we're truly looking to delay initiation, um, of the youth using marijuana. to mitigate that harm of them using it either through illicit measures or through underage access, and then build a infrastructure that's truly sustainable so that we can continue with this. We chose to look at Tulare specifically because Tulare is on the rise. Growing population, a third of your population falls under the age of 18 and you have roughly 25,000 students that are gonna be attending high school as they continue to go through. Um, and the 25,000 is within the county. Sorry. Um, and so we've had some great growth in the city. Um, but we've also noticed that, uh, Tulare Tulare city is having a, the poverty rate is roughly slightly higher than the state national average. Um, we, we know that sometimes poverty can lead to increased drug use. Um, we were looking at some other different data points that you can see regarding our insurance rate within our community. big thing that we're looking at is we know um that through school connectedness adult mentorship community engagement that that is really one of the bigger influences that we have to protect our students we know that right now students feel slightly disconnected from their schools and so our ability to start bringing in some youth programs specifically and i'll be discussing friday night live partnerships into the school brings that youth engagement and that and that youth voice to the issues that affect them and impact them looking at a friday night live model which is really i think that we've gone from this traditional thing and so many of our opportunities here at school is that we have adults telling youth don't do it don't do it don't do it um which which has been fine for years but we're looking to essentially kind of create this peer-to-peer activation loop by really creating these youth trained mentors or leaders that understand that they can then share and we we know that peer-to-peer influence is one of the greatest contribute contributors to the kids students making the right decisions um in part as fnl has been a successful it's a successful program um 98 of people that have been questioned have said that they that fnl has helped them support make healthy decisions um that they help some feel community connected to their community And 63% of our mentors report being well-informed because of their peer influence. Now, looking at, um, if you take a look at heart's ladder of participation, we're really looking at so often our educational system has really left kids as that passive receiver or that decoration in meetings. So our really goal is to build this youth council. That can then is really taking those ideas of that shared decision making and those co creators of what we're doing again, guided though, by the youth of our staff at Tulare County office bed and through California Friday night live. We have four different goals. The first one is really to educate youth and adults about the laws, penalties, and enforcement of illicit cannabis youth. These would be actually set up. We're going to be working with and developing a youth council that will actually be doing these types of presentations. Second goal is kind of just share that. We really want to take a dive a little bit deeper into our local awareness, specifically with our youth. We have California high school kids, Chex data, sorry, California Healthy Kids Survey. Thank you. The Chex is just, I just want to refer to it as. And so we have that, but we also want to take a look and actually survey our youth specifically within the city of Tulare, as well as also in other areas throughout the county. But our focus right now is in Tulare to really just make sure that the numbers that we're seeing correlates and that we can adjust and take some evidence based decisions as we show the youth. And we're talking to the youth about what their colleagues and what their youth are saying. And please, at any point, if you want to feel like to jump in. Um, 3rd goal is really to look to empower is to establish a solid to Larry youth council is made up of students that initially are again as we start this because we've identified to Larry. We have a Friday night live chapter already at Friday at the boys and girls club. We'll be visiting and talking to the high school. We've already had initial communication with the leaderships. Um, it says we start recruiting members to be part of a youth council so that they then. um have a regular monthly meeting much like you guys as an advisory group to be able to also talk but then to be able to kind of sit and make those plans and develop a strategy on how is the best way to reach their peers uh what are the what are the systems that work what are the things that don't work um and look to seek them as that expert in their lives on what matters to them as we go to educate them Last part is building that long term resiliency. I think establishing of this, this youth council serves 1, just as a vehicle for this grant as well, but also provides opportunities for us to seek input from youth for several different topics that don't just relate to this particular grant. But in the future, looking for all items that end up affecting youth within Tulare County. Um, as we take a look at what we're really doing is again, they were starting off this, this, this focus with to Larry youth with us as the adult allies to help them. We've since also had wonderful conversations with police chief, um, several of the different staff of our city manager staff as we're looking to, um. continue to build this and bring in these community partners that can help support the kids. So not only are they involved and informed about it, they also have an idea of different mitigating agencies and community partners that they can also share and that they can reach out to. Um, in just as we kind of just kind of wrap this up, um, truly, we're just this, this, this purpose of this grant. And again, why we're starting with Larry is that we understand and we don't want to do anything with the relationships with your, uh, with your cannabis organizations. We are going to ask to have a conversation with our kids with our youth council in them. Um, I know that and talking to Mr Mandel, you know, that. the dispensaries have been following all the rules and regulations and they've been a good partnership we're just trying to go ahead and to help educate our youth and specifically on the illicit use but also on the underage youth as well to help keep our kids safe with that i'm happy to answer any questions council members any questions

So basically this is $900,000 a year. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Cause it, yeah. And that's used in the fashion that you've indicated that that's specifically for the city of Tulare.

The state specifically, it's going for the city of Tulare as well as also parts of the county. It's going to be the main focus as our main recruitment place area that we begin to FNL chapters is in the city of Tulare. Um, and then as we continue to grow, we're looking to expand throughout the county. Got it.

How will you recruit the students that will be on this, uh, mentorship committee?

So, fortunately, uh, Friday night live has had a existing mentorship, um, with the state, um, a statement or state council youth council. Um, so with guidance of them, we've been communication with the schools and the districts as looking to identify that criteria. And then we'll be starting the recruitment process, um, and through applications and then and then selecting those students.

My only thought is I, I was an educator for 35 years. So thank you. Thank you for your service all aboard for this, but I'm just also hoping that it would be, there will be a diverse group of students that they're not going to be the ASB, just the ASB students, but we would reach out to those students who maybe are in poverty and are really looking to, to find some kind of a place to be heard and seen.

And truly what we're looking as we start to, as we start to build Friday night, live chapters at the schools within Tulare city that those students are going to be the ones that truly have that precedence to be able to be part of this youth council. Currently, right now, I'm, I'm pretty confident as have having attended the. uh friday night live here in at the boys and girls club um that these are a diverse population of students that are you know as these students are going for after school for that place safe place to be uh again this is also giving them a point uh uh an opportunity to start doing some advocation we um we attended an event last spring where the boys and girls club of tulare hosted a um pretty you want to just talk about let's start

Yeah, no. Um, so last spring, the, um, slurry boys and girls club had been working all year on a cannabis prevention project. And so they did some data collection. They did some surveys throughout their schools and also the club. And so what they did is they have, they have a youth night every month, once a month that the students, all the youth all plan. So that night in, um, April, was on 420. Yeah, that's when it happened to be on 420. They ended up doing it was open to the entire community. They had community resources there. They invited all of the youth into Larry that was welcome to attend and they reviewed their survey results. They had created a podcast for like a Q and a kind of a sit down where they had interviewed each other on misconceptions about cannabis use. and different situations that they encounter on their campuses. So they launched their podcast and then they had a variety with our opposite support. We have cannabis goggles and different like pedal carts and activities for students to interact with to see what that could potentially look like and how it impacts driving motor skills, all the things. So that's what they were doing.

Thank you.

And Friday Night Live has a history of looking to recruit students and to give voice to many and not just that popularity.

Those that already are leaders. Yeah. That's great.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Just wanted to echo on that because in my experience, I mean, it's great to have diversity. can't all be straight a students you gotta have some c students in there to kind of mix it up in terms of uh having some kids that are street smart understand what it's like to be on the street and all the challenges so um the ages are 14 to 20 is that what what i saw Okay, because I know unfortunately, sometimes you got to go down into middle school to start educating. So none of that. So will any presentations be done in middle?

Well, part of that is, as we develop this youth council, we're now going to be empowering the youth to then share their messages. Part of some of their goals is to share out at other school sites and to be able to share the information again. And we're hoping so. Absolutely. So that it's a peer. You know, it's the idea of, could we get a high schooler talking to a middle schooler about that? This is not the way and, you know, uh, you know, talking to those of those, the students, and there's other opportunities, other things to do it as other things to get involved in. Um, and and really showing that.

So this grant is purely in terms of just educational leadership, mentorship development. There's no enforcement. There's no stings that the department will be doing with any of that stuff. Part of this grant.

We've been in meetings with law enforcement and we would partner with them. They have signed on as to be part of our team. And so absolutely, it's something that if the young people feel that that's where they want the project to go, then we would definitely do that.

Because I share I'm not concerned with our retailers per se. I mean, it's like Fort Knox trying to get in there. So, but I'm concerned. I wouldn't know, Mr. I've been there plenty. I asked people to go out and smoke a little more so we can get more revenue, more revenues for kids. I've been every year trying to get money out of the cannabis for kids, but all of it's going to the homeless. So I'm hoping that. We have a higher productive year to give the kids some money, but I guess what I, what I'm thinking is they're going to be enforcement, like, with other shops that may sell some kind of products.

So that will be part of our relationship and the development with kids and also talking to your chief. If the feedback from our students, as we start to do that survey is that. Well, yes, you can just, we're doing taps out by the, you know, we're standing, you know, um, over by boot barn and they, we just have somebody go walk over to valley pier and pick it up for me. Um, if the kids are sharing that, absolutely. We're going to continue to share that off that, that information, um, with, with your police force so that they can go ahead and continue that because it is to stop, um, again, underage use and then that illicit use. If also we're getting information from kids that there's a Nova, you know, that's, you know, parked back down the street. And if you want to go there, that blue car, just always go there. And they're the ones that we want to be able to share that. And then we'll pass that on and communicate it.

And that's why a big piece is the involvement part. So the survey that the young people are going to create in partnership with some of our consultants and experts in the industry, that'll really drive the project as well.

Along that line, how much education are you engaged in as it relates to driving while impaired um and that aspect are is that part of the program could you repeat it one more time i'm sorry sir well you you've indicated the ages some of these kids are old enough to have a driver's license and and my concern is how how much effort are you um taking as far as education is concerned about uh driving while impaired thank you for um it

we're we're actually just coming off a grant um that we were we we went to multiple of Tulare football games uh Tulare West all of them um actually I think we attended all of them with a drive high get a DUI booth um we have so so the office that Brittany and I specifically work out of is the prevention office at the Tulare County Office of Ed where we specifically do ATOD alcohol tobacco other drug prevention as well as resilience training um across the county we have um in One of the things that we do to help show that is we bought full size adult pedal cars, pedal cars that can hold 400 pounds. We put we put students in it. We put adults in it. We put them in. We have them drive through just a simple course with a stopwatch. unfazed we then put goggles that simulate them being under the influence it changes their depth perception we then have them go through the course again but honestly the biggest impact is from the spectators from the spectators watching as they see their individual that their their peer drive through the course and start hitting cones that we may have taped a puppy to or something you know um but to drive through the course to show that we're really you're really not okay that you are under the influence that's been a major that's it's been that activity that has been great we also um you've all heard of the game operation right we all played that one as a kid we have a life-size operation like with a that's five foot ten um where the students again how many pieces can they get in a minute without the goggles and then we put them on so that they show that they're so they simulate being in the how many pieces could they get? Would you want your doctor getting high before doing surgery? And to stress that we've done retrospective surveys for the past two years of that grant with 85% of the students saying they didn't realize the impact that driving under the influence had until they were able to participate. We've even just gone out to schools and just given two kids pairs and have them try to high five each other and just miss. And so the education part is, so one, we're educating them, of course, on the harms, the danger, development with the brain, developing with their bodies. We're talking about the impairment, but then we're also, because we're connecting, we're talking about specifically that they can get a DUI and that they are impaired driving.

And does that extend not only to cars, but so many kids these days are- E-bikes, those fast bikes, yes.

Yes, and they're riding without helmets and they're doing, yeah, I mean, they're asking for problems, but- What we're doing, we're showing the awareness that when you're under the influence, you are not, that you are altered. And by having them participate in these activities or watch other students participate in the activities, we hope that it addresses that point.

I think the chief would confirm that you can be arrested for driving under the influence.

Part of this grant will be students knowing as we educate the students to educate their peers, knowing what the penalties are on the legal side as well for doing these sorts of things.

Council, are you ready for action? I don't think we have any action.

I think we're pushing the action to next. Okay, I thought he said, but we wanted to present we wanted to share and wanted to just take an opportunity to get if there was any additional questions that we can ask receive the present.

Yeah, so next next council meeting, the resolution will be on the consent calendar.

Okay, thank you so much. Thank you for terrific. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

Okay, moving forward on our agenda 8.2 Zumwalt Park Amphitheater 2026 concert series update. Mr. Mondale.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just like last year, mid-year in the concert series, we gave you a mid-season update. So we're going to do that again for you this year. Um, it's I'm going to take my time. There's a lot of information in here. Um, I'm going to walk through because I think it's very important because there continues to be misinformation in the community. I want to put on the record the facts and certainly answer any questions. You'll notice that there's about 400 plus letters of support for the concert series and specifically spade entertainment. I'm not intending to walk you through those letters, but if you haven't looked at them, I'd encourage you to. They're actually really interesting. Very impressive. Um, the amount of specificity and each 1 talks about. The benefit of this concert series, the park, the operator to them specifically and these are. Many of these folks are either folks that are gone to the concerts. Uh, or are vendors at the concerts or nonprofits associated with this activity or business owners downtown? I would qualify all of them as people that are fully vested in the concert series. They're the folks that are spending their monies and their time and their energies on a concert series. Uh, and then at the end, uh, after the staff report, then I'm also going to present, uh, an updated economic impact analysis last year. We had 1 at the end of the year, the cosmos, our economic consultant prepared. We asked them to update it for where we're at in the concert series this year and then project where we think we might be if. Of what we've seen so far in the 1st, 7 shows is any pattern for the next 5 or 6 shows. So I'll go over that with you. I would just ask if you wouldn't mind maybe holding your questions until the end. If you can't and you need to, certainly ask. But I want to make sure I cover everything. And I think maybe I'll cover a lot of your questions in the process. So right from the very beginning, and then so we're not only doing an update, but we're also asking some additional funds to carry us through the balance of this concert series through the end of this December. Keep in mind when you're thinking about the funding, the funding kind of bridge fiscal years, right? So because what happens is our fiscal year goes from July 1st to June 30th. But Spade Entertainment, our operator, actually, for example, right now is starting to book shows for next concert season, right? And so even though we're finishing up these concerts, you know, we're about halfway, a little more than halfway through, they're already planning and working on next year shows. And the other thing to keep in mind is some of these numbers are estimates because they don't get all the revenues until later. The ticketing platforms that people buy tickets on, they may not provide that revenue to Spade till 30 days plus after the show. So they're using in some cases their best estimates for the numbers. So just to begin with, from at least staff's perspective and from all the metrics and the data that we're able to see, Zumwalt Park and the Adventist Health Amphitheater, along with the city's concert series continues to grow in popularity. but as I mentioned, there's still some misinformation, misunderstanding about a variety of aspects of the park. I'm hoping to clear those up through this presentation. So the first one is why did the city redevelop Zumwalt Park? The city's fully invested in redeveloping Tulare's downtown. And we talked about this through the downtown master plan process. In order to redevelop a downtown, you have to do several key things, and it's all about people. You have to have people living downtown, You have to have people working downtown, shopping downtown, eating and drinking downtown and entertaining and recreating downtown. And you really need to do all those things simultaneously to have a successful, typically in most cases, a successful downtown. So, you know, where I remember when I interviewed four and a half years ago, one of the big discussions in the interview process is how do we redevelop our downtown? We've been vested in downtown for so many years. We spent so much money. It'll be five this September. That's correct. That's true. Correct Thank you. Thank you. Um, and so, you know, we've been working on it obviously ever since and it's important for downtown sort of the center of the entire city and all the citizens and all of our visitors. It has been for many years. It's a commerce center and we want to continue to reinforce that and reinvigorate that. And so. 1 of the big 1st moves was to redevelop some more park. And why do we do that? Because it was a passive park. It wasn't really attracting anyone to the downtown. It was a nice amenity for our residents, but nobody was driving from Fresno to go to somewhat park, right? Or Los Angeles, or certainly not out of state to go to some more park. And so we created an active park. And we put an amphitheater in it with a concert series. So the park on a daily basis serves our citizen. And if you haven't been out there and you haven't visited, you need to go. My window sits right outside the park and every day, especially now, when it's hot every day from about 9 in the morning to. I mean, I'm not 8 o'clock at night. Probably we've got kids and that splash pad and on that playground and so. It's really been very well accepted, I think, by the community and continues to grow as people become familiar with it. and part of the reason we needed to do something like that especially the concert series is that's what attracts people to the downtown i told you early on that we think it'll be somewhere in the 35 000 to 50 000 People range in terms of the attraction, and we needed to do that because our downtown, unlike many other downtowns, for example, by Celia's doesn't have big attractors for people to come by Celia has the hospital. They have the county offices. They have the city offices. They have the convention center. Those things are all very deliberately there to attract people to the downtown. We didn't have anything like that. We have a hospital, but it's not walking distance to the downtown. We have city offices, but they're not all located downtown. Right? So. bringing that concert series brings people to the downtown. And when those people come downtown, what do they do? They spend money. They go and they go to restaurants and they go to the bars and they go to the retail shops. So not only does it help our existing vendors, business owners to be successful, but it attracts more business owners to come to downtown. And when those people spend their money at those businesses that generates revenue for the city, right? All right, so using round numbers, this is kind of how did we pay for that project? So the project was a $15 million project, but we only spent $5 million of our own local taxpayer dollars on it. And let me explain that to you. So you'll remember that we had $5 million in federal one-time ARPA funds. Those are not tax dollars generated locally. Those are tax dollars generated from all around the country. and council could have spent we had a total of about 18 million we could have spent them on a lot of different things than we did i think council did a great job of diversifying how we were going to spend those money with a focus on dollars that could generate a return on our investment long term so we used 5 million in federal arpa funds you'll remember that we had about seven and a half million dollars of park development impact fees and the way the impact fees work is after developer pays those impact fees you have to use those on capacity building projects so you don't use them for maintenance and you have to really commit them and spend them within five years failing which you give them back to the developers and when i got here we didn't really have any eligible projects to spend that money on that was a capacity building project and we were getting to that point where we're gonna have to give that money back so rather than give that money back we intended to use it for what it was intended for which is a capacity building project a redevelopment of zumwalt park a reimagination of zumwalt park which clearly is attracting people adding new elements to the park The remaining 5M dollars was our fund balance was our local tax dollars. So. My opinion, that's a hell of a leverage to use 5M of your own. To get 10M and other people's money to build a 15M dollar project. And ever since we've done that, we continue to see an increase in activity downtown and increase in park visitation. And in fact, on the next page of my presentation, we've got a couple of slides. We show you what the average daily population has been in the downtown going back from 2019 all the way to currently in 2026. And we're not done with 2026 yet. Right? And so we had about 8816 people in 19. you saw those numbers drop during the pandemic and then you've seen those numbers sort of fluctuate back and forth and you see them now since 2024 going up. So we are. Last year we were 85, 39 through the whole year. This year we're at 88, 65. So more than what we had in 19 and we're not done with the year yet. I think the next one's very interesting. This is the average monthly attendance at Zumwalt Park. So you go back to 19, you had about 3,800 people. Again, we're not through 2026 yet and we're looking at 13,000 and change per month coming to some more park. So that I think demonstrates that our desire to build a park that was going to attract people into the park and into the downtown is working now. We said it would attract people. We said it would generate sales tax revenue. Hopefully hotel tax revenue when we have people coming from out of town additional gas tax revenue. And I'm going to show you that in the economic impact analysis when we get to that at the end. But I also said, it's going to take us at least 3 years to establish the venue. Like, any business, you know, the very 1st year people are like, I mean, every once in a while, you still get somebody that says. when did this happen where how did this project happen right and they're like i live a mile away from here and i had no idea about it so it takes a while to establish the venue work out all the kinks from an operational perspective effectively market it attract the right kind of talent that's willing to come here there's a lot of bands that are not willing to come to a brand new venue especially with those that are in a small market right it's not like we're in atlanta right where you know you've got millions of people that are going to come no matter what That's not what we are. We're a small to mid-sized community in the Central Valley. So it takes a little while to get people to bands and people to want to come to your venue. It takes a lot of marketing and a lot of effort to do that. And so we talked about the reality that from an operational perspective, we're probably going to have to subsidize that operation for a period of time. That's not unlike many other communities. I've shared with you before the city of subsidizes their convention center to the tune of 1.3Million dollars a year. They subsidize their minor league baseball stadium to the tune of about 700,000 a year and that doesn't include capital contributions. They're on the hook for making major capital improvements to those facilities over time. I'm just talking about the annual contribution to attract those people to use those facilities for the same reason we do. In the first year of operation, the series attracted 11,400 paid attendees, including 73,000 total guests and 42,000 unique visits. So of that 73,000 total guests, some of those were people who left and came back, right? They went to the show or they did something. They went out, got some dinner, and they came back. But those are 42,000 unique visits, approximately 10% of attendees were from the city of Tulare. And we talked about that last year. That's been 1 of my frustrations is the other 2 venues that I was involved in in my prior communities. We started out closer to about 25% local attendance. And until Larry, unfortunately, we are only at about 10%. The good news that number is going up and we're going to share that with you here shortly. Uh, but last year we had attendees from 12 different states resulting in about 250 hotel nights and about 250,000 dollars was generated an off site off site, meaning not at some all park off site, retail sales sales. Now, this is where it gets kind of tricky. The original operator agreement included terms, which due to limited ticket sales have not yet fully materialized. I won't go through all those terms, but the way we set it up originally was very optimistic. We set it up such that, for example, Spade Entertainment, they would be responsible to go out and get sponsorships and they would retain 80% of the sponsorship revenue and the city would get 20% of the sponsorship revenue. Unfortunately, because the ticket sales hasn't materialized to the extent that we are wanting it to, it's not where we hope it will be yet. They've had to take that sponsorship revenue and dump it back into the concert series. So even though they're entitled to keep it, they're not. They're putting it back into the concert series, just like the revenues we're entitled to, right? So we're entitled to a certain amount from the ticket sales, like $1 per ticket or up to $3 depending on ticket price. That money is just getting dumped back into the shows to try to keep the shows afloat. for this period of time. So because of that fact, we needed to pivot away and we don't have a specific agreement that says this is how we're going to do it. It's been sort of how we've established it as we've gone. We've done some similar things, like for example, I'll talk about the show with Rooks Agency. We structured most of the concerts last year and all the concerts this year, a similar structure to what we have with Rooks for their one show they're going to do in September, which is The operator, in this case, Spade, or in that case, Rooks, they're not the operator. They're getting the artists and the marketing. They get a flat fee of 5,000 per show. And then what the operator, Spade, has been doing is they get to keep net proceeds from alcohol sales. So after they have all the alcohol sales, they pay all their expenses, whatever's left. If there's anything left, not every show there's anything left. Some shows there's not even enough money to cover the expenses. They keep those net proceeds. but the thing you have to remember with these guys is all of their expenses their travel time their hotel time all of that stuff comes out of that money so when you look at how much money they have left and i'm not going to get into that that's their business but it's not a ton of money left at the end of the day for them all right so for the second year of operations you'll remember um we went back in december Um, I think it was December last year, and you approved a contract amendment, extending their contract through December of 27 and included several bullet points. The city was going to waive the cost of police over time. We are going to wave the sponsorship fee. We are going to establish 250,000 dollar artist deposit. That's what they use to secure the artist upfront. We're going to allocate $75,000 for marketing, which is what we pay Spade for them to do marketing. And they use that money to pay billboard companies and radio advertisements and social media posts, etc. We're going to allocate $175,000 for production, janitorial and security for this year's concert shows. And we also allocated $50,000 for the end of the year Posada, which is kind of coordinated through Includus Labs and Rooks Agency. Um, in addition on March, 3rd of this year, the city approved the use of up to an additional 40,000 dollars to cover the cost of the 250. Independence Day anniversary featuring the Sequoia Symphony. The great news about that is through the concerted efforts of Spade Entertainment and Councilmember Medeiros and others, most of that cost of the city's cost of that show was sponsored, was covered by other people. We didn't have to use that $40,000 for all of those expenses. Spade has their own costs, and I'm going to go over what their costs are on the show. They didn't cover all their costs, but most of our costs, if not all of our costs, were covered. Their perspective on their cost is that was the donation that was a donation to the city and they were excited about having the symphony and they're hoping like we are that we'll continue to have the symphony come back every year. Um. On May 5th of this year, the city approved the use of up to an additional 132,000 dollars in support of 1 additional Hispanic concert in partnership with rocks, which I've already mentioned that show is going to be on September 13th. Um, we did that because. Spade has a lot of experience with all genres of music, but their expertise is not necessarily Hispanic shows. They've put on Hispanic shows here. They've done it in other places for years. But it appeared to me that Rooks, they have a specialty and expertise in Hispanic type of shows, and they've had some success in the past. And so we brought that forward to concert and said, why don't we give them a shot working with Spade? They'll partner together. Rooks will be the ones responsible for getting the artists and the marketing. Spade will be responsible for production and other aspects of the show. And so that show is yet to occur, but it's right around the corner. It seems to be tracking well. They're selling tickets for that now. Now, I think the remaining sort of issue is the ongoing operational cost of the concerts. And we get it. Our goal from the beginning has always been to try to get the all the revenues from the concert series to cancel out all the expenses. And that would include ticket revenue, alcohol sales, parking revenue. Big one is sponsorships, right? That's our goal. We're not near that goal, obviously. If we increase ticket sales, I'd say if we're able to increase those by 50%, and if we increase sponsorships, and I'm going to talk about that for a second, because Todd and I had an agreement in the very beginning. And this is what Todd likes to do when he goes into communities is he doesn't reach out to major national brands for sponsorships. He only works with local businesses first to try to see if the community can support it fully on its own. Uh, that doesn't always happen. That's the goal next year. Todd's already started the process of reaching out to national brands to see if we can get some sponsorship revenue from them. Heck, if you get enough sponsorship from national bands, it might take care of all these costs, but I'm not saying it will. I'm saying that's an example of a way that we can try to increase revenue beyond just ticket sales. All right, but again, so we knew that for the 1st, 3 years, at least we were going to have to subsidize it just like does. It may take longer than 3 years. We don't know, but we knew it take 3 years at least to understand what we're dealing with here. And just as a quick reminder, again, not only does Visalia do it, but many, many other cities do it. In fact, I would tell you that if you look at most big public uses like airports, convention centers, performance centers, baseball stadiums, zoos, those things that attract a lot of people, they don't make money. There are a few exceptions, but most of the time they do not make money. They are heavily subsidized for the reasons I already outlined. I also want to remind council that we spend about 2Million dollars a year currently on park maintenance. That's outside of some. Well, that's just all of our parks combined park maintenance. So, all the parks we have in the city, we own all the capital costs. We own all the operating costs on all the maintenance costs of it. We don't all the liability and risk associated with it. And those parks don't really generate. They might generate a little bit of revenue in terms of, like, gazebo rentals and things and they don't really attract a bunch of people to our community. They serve an important purpose. They serve our citizens just like does. But in addition to that, Zomwalt attracts people to our community to help our businesses and spend money. We also spend about a million dollars a year in park programming outside of Zomwalt Park. And that's for all of our parks, right? And that's for the folks that are local. These are not park programming things for people coming out of Fresno. This is for our citizenry. I'm not complaining about it. I'm just reminding. That's what we do currently. So here's our update. So for the first year of operations, our goal was to establish the venue, to get it to learn how it functions operationally, to increase awareness of the venue. And we were hoping to get 25% local participation. We got 10% local participation. Our next year, this year, second year, our focus has been let's diversify the type of activities. We have a comedy show coming up this weekend, right? We had the symphony. We're trying to change things up to see what work, what makes sense. Also, we always said from the beginning, this is not about generating as much revenue we can. It's about also making sure that there's something for everyone. So every segment of our society will have something to go to that they can enjoy. That's why we have some free concerts at the venue, et cetera. So this year, we have 12 concerts planned. We've done seven. We have five remaining. I already talked about that. Here's sort of the numbers where we're at as of the best guesstimate we have based on today. Total revenue about $436,000. That's ticket sales, sponsorships, and net bar, other miscellaneous revenues. Operator's expenses, Spade Entertainment's expenses, about $418,000. So we put money down on artist's deposits, but they do as well. Or sometimes we'll put money up front for an artist, the deposit itself, but then the goal is always that there'll be enough revenue from the show that you pay everything else out of that revenue. And then when it's not, either the city picks that up or Spade picks that up. And so we kind of work through those. What we've historically been paying for the last two years, the city itself has been paying Where are we at? Artist deposits, production costs, which are usually fairly expensive, security, janitorial, video for after the concerts, and then the marketing dollars that we give to Spade. The operator cash on hand is just about $17,000 or change. That's what they have in their pockets right now to last them through the rest of this concert series. Obviously, they'll get some more revenue in that they don't have yet. In the future shows, the next five shows, there'll be some more revenue comes in. We don't know what that'll be yet. All right, let me see. I covered that. Covered that. Our expenses to date have been $868,000. The city subsidy has been $687,000. That includes the 550,000 approved back last year in December, the 132 you guys approved this year on 5-5-26. The remaining subsidy that we need to cover the balance of costs going forward is about $181,000 and change. The request we're asking for you tonight is 160,000 because we would use spades $17,000 and change, our $160,000 to try to attack that $180,000, $81,000 estimate. We think we can get it done. We'll cut some costs some places. Spade will beat up some of the folks to lower their costs, etc. So here we go. The primary goal of this year's concert series was to increase local ticket sales from 10% to 25%. We're pleased to advise that local ticket sales are averaging 39.8% per concert show so far. So that's a huge increase. We're really excited about that. In 2025, the average concert attendance was around 1,900. In 2026 so far, that number has increased to about 2,400. That's also very exciting. We've been able to demonstrate through a variety of means, including these letters of support that the shows are having a positive impact on local businesses, nonprofits and guests. The staff are having the city's economic consultant, Cosmo, which I'm going to present to you after this, give this the economic impact. And then we've identified in terms of the $160,000. We've identified several sources of special one time funds that can be used to cover this additional subsidy expense. So we're not even though in short term, we're using general fund as these other funds come in, but we've identified a handful of other sources of funds that we did not budget for that are new one time dollars coming in that we fully believe will cover the hundred, we think it'll exceed $160,000. All right, we're also continuing to work on ways to reduce expenses for next year, as well as increase expenses. So here's the potential changes that we're talking about for next year. I'm not asking you to vote on this tonight. I'm just trying to preview it for you so you know we're fully aware of these issues and we're trying to work on them. One is we're contemplating a contract extension, a three-year term with two one-year renewals. This will come to you for a vote in December. So when Spade does their annual report in December, just like last year, this is when we would bring back a proposed contract change. Um, we would provide the ticketing platform. So what we're thinking about there is I've given you, um, I've let, you know, over the last couple of months that we're moving forward with a company called be with to create a community calendar on our website. That's something council talked to me about when I interviewed. Something we've been working towards, but we've been trying to figure out who's the right vendor. What's the right way to do it where we don't have to spend all our staff time doing it. So, we're really excited that should go live here at the end of this month. 1 of the interesting things about that platform. Or that software is they actually have a ticketing platform that's built into the cost for our community calendars. If you want a community calendar. You also get thrown in this ticketing platform. It's not an additional expense. It just comes with it. You can choose to use it or not. So they've sat down with spade spade thinks it's a good platform. So he can reduce his expenses probably by 20 grand or so if we use their ticketing platform. So that's 1 change we're proposing to make. We also, the Parks Department needs some additional staffing. There were 30 positions requested this year from all the departments. We didn't, I didn't recommend any to council this year. One of them was a full-time recreation coordinator position. And one of the things that we've, Chris and I've talked about is if we take that position during the concert series, a couple months before, and have them work part-time on group sales. So if you look at minor league baseball, for example, there's somebody who's out calling all the little league teams and all the social clubs and all the different organizations saying, hey, we'd love to host you for a show, bring your friends, your families for a fee of $3,000. You'll get X number of tickets. You'll get to get up on the stage and we'll honor you. So it's that same basic model. Most venues do that. Spade doesn't have the capacity to do that. So that's something we were recommending that we take on. They'll come back to you in December. What we are also suggesting is that the city would receive all the revenue, including ticket sales and sponsorships, and we'd also be responsible for all expenses. The operator would get a flat fee for their operations per show, and they get to keep 20% of their sponsorship revenue that they bring in. They're going to pursue corporate sponsorships. The operator will receive all net proceeds from food and beverage sales. And then operator would continue to work with rooks agency on all Hispanic shows going forward, depending on how the outcome of this September show goes. So that completes the staff report i'm not going to get into the letters, but Melissa can you pull up the economic impact analysis is this what I have here to advance those slides this go pretty quick and then we'll open the questions. I would encourage you, if you have time, to look at those letters, though. I was surprised at the impact it's had on so many people, so many families, and in ways that you can't really monetize. I was talking to one of the council members recently, and I don't know if you remember this council. When I was interviewing, you asked me, what do I think are our biggest challenges? And I said, well, one is homelessness. The other is going to be financial. I said, but the biggest challenge of all, in my opinion, is our community's sense of self-worth. I think Tulare has had a little bit of a chip on its shoulder and has felt like good things happen in other places, but not here. We've tried things and it didn't work. We're always going to be lesser than Visalia. And I don't agree with that at all. And the amount of pride that this one project has created in this community, just read the letters and you'll see it. I've been very happy with that outcome. All right, so here's what Cosmont gave us, economic impact. So this is what they've done. They looked at the existing shows and they track all the data using Placer AI. It tracks mobile data information. So they know where people, they don't know who the people are, but they know where they come from, where they go, et cetera. And then they can pull some basic demographic information about these individuals. So here's the shows that we've had so far. There's some more acts scheduled, as we mentioned. We've got the comedy show this weekend. We've got a country show coming up and a reggae festival as well. Of course, we have the big Latin show coming up and then the Posada at the end of the year with the Christmas event. They track data across 30 million people across the US. Basically, they're looking at, based on visits to the Zumwalt Park, and they define what that area is that lasts at least 10 minutes. So if you're there shorter than 10 minutes, like if you're an Uber driver dropping someone else off, that doesn't get counted. It includes visits to commercial and other businesses fronting on Zumwalt Park, may include multiple visits to the park from the same people on the same day. We already mentioned that. And this is over pretty much a two-month period from May 8th through, at that point it was July 11th. So estimates about 73,000 people, 42 unique visitors in 2025. I already told you that. In 2026, thus far, they're estimating 49,300 visits from 33,500 unique visitors during the 2026 events, right? So last year was 42,000 unique visitors for the whole year. This is 33,500 just made to July. So the average daily visits on concert dates grew by 15% from 21. Well, you see the numbers, sorry, I won't get into all that. But it grew even more on concert dates by 23%. 86% of the visits to the Zumwalt Park come from Tulare County with 61% coming from a three mile radius of Zumwalt Park. That's a huge change and increase from last year. And then 4% come from over a hundred miles away, 1% from out of state representing 18 different states. positive economic impact. Last year in 2025, it was $250,000 in offsite visitor spending from concert attendees. Based on what we're seeing so far, we're looking at about 191,500, including 168,000 in offsite and about 22,000 in hotel room revenue. based on some projections, if we use those numbers, they're estimating full season attendance to reach between 85,000 to 98,000 people this year. They're saying that that could generate somewhere between 333 and 382,000 in offsite visitor spending. uh about 7491 directly to the city and sales tax and tot revenues uh plus additional tax on on-site spending which you don't count the on-site on-site spending here that rolls back into the concert series but one thing they don't talk about that i want you to remember is these dollars rotating in the community even though this is one this is a snapshot of one-time spending When people are spending this money at our local businesses, those businesses are taking that money and spending it back in the community. It's one thing if you spend it at a national retailer where those revenues go back wherever corporate headquarters are. When you're spending with a local small business, those dollars typically stay and rotate at least four times in the community. All right. So that's just the area. So we know what we're talking about. Here's what some of that data comes down to in terms of maybe more of the granular specific information, average household income, average length of stay. This is during the concerts. Here's something that's interesting. You know, this shows you kind of what's happening on a daily basis. And you can kind of see on the concerts, those are the big spikes, right? I think so. This one here. That's based on plaster data's information. That's household, so that's not individual, that's everybody in the household. Here's some more demographic information for you. Most common ethnicities, 62%, which is reflective of our communities, about 65%. Here's sort of a trade area map right so it shows you the concentration or two people are typically coming from obviously mostly into Larry county and the adjacent counties and then you see outcroppings out of the L. A. Area and out of the Bay area. So, they're coming from all over the place. It's not 1 direction. It's from every direction in the city. of where do they go where do they come from where do they go after the show so you get a sense here of you know what they're coming from home before visiting after visiting are they going home are they coming from home are they going back home and where are they going in between Now Todd and his team have worked on, but over time intends to continue to work on deals with all the local businesses and vendors. Hey, come to dinner here and get 50% off or 20% off your ticket or whatever it is. He'll continue to work on those things as we go forward. Here's the hotels, the number of, you know, which, where they stayed at, at the different hotels. Most of those are in Tulare, not all of them, a couple outside of the city. John Potter, All right, and so that present that's the end of that so Council, I and Todd spielman and claudia spielman are here to answer any of the questions that you have. John Potter, What you got.

John Potter, So with staff presentation in the part what I will do is go to public comment.

Get my.

John Potter, Is there anyone in chambers who'd like to make public comment post the staff presentation on zoom all park amphitheater 2026 concert series update. John Potter, Do we have anyone on the phone or webinar. John Potter, Okay. All right. With that, council members comes Mr. Harold. John Potter, Councilman seagal.

Yes, thank you for the pretty lengthy presentation, very informative. Yes, 420 pages out of our 700 pages were food good letters and folks that shared their thoughts, which is great. I mean, I have no doubt, no doubt in my mind that people have a great time, have fun, and some of our businesses are making money. I would imagine the Tap Yard, one of those that I've gone to after concerts. is doing very well. So there's no doubt about that. There's no doubt about the facts that city manager talked about how we built the park and how it's been great. I drive by there every once in a while. I love seeing families. I love seeing kids using it, people hanging out. So I'm hoping, I'm thinking some of those numbers are those kids and those families that come, right? Not necessarily all concert, but just people that use the park. But I think I go back to just some of the fundamental questions that I have in regards of expectations, accountability, and continued financial investment into the series. I think that one of the questions I have, and I think you might have answered, but I didn't get any specifics, is what is the goal on the return now? What is the expectation? If it's a $100,000 concert, if it's a half a million dollar concert, $200,000 concert, what is the expectation the city manager feels is appropriate? Is it 90%, 10%, 1% return? What is the expectation of that? Yeah, please.

Yeah, so I wouldn't define it that way. I wouldn't define it that way because there's no 2 shows are alike. So I wouldn't, for example, some of our shows are completely free, right? So there is no return of this, but we just lose money. If you're talking about in terms of dollars, right? Some concerts may be really big productions, but we may not make money on that concert because that's what we're doing to attract and lure people into the downtown. The way I look at it is more at the end of the year. are we are we how much are we subsidizing the concert series that's what i'm really trying to focus on our goal our goal is to get it to where there is no subsidization that would be our ultimate goal that doesn't happen in every community it usually has a better chance at happening in the more affluent communities and the larger communities because you have a much bigger demographic to pull from in this community i would say you know next year and remember now How you get there to where revenues are equaling or hopefully largely covering expenses is either going to be through ticket sales. It could be through other minor things like food and beverage sales. Those all matter, but there's much smaller compared to ticket sales. And the big one is sponsorships. If you get the right number of sponsors, if we're successful next year, for example, in getting some large corporate sponsors that are national brands, and there's no guarantee we will, but if we're successful in that, you can wipe out all of the subsidy, right? So our focus will be, how do we lower costs? I gave you an example of that with the ticket platform. How do we increase ticket sales? I gave you a couple examples of that with the part-time person that's gonna do group sales, If Council votes on that in December, and Todd's team working on national sponsorships, we're also working on some regional sponsorships ourselves. We're having conversations with large regional companies that don't just have a footprint in Tulare. And so if that combination of those with the cost saving measures and increase in ticket sales, even if we increase ticket sales by 25%, I think there's a very good chance we'll cut our subsidy down in half.

Well, let me ask the question in a different way so I might get the answer that I'm looking for. What has there been an analysis of the five concerts today this year in terms of yes they're different they have to track different people and they're different genres but has there been an analysis by concert saying okay the concert costs $100,000. Ticket sales brought in $5,000 beer sales brought in $1,000. Sponsorships brought in 10,000. Has there been an analysis of the concerts to that degree? In other words, I have information that's been provided to me through you, but I don't know if it's complete. But the information that's been provided to me pretty much says that the city is subsidizing 80% to 90% of each concert. So is that accurate?

Well, I haven't looked at it from that perspective. I'd have to go back and look at everything I presented to you to make sure I'm comfortable with it. I think one of the things that's missing, and I could be wrong because I'm trying to remember, I think one of the things that is missing is we may not have done a very good job of clarifying for you How much of that was actually City subsidy versus Spade Entertainment subsidy? How much of that have they been covering that? I haven't really, until this memo, I didn't do a good job of breaking that out for you. So I could try to go back and do that kind of analysis.

I just haven't done it like that. When I'm curious, I guess another question I have, and Mr. Mayor, you can stop me whenever to go to the next council members because I got a lot of questions. And so The question I have, we voted on our budget a couple of weeks ago or a couple of months ago. In the budget, there was $250,000 allocated for the concerts. So what you're asking today is in addition to that $250,000?

Well, allocated in the budget, I think.

Yeah, you told us it was for use from July 1st to June 30th. I brought up the issue that it probably will be all used this year. So the $250,000 that was in the July 1st budget, Is this $160,000 in addition to this? Yes. So that would get us to $410,000 plus the $500,000 from earlier this year. Because I don't count the Posada. I hope that Posada is done by Rooks and whoever else takes care of that. I don't count the Posada. I think the Posada should be an event on its own without the operator. But if we take out that $50,000, that's $500,000. plus 250 plus 160 is what we're subsidizing.

Yeah, but just keep in mind, some of those dollars are different budget years.

Of course, yeah, they're budget years. Yeah, we made that clear. So I think for me, what I'm interested in understanding is the entire picture of revenue. From what I received, what's been shared with me is there's a concert that costs X amount of dollars. to pay the artists, to pay the production, to pay the M&Ms that the artist wants in the green room, to pay for whatever it takes to do the concert. And then there's a revenue that, from what I've seen, is only ticket generation, I mean, is what comes from ticket sales. But there's a whole other equation of sponsorships. I know that there is a fee charged to all the people that sell food. There, right? Every, I don't know if it's every concert or it's a yearly thing. I mean, I've talked to those vendors. I'm hoping that in the future, they're to Larry vendors. And now other city vendors, but that they are, I mean, there are plenty of taco trucks in to Larry to to sell food at zoom wall. And so, um. I'm just trying to understand what the big pictures I don't want to. say, hey, to me, it's shocking that it's such a big event and there's such little revenue when there's a lot of revenue missing.

Well, I've given you that number in the staff report. So the total revenue this year from the shows, for the first seven shows, we've had seven shows, is $436,135. That includes ticket revenue, sponsorship revenue, net bar revenue because you got to take out his expenses and then other miscellaneous so those other things you're talking about that's the other miscellaneous right because because what we've given we've given up as a city

is sponsorship funds, right? 20%. We've given up ticket sales. So it just, I mean, for me, I'm not an accountant, but the math just doesn't jive. It just doesn't jive. Even with what you tell me, like, oh, wow, these concerts have made 400,000 from what the P&Ls I received over the last five concerts, and they stopped coming to us. I don't know why, but we don't get them anymore. It doesn't add up to 436,000. It adds up to maybe at the most 100,000. So I'm trying to understand the math. You know, what's the skin in the game?

Because you didn't because as I was trying to explain to you a second ago, when we when you do it on a per concert basis, we don't add sponsorship revenue into sponsorship. Revenue is on top of the whole concert series, right? It's not sponsorship revenue for this concert. It's sponsorship revenue for the concert series, right? So when you're looking at those panels per concert, you're only looking at the specifics of that one show. So I'm giving you now, for example, and I could break it out even further if you'd like, but I can't do it tonight. I'd have to do it later. But I'm telling you that when you add sponsorship, and I don't remember sponsorships, maybe 160,000. Todd, I don't remember if you remember that number off the top of your head.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. Yeah, I think it was like 164,000 in sponsorship. And I'm not sure what you guys are seeing. I know that I provide P&Ls to Mark, but we don't sell sponsorship per show. We sell for the series. And Mr. Sagala, on the food trucks, you don't know our business with the food trucks. Not every food truck is charged money to be there, but I did include that in the revenue for Mark. A lot of times we do trade. So for instance, the chicken shack, they are not paid. They don't pay us a fee. They provide sandwich trays for the artists at lunchtime. And we have that case with a ton of the food trucks on every concert. And as far as any of these trucks not being in Tulare, we work with people that want to work with us.

Good. We'd be happy to, you know, have you meet some local Tulare vendors.

Yeah, pass them our way. As long as they're not competing with our current ones, we can talk to them.

I would hope that we would look for Tulare-based vendors. That's all. So I think one of the other things Mr. Mayor would like to kind of act is I was, since Mr. Spielman's up here, there was a sentence in the staff report about about the operator losing money. And I wonder if you can explain how that's working.

You said you're losing money in every event. That was in the staff report.

I mean, I'm not a promoter, but I would imagine there's expenses and there's revenues. Sure. How far short do you, on average for every concert, are you short?

Well, I don't think that's proper for me to discuss right now. Mark can discuss that with you, but I think like Mark said on the P&Ls, we could do a better job of breaking out what Spade pays and what the city pays. Yeah, I think that would be pretty simple.

Because what I see is anybody If I contacted, you know, a majority of those people that sent letters and say, hey, look, yeah, everybody had a great time. I had a great time. I go to concert, have fun. I dance, I sing, you know, maybe buy a beer or two and have fun. I mean, that's no doubt. But if people were to be told, hey, it costs $100,000 and it only made $10,000 in revenue and the city of Tulare is paying the other $90,000, people would probably have, oh, okay. That's my concern is just how much of a subsidy are we going to continue to want to do?

Again, the goal has always been to try to get our subsidies where they're eventually going to go down. That's why we talked about the strategies to try to do that. That's the same thing every city faces like Visalia when they subsidize the convention center or the minor league baseball stadium.

Does the Visalia City Council pay the vendors at the convention center that don't make money? Do they cut them a check?

If the city of Visalia didn't commit $1.3 million a year out of their budget, the convention center would not be profitable.

Well, no, it's to run the convention center, not to pay a concert promoter who fell short on making the money.

Well, we don't subsidize this. We give him a $5,000 fee per show, and then he takes out of that fee any of his expenses. So I don't have the breakdown. I guess we can go pull the budget for the Visalia and try to understand how they do it. I just know how much they commit out of their budget to subsidize. the convention center and again it's you know it's not a concert venue per se i don't know there's a lot of concerts they do have concerts there but it's not a concert venue exclusively right they have trade shows they have all these other things that they do there so if you want me to go spend some time finding out from bycelia how they exactly spend their money i've talked to people and they don't pay uh

promoters. Promoter does a concert in Los Tigres del Norte or Tucanes or some group and, you know, they cost $100,000. City of Visalia doesn't give the promoter, hey, you only made 30, here's the 70 that you didn't make. They don't do that.

We don't do that with him either.

We pay for his bills, right?

No, we give him a $5,000 fee.

No, but we pay the bills for the concerts.

We pay some of the bills and he pays.

Does that include the, do we pay the artist directly?

We pay some of the artists directly. He pays some of the artists directly. Yes.

I'm trying to understand why is the city paying artists directly?

Well, we've had this discussion before and you voted for us to pay the artists directly.

I don't remember voting. I remember voting that we provided a deposit that's never going to come back to us.

Yes, but that gets paid to the artist directly, right? If you don't pay the artist deposit, you don't get the artist.

Well, I'll wait for the next round, Mr. Mears. Mr. Mendoza?

I was impressed with the letters. I read every one of them. An example is Lisa D. Ochoa. I think the Adventist amphitheater is one of the best things to Larry. has had for the community. It brings people together, supports small businesses, and benefits nearby restaurants, hotels, and other local businesses. I've attended many outdoor venues for over the years, and Tulare is quickly becoming one of the best. The entertainment has been excellent, the atmosphere is welcoming, and it's become a wonderful family-friendly destination. I also think Spade Entertainment has done a great job building momentum Bigger artists will come with time, and I think the community understands that. One of my favorite things has been meeting people from all over California, as well as visitors from Texas and Florida who have traveled here to attend concerts. It's exciting to see Tulare becoming a destination for entertainment. I've also heard some great suggestions from others, including offering wine and any large video screen on the right side of the stage. Overall, I think The future is incredibly bright for this venue. This is just an example of the types of letters that we have here. We're building momentum. I think that was an example of what we're dealing with. We cannot subsidize this concert series and shut it down, but we'll have no momentum at that point. Dave Kuntz, i'm satisfied with the types of acts on the strategy that's being implemented as it relates to what spade entertainment is doing and and I encourage the partnership that's being developed with looks as it relates to the Hispanic concerts. We. Probably the one thing I'm impressed with, and it was exemplified in every one of these letters that I read, stayed up real late last night and continued this morning, was the pride that people in this community are feeling as a result of this venue. And I guess we could take some of this money and spend it on other things in the community. But this has a rippling effect. And from a business standpoint, that's very important to a community. It's important to the businesses that support this community. I want to compliment you on the acts that you're bringing in and the approach that you're taking with with staff as it relates to continuing to add this in the right direction, and I hopefully will arrive at where we need to be. As the image of the venue continues to grow, then I'm sure sponsorships will be easier instead of harder. So in that regard, and you know, if you take the amount of money we're subsidizing, what's the total figure, about 900,000, something like that? Yeah, 900,000. Yeah.

Not including previous years.

Yeah, I'm talking about 900,000 per year with a population that we have that's somewhere around $14 a person, something like that. And there's different ways to look at that. But from our standpoint, I think it's a good investment John Potter, With taxpayer dollars to achieve what it is we're trying to achieve and different people can have. John Potter, Different people sitting in this dais can have different opinions. John Potter, backing up and trying to start all over again would be detrimental and basically it would it would be. it, bottom line, it would be detrimental. And I'm prepared to adopt the recommendation that's indicated by staff. Council Member City.

I concur with Council Member Medeiros' assessment. We made a commitment to a three-year commitment to see this through. The improvement has been fantastic. I've attended almost all the concerts, not the hard rock. But the vibe, the atmosphere is so positive. And the talk around that, it's positive. I think that's really a large part of the benefit is the reaction in those 400 letters. I read them as well. And my own personal. I saw that. Yeah. My own personal enjoyment. I've never gone to a concert in my life. I guess it's my generation. I don't know. And I wasn't a Woodstock person either. But I am impressed with Spade Entertainment. I feel like the integrity is exemplary. I feel like the positivity is exemplary. When the artists say that they'll come back, they can't wait to come back because they've been treated so well. i think that speaks a lot for your commitment to keep this going and i'm i'm in for the long haul and i also support this okay

I think from my comments and overview is one, I just want to say of having this on the agenda and the presentation of materials that we have is part of also our goal of keeping this transparent and keeping this topic in front of the community. So I do appreciate Mark and staff, and it was also amongst requests of council members, what is the fiscal status. What are we looking at in subsidies? What is the breakdown overall for the amphitheater related to spades contract vendors? So with that, I just want to say to those who perhaps views, I think, as Councilman Madero said, you might have opinions on this program. The point is, I think, speaking the information to the community. Here's where we're at. Here's what we're doing. and our members of the audience get to hear this discussion and those listening at home. What's the revenue? What's the expenses? What's the subsidy? What's the goals? What are we doing with that? What I understand overall, so what's broken out here in this 25 to 26 show series is so far there's a total revenue of $436,135. That's an all-inclusive revenue. There are that's that's what the operator has our our contracted agent operator has said is the total revenue. The operator has expenses at 418, 861. Those are by understanding Mr. Mondale expenses that the operator has to pay, and the operators paid those monies. So that leaves an operator cash on hand of 17 to 274. So amongst the operators total revenue operators expenses. We had said that Spade collects $5,000 a show. However, with that is, we are not the city in our subsidy breakdown is not making a analysis is not doing a cash subsidy back to Spain. That is, that's clear and that's that's been mentioned. The second part for what you do the breakdown, then, is we get into income, and then the operations we go into city expenses. City Council Chambers, The city has been paying the artist department, the artist deposits has been paying the production team, there are direct cost. City Council Chambers, Part of the question of whether we pay direct costs or not, we have stepped in and we are paying direct costs for that $868,000 the city. City Council Chambers, has previously approved a subsidy of 687 and therefore there's $181,000 remaining, and I would say from that is in looking at those costs, there was a comment. Mr. Segal that said now agrees we're looking at roughly about 80 percent 75 to 80 percent got that I think with that though is then looking at the goals is our goals is to get to no subsidy our goal is to make is to have more local attendance we're going to come back and review do a contract review in December of 2026 and there's a goal of national broader sponsors which helps come into that income right so if we get higher income we want to get less subsidy And the other part is we mentioned implement cost saving goals, so the analysis, which I think are important is we could we mentioned about p&l into concert series but sponsorships the umbrella the cost of the umbrella and what we're looking at. I I agree, and I think with the comments that were made by Councilman Medeiros and Councilman Serre is that overall that that was the goal that we had looked at looking at a three-year deal. We're coming in the middle of part two. We're looking at the status, and we're being asked for a hundred and sixty thousand dollars, and amongst all of that analysis is Council. That's Council decision. And I think the part of that is council is the one making those decisions. We have goals. We have objectives. I grew up here as well. Probably one of the last generations, my age group, our Generation X, we shopped at Carter's Toys. That's no longer there. We remember the Tulare Hotels. Hal Hallstein, And I think with that is we're we're part of that last generation that has a romanticized view of our downtown per se of what what that was and the point we made a goal to come in to. John Potter, Not so much reinvent it was to be a draw to the new successes in the evolution of downtown. John Potter, And we looked at that contract, we looked at the concert series, and I think with all of that 160,000 altogether. John Potter, I think, looking at this this budget year, which was the total and it's put in here of around over 900,000 that's across two years if i'm correct, Mr mondale because these were actions coming out of last budget year which we had subsidies from last year, and then this budget here. John Potter, And well. yeah 12 12 months yeah fair enough yeah 12 months with that one concert series so John Potter, I hope the public and those listening and if i'm making sense with that summary is that's what we are looking to in the commitment is towards those goals. John Potter, And I think some of the other analysis that I hear out in the public and we walk through is. John Potter, we're taking money and what we're doing is we are supplementing or coming back and I think paying spade which is i've seen some comments that that's not the case, what we have done is. We are directly engaged and involved in monitoring the cost, and I think those costs by our staff are making sure that this is transparent. We do have our fingers on it, and Council knows those decisions of what we're subsidizing, and for that is, I approve as as saying, I approve where we're at. But I also appreciate where we're going if the model doesn't work. or if things change, we'll get a chance in December to look at that. And of course, we'll get a chance to talk about those models in the future. And that's what we need to do and go for that.

I agree with everything that's been said. Prior to the meeting, I talked to Todd and Claudia for a minute. And like Councilman Medeiros, I read all of the letters The one thing that I noticed is through all those letters, they said, what a great job Todd was doing. What a great job Spade was doing. Everyone's finally mentioned Claudia. They never once mentioned the city council. I guess we were chopped liver when it comes to this whole project. But I think a great job. Love working with you. Thanks. Thank you.

Mr. Segalo. Before Mr. Segalo says something, I want to say something on behalf of Claudia and I. I think it was five years ago, Mark came to Tulare. Well, Stannis Denison was exactly the time, I think. And I might have shared this story with a few, but Mark said, I'm in Tulare now, I'm the city manager, and I'm going to build an amphitheater. And I said, Mark, I'm from California. I don't know where Tulare is, but I said, I'll check it out. And uh you know we talked about that there was going to be an rfp for this and i told mark point blank i said i don't know if we're interested in this i was concerned about sponsorship i was concerned about um the response from the community. It's a smaller community. We were gonna have to bring in a lot of people from out of town. And in my talks with Mark, he said, well, that's what we want. We do want people to come in and spend dollars here. We're trying to, you know, and Mark shared his vision with us and we really got behind it and we still did not commit. But I told Mark, I said, I will help advise as you build this at no charge. And that's where Claudia and I fell in love with this project. And then when the building really started going up and things are happening and we're working on sponsorship we're not making any revenue for two years the thing's being built the venue's being built we're working on um sponsorship with local businesses and then we fell in love again with the community because of the businesses We're from Sacramento area. We live up in the foothills, but we do a ton of festivals. We do shows up there and we just love working with the businesses here compared to Sacramento. I mean, we have a lot of good relationships up there, but it's nothing like here. I just got a call from the marketing director at Valley Strong Bank, and she said, does Claudia need help in the green room? I mean, she wants to come work with Claudia, you know, just, you know, whatever it takes. And that's why we're hanging in there. Mark said in the beginning, he wants to clear up any public misconception. We see the social media posts. It hurts sometimes. And we know that it's people that don't even come to the shows. And it is what it is. but we're not making money. We probably make five bucks an hour if you look at it, with the amount of hours we spend. We're committed, we got up at five in the morning to be here, we're here all week when we don't need to be here all week. We could have come down on Friday and done the show on Saturday and go home on Sunday. But we're committed to this venue, We share, we continue to share in the vision. We will continue to help pay as many bills as we can and very transparent with Mark about everything. He has access to everything. And we just, you know, want to continue that for you guys.

Thank you. Mr. Scott, did you have some additional questions?

Yes, I have a couple more questions. I think one of the things that I like to, well, first of all, I appreciate Mr. Madero's logic about the, I think, what did he say, $14 a person, or what was it, 12? Man, when I ask for $100,000 every year to keep kids out of gangs, it turns out to be $3 a kid. We've got 30,000 kids under 18, so I like that logic. I think for me, what I'm interested in is just getting an understanding of the public money. I know there's the promoter money, and then there's the public money. I'm just still having a hard time understanding the $436,000 in expenses for this year. From what I've received, the expenses for the concerts are a lot more. Just three concerts were almost half a million dollars. in terms of what it costs to put them on. Yes, I understand, look at the bigger picture, but if you have a $200,000 concert, you have a $100,000 concert, you have a $195,000 concert, that adds up more than the 418 in terms of what the expenses are. Then you have a $500,000 subsidy that we approved in January. that adds up more than the 400 just alone that self it's it's revenue in the sense that it's used to pay bills the money is used to pay bills there's no doubt about it it's money for artist deposits it's money for janitorial it's money for marketing it's money so i mean those are expenses i mean i'm just trying to understand is there a whole different sheet of different expenses versus the concert expenses because what i like to see is an audit of all the public money I'd like to be able to say, okay, if we're going to be transparent here at Tulare Residence, we've invested $900,000 in the concerts, $100,000 went to pay for the artists, $50,000 went to pay for the marketing, $10,000 went to pay to clean the bathrooms. I'd like to see where that public money went. Is that something that could be- That's something I can work on, sure. And then I think the other question is, I don't include the 132,000 that went to the Rooks for their concert. What I'm interested in is, what is the expectation for them on the return of the money? There are going to be, I think from the 132,000, from what I understand, About $100,000 is what's being used for marketing and artists. What is the expectation of that concert? Is the expectation that they bring in 100% of the revenue, 50% of the revenue? I mean, expenses, 10%, 1%? What is the expectation of that concert? I want to make sure that they have the same expectation as the operators.

Yeah, they don't. They don't because they don't put on a bunch of free shows. They don't do everything that Spade does. They're doing one concert.

Right, but it's an expense of a concert.

Yeah, but they didn't submit a proposal to be the RFP operator of our concert series, which requires more than just putting on 1 show. Right? So, um, what I have said to rocks, there is no written expectation. What I have said, what I have shared with them is. My hope for them that they have professed that they have expertise and attracting. Folks for Latin, Hispanic, Mexican, whatever. I'm not sure what the right what I refer to as Hispanic shows. um and they've they've given me documentation information that tells me that they that's their expertise that they've had they don't they've said to me we don't do rock we don't do country we don't do christian we don't do any of the other things that spade does all we focus on is hispanic shows And I said, wonderful, we have 65% Hispanic population. Todd does a lot of different things, but he doesn't just focus on Hispanic. So let's bring in this other group Brooks who focus on his Hispanic and let's partner them together. And the reason they partnered together is because Todd Spade entertainment is the operator for our concert series. And with that comes other. things like the venue has chairs, for example. So if you want to just rent the venue to put on a show, you pay the city $1,000 and you go do your show and you work out with Spade and Rio if you're going to use Rio Productions or not, right? But that's not what Rooks wanted. Rooks wanted to be able to use staff time and chairs and other things. And I said, great, then let's partner with Todd. You do the artists and the marketing. Todd will do all the other things and you'll get all the city resources because you'll make it part of our concert series, right? He agreed to that. We agreed to that and made a lot of sense. And all I told him in terms of expectation is, listen, just do your best to try to get a lot of folks to come here and pay for tickets. I don't have any expectation they're going to make money. If they do, that'd be wonderful. But what I said is, let's just show that we can do a really good job of attracting our Hispanic population to these shows. If we could break even, that would be amazing. But I don't have that expectation. I don't know. It's going to be his first show at Zumwalt Park working in partnership. So I don't really have a huge expectation other than these guys are going to execute together. And it's challenging, right? Two new parties working together, partnership. Pull that off. Put on a great show. Let's get as many people here as we can. And let's see where the numbers fall after that. And my hope is that it does really, really well. And when I come to you in December, I say to you, like I said in this staff report, these guys partner together and make all of Rook's shows, all of the three or so, however many Hispanic shows they're going to do a year, part of the city's concert series. That's my hope.

I think, you know, I just, the last couple of points, I just want to make sure that, you know, it's not that, that I'm against the park. The park is an amazing jewel in our city and our region. It's not that I'm against having fun, going to a concert, dancing, enjoying it, having a beer or two. What I'm concerned about is just at what point do we need to understand that the concerts that are put together are not gonna make any money? That we're lucky they make 20% back. At least that's the information I have. I'm missing a whole bunch of information that adds up to $463,000. I don't know where the revenue is coming from. A lot of people buying pizza, tacos, beers. I mean, where's the other revenue? The only revenue I see is ticket sales.

and so that's the only thing that has been shared to me i don't know if the rest of the council looks at that stuff but as we as they're called i don't think that's the only revenue you're seeing i that's what's given to us well that's what's given to us mark has the bar numbers and yeah also has the percentage of merchandise you know that we sorry

I I get it I don't want you to feel that it's a charge that you have to jump oh okay no no no I think it's I think for me it's more transparency and I appreciate you being transparent right now on that and I think that's the missing piece I mean I've talked to the vice mayor about it and you know I said hey wow this was a two hundred thousand dollar concert only brought eighteen thousand dollars in ticket sales whoa you know what kind of you know that I don't know, I'm not gonna lay judgment on the business, but hey, a lot of businesses would not be moving forward. And I know the city manager's trying real hard, extremely hard, to make sure this succeeds. I understand you probably now wear a promoter cap. You're probably a promoter too, in terms of what you do. Reminds me when my kids were small, my twins, one of my kids, mom left to go shopping, told my daughter to do something. It was too much for her. Dad, me, helped her. And when mom came back home, oh, hey, you did a great job. But hey, dad's the one that did the work. So I see that relationship with our city manager. He's vested into this. I definitely understand that. I mean, to have 400 positive letters in a council packet, that's extraordinary. I appreciate that. But for me, it's about accountability. It's about when... What are your expectations? If you tell me right now, Todd and Mark, that, hey, councilmen, from now on, do not expect more than 5% of the money coming in. Then I'll be like, okay, that means that we got to pay for 95% of the concert's bills. You know, because the revenue didn't come in. I'll be like, okay, then I'll decide whether to vote for it or not. But right now it's all over the place. The math doesn't add up. We're giving $500,000 and we only have 400-something revenue.

I just want to say one thing, which I want to speak in some generalizations. The math not adding up is your personal comments. Yeah, they're just your personal comments. So the part with that of looking at what we have in income to expenses, if you look at both in expenses of around 1.3 million, it goes to subsidies of what the operator and what we're doing. You put those together, that gives you the overall cost. If you want to break down to debate all of the general ledger compared to looking at a trial balance, I just want to say from my perspective that that doesn't mean that because I can read and understand this that you don't that overall there isn't transparency that overall the math doesn't make sense. So I just I want to keep perspective that when you use generalizations that I respect that's coming from your perspective. But when you say that you make it sound like it's an overall generalized thing can't speak for other council members just for myself. I get the breakdowns, the breakdowns make sense. I know that Mark has sent us it and our weekly reports, general ledgers at times in the past. I just want to put some context to that. You're welcome to your opinion, but please careful of the generalizations.

Of course these just for the public, this is my opinions and add numbers don't add up to me. So I think the last point is I just want to make sure that, that the, There is a commitment for an audit of all the public dollars that have been provided by council Because I know from your presentation in January that you assumed, or the city has assumed, paying bills directly to Rio and to other productions because there is no funding, I would assume, from the operator because they have a contract with the operator to do the concerts. I don't know if now that's changed. Now they have a contract with the city. But we're paying Mr. Spielman's bills. Directly with the public funds. Is that accurate?

It's an accurate statement, but again, if you go back to the statement, I made at the beginning of this presentation. We have an original contract with spade that was structured in such a way that that has not been able to materialize, which is why I've been bringing back twice a year to council. Here's where we're at. Here's what's going on. We don't have enough ticket revenue and sponsorship revenue to call the expenses. So we need to subsidize it. And rather than giving spade the money. To cover those expenses, which under the original agreement, they would be his expenses, right? We'll pay those expenses directly, which council has approved. But you're also not remembering that spades entitled to 80% of the sponsorship revenue space, not taking that himself. Spade is taking that money and dumping it back into the concert, just like we are doing. So this has been an effort to try to make sure that we grow the concert series together, right? Because they're vested in it, just like the city is, right? So what I will tell you is this. We absolutely would do an audit. Every single year, the city audits all of our funds. We have an independent auditor coming in, and we'll look at this like they do every other account. What I will give you separate from their audit, I'm not an auditor. I'm not going to go hire a special auditor to do that. We're going to use the regular city auditor to audit this, audit this, just like we do all the other city funds. What I will give you is I will spend some time with finance and Todd to try to develop. It may take us several weeks, a separate report that will say here's to date from the very beginning. To now here's how much public money has gone into the operations. Here's how much revenues have been received the best of our ability. Some of that we're gonna have to estimate because we still have revenues coming in for the next few shows. Right? And I'll try to delineate between what we've received and what. We expect to come in. That's not an audit. That's the best numbers we have that we could show. This is actually how much we paid to whom it'll say who the vendor was. So I'll do my best to put that together over the next few weeks. Yep.

If I may cancel. Yes. Yeah. Just final comments from my standpoint. I mean, we all bring to the table the experience and background and whatever perspective we have on the various issues that come before us. Some have experience in different fields. I always appreciate, Mayor, as as your financial background as it relates to being an analyst, basically, and dealing with what we have here. I like to think I have a certain amount of business background that can be brought to the table. One thing I'd like to clarify, I know we have goals. The goal is to get to the point to where we break even, and this is self-sufficient in and of itself. That may be the goal. I think based on what other communities have done and realistically what we're looking at here, it wouldn't surprise me and I wouldn't be crushed if the city continues to subsidize this concert series because of from a business standpoint in the community at large, the benefits that come from this concert series, not only Basically, with the city investing its tax dollars, what benefits we get peripherally as it relates to other tax dollars we bring in. So I don't have as much problem in that regard as others up here seem to. I think as long as we continue to get all that information to us so that we know what it is we're voting on, then we can proceed and move forward and the community, as indicated in this letter, can be proud of what we have brought to the community of Tulare. That we were able to take tax dollars from different sources that didn't come directly from us and we have something that's been called a jewel of the community. And under the circumstances, I'm prepared to vote for what's being approved.

Is that a motion, Mr. Medeiros? Yes. So we have a motion for approval of 8.2 Zoom Hall Park. I'll second the motion. We have a second. Is there any further discussion?

I don't think I heard where the one-time funds are coming.

Yeah, so, uh, in the staff report, we mentioned that there are several different sources of revenues that we anticipate coming. Some have already come in and some, we anticipate coming in this year from a variety of sources that were not included in the budget. So this is new 1 time money. I list several of what those are in the staff report those it will exceed 160,000 dollars. So we will take it from some combination thereof, depending on when we have to spend the money.

I'm sorry, so I missed it. So it's in the staffer. Yeah, like the specific source.

Yeah, we list, I'll read it too.

Yeah, I'm just curious to see.

Okay, at the very bend at the very end of the fiscal impact and funding sources section, it says. Rather they are, they are special 1 time funds, including greater than anticipated investment earnings. I think at the next Mark Roberts is that the next council meeting or the 1 after that, that we're going to have our consultant talk about our investment earnings. It was on. Go ahead.

I'm sorry. I was looking for like that here. Sorry. It's the next meeting.

Yeah. So we are getting greater than anticipated investment earnings. You're going to hear all about that at the next meeting. Remember last year, we had a tax credit that we used some of the money for last year. This is the second year of that tax credit. So that's new money that wasn't budgeted. We had some loan repayments come back to the city that we had not anticipated. That's increased revenue to the city. We are seeing an increase in utility user fee revenue, which all of those are any of those would offset this cost.

Thank you. I hope hope hope staff could find a 100,000 dollars to invest in kids in the city.

All in favor. Hi, any opposed. Okay. Motion carries for 1.

Mr. Mayor, can I just express our next few shows and our Christmas event real quick? Just this Saturday, we have Howie Mandel come in with Jay Ferrell for a comedy show. And then next weekend, we have a country show, Low Cash, with local recording artists, Joe and Martina. And the very next day we have Rooted in Harmony, which is our reggae festival. And we're excited. Common Kings and Still Pulse are on their world tour right now and they're stopping by Tulare. And Still Pulse is name of their world tour is Peace, Love and Racism. So we're real excited about that. And then Nico Moon, September 5th. And I was telling Councilman Harrell, As hot as it is, we are right in the middle of planning our Christmas event again this year. And one of the exciting things that I can announce is each day will be a theme. But the Saturday of the Christmas event is Kids Entrepreneur Day. And we're taking kids from 13 to 18. 18 that make things and they set up their own tent and we partnered with the company. They teach them how to do balance statements and everything. And for that entire day, they're going to be selling their goods from there and we're allowing them to have that as a place for free to do that. And we're actively booking for next year. Already have a couple of confirmations in and we'll be excited to let you guys know what shows those are. Thank you.

Quick question. Comedians don't count cancel just because it's one hundred and five or one hundred.

I hope not. But I would add that next weekend, our reggae festival is our biggest production for Hillary to date. You'll see us out in the heat for two and a half days, setting up for that one show, 15 hour days for two and a half days. And although we have plenty of water,

we're happily take water and diet coke if you guys are driving by so thank you okay moving forward to item nine future agenda items 9.1 parkwood meadows park volleyball courts councilman segala

I believe that's a straightforward request. There is a number of constituents in my district who use that park and have created their own volleyball court out there. But I think it's worth us having a discussion to see if we can create some permanent type of volleyball courts out there and just like for us to have a conversation about it at a future meeting. Thank you.

OK.

would make the motion to add it to a future meeting as stated in the request.

Are we kind of putting the cart before the horse? Shouldn't this go to community services, go to Chris to see if maybe he's got something already planned or the parks commissioners before we get involved in it? Probably go to Parks and Rec Commission first. So this could be just presented to them.

TODD BANDUCCI- Right. So I think then if that's the case, then I would amend my request that the council forward the request to the Parks Commission for them to consider. TODD BANDUCCI- We can do that.

Just the agenda already went out for the upcoming meeting.

So it'll be the one after that. TODD BANDUCCI- That's fine.

So with that, though, I just want clarity and perhaps legal counsel with that clarity is that's a charge going to the Chris, but that still need we could do that, but that would need council's consensus, correct?

Yeah, it seems it seems like it's just a statement to the Parks and Rec Commission to council would like you to look at this.

Okay.

Okay.

Yes, there's consensus for that.

Just for clarification. Um, I just make sure Chris and your staff are where council is not directing the commission to make this happen. Council saying we'd like you to look at this and consider whether or not it would support it. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, like feasibility. Okay. Okay. Moving forward on the agenda item 10 staff updates, Mr. Orr.

Good evening. Just a reminder, this Friday we'll be having the last movie of our summer concert series, Zootopia II. We'll be at Mulcahy Park around 8.15. Thank you. Just to be clear, it's not being canceled because of the heat, right?

Okay.

And that is for children, is that correct, primarily?

Adults can come.

Okay. That's why I use the word primarily.

I'd like to see you out there, Mulcahy Park. Dennis, come on. Nothing to report.

Nothing to report. Nothing to report. Nothing to report. Nothing to report.

Nothing to report. I have a quick report just to let you know that earlier today, the state did put out their preliminary list of opportunity zones that they are looking to recommend to the federal level. And within Tulare County, there were nine census tracts identified only one for the city of Tulare, but it was the one that council identified as your number one priority. So, so far that's what's on the list. I don't know if that will be changing at all over the next month, but we should get a final list by the governor, probably in September.

It's kind of getting balmy in here a little bit, isn't it? That's the algorithm. This flower is a begin to wither. Mario. Nothing to report tonight, thank you.

Nothing to report nothing to report nothing to report. Nothing to nightmare just 2 things really quick. 1 is, um. Council, you're aware that the city's 1st, the new public newsletter has gone out went out, I think today or yesterday. um so it goes out to a bunch of folks uh via email all of our citizens and then it's on our website a lot of really great information in there one of the stories that we're featuring thank you to councilmember sagala for reminding us about this we're really excited about the tulare marketplace which starts this thursday uh turns on at 5 15. uh doors open to the public at 5 30. have had a lot of a lot of folks interested in that that'll run all the way through october So I want to encourage you to come out and join us if you can. That's all.

Who's in charge of putting the newsletter out?

Our public information officer is in charge of putting the newsletter out.

Oh, that's where the compliments go?

100% to her, yes. And complaints.

I was trying to maintain optimism under the circumstances, so that's why.

Are we going to get her a hard hat and vest that says PIO on it? Whenever you come to the office, yes. Okay.

All right. And with that, item 11, recess to close session to discuss the following, 11.1, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation per government code, 54956.9 . Anything else, counsel, I need to announce with that? All right, we are recess to close session. We have nothing to report from closed session. And with that, the Tulare City Council meeting is adjourned.