City Council/Public Finance and Economic Development Authority/Parking Authority - Regular Meeting

Few seconds, ladies and gentlemen. We'll start in a few seconds.

I'm crazy. What is the pledge? Harris want to do a pledge.

All right. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I want to welcome everybody to the April 6th meeting of the Merced Council. We're going to begin with an invocation from Monica Gracley from Lifeline CDC here in Merrced. And then after that, uh, Council Harris is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. If everybody could please stand for Miss Grace. Lord, thank you for Easter, the promise of new beginnings, restoration, and life. Thank you for making a way to bring new life out of broken things. Thank you that you love us where we are, but not leave us there. As a city, we see the beauty all around us. We see neighbors caring for one another. We see teachers giving their best to educate the next generation. We see police, sher, sheriffs, and firefighters working to help our community, keep our community safe. We see nonprofits investing in the well-being of others. We see medical professionals helping people towards health and healing. We see churches, mosques, and synagogues furthering, nurturing faith, and promoting shalom. We see leaders stepping forward to make our communities a better place to live. We see mental health professionals helping people overcome barriers. It has been said, "What we see depends mainly on what we look for. Help us to look for the good in people, in organizations, and in government. Remind us that in many ways, we're all trying to make our communities a better place to live. And yet, we know there is division. We don't know we don't always agree. Help us to see one another as created in your image. Help us to look for the good in each other and help us to see your shalom, your peace and well-being in our city. As we enter this meeting tonight, you already know what needs to be discussed and what decisions lie ahead. We ask you for wisdom for the council members, kindness in every

interaction, and a spirit of humility and cooperation. Grant us your peace that goes beyond human understanding and guide us to live in a way that reflects the deeper meaning of Easter. Amen. Joining me in the pledge of allegiance. Ready, begin. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. Thank you, Monica. Thank you, Council Member Harris. Agenda. Agenda item D. Roll call. Council member Deont present. Tao present. Harris present.

Smith present. Jeang here. Mayor prom here. And Mayor Sorado here.

Mayor I'd like to remind the audience that if they wish to address the city council, they must submit a green request to speak form located at the podium in the back of the chamber. Additionally, citizens can submit public comment to the city council electronically no later than 1 p.m. on the day of the meeting. Comments received before the deadline will be sent to the city council and will be part of the record and will be mentioned as part of the written petitions and communications portion of the agenda and will be posted on the city's website. Material may be emailed to city clerk at city ofmer.gov and any correspondence received after 1 p.m. will be distributed to the city council and retained for the official record. Also, for those audience members who wish to hear the council meeting translated into Spanish or Mong, please let our interpreters know. In accordance with government code 54952.3, it is hereby announced that the city council sits either simultaneously or serilially as the public financing and economic development authority, parking authority, and/or successor agency to the redevelopment agency. City council members receive a monthly stipen of $500 by charter for sitting as the city council, and the mayor receives an additional $100 each month as part of the adopted budget and resolution 2024-78. The public financing and economic development authority, parking authority, and successor agency to the redevelopment agency received no compensation. Agenda item E, report out of close session. There is no report out of close session.

Agenda item F, ceremonial matters, F1, proclamation, National Donate Life Month. Thank you, Jennifer. Our first of the two ceremonial items tonight is National Donate Life Month. Um, so I believe we have someone is Leo Hernandez, someone from Donor Network West. Please come forward. Good to see you again, sir. How you doing? Good to see you. Good. I was I was scanning but I missed you over there. All right. I want to welcome Mr. Hernandez here tonight. He's going to say a few words about the importance of National Donate Life Month. So Leo, I'll turn over to you, sir.

Perfect. Sorry, there's quite the crowd today, so I'm going to pull out my notes. I'm so sorry. Uh, good afternoon everyone. My name is Leonardo Hernandez and I'm the community engagement specialist with Donor Network West. To those unfamiliar with Donor Network West, we are the OPO which stands for the organ procurement organization responsible for facilitating organ eye and tissue donation. This is of grave importance particularly here in the US as there's about a 100,000 people waiting on the national transplant waiting list. 20,000 of those are waiting just here in California. Uh your efforts have helped to amplify a crucial message, reaching uh countless individuals and inspiring them to consider the life-saving impact of donation. Your commitment to promoting donate life month has undoubtedly made a significant difference bringing hope to those waiting for a second chance of life. Thank you for your partnership, your compassion, and your dedication to saving lives. Together, we can save a lot more. Thank you. Thank you again, Mr. Nandez, for being here. And I'll read our proclamation. Whereas more than 23,000 individuals in California that are currently on the national organ transplant waiting list and 17 patients die each day due to the shortage of donated organs. And whereas Donor Network West serves as the federally designated organ procurement organization in northern central California and northern Nevada and works in close partnership with families, doctors, nurses, and coroners in hospitals to connect donors to recipients. Whereas organ and tissue are lifegiving acts recognized worldwide as expressions of compassion to those in need that save thousands of lives each year. And whereas the need for donated organs is especially urgent in Asian, Hispanic, and African-American communities. And whereas a single individual's donation of the heart, lungs, liver, kidney, pancreas, and small intestine can save

up to eight lives, donation of tissue can save and heal the lives of up to 75 others. And whereas the spirit of giving and decision and the decision to donate are not restricted by age or medical condition. And whereas over 19 million Californians have signed up with a state authorized Donate Life California registry to ensure their wishes to be organ and tissue donors are honored. And whereas California residents can sign up with the Donate Life California donor registry when applying for or renewing their driver's licenses or ID cards at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Now therefore, I, Matthew Serado, mayor of the city of Merced, on behalf of the Mercured City Council, do hereby proclaim April 2026 as National Donate Life Month in the city of Merced. And in doing so, encourage all Californians to check yes when applying for renewing their driver's license or ID card or by signing up at donoretworkwest.org. Thank you. Just want to say real quick too, I mean you can see from the proclamation too how your policy advocacy and your work is so important. We have 19 million Californians signed up and that's that's saving lives and that's because of your work. So thank you.

Thanks again. Appreciate. Okay. Agenda item F, certificate of recognition to members of the Merced Special Olympics for their achievement. Okay. Thank you, Jennifer. Turn over to Council Member Dupont. Thank you. Yeah, that works. That works. Thanks,

Can I have all the athletes to uh the Special Olympics, Merced County Special Olympics come up and the coaches as well? Of course. No problem.

Don't go far because you're going to have to say something. So, in March, our athletes traveled to Fresno, and they went to the basketball regional competition, competed against seven other counties. Our Merced Blue Devils came out with the gold medal, and our Merced Bobcats came out with the silver medal. And this is a testament to the group because this is not the first time that they've gotten medals either. So these are a a special um breed of athletes that continue over the years get medals for our community. And I want to thank the coaches as well, Adam, who's been a part of uh Special Olympics uh in not only the basketball programs, but all the programs uh for our athletes, helping support them and train them in any endeavor that they have. So, I'm going to turn it over to Adam. Uh I didn't realize I was going to speak, so I'll make it brief. Um, just really wanted to thank the city council members who have been so supportive. Darren as well in recognizing our athletes. They work so hard. Um, and so to get a little bit of recognition for their achievements is incredible. And, um, you know, I get a lot of recognition being the area director, but I have a group of incredible coaches who are up here, uh, parents, educators in the community who help get us practice sites, um, community members who have come out and supported us. And it really takes a village. Uh, and I'm just so grateful for ours. So, thank you guys so much for this recognition.

So, we have some certificates of recognition, Dimmitri Perry. Congratulations,

Courtney Frid.

Congratulations, D. Jones. Congratulations. Got it. Matthew Owens. Here. I'll come to you. Oh, not here.

Rigberto Montero. Congratulations. Thank you. Of course. Abraham Muhammad. Thank you. Margaret Mayo.

Congratulations. Rachel Lopez. Thank you. Congratulations. Mark Hefner.

Great job, Mark. Thank you. There you go, Mark. Thank you, guys. Raul Garcia Dustin Franks. Congratulations

Miguel Castro,

Frank Bueno. pitcher. Here you go. Thanks. Good job. Of course, DeMarquez Montette.

Caleb McCauley. Thank you. Ashley Lopez. No, you're Luke Hobbs. Good job, Luke. Corey Griffith. Great job, Ruben Garcia. No. Anthony Caldera,

Daniel Avala.

Congratulations. Jared Souza.

William Mitchell. Congratulations. Adam Goldberg,

Lisa Mitchell, Thank you. Lynn Griffith. Thank you. Give it one more time for all our athletes for their great hard work. Thank you guys.

Oh yeah. Thanks again. We appreciate you so much. Give everybody a few Give everybody a minute or so to clear out. You all are welcome to stay for the rest of our exciting meeting.

See you. No takers on that. That means you Jody. Jod's gonna stay. See you. I tried. That was a firm no. All right. Congratulations everybody. Thank you.

Okay. Agenda item G, written petitions and communications. Mayor, the clerk's office did not receive any emails for tonight's meeting, and any emails we do receive after the 1pm deadline will be sent to council. Agenda item H, public comments. Members of the public who wish to speak on any matter not listed on the agenda may speak during this portion of the meeting and will be allotted three minutes. The mayor may propose a further limit to the time available for all speakers at the discretion of the city council in order to accommodate as many speakers as possible. State law prohibits the city council from acting at this meeting on any matter raised during the public comment period. Members of the public who wish to speak on a matter that is listed on the agenda will be called upon to speak during the discussion of that item. And mayor I currently have six request to speak forms.

All right. Thank you, Jennifer. Want to call the speakers to the podium. Okay. If I can get the first three to the podium to my left. Um Leavonne Phillips, Cindy Kelly, and Fletchie Jr. Josh Fletch. All right, Leavonne, whenever you're ready. Oh, right.

Um, good afternoon. Uh, first I would like to thank the chief for putting a monitor on our a speed monitor on my street. Although it's not helping, it's worse. But I'd like to speak for the three S's. And in case if you were around the military, you know what the three S's stand for, right? But if you're not, I'm going to tell you what my 3Ses stand for. Street lights, sidewalks, and speeding. Uh, my church is out on Ma Road. And it was it was founded in 1952. 1952. That's 74 years. They don't have one street light, not one. They don't have no sidewalks, but they have street lights all the way down the Winder, but not run on Mesa. But they have a on Tyler road they have a sports complex is coming up. You pass by there lights on day and night. There's nobody. They're not having any activities out there. I want to know why we can't get a street light on Ma Road and speeding. I live on Northwood Drive. I I think you should change the street sign to Indianapolis 500 or Daytona 500. They fly up and down there uh every day. It's just unreal how fast cars go up there. And I've complained. I've complained. The the mayor of Northwood Drive recently passed. Well, he passed away. Uh that was Ron Mo. He was out there every day. Slow down with a sign. But it's it's ridiculous. You know, when you promise as a a politician, oh, we going to do this, we're going to do that. I watch what you do, not what you say. Sorry, Miss Jackson, but I tell you what's what what I need to know. Why is it we're in 2026 and we still have streets in in Merced with no sidewalks and no street lights. We're not in the dark ages. And you know, we need to do something

about somebody going to get seriously killed on Northwood Drive. It takes you 15 to 20 minutes to get off Northwood going either making a left turn on the M Street or right. You can't you can't get off the street. What about getting a street light of Southside or something to deter people from speeding and you know it's just ridiculous. But when it come round to oh well we're running for election. I want you to vote for me but yet you can't do nothing for me. Thank you. All right. Thank you Lav. No I said thank you. Oh I thought you had question.

N we just listen to you here. This No. Good evening, mayor, uh, city manager McBride, city attorney Cornwell, and city council. Cindy Kelly here, citizen of the city of Merced. Um, and I'm just here to bring your attention to some things going on on the streets of Merced. As the weather gets nicer, we're seeing more and more people out and about enjoying our parks and, you know, just walking around and we're seeing a lot of motorized vehicles on sidewalks and bike paths. Um, I just want to share an experience I had with you yesterday. There was a young mother. She had a child in a stroller, another one walking next to her. And some I won't say the word, but some Yahoo on one of these motorized bikes came speeding down the uh sidewalk on West 21st. And on a conservative, maybe 15 miles an hour, probably going faster. Um almost ran into her. Her child fell over. um and he ended up going out into the street to avoid hitting her and her children and almost got hit by a car. So, we're seeing more instances of these now that the weather is getting nicer. Um the people on these bikes are often rude. Um I will tell you the Merrced SPCA has had two cats hit. Both have required surgery and recovery time before being returned to their colonies. I have been flipped off when I'm out taking care of cats because I'm in somebody's way and they're coming through at 15 miles an hour. Um, so I I know other cities, other counties have developed ordinances. They've put out signage. There's requirements on campuses now regarding these bikes and how fast they can go. Um, you know, anything over 25 miles an hour should not be on our sidewalks, should not be on our bike paths. Um, right now it's not my concern is it's not a matter of if somebody gets hurt, it's just when this is going to happen. So, I wanted to bring your attention to that and perhaps something you should consider in the not so far

future of how to address these motorized vehicles on our pathways and sidewalks. Thank you.

Thank you. What up, Merced Council? My fellow Mercedesians. My name is Fletchie Jr., but my Fletch my friends call me FJ. I know you probably don't know me, but you may know my father, Fletchie. He used to promote totally tubular events downtown, but has since retired, and I have taken up his mantle. That being said, I'm here to tell you, nay, invite you all to Burgers and Brews 2026. What is Burgers and Brews? Well, I'm glad you asked. It is an all you can eat burger event from seven burger vendors. An all you can enjoy beer event from nine breweries. I'm going to say that again. Nine breweries right here on Canal Street. It will take place on April 18th from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. The money from this event goes to supporting the high school aquatics programs you know and love, swimming and water polo. Unfortunately, there's no Merced High surf team, but maybe one day. To help you remember, I wrote a little poem. Burgers and bruise, ladies and dudes. Come out for the best of all foods. Live music is pumping where the vibes are alive on Canal Street where good times thrive. April 18th, don't you be late. 6 in the evening. It's gonna be great. The band will be rocking 8:30 till 8:30 at night with burgers and brews and the best of all sides. Juicy paddies patties are sizzling sky high with toppings so good they're going to make you sigh. Cold crafted cold crafted brews flowing right to your hand while you mingle to a rocking live band. So gather your grew crew and come on down to the live event. Come to our sweet little town. You know

I've been crushing the concrete waves of Mercedes since I was a little Nino. But now it is time is now now is our turn to crush some burgers and bruise on April 18th. If you guys would like to buy a ticket, you can uh visit our Facebook page at the ManUp Opportunity Foundation or our Instagram page. And then my boy Poncho back there has flyers as well. Thank you, city council, and have a great evening. Thank you. All right, Jennifer.

Okay, can I get the next speakers? Um Laura Ivanchik, uh Josh Pedroszo, Gloria Sandival, and Manar or Manor Ahmed. Okay. Thank you, Laura. I was hoping that Pedroso would get to follow that, but I'll give it to him. No.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Laura Ivansich, management analyst with the engineering department. I'm here to share some information at the city's efforts to host community outreach meetings to gather input for a citywide safe routes to school initiative. There is an opportunity for us to apply for the cycle 8 active transportation program ATP grant to support this initiative. CPPG will be helping us with the grant submission process. ATP projects are aimed at increasing walking and biking through safe and connected infrastructure, which includes improving existing pedestrian facilities to meet modern standards such as ADA compliance. Since community input is a key part of this process, the city will be hosting outreach meetings next week on April 14th at Tanaya Middle School and April 15th at the Merced Civic Center downstairs in the Sam Pipes room. Each meeting will begin at 6 PM. Just a little background, on March 24th, we had the call for projects issued and the grant deadline is June 22nd of this year. So, we've created a project page on the city's engage project site. We will share project information on our social media platforms and Merced schools will also share this information via parent square. We ask for your support in sharing this information and look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you.

Thank you, Luke. Mr. Joseph.

Well, I can't follow up uh little Fletchie, but I can certainly uh bore you even more. Um good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madame Per Mayor Pro Tim Bole, members of the Merced Council, Manager McBride, and City Attorney Cornwell, Josh Proso, District 2 Supervisor. where I would like to invite you to a district 2 town hall on Monday, April 13th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Mondo building in downtown Merced. I will provide a brief update on this past year, share what we are currently working on, and take questions and then invite attendees to speak directly with the department heads that we have um in the county. I think it's really important that people are able to get out and talk to our department heads because sometimes they feel like they don't have the opportunity to do so. If you have any questions in advance or if I can provide any assistance at the county level, please don't hesitate to contact me at 3857663 or by email at joshh.padros@countymers.com. We also have a board meeting tomorrow morning beginning at 8:30 with close session followed by our regular session at 10. That's it. Thank you. All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate the update. Josh, you said Monday uh the 13th, 688 Mondo.

Yes. Got it.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Manar Ahmed and I currently serve as the 19th student body president here at UC Merrced. I wanted to come out and formally invite everybody on this council as well as the city of Merrced to our first annual tailgate um for the men's volleyball game against UCLA this Friday from 4 to 6:00 p.m. with the game beginning at 6:00 p.m. Um I grew up in Clovis, California, so it's literally an hour south from here. And there is not a single person in my family who has any affiliation to Fresno State, but if you ask us, we are the biggest Bulldog fans. And that's exactly the energy that we need here at Mercer. Um I think we need to have our city connected more with our university and I'm hoping starting initiatives like this will do just that. So we will have um face painting, free face painting for kids. We'll have popcorn. We'll have food trucks. We'll have lots of yard games and lots of fun opportunities. Um I'm hoping to see everyone out there. Please bring your families. Please bring your kids. That's what I'm the most excited to see. Um, and yeah, if anyone has any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Thank you.

Thank you. Cool. Everybody seems like they want to clap, but they Yeah. Um, now good evening. Good evening, council, uh, staff, uh, public. Evening, Gloria.

My name is Gloria Sandaval. I am um district 3 constituent and I'd like to share something that I came across um Facebook because I think it's from a credible source. It was a post by the National Lawyers Guild President Suzanne Adelli and it's titled Trump is seeking to pay for his 1.5 trillion with a T military budget by cutting the following. There are 70 items on this list and I cannot I don't have the time to share it all but just what I thought that I I I put an asterisk on. 8.5 billion to be cut from funding for public schools. 15.2 billion roads, bridges and infrastructure projects. 4 billion help paying home heating and cooling bills for lowincome families fully eliminated. Um 5 billion public health programs, mental health services and disease prevention. 5 billion from medical research NIH CDBG better known as community development block grants for local neighborhoods fully eliminated 3.3 billion 2 billion international humanitarian aid 4.3 billion global health and disease prevention programs 486 million dollar grants for public transit projects, $372 million airline service for rural and small communities,

1 billion EPA, Environmental Protection Agency grants to states for environmental protection, 2.5 billion clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure funds, 143 million from STEM education programs, 170 million from small business administration operations, and 158 million loans for small businesses. And why am I bringing this up? This is not patriotism. This is going to decimate our communities. There is no need for war in a civilized world. And I really think everyone needs to take note of what is coming down the pike, especially when you all are have to review budgets the way I know the county is also. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Glory. Jennifer, anyone else? I have one more from Jim Jen Flackman. Jennifer Flackman. Welcome. Good evening. Jennifer Flackman, public information officer, senior management analyst. I'm here to remind and invite everyone to the grand opening of Bob Hart Square, the ribbon cutting ceremony next Thursday, the 16th at 7:30. Um, we'll have a celebration and musical guest Zoe Ray as part of the city's concert series will be performing. So hopefully everybody will come out. Thanks.

Thank you. Appreciate a lot of good events coming up. And that's all we had. Mayor, thank you. On to consent. Okay. Agenda item I, consent calendar. Any members of the council have any items on the consent agenda they'd like to see pulled for separate consideration? I'd ask that I six be pulled for separate consideration. Okay. The link housing item. Anybody else? Okay. Seeing none. Hearing none, Jennifer. Anything from the public for uh request for separate consideration? We don't have anything, mayor. All right. Would entertain any discussion or a motion with respect to the balance? Motion second. Second.

Boil Dupont. Okay. Have a motion by mayor prom and a second by council member Dupont. The motion will include agenda item I5, the adoption of resolution 2026-11, a resolution of the city council of the city of Merced, California, approving engineers reports on maintenance districts and setting a public meeting and a public hearing thereon. Mayor and council, please cast your votes.

Okay, the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, gentlemen. On to uh agendum I6. Council member Smith. Thank you. Give Miss Nut a chance to to gather by the podium. You know, I was reviewing the agenda this weekend and I understand the item. Um I didn't think it was appropriate that we would be dedicating almost $1.8 million of our capacity to subsidize affordable housing and letting that only be discussed through the consent calendar. So, I would just appreciate Miss N, thank you again for all of your hard work. um maybe explain for the community what it is that is being proposed um why the developer needs that kind of capital infusion and then my third question will be um seems to me we might be putting all of our eggs in one basket so why is that the right approach

um well affordable housing projects um like link housing project on I street um requires a lot of funding between federal state and local funds um sometimes um also So, they apply for tax credit applications and um that's where this comes in. Um for the last uh eight tries, they've not scored competitively for the I Street project uh with tax credits and uh funding of home funds uh for this commitment letter will help them uh have a higher tiebreaker score in order to be more competitive against other developments. Now, how did this maybe explain how this almost $1.8 million allocation would come about. Where are those funds coming from?

Well, each year we get home funds, as you know, from HUD. Um, for since 2021, we haven't had um a project um to dedicate those um starting with those years funding, we haven't had a project to use those funds towards. Um the last project we used home funds for was the Devonwood or uh uh River Canyon Apartments project. Those used 2020 funds and earlier. Um so starting with 2021, we didn't have a use of those funds um set aside for a specific project. Um in the annual plan, we did set them aside for affordable housing projects. So the use of funds fits the intent of the annual plan approval since 2021. um with uh other funding that the city has dedicated including um the pro the properties themselves through the housing successor agency um the city has um shown commitment to um moving that project forward. Um and uh with this tiebreaker with the commitment letter um this is not a commitment of funds. It's just simply reserving the funds for the project um and providing the state with the letter um basically proof um of that reservation in order to help the tiebreaker.

I think even the commitment is significant. Um now I think about this project as an exciting way to build housing downtown, but it doesn't have enough parking. Um why why is this project the one that was selected to receive this potential infusion of cash? Well, um we actually didn't have any other project um that was eligible and ready. Um that's that's really the key, the ready because there is a expenditure deadline on these funds. First year being 2029. Uh you figure with new construction uh 18-month construction time plus maybe a six-month occupancy time, that's two years. Um that only gives us one year of contingencies. um if they don't make it the tax credit award another round, it gives us, you know, another few months. So, we're we're running up against that expenditure deadline um at risk of losing the funds, at least for 2021.

Does the builder think that this amount is sufficient to get over the hump, so to speak? Um they're pretty confident. Um they said that this might score them another five or six points which may be the difference between getting an award or not. Um this round um uh again the terminology escapes me but uh with the round of funds um this is a a better round to be able to score higher for them. So there's a better chance of them getting getting the awarded. All right. Thank you for answering my questions. I appreciate it. You're welcome. All right. Thank you Council Smith. Thank you. Kim, city manager McBride.

Thank Thank you, Mayor. Uh I think we've all seen that affordable housing is not inexpensive housing. It's actually very expensive housing development to development and it's it's heavily subsidized and as you're seeing here tonight, it's heavily competitive for the funding, right? Um these projects unfortunately have to go through a lot of hoops to get the resources they need to get built. Um, just some background. I think Kim alluded to it a little bit here tonight. Um, Link Housing was one of the uh uh responders to an open housing RFQ we submitted out to the to the community. I think it was in 2021. They they were a good responder. Their quality firm, somebody we've been working with to try to get this project together for quite some time. Uh there were several uh entities that uh were interested in redevelopment property. This is one of those. And so that's housing successor property now. So they're actually looking to acquire property from the city which is now the housing successor. So uh they've been a strong partner for for many years. So this is really just an ext you know extending that collaboration which is now this funding commitment for these home funds. Uh I see that Joey is here. I think he might want to make some comments tonight. Talk about the prospects for the funding. Um I know they have a good track record of getting things together. Um, we're optimistic we can get this together tonight uh with your support and uh try to get this a reality in downtown Merced. One thing I just wanted to add to with regard to uh the infill development, uh this project did seek a density bonus which I think came before the council before and because of the proximity to uh uh transit and other amenities didn't require parking and so they're trying to maximize 100% of the site for for housing. And so that factors into the reason for the the lack of the pardon.

Thank you, Scott. And if I can actually add to Scott's comment, we're actually in escrow currently for those properties. Okay. And part of the requirements of closing escrow is they get the funding necessary. Thank you. All right. Joe, anything to add? Yeah. Um but I I'm more than happy to address questions. Um, do do I have a couple minutes to speak to the project in link housing or would you like me to focus on the questions that came up during our discussion? You have you have 15 as an applicant or No, no, don't. You have three minutes, sir. Three minutes. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Say whatever you like.

That sounds good. And I'm happy to take questions after that. Um, so good evening, mayor, uh, Mayor Prom Bole, council members, city manager McBride, uh, city attorney Cornwell and city staff and all attendees. Uh my name is Joey Shields. I'm a senior project manager with Link Housing. Um I really appreciate Jennifer and city staff for making my virtual visit possible this evening. Um so Link Housing is a Long Beach based affordable housing nonprofit. Uh we've been in business for 40 years um with communities as far south as San Diego and later this year as far north as Eureka. So we've worked throughout the state um at different jurisdictions. Um I'm excited to be here to speak more toward the 54 unit senior community um in council district 3 which is the I Street Merrced project that I'm working on. Um I've been overseeing the project um over the last uh year or so uh trying to get this last trunch of funding um that council member Smith mentioned um you know concerns around and I'm more than happy to speak to that in greater depth. Um, you know, again, the city has been a fantastic partner. Um, as as city manager McBride said, um, you know, we applied for an RFP back in 2021, uh, secured that, um, for the city own land and the city's been very generous, um, through other grant sources that have become available to make the project, uh, more competitive for tax credits and really make the project pencil. Um, that is really kind of the issue that we're having is competitiveness around tax credits rather than the ability to make the project pencil. Um the um really that that's the main funding uh hurdle that we have right now. Um link housing we've sought out every funding source that we've been eligible for to apply. Um outside of city sources we've secured um approximately $800,000 from um the federal um home loan bank um of San Francisco as well as another $3.4 million from the Central California Alliance for Health. Um and because of

that combined with the city funding that has allowed our project to um you know be fully funded um and apply for tax credits. This additional $1.8 $8 million will help boost the tiebreaker. Um because the problem that um Merced has and as senior projects have is um a lot of projects in Fresno, for example, are unfortunately um much more competitive because they might have project home keying um which can often be $15 million plus. Um, and because of that, because we're a senior project that has special needs funding, and the state of California hasn't prioritized senior projects like they used to, all of the uh funding for um affordable housing is primarily going to uh homeless and special needs projects. Um, any dollar helps make the project more competitive. Um so if we're successful with this um if we we win tax credits for this round um we would start construction um in late 2026 early 2027 and if we are unsuccessful we will continue to apply um until we um you know can get this project out of the ground. Uh but we are you know continuing to work as hard and diligently as possible and we're grateful for your partnership and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Thank you very much for being here and uh uh we appreciate you taking the time. Appreciate your work. Any appreciate your time. Questions, questions for Joey. Okay, seeing none, Jennifer, anything from the public? We don't have anything. Mayor, additional discussion from council, questions for Kim or a motion? Motion. Second. Okay, I have a motion by council member Harris and a second by Mayor Pro Tim Bole. Mayor and councel, please cast your votes.

Okay, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you Joey. Thank you Kim. Thank you for the present or thank you for discussing it. Good luck. Okay. Item support. Agenda item J, public hearings. J1, public hearing to consider adoption of the resolution to update and establish user and regulatory fees for the development services department's effective date or effective July 1, 2026. Mr. Jordan,

good evening, mayor, council, committee. Daryl Jordan, your city engineer. Um, tonight we're here to open up the public hearing to consider the adoption of a resolution to update the update and establish user and regulatory fees for the development services department effective July 1st of this year. A little background is the development services department retained clear source which is with us here tonight financial consulting uh last year to conduct a comprehensive fee study of the city's building engineering and planning fees. And we have building and planning in the back row there. Thanks for coming, guys. Uh, the study provides an updated analysis of the city's costs to deliver various fee related services along with findings and recommendations based on the completed user and regulatory fee review. This information is intended to assist the city council in evaluating potential updates to the city's fee structure. User and regulatory fees are established at the direction of the city council following a duly noticed public hearing to consider the adoption of any new or revised fees. So tonight, I'd like to introduce Terry Matson, our consultant. Terry,

thank you, D. Welcome, Mr. Madson.

Thank you, mayor, and members of the city council for allowing me to speak with you this evening. As mentioned, my name is Terry Madson. I'm here from Clear Source. And uh this evening I have about a 30 slide presentation, but I will make my way very quickly through it. Um there's a handful of slides that sort of follow the same pattern. So uh I will do my best to avoid being long-winded and then allow the council to direct me in terms of feedback or questions. Just by way of orientation, um we'll break the presentation up into the idea of background and fundamentals and terminology that are really consistent for fees throughout California. and then we'll talk specifically about Merced and next steps for city council consideration. So, by way of background, we're dealing with development services fees and um what we're thinking about is when staff issue permits um provide inspections of construction or plan review of construction um we use what we call user and regulatory fees to recover the cost of providing those services. So most of the time we can think uh broadly that communities uh target their use of general tax revenues to provide services that provide this broad communitywide benefit. Most of the time we think of that is like public works, public safety, park maintenance type services. And when we see a specific receiver of service, we use u mechanisms like fees and charges to recover that cost. So when we see a direct receiver of service, we think about direct recovery. When we think about broad receivers of service, we think about like tax funding. So we are uh thinking about servicebased development fees. So some human providing some service as I mentioned is typically permit processing plan review and inspection. And our world for this study is limited to the building world, planning world, engineering world, fire construction review. We are not

examining or considering any taxes, any assessments, any utility rates. So those things that um Merrced residents and businesses sort of encounter on a day-to-day basis, we're not considering any of those items. And particularly, we're not considering any development impact fees. So when we think about development related fees, we think about service-based fees and then we think about impact fees. Impact fees deal with infrastructure. service-based fees deal with um humans providing some sort of service. So, we're dealing with the service-based side of it. Uh why does Merrced and cities throughout California perform these types of studies? The number one reason is to make sure you comply with legal requirements because these are fees and not taxes. Um you have certain guidance that you're you're required to follow that's outlined in the California Constitution and the California Government Code. We mentioned the idea that when we recover the costs of these services, um, we're freeing up those general tax dollars to be used towards broad communitywide services. And I think this final bullet point is particularly important when the city of Merrced uh, recovers the cost of providing these development fee related services. You position Merced to continue to meet the service level expectation of your community. So that legal requirement uh idea that I mentioned the California constitution and the California government code they give us sort of two broad fundamental principles. One is we are not in the profitm business. So a fee should not recover more than your cost of service and a fee should be proportional to to effort. So um something that is more complex in nature will likely have a higher cost of service than something that's less complex in nature.

And this study complies with uh both of those parameters. So now just some brief terminology in the staff report in my presentation we use these concepts of cost of service, cost recovery and subsidy. And uh so just uh cost of service what we think about is this idea of most of the things we're dealing with can be linked back to time. So if we understand what is the value of our time and how long does something typically take us, we can understand what is the city's cost of service. If an action takes us two hours to perform versus an action that takes us four hours to perform, the four act fourhour activity would have a higher cost of service than the two-hour activity. Um frequently communities think through this idea of what do I want to recover um in terms of my cost recovery levels and commonly they say for these development related fees they target high cost recovery levels because they see a high direct benefit to the receiver of service. So my new construction is causing some regulatory activity and and so we recover the cost of that regulation from me instead of the neighbors in Merrced. In terms of subsidy, um once we understand what our cost of service is, the Merced Council makes a decision whether to recover that cost or something less than that. Um when you choose to recover something less than that, what you want to remember is Merced still incurs the cost. you would just say, "I'm recovering part of this cost from the receiver of service, and I have to find some other city revenue source to cover the difference." Um, and typically that other revenue source would be your general fund tax dollars. So, everything you've just heard is common to communities throughout California. It applies to all your neighbors. It applies to Southern

California, Northern California, Central California consistently. Now, we'll talk specifically about what we see in Merced and what is proposed for the council to consider this evening. Um, and primarily what we're saying is that these fees that we're examining, they're regulatory in nature. Um, they're they're reviews that are required or inspections that are required as part of the California Building Code, the California Fire Code, your own zoning code. Um, and so these are regulatory fees and because we see this high level of direct benefit when somebody um adds square footage to their home or um builds new construction um that that there is enhanced property value that comes from that. There's enjoyment of the enhancements to from that construction. And so um the fees that are proposed for city council this evening primarily target full cost recovery. And the idea of that is when we recover the cost from the um actual receivers of service, we are having other Merced residents and businesses avoid subsidizing those private construction activities. A lot of times the city council says, "Fundamentally, I understand what I'm being asked to consider. I understand the concepts of cost of service and cost recovery. if I adopted these proposed fees, um would I position Merced as some sort of regional outlier or would I be um uh doing something that's sort of, you know, like provocative in nature? And so what we do is we grab uh a handful of fees and say what would the fee be today, what would it be tomorrow for common permit types or or permit types that can easily be compared from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. And this is where I'll move relatively quickly, but what you'll see is the light blue shading represents uh Merrced today and

Merced potentially July 1, 2026 if you adopt these fees. And over and over you're going to see um that the proposed fees do not position Merced as a regional outlier. You may end up in the mid-range, you may end up in the mid upper, you may end up in the mid lower, but the bottom line is most jurisdictions are in a similar range. if you see somebody um fairly low, a lot of times they're actually having a study in process right now. So today you'll see Mera is at the low end of a lot of these comparison charts. They're they're currently performing a study. Turlock's currently performing a study. And so um these slides give us comfort that what is being proposed uh falls within the realm of rationalism and reasonleness. Um and then secondarily that um that I what I want to mention is these comparisons come at the end of the study. So staff did not sort of say I would like my fees to be in line with the region. What we did as consultants is we worked with Merced data and said to ourselves, what do we believe the costs are for the city of Merrced and what do we believe a rational cost recovery policy would be? We identified those numbers and then at the conclusion of the study, we performed a regional fee comparison to figure out how would these numbers fit. So we didn't try and force outcomes to the region, but what you found is just based on your own costs in Merrced, the outcomes did align to the region. Um, in terms of fiscal impact of the proposed changes, if the council were adopt were to adopt the fees as proposed, uh, we anticipate an additional cost recovery of about 1.15 million in annual additional cost recovery. These are costs that you are already incurring as Merrced. So this is

not intended to fund new services. This is intended to recover a greater share of the cost of services you are already providing. Um because these are fees, they are adopted by the city council at the conclusion of a public hearing. So at this time I believe Merced will open a public hearing, consider the fee adjustments. Staff's recommendation is that you would adopt this the proposed fee schedule. If you do, the fees would be effective July 1, 2026. Thank you so much for your time and attention. All right. Thank you very much for the presentation. No one ever's gotten through 30 slides faster than than you did. We appreciate any

uh any questions from the council before we open the public hearing. Council Dupont,

thank you for the presentation. Um, one question I had to si slide 11 is the uh hourly hourly rate for personnel providing services. So it states here direct and indirect labor costs, services and supplies and agency overhead. Can you just in general explain um what is included to determine what the hourly rate is? Yeah. So, what we think about is we think about your your base salary or wages that somebody thinks about as showing up on their paychecks, but we also receive um benefits like medical benefits. We might wear uniforms, we might drive vehicles, we receive IT services, human resources services, payroll services that make sure we get the paycheck. And this is consistent methodology in terms of understanding what our costs of service are. So, we're trying to understand what are our direct costs, our our own salary and wages, and what are the supporting costs that allow us to go out and provide that outward-f facing service to the community.

And then the estimated time required to perform that service, is that based on the time that the department currently performs a service or is it based on some generality or industry standard? Uh that's performance of service.

No, it it was based on discussions with staff and what we talked with staff about was this idea that we don't we don't think about the the worst case scenario and we don't think about the best case scenario. We think about the typical scenario what we're likely to encounter and you have hundreds of fees because you're trying to contemplate the various scenarios that can come through your door. So, some of them the service time is very quick, you know, uh 1 hour, half an hour, something like that. And others it's more intensive. If you need reszoning or a conditional use permit, but um uh that's the way we did it. We didn't use any just sort of blanket numbers. We work with staff and then um we did do that sort of reasonleness test and soundness test to think through are these outcomes um aligning with what we would expect based on what we've seen in other communities. Thank you, Council Smith.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Madson, thank you for the work in the presentation. I want to ask you about some slides at the end of your presentation that the cost of appealing to the planning commission and city council. Uh let's focus on the planning commission. If you could maybe elaborate a little bit more how what are the cost drivers that you looked at and how do we arrive at 750? I guess that's per appeal. Yes. And I think the current cost is $500 to appeal to the planning commission. I'm almost there. Okay. Sorry.

I've been told I talk fast. Okay. So,

so thank you for asking about appeals. Appeals are actually an intensive process. They occur uh relatively infrequently because your staff really tries to help people not have to appeal. Right? So staff says to an applicant, um this is this is what your application uh requested. we've made the decision because of X, Y, and Z. Um because our zoning code says this and and this project doesn't align to that or something like that. And and so over and over we try and work through this concept, but you should have maybe a handful of appeals in a year. When they do come, they are intensive in nature. Um but a lot of communities say I acknowledge that they are intensive in nature and and I said in my presentation that most of your fees attempt to recover full cost of service but there are a handful like design review of signs or small residential projects where you might target less than full cost recovery. Appeals is one of them. So when we talked to staff and said just generally what would you anticipate that you would spend at a base level sort of getting ready to uh inform the city council or the planning commission about an appeal? They said at a staff level we're thinking about like 16 hours. We might have specialized attorney review in addition to that. But a 16-hour um effort, we're thinking about thousands of dollars here of time of staff effort associated with it. But there it seems like from community to community to community in order to avoid seeming as if we are discouraging somebody's ability to appeal, we target less than full cost recovery. So, that's what's being proposed in your scenario is um if you wanted to appeal to the planning

commission, there would be a $750 fee. That would be about 25% cost recovery. If you wanted to subsequently appeal to the city council, there'd be a uh $1,500 fee. That'd be about 50% cost recovery. And then what we acknowledge is um if there was specialized attorney review costs that were associated with that appeal, we would expect the applicant to be responsible for those costs. So you are choosing to subsidize the base application processing fee and preparation, not necessarily all of the associated legal costs that would come with it.

Yeah. So Mr. Madson, I don't know if I could have explained it better myself. You went exactly where I was hoping to go. Um, sounds like the your estimate of the actual cost on the on city hall for a planning commission appeal is three grand an appeal. Yes. And you the actual cost of an appeal to city council is you think about twice that. That's also about three grand. It's just a secondary body that they're appealing to.

Um, but we're saying you might likely appeal to the planning commission as your first course of action. And so there's a reduc the idea is go appeal to the planning commission. If you don't like that answer and you wish to subsequently appeal to the city council, there's an additional fee and we're saying, hey, another additional level of effort to prepare for that review, right? Um, and so that's what we're doing.

Do you see fee increases done in other cities? Excuse me. Do you do you see instances where fees are increased for appeals to a planning commission or city council, but also either an an increase in the in the requirements for the appeal or the amount of information given to potential appellants? Do you see those things kind of going hand inand? You know, I would have to say I I don't know the answer to that. I only think about sort of how much does it cost you and what do you want to recover? Not necessarily policywise. What do you want to wrap into sort of the requirements associated with that? All right. No, that's fair. I appreciate that. All right. Thank you. Those are my questions. Council Dupont.

Thank you. Um while you're speaking, it sparked another question. Um what was the methodology methodology used to determine what fees would be 100% recoverable versus lower than 100% and why did we pick some and not others? So generally you've chosen uh well the proposed fee schedule recommends um less than full cost recovery in a handful of areas and they're primarily these these small sort of essentially single family residential projects and they're a lot of times at the planning stage. Sometimes a planning effort is an intensive effort um and you're really trying to avoid discouraging somebody from coming and doing things the right way. So if you look for where is um sort of proposed less than full cost recovery. You're going to see it in these very small sort of momand pop type planning projects. You're going to see it in small sign reviews. A lot of times a community targets less than full cost recovery for small sign reviews because you're saying I think uh when somebody improves their signs it's a benefit term or set so forth. Um and then the appeals I mentioned and then the final one is uh frequently we see residential driveway encroachments as an area for less than full cost recovery. And the idea here is there is a cost to reviewing somebody who wants to sort of um redo their driveway, but a lot of times um what communities think is I'm trying to avoid somebody going out and trying to do this on a Saturday. I have multiple priorities, right? I do want to recover the cost of service, but I also want to encourage people to come in and do things the right way for drainage and so forth. And so um that one is the residential driveway encroachment is the other one where we see less than full cost recovery.

Couple questions kind of following up just big picture. Obviously you seem like extremely thoughtful uh and do this uh at a very high level. Where is the um you know where kind of are the sensitive spots where you could potentially you know slow development, discourage good behavior? You've mentioned a number of them already, but where where do we got to be? Where are the landmines? Where what do we got to be looking out for here where the city's um you know a very fast growing city, but then there's also a lot of need and there's there's a need in a lot of different areas and we don't want to discourage good behavior. We don't want to discourage development. um you know where are the things that um that we need to really look out for here and have you seen that in other cities at what point do the feeds become too ownorous that

you know it starts to discourage good behavior

we did think about that and we do think about that so I mentioned this idea that we do a comparison at the end of a study um and and we think about that concept throughout the study but it does not inform our answers so our answers are what is Merced's cost of service and then do we believe if Merced set fees to this cost of service secondarily do we believe that um there is something here that would indicate that you would significantly alter somebody's decision about whether to choose Merrced or not for a potential project or something like that and um so secondarily we think about that at the same time as the comparison we didn't feel like we were seeing that so as an editorial comment from somebody who does this sort of day after day. We do not believe the fees as proposed today either exceed your cost of service or would likely sort of um encourage a potential developer to choose somewhere else, somewhere other than Merced to go um uh perform their project. When we think about like what is the impact to a residential tracked home development or if somebody wanted to build a large warehouse here, the fee change is really uh very minimal in terms of the total costs of the project. What we hear from the development community, what we hear from fee payers who are sort of um uh sort of stakeholder representatives on the other side of the table is what they're looking for is a high level of service. They're looking for turnaround time. They're looking for access to staff and consultant support. Um they're looking for city infrastructure that will support the project and and so forth. And so um there was nothing in these slides that sort of said, you know,

Merrced is putting themselves at 2x the region or something like that. And just another point of um information in case it helps the city council when we think about fees the servicebased fees are the smaller component of the total fees a project might pay. The larger fees would be um impact fees for connecting to a sewer system, a water system, a school district, um enhancing traffic infrastructure, transportation infrastructure. We're not examining those. Those are sort of like the the big ticket items when you think about fees and none of those are proposed to change as part of this process. Okay. And it seems like as you said earlier appeals and then some of the planning

early stage the small R1 type planning projects for example minor cups 20% proposed cost recovery major 30 and these were talked through with staff in terms of boots on the ground and and what they know of Merrced. Um, so they weren't, you know, they were very deliberate, thoughtful approaches to this would seem a logical candidate for full cost recovery versus partial. Some use of city property that would be justified was it's got a broader public use. Okay. Yeah. All right, Mr. O'Bri.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh, Terry Terry hit hit it pretty solid there. Um, I was going to mention three things that uh really have an impact. Um, couple of them he he he hit which are really it's your sewer and water rates, right? Those those have a a much larger impact. I just want to uh make a comment to we we did hold a public workshop and we've added a lot of stakeholders to the meeting and and we kind of alluded to the fact that your entitlement fees which these cover your permit fees which these cover uh these are much smaller in the bigger scheme of what we're looking at. um your your um water fees, your sewer fees, your public facility fees, those carry a much bigger weight in the costs. Those are areas you have to be very sensitive to. Uh we did mention during the meeting that we were holding off um uh looking at rate increases this current year, but they may be perspectively down the road. Uh I also want to mention too, I think the council might be aware, but if not, it's a good reminder. you still do have a public facility finance plan uh reduction 50% reduction in place to encourage infill development. So we've been carrying that for a while and so that is a good incentive for those builders who out there that are looking for unique opportunities to invest in the core of Merced. And so I think those areas are more sensitive to builders than the fees we're talking about here tonight. Um I did want to uh convey I I was able to get some uh communication from John Beckman uh our BIA representative. He he he obviously wants to advocate, but you know, and all increases are too much, right? But he said the methodology looked appropriate. Um didn't really have any issues there. Uh so I wanted to make sure that I shared that that information tonight. I told him that, you know, for the time being, we're still holding off on the other things we mentioned during the workshop, the water, sewer, and keeping the infill rate uh where we have it. So I think those are still a fair balance to try to encourage the development we're looking

for. And how is this sensitive to our we made the policy decision a while back to make the infill fees lower? Is this going to affect that in any way in your opinion? The infill fees that the city manager was referencing are not a part of this study. Sure. But that these don't I mean all told here the different they would they would modify but it would again it it would it would not be a modification that we would anticipate would sort of trigger somebody to say I I can no longer um choose to move forward with this. Sure. Council Harris.

Thank you mayor. Thank you for presentation. Um, specifically with regard to appeals, uh, seems to me that if an applicant wins their appeal, they shouldn't have had to pay for it. Are you aware of any municipalities that have that policy?

We are we are aware of agencies that sort of say um there is an appeal filing fee. um making sure that people understand there there is a cost of service and there is a value of staff time associated with this. Um but they have a footnote or a clarifier that says if if the uh if the appellant is successful that fee will be refunded essentially that that appeal fee will be refunded. So, we have seen that and I'm not sure if we propose I'm trying to look at your footnotes to see if we proposed that or not. But if we didn't and you're asking have we ever seen it? The answer is yes. Let me just take a quick look at the footnotes. I'm almost there. So, the footnote for appeals is letter D. It your footnote does say if a decision is made in the appellant's favor, the city will refund the appeal filing fee.

Very good. Thank you so much. Yep. Thank you. All right. Caris got you on the one thing you probably didn't have committed to memory. All right. Anybody else? Okay. Seeing none, we'll open the public hearing. All right. Jennifer, do we have any requests to speak from the public? I do have one from Robert Delina. Oh, Mr. Delina. evening, sir.

Good evening, Mayor, uh, city manager, city council. Um, so hearkening back to Econ 101, we know that any fee on any activity acts as a disincentive. You can chart it, right? Um, that curve is is real. I'm not advocating that we don't adopt these. Um, there's a lot of good stuff in here. The primary concern that I have uh I think is more so around infill. Um I will disagree that uh I think some of the fees uh to the scale that they're increasing will uh depending on the size of infill project will discourage them quite a bit. The uh general plan amendment fee in particular is increasing dramatically. um uh zone change uh the pre-development application um which has been a fantastic tool for planning um although probably costly I think the full cost uh of that was recognized to be about $1,400 some dollars the application fee for right right now is I think 194 um that increase uh I know for a fact will scare off some smaller uh folks that may not be professional developers but they've like okay I've got this halfacre lot that's been empty for a while. I'd like to do something, but gosh, I just can't be sure. And you know, almost two grand just to find out if I've even got something. Um, and then heaven forbid. Oh, well, it's low density residential. You want to put a duplex. Too bad. Uh, you know, you want to put maybe some row housing, three houses on that that half acre. Got to do a general plan amendment to move to low medium density and a zone change simultaneously. just added three $30,000 cumulatively to your cost to do so. Um, so I think the main thing that I would uh recommend you consider is the the activities that you do want to subsidize. It's one of Merced's strategic priorities to encourage infill, right? With this has been

mentioned in your strategic sessions. It's been talked about. There's a current uh 50% I think is the cut on the impact fees if you're building within uh the infill area. uh which is great. Keep in mind you did double that fee at the same time that we created that 50% discount. So um you know that's approximately $5,000 in savings for your construction there might be entirely wiped out by the new higher fees if you're having to change your zoning or or whatnot. Um, the other thing that we've often talked about is how we often lose commercial opportunities, super targets and and and businesses like these that will go other places that are willing to provide them incentives. One of the things that we talked about in the the community meeting was that none of the long range tax basis or benefit from any of this type of construction was calculated in when setting the fees which is probably appropriate. But in many cases there may be cases where you want to subsidize a large employer of some kind that's going to bring a lot of tax revenue to the city and there doesn't seem to be neither in the fee study or in the code a way to wave or provide an incentive. Thank you.

Thank you. If I could indulge, uh, Mr. Dan, if I could ask you one question. You mentioned the, um, the I just want to make sure I'm getting this one right. Uh, on our, it's the, uh, pre-application review for a minor CUP, which is currently uh, 194. Is that I'm just want to make sure I'm looking the right one. Pre-development application, I believe, is the official title of that one. And it's 194. It's going a little over the one I see goes I think it's 1,400 some bucks at least in the the draft copy that I saw last week when the agenda was posted showed that the one I see and I could be missing the one I see goes from 194 to 300 and it's

20% cost recovery. I could be missing it though. Kid it's definitely not minor site plan. It's no one pre I'm I see pre-application review on page four. That's what I'm looking at too. number item 38. Yeah, for the minor. Yeah, it's entirely possible. I got lost in the sauce on the page. There's a lot of numbers on there, but um I thought I was reading the right line and it was it was pre-development application, which is uh I know myself and many uh currently use that. It's one of the best tools you guys have for figuring out, you know, if a project is viable or not. Okay. Could I let me take this to you? Just want to make sure we're all talking about the same thing. I'm going to walk.

Yeah. So, the last I saw show I didn't see this. No. That's my mistake. It uh I read a different line item, I guess. I don't know. But it's going to 300, which I still think is that's fine. That's appropriate. That won't dissuade people. Okay. If I could. Yeah. Go ahead with regret.

Um couple things come to mind. Um and Terry, I I I think we're still doing this in the proposed update. We actually wrapped that pre-development fee into a credit when you actually apply for the entitlements. So you don't lose that fee gets wrapped up into it. So it's it's actually a credit for it. The other thing I just want to point out, I know Mr. Deline is paying attention, so I want to make sure he hears this very clearly. Um, in every R1 and every R2, you can actually do a duplex by right. So you don't need to ask for general plan or zone change. You can do a duplex by right. So that was part of our code amendment to encourage more development and more infill. So we doing that all over the community. So, um, if there's any questions about that, let's talk about it. Okay. Anybody else additional questions? Um, public comments?

We don't have any more. Okay. All right. All right, seeing none, we'll close the public hearing and we'll bring it back to council for further discussion and action or additional questions, discussion or motion. Motion. Okay. Motion. Council member Harris. Is there a second? Okay. Council member Dupont.

Thank you, mayor. I just want to point out a couple of things. I I I do have the ca some of the same concerns uh as said in the sense of stifling development especially representing Southeast Merrced. We have a lot of development and potential development going on in Southeast Merrced. So we don't want to raise the service uh cost of service to our developers without seeing an outcome to it. And what I mean by that is if we are looking to increase these uh development fees, there has to be an outcome to our departments to say there's an expected level of service that we are going to provide at that at that point. Um another thing is on the the regional fee comparison, I would be uh very hesitant to compare ourselves to St. Louis Abyspo. Um, so looking at a lot of these regional fee comparisons, I look at valley um, cities. So, in a lot of the valley cities, we're getting close to the top end of the regional fee comparison, which again concerns me because we do not want to stifle development um at the at the hand of trying to increase fees within our own departments. And it's not to say that other cities may increase their fees. They they very well may. But we're competing with a Turlock or a Madera or a Modesto to ensure local developers build local and provide local. Um and so we don't we want to be very careful in what we're doing. But I I do see that the fees are um in some degree and and a lot of degree are

moving up incrementally. Um I I just want to ex have the expectation of if we are going to increase these fees that there should be an expectation that we provide top level service. Not saying that we don't do now but that will be the expectation response to that.

Well you know I I I don't have any response to your service level comment but I do have a response to the St. Louis Abyspo comment. Um, we did think about that. It was again a strategic move. When we thought about Merced, we thought you do have two very unique scenarios compared to some of the other cities in the valley. One is a major hospital and the other is major universities. And we felt like that actually merits considering um other communities with similar infrastructure versus a community that has nowhere near that infrastructure because that really does influence um you know this idea of what is coming to Merced. Merced is not the same as some of your regional neighbors just by definition of that hospital and that major university.

Thank you. Or additional questions, comments. Uh pending motion from council Harris. Councelor Dupont.

Just one last one. I I want to just our our expectations of yes, we do have a major hospital. Yes, we do have a university, but our medium income levels and our medium housing prices are totally different than a slow area. So again, we have to remember that and understand that before we're saying yes, let's compare ourselves to slow because we pass these fees on to the developer. The developer is just passing the fees on to the consumers who we don't have those medium income levels. we don't have the the the same comparison of jobs. So again, just just food for thought

and I just want to confirm that if you tried to build a home in St. Louis, you would pay significantly more than Merced. So even though I use them for certain comparisons, it is a different spectrum. You are completely right, council member. Council Smith couldn't resist the urge to jump too much into the comparator city, but uh one thing St. Louis has over us is better wineries. Let's just be honest.

Um you know, look, I kind of look at it stepwise. So, should we take this opportunity and thank you city manager McBride for getting this ball rolling? Um you know, the answer is yes, right? We Venus gave the forecast three four months ago. Planning services is it's not paying for itself and it's nobody's fault. Just the level of the service demand far exceeds cost recovery,

right? Um also, you know, we all talk to people in the community. The biggest complaint I tend to hear from people in the development community is that things just take too long. And it's not a comment on the quality when their file is picked up, but it's always like, "Hey man, I'm trying to give your city some money here. I'm trying to build the thing that you guys give us the green light for. So, I don't know what the service level is, but clearly there's a demand and we're not doing enough of it. So, we need to we need to charge the users of the service more so we can do a better job. Um, I'm sensitive to Mr. Delina's comment, Council Member Depot's observation. You know, maybe there are some economically sensitive styles of development that we don't want to squatchch. I don't know that I have enough information sitting here to know how that will impact say infill development. Um on the other hand, I think our fees are relatively small compared to um our peers up and down 99. I'm less swayed by that though. You know, I I think outside companies invest in Mercer or don't for a lot of reasons and the fees really is just one of many, right? Do they find the parcel they want, the location they want, etc., etc. Um, I would rather set the right fee on the front side than set a fee and then try to roll it back or cut it though because that does other things to my understanding like potentially trigger prevailing wage which can change project economics. Um, I'm inclined to accept the recommendation as presented. I was thinking about the appeal costs and as our city grows and changes uh you know in a large sense that's our community coming to talk to us about the decision we're about to make. I actually think the appella procedure would be improved greatly if we gave people a little more information about how to present appeals on both sides but that's not the question before us. Um, I think 750 for

a planning commission appeal is probably about right. And I think 3,000 is probably actually pretty low, having gone through a cell phone tower and a self- storage facility a couple of times. Um, I think the demands on staff are pretty significant. So, those fees are pretty are commensurate with the need to give the people in our community a chance to speak. So, um, I'm inclined to second Mr. Paris's motion, but I wanted to make sure we had a chance to discuss everything in front of us. The cell tower fee, there's a cell tower fee update on this thing too as well in case you wanted to know. All right. Um, so is that a second? Still pending further discussion too, but second.

Okay. So, we have a motion, a second. Is there any additional discussion? Okay, seeing none, Jennifer will call for the question. I have a motion by Council Member Harris and a second by Council Member Smith. The motion will include the adoption of resolution 2026-10, a resolution of the city council of the city of Merced, California, updating and establishing various user and regulatory fees. Mayor and council, please cast your votes.

Okay. And the motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Terry. Thank you for a very good thoughtful presentation. If anything um goes wrong, we'll start to uh might have to revisit them. But we appreciate your thoughtfulness on this. Very well done.

Agenda item K, action items K1, approval of a professional services agreement with Precision Civil Engineering, Inc. in the amount of $246,587.65 and a deposit and reimbursement agreement with Tavvaris 2015 Trust in the amount of $271,245.82 82 cents for the preparation of an environmental report to facilitate the annexation annexation 25-00003 of 37 parcels approximately 366 acres. Thank you Jennifer. Mr. Rashet

good evening mayor city council members speaking of planning because which I felt like the uh most of the discussion of the fee was uh so what I'm bringing before you is a professional service agreement and a development reimbursement agreement with precision civil engineering and the trust fund. This deals with a property that's bounded by Kona Avenue, Tyler Road, Mission, and is just west of Henry Street. Uh back in November 17th of 2025, there was a uh preliminary annexation application that was brought before city council. Uh this uh this vote passed from 5 to one vote in favor of this annex of this pre-annexation. It was comprised of 366 acres, which is still being proposed. 119 acres is designed for regional community commercial, 55 acres for business park use, 62 acres for lowmedium density residential, and 108 acres for low density residential uses. So what this is is just the ability to allow the city of Merrcett to continue on working with the environmental professionals that will be helping provide the squa analysis to the property and then allowing the development or uh development uh portion of it to be able to reimburse us for the cost of the management of the property. Um if you do have any questions I'm more than happy to answer.

Okay. Questions? Jennifer, anything for the public? We don't have anything there. Thank you. All right. Back to council for additional questions, discussion or a motion. Motion second. Boil Dupont. Have a motion by Mayor Pro Tim Bole and a second by council member Dupont. Mayor in councsel. Please cast your votes. Okay. And the motion passes with council member Jeang absent.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay. Agenda item L, reports L1, presentation and discussion of Senate Bill 77 707, overhaul of the Ralph M. Brown Act. All right, Rhonda. Everybody's favorite topic.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madame Mayor Proim, Council members, Mr. City Manager, and Mr. City Attorney. Um, we are gonna delve into the long awaited presentation on SB77. Little preview. It's so much fun. I get to come back to you in two weeks and delve into another aspect of SB77. So, um, here we go. First and foremost, um, as you all know, I'm sure, uh, the Brown Act, as Ralph and Brown Act, also known as the Brown Act, is what allows local what requires local governments to ensure that all of our meetings are noticed, open, and public. In addition to that requirement, um it also requires that the public have a right to participate and that's codified here at California government code 54953. The Brown Act applies to what is defined as all meetings of the legislative body of a local agency. and we're going to learn how important that concept is. Um, under the Brown Act, the legislative body means and relevant part the governing body of a local agency or any other local body created by state or federal statute. It also includes so you city council. It also includes under subb a commission, committee, board or other body of a local agency whether permanent or temporary decisionmaking or advisory created by charter, ordinance, resolution or formal action of a legislative body. And again, this is all derived at government code 54952 and 54953.

The SB77 was introduced and ultimately signed in 2005 during the legislative session. It is California's first major Brown Act modernization in decades. According to the bill's author, quote, "This act is necessary to modernize the Ralph and Brown Act to reflect recent technological changes that can promote greater public access to local officials. And the changes we're about to talk about include hybrid public participation, language translation of agendas, and encouraged expanded community outreach. It does appear that we learned a lot during COVID and how we conducted meetings in addition to just the natural advancement of technology. And coming out of the COVID era, um, the author and many members of the legislature, a majority, decided to do kind of a lessons learned exercise and update the Brown Act to reflect in their opinion some of the best lessons from those times. Um, as I mentioned, I will be back in front of you on April 20th. Lucky you. um because SB77 really very broadly falls into three categories or tracks. The first is a clarification and expansion of teleconferencing rules. Um that's what I'm going to come back to you on um because I didn't want to be up here all night tonight or bore you all. Um specifically the teleconferencing rules could apply to all legislative bodies. That's another very important distinction. And um beyond that tract, the second tract is what we're kind of calling miscellaneous ch changes for all Brown Act meetings. Unbeknownst to you,

perhaps your staff has been working very diligently and much of what I'm about to verbally commit to you, we've already done because it needed to be done by January 1 of 2026. So these miscellaneous changes that apply to on the first one all legislative bodies first and foremost um you guys interact on social media and it's allowed in a limited context as defined in the Brown Act. Um and there was a sunset provision. The legislature told you don't worry we're going to get rid of it. 707 removed the sunset provision. So, how you conduct yourselves on social media continues and remains and those restrictions are not going away. Um, the bottom line, legislative body members can use social media to communicate with the public, but a majority of the legislative body cannot discuss matters within their jurisdiction via social media. And you individual members as well as every individual member of one of our commissions, boards, standing committees cannot respond to another member's post, shares, etc. on matters within the jurisdiction of the body, including simply liking or disliking the poster comment or commenting or posting an emoji. The second sort of miscellaneous change that we uh have already enacted is SB707 now requires us to provide a copy of the Brown Act to all of you. Electronic copies are sufficient. Um we have done that. Um and we did provide you with an electronic copy. We will provide a

printed version obviously if it is requested. Another miscellaneous change is um a relatively unused portion of the Brown Act. If the body is considering a change or adoption of a policy that was brought up through the body's committee process, you technically don't have to have public comment. um this stays in effect, but now if there was substantial changes between what your committee brought up and what you're actually deciding on, you have to provide public comment opportunity. In addition, you have to provide public comment opportunity in that scenario. If a quorum of the committee did not participate from a single physical location or if the committee has primary subject matter jurisdiction over elections, budgets, police oversight, privacy, library materials, or tax and spending proposals. And I think this might be the last miscellaneous change that we're going to talk about tonight is um as we've allowed during COVID for the use of teleconferencing and um remote participation, the Brown Act didn't actually specifically say whether or how one could go about handling a member remotely participating who was being disruptive. The Brown Act now via SB77 allow specifically authorizes removal of virtual attendees causing disruption under the Brown Act. Um you must still provide a warning before removal unless the behavior constitutes use of force or

true threat of force. And just to be clear, once we get input and feedback from you over the next couple of meetings, we anticipate presenting a policy for the council to consider adopting that implements a formal policy on how the city will handle disruptive attendees. And we anticipate that that will be an all-inclusive policy, but we wanted to get feedback or thoughts from you um before we began drafting it and presented it to you. The last topic and actually the thrust of tonight's presentation is the changes to eligible legislative bodies and that's where we're going to spend the bulk of this evening. So an eligible legislative body is a subset of that broad legislative body definition that we went over in the first couple of slides. An eligible legislative body means any of the following. a a city council of a city with a population of 30,000 or more. Um, importantly, the city of Merced's only eligible legislative body is you, the city council. So, everything that we discuss from this point forward only applies to you, the city council. It does not apply to your commissions, boards, or standing committees that may be created. What is required? One of the most major changes is that the city council meetings beginning July 1st have to provide access and community opportunity to participate in meetings via either two-way telephonic service or two-way audiovisisual platform. The city council, excuse me, shall provide public comment

opportunity for those participating remotely and ensure that the public comment time period for remote participants is the same time period as those appearing in person. I want to be clear here. In order to be operational by July 1, as the law requires, um for a one-year period, staff has executed a contract under the assumption that at least through the end of this year, um we will be participating via two-way telephonic service. We did that in part in very large part because the technological requirements for the audiovisisual platform were much greater and the two-way telephonic service we could implement very quickly and use it as a trial basis still meeting the requirements of the law and we will get our imped. Um, importantly, even though we're going to be implementing the telephonic service, your meetings will continue to be broadcast to the public in the usual manner. So, they're going to go out over Granakus on the website via YouTube. What this platform is talking about is how remote participants engage with you, particularly via public comment. And in order to even get the two-way telephonic service up and running, we did have to execute a contract of limited duration. So, it fell under the the bidding requirements. It was approved actually on tonight's consent agenda as anformational contract only because it's just through the one-year period. And what that contract does is, and I am way out over my skis here, um, but Jeff and I are helping me quite a bit. Um, it

provides that our meetings continue to be broadcast like we're all used to in the background. It creates a expansion of the dialin abilities of remote participants and creates a request to speak system. So almost the virtual equivalent of the green card and a virtual queue so that the city clerk can manage the flow of the speakers and their requests. and we will know what item they want to speak on. Um, just as though they were hopefully just as though they were participating here in the room in person. Um, another meeting requirement is you must adopt by July 1st a policy on disruption of service, including the fact that you made good faith attempts to restore service for at least one hour and that the re meeting has was recessed while the good faith attempts were being made. So what this means is that as of July 1, even if all of you are here and everything's going fine in-person meeting, but we have some form of technological glitch where the public who may or may not be participating remotely lose their feed, um we have to go into recess. We will have a policy that discusses lays out um how we attempt to make good faith efforts to restore that service and the steps that will be used, we cannot reconvene for at least one hour. Um if you wish to um if disruption of service cannot be remedied within that hour time period, you may reconvene if you so choose after that hour time period. But in order to reconvene, you

have to adopt a finding by roll call vote that good faith efforts were in fact taken to restore the service and that the public interest in continuing that particular meeting outweighs the public interest in remote access for the remainder of the meeting. Um you cannot approve this future disruption of service policy on consent calendar. So, it will be in front of you for an action item. Um, we are currently drafting a policy for your consideration and we will bring it forward after the council has been fully briefed on SB77 and we hear your input on technology and where you want to go and how you want to implement this. Um, we anticipate bringing it to the council in either late May or early June. And I do want to take a moment and say that um while I'm up here presenting tonight, city attorney's office, city clerk's office, and the IT department have worked very hard, very closely together, many bi-weekly meetings leading up to this. So, um Jeff and Jennifer especially deserve hats off that this is a total team effort to get to this point. Another requirement, and this is where the big changes come in, the city council must reasonably assist translation/interpretation requests from the public into any language. Um, you the city shall create and publicize instructions on how to request translation or interpretation assistance. Importantly, this requirement does not call for providing actual in-person translation services. And we can satisfy this requirement by

allowing sufficient space at the podium for both the interpreter and in-person um translator, public speaker. If if that's what's occurring and you guys do that now, um we can allow for additional time for speakers requiring translation services. We can also allow for individuals to utilize their personal equipment or commercially available interpretation equipment for translation and interpretation services. Um again we can use digital service. Most importantly, we are not responsible for the content or accuracy of any interpretation or translation that is specifically codified in the law. It is not vague. It expressly states that we are not liable. The city must translate and post the entire council agenda, including the remote attendance information and how to request for interpretive services into any language spoken by more than 20% of the city's population that also speaks English less than very well. Um and our agendas are translated into languages spoken by more than 20% of the cit city's citizens who speak English that are less than very well must be posted virtually in the same manner as we post the agenda in English. Um there's a unique way to calculate this threshold. I won't bore you with it. Um, but we've looked at the math and right now we believe that our SB77 require required language translation threshold is met for Spanish speakers. But as we went through this process and had our

meetings, we also assumed that the city's practice of translating in Mong will continue. Um, even though we're not quite at that threshold under the strictest interpretation of SB77, the translation is only required for the agenda, not the entire packet. That being said, IT staff have created an interactive feature right on Granakus, right on our website, um that allows any user to select from a drop-own menu and translate the full agenda as well as any documents that are in PDF into many, many languages. The way we currently have that drop-down uh menu set up is at the top is Spanish and Mong. Below that are a whole host of other languages. Um and so that's how we're handling that right now. Um, I would say that also backing up one, the translated agendas posting must occur in a freely accessible location on our website. And we also have to provide a spot open to the public where um any person who has translated the agenda into a language can post their translation. So um we there that will also be a new area in the foyer there of city hall. Um, the city must maintain an accessible web page dedicated to public meetings that detail the public meeting process and outline public participation methods.

That Spanish threshold, the web page has to be translated into the Spanish language for the city of Merced. And each translation, so for us it's just Spanish at this point in time, must be accessible through a prominent direct link posted on the city's primary homepage or city council homepage. We are working with it. We again, city council or I'm sorry, city clerk, uh, city attorney and it are working together to see this will probably be a new web page and can the technology that I referenced at the previous slide where anybody can just hit translate into a whole multitude of languages. Can we make that work on this web page as well? Um Jeff will be talking to you more about some of the IT solutions and of course the costs associated with them at the April 20th meeting, but I wanted to let you know that that is in the look works and something that we're working very hard on. Um, last but not least, the city must create and implement a system for electronically accepting and fulfilling requests for and or providing copies of the city council meeting agendas and agenda documents through email or an agend integrated agenda management platform. um information about how to make this uh request using this system shall be accessible through a prominent link directly on the city's website homepage. Um I believe that at the April 20th meeting we will um again have a presentation from Jeff and it we will get delve much further into some of the

necessary procurements and and and platforms and software to make all of this happen. But this is what SPO7 requires of you the city council effective July 1. And with that, I am happy to take any questions or comments. All right. Thank you, Ron. Any questions for our chief deputy city attorney? Mayor Pro Bole. Thank you, mayor. I missed I think one of the miscellaneous changes for all Brown Act meetings. Could you go through that list again?

Absolutely. Um the social media restrictions, the main thing is that the sunset clause has disappeared. Um and you can use social media to communicate, but a majority of the legislative body cannot discuss matters within their jurisdiction via social media. More importantly or as importantly, individual members cannot respond to another member's posts or shares or anything that they put up on social media on matters within the legislative body's jurisdiction, which includes likes, dislikes, comments, emojis, all of that good stuff. You can tell I'm really technologically with it, too. Um, we have to provide copies of the Brown Act to every member of a legislative body. Um, the third change is that the committee exception that allows you to bypass public comment if an item that is about to be heard by the legislative body came up through the committee process um, remains. But if there were substantial changes from when it was heard in committee versus what's in front of the legislative body, you have to provide for public comment. You also have to provide for public comment if a quorum of the committee did not participate in a single location. And this exception does not exist for committees or legislative bodies that has primary subject matter jurisdiction over elections, budgets, police oversight, privacy, library matters, or tax and spending proposals. The fourth miscellaneous change is the

authorization explicitly to remove somebody who is participating virtually and being disruptive. To that end, um we will be bringing forth a policy for city council to adopt that would apply to all of our boards and commissions um on how to handle this sometime in late May or early June. And that is all of the miscellaneous. Thank you. It was the copies of the Brown Act that I missed. Um I have another question. Do we have an I'm assuming someone does know this number, but what is the fiscal impact with all of these requirements and all the changes?

Um I supposed to know it. Jeff went over it with us. um you will get that at as a part of Jeff's presentation on April 20th. I'm I'm sorry to put that off. Um until then, at this point in time, additional staff time of course. Um doing some of the things internally we didn't account for, but your major fiscal impact was the umformational contract that uh was approved and it was under the threshold. It was I know it was under 50,000 but that was just for one year and that allows us to have the Q system um for uh remote participants to get in line to comment. I would like to give a hats off to Jeff and the IT department. the translation technology that I mentioned. Um we are have that available to us without additional fiscal impact because um Jeff and I all of it um had to do something for Americans with Disability Act compliance and found that module and forward thinking realized if we do this we can kill two birds with one stone. we meet ADA compliance as well as SB707. Um, and that was that was a huge catch on his part and really alleviated a lot of my concerns with the July 1 requirements in that area.

Thank you. Yes, I hoping on the April 20th meeting we can at least see what the impacts are. We have we do have an estimate um and a part of it will depend on the direction you give us and how how broad and encompassing you want to go um with this which is a big part of Jeff's um presentation because so much of this is going to be technologydriven and it's up to you guys to tell us how much software platforms and hardware you you want us to purchase. All right. Additional questions for our chief deputy city attorney. Council Joel,

can you remind me if the two-way telephonic services does that pertain to any boards, commissions, standing committees that we have?

No, not under SP7. The reason I'm somewhat hesitating in answering you is because depending on what you, the city council, do with respect to a very specific teleconference room that we'll be talking about teleconference role, excuse me, that we'll be talking about on April 20th. It may be more available and required, but at this point in time, the two-way participation um is only applicable legally under the way SB77 is written to the city council. Obviously, if the board or commission is meeting under the existing teleconference rules, then there has to be some level of of participation.

Okay. And then tying into um the miscellaneous changes to the round act with regards to an item coming up the committee process where public comments is available at that time and then not needed during council meetings. Um does that mean that during that entire process there doesn't there there might not be any sort of two-way telephonic services for that item? if it wasn't provided during the committee portion.

That is an excellent question and I can tell you that that is not something I saw any evidence that the legislature even considered the way that the law is currently written. I would say no because the requirement for two-way telephonic communication doesn't come into effect until July 1 and it only applies to the city council. If it was a subcommittee of the city council, the answer would be yes because that law applies. But if it's a subcommittee of planning commission, for example, um there's no requirement for the planning commission to have that two-way telephonic or audiovisisual. Therefore, their subcommittee would not necessarily have the two-way telephonic or audiovisisual. So, the answer is is no. There's no requirement.

Okay. Thank you. I will point out on that exception, I looked briefly at past meetings. I don't think you guys have ever invoked it. It is rarely used. It is up to the governing body whether they want to invoke that exception or just have a public hearing. You can always go above and beyond. Thank you, Council Member Schmidt. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Miss Lucas. I can tell you've done a lot of research in this. Um, surely the legislature made themselves subject to the same rules, though, right? Um, if you'll recall, the Brown Act only applies to local governing bodies.

Got it. Um, I've always been under the impression, I've been doing this for a while, that these are our meetings that happen in public. Seems like the legislaturator's decided that it's not the case anymore. Um, what are the limits that a governing body like the council can place on public comment to make sure we can still do our business? I saw you say that electronic comments have to have the same amount of time allotted as somebody in person, right? Correct. Is it still fair for the council to decide that public comment is no longer three minutes but two minutes or one minute like say a highspeed rail authority? Yes, sir. Okay. You you still have all of that authority.

And can legislative body still cap the overall amount of time dedicated to public comment like the board of supervisors? Yes. Okay. So we could decide public comment is only one minute per speaker and it's capped at 20 minutes an item. That would still be lawful. That would still be lawful. All right. Thank you very much.

Council, just to council mayor's miss point, um how will the queue works in terms of capping the time for public speaking? Will we allow folks that are here physically take party over folks over I don't know that are online? How does that work? Is that at all explain

these sort of details? Um the legislature never considered. Um I know you're all shocked to hear that. Um but I would certainly defer to uh city council or city attorney Cornwell. Um, but in general, best practice would be to have thought these items through and have adopted something before so that everybody is on notice and it doesn't appear we're being arbitrary and capriccious. And um I don't know um if city attorney Cornwall wants to jump in here or you want me to keep going. we we would make a proposal. Um I I don't think I think equity and fairness would would govern the proposal, but we're outside of the um the state's um adoption of 707. we'd have to come up with something um maybe so many in person and then online within the given uh time period, but we'd have to balance the two um issues fairly. All right. Anyone else? Jennifer, anything from the public?

We don't have anything, Mayor. Okay, bring it back to council. Uh Ron, you need anything from us tonight? It says we're agendaized for possible direction, but that's more Yeah, just this dialogue has been helpful and if there's any uh thing more pointed or detailed you want to send our way. Um thank you for your patience and indulgence and we will be back discussing this in two weeks and then you get lots of uh draft policies from us for your consideration. Looking forward to it very much. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Okay, we'll take a brief recess back at 8:15 uh to resume.

All right. 30 seconds, ladies and gentlemen. 30 seconds. Got Rhett and we got we got Chief. Need them both to be brief.

All right, we'll call our meeting back to order and we'll resume with agenda item L2. Jennifer. Okay. Agenda item L2, update on essential air service and other projects at the at the Mercedes Regional Airport. Thank you, Jennifer. All right, Mr. Williams. Welcome, sir.

Good evening. Tonight, uh Mr. Mayor, city manager McBride, and council, I've uh come to present to you our uh update on the Merced Regional Airport Terminal Replacement Project and the essential air services program by the DOT federal order. As you know, the DOT has been or the feds have been shut down twice. We still are in a shutdown. Uh, and that's essential to basically a lot of our business for moving the project forward for the lease agreements. As you can see, that's a nice picture of the outside of the terminal. It's just a beautiful facility. Just it's going to change the game here in Merced a lot. So, oh, went too far. So, here's a little presentation about uh central air service. The DOT has extended and transitioned to contour the federal order which is the 30 seat regional jet and that'll be going to LAX in Las Vegas starting July 1st. Uh that order just came through in March. The final reviews obviously started in May. The DOT commitment is a zero gap service agreement to Merced guarantee along with advanced airlines and the regional connectivity uh to maintain connectivity for businesses, tourism, access to use and Mercy medical transportation. You'd be surprised how many tourists are from like Australia, Japan that are coming uh pretty weekly actually to use. So it's really cool to see them actually see this and what this is going to do with the new service out of LEX. You can connect anywhere. Here's the uh terminal project update. This is the interior at the uh after secure hold room. Um the beautiful vibrant carpet and the nice natural lighting and the cast concrete podium there. Um the CARES grant was closed November 6 for the construction. That was a big milestone for the grant. The terminal should be opening sometime in summer 2026. The reason why is the delays of the federal shutdown with TSA lease and the EAS order that was just

issued u most recently. Along with TSA, the PC, the person of contact has been furled and working to find another operate authorized representative person to actually execute this lease. Um the airport improvements, we have the FAA RTR tower to the right of the old terminal and that is all new radios navigation for NorCal approach and that's 100% funded by the feds and that has been transitioned from P Gen to MID along with our new terminal as well too. So we're using local power at the new terminal which I think it's a great um added using local power and just really true to our local economy. We have a crack seal project too for taxiway alpha that is uh the plans are complete and it's been submitted to the FAA for ACIP review. Um we're just waiting for the feds to get back to doing what they do for us. Uh that's the taxi way a it's a crack seal reseal coat and uh that's been submitted to our ADO in San Francisco for 2026 to 2030 as well. Here's our project timeline for the TSA authorization to get our building terminal readiness. That's a lot of programming with all the security buttons and all the transitions to make sure we have a seamless connectivity to the new terminal. Um the radio towers will be phase three this summer that will complete the navigational radios for FAA. Um very boring but it's very essential for the planes because they'll have a whole new upgrade that hasn't been touched in 20 plus years. So, and then the grand opening of the terminal facility and stakeholders part participation and full service activation this summer. Midsummer will be the transition to the new EIS uh carrier to Contour July 1st. And that is the back of the terminal there when you show up to the new airport. That concludes the presentation.

Thanks, sir. Very excited. Any questions for our airport manager? Council Smith. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Um, that went so fast. I feel like I have to ask questions to figure out what we talked about. Um, contour starts June 30th of 2026. It' be July 1st, 2026.

Okay. Right. And so, Advanc is flying on the 30th. um you've been a part of a lot of conversations with us about the airport and you know trying to get it get this asset more valuable to our community at large but also get it a little bit more um generating its own revenue. How is Contour going to help us achieve those goals?

Thank you for asking that, Mr. Council Member Smith. With Contour with the 30C connectivity, their proposed employments is up to 21,000. They're predicting and right now we're hitting about the 4,000 mark. And the reason why that's important is that if we hit the 10,000 mark with the feds, that automatically gives the airport a grant from the FAA for airport projects, that's 1.3 million non-adjusted for cola. Um, that is the big essential number. That's my strategy for the airport and for the city to move to that number. And people are going to want to fly uh to LAX to connect to the world because you can literally go anywhere from there and Las Vegas as well too on the 30 seat jet. So that takes that flight time from an hour and 5 minutes to 48 minutes, wheels up to wheels down, along with the additional fuel pumping of two jet engines. They're estimated 20,000 um gallons per year at this point for half the quarter as well. Um but again, it's it's more than just the employments. It's also the it's not just brick and mortar. It's an investment in the city's potential to become a true transportation hub for the region. It's an underutilized gym for Merrced and becoming a polished into modern facility that can turn and support both commercial travelers and general aviation community to really showcase what we can do here in Merced. And this is a it's a big step for Merced.

So contour does code sharing with which other major airlines?

Uh officially as of today we're sitting United, American and Alaska airlines. So when you check your luggage here it transfers there. They land into terminal 6 into LAX. So you're in walking distance of all three of those carriers. And also I know there's a potential another agreement with another big carrier as well that's right there as well. And that really helps for the 2028 games and the Olympics for people to actually go from here to the Olympics and vice versa to come see us. So they could be at the Olympics and come up for a night, stay in our hotels, patronize our businesses, our restaurants, our community, see what we have to offer here and fly back. How many routes a day is Contour scheduled to fly?

They're supposed to do seven daily to LAX and five to Las Vegas. Takeoffs or round trips? Round trips. Okay. So, 30 seats a plane, 12 trips a day. Correct. Do all Do all those 30 times 12 seats get us to the 10,000 employments? Yeah. 12 a week. Okay. 12 12 a week. Yes. And that that and again this is a federal order by the department of transportation not from the city and I just want to make sure that's uh clear that's the DOT orders and pick the carrier with our recommendation from the different meetings. It wasn't us it's the federal government.

Okay. So a week. But if people use the service you think that it's possible that we're going to get to 10,000 employments a year? Uh yes. They're going to start selling tickets April 14th. And with the co-shared agreement, you're able to go on Google flights and see the airline agreement and actually book your flights to to Merrced will show up. They will light that up on that system for all three carriers. That marketing alone will be very impactful.

You mentioned flights to Vegas and LAX. Is there any route flexibility? With the special secretar's waiver, we can do that for unscheduled service to allow for uh flex flying with the cooperation with the carrier if we have a seasonal availability to add more or less depending upon the wrership and what they see. So, they've uh taken over other routes in other parts of EAS recently in the southeast and you can go on their website currently and see what they're uh promoting and selling and that's up to the carrier. They were allotted $25,000 per year from the federal order to market in our community. Thank you, Mr. William. That's all I have right now. Appreciate it. I always like it. I feel like I'm in a deposition. No, that's a direct exam in court.

Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. That's why I'm not an attorney. Can imagine what the cross exam is like if that's the direct exam. Council Dupont. Thank you, Mayor. Um, remind me the date you just said of when tickets will be available for contour for the Merced. I believe uh they said April 14th. So it should be around that time. So that date people can they should look for flights after the July 1st date. Yeah. On the search engines. No further questions. Thank you. Mr. Harris,

thank you. Mayor, does the uh do the implainments from Advance count towards the yearly total for 10,000? Yeah, as our airport, it counts towards our yearly total. And right now, Advance has been filling their flights because they've reduced their rates. And that has really helped our community. And again, we win in Merrced with the rates because they're being subsidized and getting those numbers up. So we only way to move up on that one. Thank you. The witness is excused is um

and Ben from Contour said he mentioned that the uh the kind of the tenative plan was to go the plane would sleep here and then it would go to LA first thing in the morning uh back to back here and then Vegas early afternoon back here at night roughly. Is that still kind of the plan or? Yeah, that's the plan. It'll sleep here and get a nice night's rest and then wake up and we'll send it back down to LA and back, bring all those people up here so they can move, buy houses, have a good life.

Sounds good. Um, and then I think to just one point too, um, especially if we're going to get the employments of over 10,000, expanding the market's really important. So the the Turlock Modesto market is an area that a lot of those guys go to Stockton or they'll go to the Bay Area. Um so bringing them to us as opposed to Stockton would be a big deal.

Yeah. And our airport um since you brought that up at the other carriers. If you see the concrete apron and our runway are actually category to handle up bigger planes and the FAA u maintains our radios and frequencies here for the planes to land. It's not on us. So, it's another thing the feds pay for that's not out of our own pocket and we're ready to grow from there. So, we're ready for the infrastructure by doing this program. Do you have a rough idea as to how many annual employments at the Stockton airport? That airport they I don't know off the top of my head, but I know they're like I know they're in the six figuresish. They're they're mostly a cargo hub. They're a line hub to Cincinnati for ABX. But, six figure passenger employment.

Passenger. Yeah. But their cargo is mostly what sustains that. Fresno on the other hand, they're hitting um they're going to move up to another category to category two right below SFO because of the new expansion and adding those carriers that people thought 10 years ago when I was there that it was crazy that we could actually hit those numbers. And now they're hitting those numbers. And if we can hit that 10,000 threshold, that is just the key for us to hit. And I really see us moving to that direction because of all the UC the all of our community needs to get in and out of here. And that's the whole program for EAS is to help move people to find better jobs or not and come back and forth. So it's more than just a leisurely travel. It's economic viability of the the cities to have this airport to deliver that and bring those business aviation clients here to fix their planes when they don't have time at LAX cuz it's so busy there. or they can come to Merrced and fix their private jets here in Merrced. And that's a whole another business aspect that is very overlooked here.

Got it. Quick Google search. 1.3 million in Fresno, too. So, yeah. Point being, we just need to capture a decent sliver of that other traffic to get over 10,000. All right. Customer Harris, is that a new one or is that okay? All right. See no other speakers. Thank you, sir. I'm excused. You're excused. The witness is now excused. Great applause. Okay. Agenda item L3, presentation on the 2025 Police Department Crime Statistics update on real-time information center blue light camera program and night program.

All right. Good evening, Mayor Council. Uh this is something we wanted to do for a long time. Uh the team has really wanted to get in front of this council and give you kind of a reflection on what happened in 2025. uh what our statistics look like, some of the investments that you've invested into the police department. If you can give me the first slide there, Captain Pres. They're going to actually run the presentation. But I have a slide here before we start. I want to just hit on a couple things. Uh just in the last couple years, we've looked at trying to reduce some of the things here. We wanted to reduce use of forces, internal affairs complaints, and I kind of wanted to just kind of briefly touch on before the team get into it. What really I think for me uh is my main role. I let the crime statistics flow through the team, but my role is to help make a better police department. I feel like that's my main role is to improve our police department, and that's what you paid me to do. So, uh, when we sit here in 2025, we've had a 10% overall reduction from 2024 in use of forces. Uh, that's a big number for us. Uh, 10% reduction in times that we have to put hands on a suspect. Uh, we've learned that deescalation techniques. We brought some uh ABLE training, which is active bystander law enforcement training. It's a third party vendor that comes in and talks to us about how to engage with citizens. We became the second agency in the state to get our entire department autism certified to deal with people uh struggling with autism and mental disorders and things like that. That was all taught to us in this class. And then we uh transitioned all of our shotguns to a less lethal platform to give us more opportunities for less lethal rounds, opportunities to uh use um less lethal munitions and things that can gain compliance. We also uh had a 10% reduction last year in use of internal affairs, but in the last two years and since 2023, we've seen a 50% reduction in internal affairs complaints, internal uh internal affairs complaints through

our department, which is a huge huge um just a thank you to the staff that have really changed the overall culture. We stayed focused on community relationships, staff development, and we have very few citizen complaints. Uh about 50% reduction in my world is huge. And then one of the things that we implemented last year with your assistance through our new Axon contract that you all signed is a a little module in Axon called my90. And we activated the survey system on that. So randomly, if you're a reporting party to the police department, the uh my90 Axon system will send you a text message asking you to complete a survey to ask you how was the officer? And we ask questions like, did the officer listen to you? Did you feel like the officer um gave you resources? Did they answer your questions? Um were they kind to you and spoke to you in a kind way? Those kind of things. That's what we ask in those. And I'm happy to say that pretty consistently since we've been started uh with that program, we sit at about 78% of our surveys come back and they say they're extremely or very satisfied with the with the officer or the staff member's uh interaction. Uh we get about 10% uh that say they were sent the message in error and about 12% say slightly negative or negative. It's about six and six. And the number one complaint we get and the negative is that uh they've called us for assistance and we have to refer them to another jurisdiction because the crime or whatever incident they're reporting happened in the county or it happened in another town. So uh obviously that is not what citizens like to hear. So, we're trying to figure out a way to do the the handoff a little better to our allied agencies because although we cannot respond everywhere and handle every problem outside of the city, we want to find a good solution to help our citizens that have called us that have to be referred to another jurisdiction to have a better outcome. So, I just wanted to hit this slide before Captain Perez starts with the presentation and

just kind of give you an overall snapshot on our uh citizen outreach and compliance when it comes to some of the internal things that I pay attention to out of my office. So, with that, I'm going to kick it over to Captain Perez, who will give you the rest of the presentation.

Good evening, council, mayor, city attorney, city manager. Um we're going to go over some of our crime stats compared to 2024 to 2025 and then talk a little bit about what we're doing as an administration with comstat. Uh comstat is a goal oriented uh datadriven management uh system that we use at the police department. We're constantly monitoring our crime stats. Um, right now with our real-time information center and our two crime analysts working in there, their main one of their main jobs is to they built us these crime stat dashboards that are constantly updating so we can see what type of real-time crime data is going on in the city. So at the Merced Police Department, one of the biggest changes we made in our command structure was the implementation of our area command system. So we do have our four lieutenants. All four of them were uh assigned to area of command within the city. We have a south area commander, central area commander, and north is so big we broke it up into two different areas, northeast and northwest. Um, every other Thursday we meet as a command staff and uh the four lieutenants. Their primary responsibility during these comstat meetings is to sit down and explain their crime stats specific to their area of command to myself, Kathern Dabney, and the chief. Um during these meetings they have to if they can recognize any crime stats that are rising in their area they have to look for any type of patterns. If they want to look with these uh dashboards that are built by our analyst they can break it down by when are these crimes occurring? Is it a specific day of the week? Is it a specific time frame throughout the day? Once they're looking at that data they have it's their job to come up with um a pro a possible action plan. if they're looking at crimes going up, whether it's burglary or there's a rash of autothefts in an area, they have to come up with an action plan. And those action plans can

range anywhere from educating the public on social media, putting together uh extra patrols or footbeats, or utilizing any one of our um uh specialty assignments that we have at the PD, whether it's detectives, gang unit, uh dart, or our traffic team. So when they do these action plans and they present them at our CompStat meetings, we've been doing them for so long, they also go back and talk about previous comstat meetings that we had and what action plans they did during those and what were the results from those. And it's really good collaborative effort when our lieutenants can get together and say, well, this is the problem that I had in my area and this is the action plan I implemented and it it worked or it didn't really work or it was a total failure. and then they can discuss some of the things to maybe tweak some of the things in the action plan so that they could put those forth in subsequent action plans because that's our our main goal is to constantly analyze the crime stats and do put together some good action plans to bring down those crimes. So that's the biggest part of our compet and we love looking at the crime stats. Um here's some of the uh updated crime data from 2024 to 2025. Obviously, we have a calls for service are up 10% and cases are up 7%. Call for service could be anything from a traffic stop to an officer going out on a footbeat. So, we know that there's some contributing factors to calls for service and cases going up. Uh the biggest driver of that is probably we've had the best staffing levels at Merced PD that we've had in a long time. Our, you know, two, three years ago, our patrol staff each shift was six, seven officers. Right now, they're looking at nine or 10. We have 10 fully a fully staffed detective unit with 10 detectives, four in the gang unit, three in traffic where last year we only had two officers in traffic, three people in our dart team. All of our staffing is up to where we have those officers there who are out there doing those extra foot beats who are out

there making traffic stops, which one of our statistics is citations are up 106%. And that does not count the red light violation tickets that we've been getting. Adult arrests are up 51%, juvenile arrest down 25%. Uh traffic accidents was was one of our biggest goals that we wanted to hit. We wanted to hit 10% and we did hit 25% traffic accidents. We do believe that that's a correlation between our citations being up 106% when officers are out there enforcing traffic laws. It uh creates that better driving behavior and it leads to less accidents. vehicle burglaries down 30, residential burglary down 27, commercial burglary down 40, and then right here, almost 2,000 citations um issued by the red light cameras. And we do have a second location in the works. And I believe this citation started uh coming in around June, July of 2025. Robberies are down 25%. Auto theft was another big one that we wanted to hit that 10% mark and we hit 38% reduction in autotheft which is perfect for the community because that's how we uh the insurance companies figure out how to pay your auto insurance, what the premiums are going to be. They're looking at how many uh accidents do you have in your city and how many stolen vehicles in your city. So that's good for both parts. Sexual assaults are down 15%. Simple assault there, that was the only one that went up about 1%, but felony assaults are down six and overall assaults down 0.25%. Shootings down 32%. And our homicides did increase from 7 to eight. And again, these numbers are related to our renewed focus on staffing, the area command where they really deal with uh what's going on in the area and how are we going to fix it.

And now I'll be turning it over to Lieutenant Braz who's going to talk about the real-time information center. Thank you, Kevin Perez, Lieutenant Bahas. Welcome, sir.

Thank you. Good evening, council member, city manager, mayor, and city attorney. Uh, you guys have heard us speak in regards to the real time information center. I just wanted you guys to have a quick overview of how it's been developing over the last year and uh what developments we've made there. You heard that it's staffed with two crime analysts. They monitor our surveillance cameras that we have deployed throughout the city, cameras that we have deployed, cameras that the city has already installed at city parks, as well as community members cameras, businesses uh their own uh cameras, and I'll explain a little bit on how we do that in just a bit. Uh we talked about what our crime analysts are doing. Uh they complete retail theft bulletins, and I'll give you an example of some of the photos they put out. Uh, and they also complete our city uh, statistic reporting that uh, Captain Perez had just talked about. Here's some of the stuff that you'll see on our social media web page. We uh our analysts compile these photos and they put them out as a Facebook post and they send it out to the community and we've had a huge success rate in that uh just by having the community actually help us out and able to identify these and we're able to get closure rates on these on these cases that would go unsolved in the past. Uh as you could see when we started implementing this we began getting traction in January uh having uh solve rates of about 10 uh cases per month. Uh as we continue to develop and and put those posts out. We've almost tripled them finishing the year just uh right around 30 35 cases uh solving per month. So, great success story from our crime analysts and our real-time information center putting out that to uh on our social media. Uh a little bit about the cameras they monitor. We've slowly been developing our camera program and little by little is has expanded. This is what they look like. So, if you see them and as you're

driving around the city, you might see that box with a really really bright blue light thanks to Captain Davany that loves to install the brightest blue lights on them. uh great deterrent, great in reducing crime, and this is one of the tools that Captain had talked about that we uh revert back to when we're trying to help out a business that's having a certain type of problem or theft or a neighborhood that's dealing with uh certain issues. We go and install one of these or we have even had businesses that purchase one and then we monitor it through the city. Here's what they look like. This is uh some of the cameras you might recognize off of uh Loftboro Glenn uh the zoo uh monitoring our famous zoo sign that has quite a history here obviously. Um believe it or not, that same camera uh we had a stabbing that was captured on that camera and then on another camera just off the uh a little bit further into the park or one of our most recent homicides was solved thanks to that uh camera that was there at that park. Here's some of those angles that I'm talking about. You'll see Fence Park uh there on the bottom left and then uh Ference Park there on the right pointing at the roadway with also one of our speed cameras. So, we use it to monitor our own equipment so that it doesn't get stolen because uh tires like to go missing on on those trailers. A little bit about the camera integration that I talked about that uh we deploy out to the businesses. We use a program called Axon Fus. And what we do is that there's a module uh just shown here. That module can be purchased by uh any business or community member. They can install it on their cameras and what that does is it it feeds the cameras into our system so that our crime analysts can review it. Uh so if we have a crime and we know that we have ac access to those cameras, uh it shows us on a on a map as to where we have

cameras as as you see there on picture on the map. So the more cameras we have, it'll pop up an icon. So if we have a crime that happened in that area, we can pull it up and know that we have some footage that we can review in that area to help solve us solve some crimes. And with that, I'll be turning over to Lieutenant Sers. Thanks, All right. Good evening, city council, mayor, city attorney. Uh, we're going to be talking about Nybin, which is the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. So, in February of 2025, uh, we purchased what is called a brass tracks machine. It connects to the NYN system. It's a national database that, uh, captures cartridge casings fired from handguns. uh rifles and it's essentially captures a fingerprint like uh markings on the cartridge casing and analyzes it through a database. Uh along with that, the way that we would capture some of those cartridge casings is from handguns, rifles that we uh collect as evidence or found property on the streets. So, we have to have a way to be able to test fire those guns. Normally we were taking them out to the police department range which takes a lot of time in checking firearms out, transporting them out to the range. So in July we were able to purchase this Savage Arms indoor shoot trap. So this allows us to immediately fire the firearms once they are taken as evidence off of the streets. uh it can then be turned over, the casings can be turned over to our property and evidence and they can quickly enter them into the brass tracks machine which you can see here. Uh they enter it into the brass tracks machine, it scans it and uploads

the uh image to the uh NYN database. There is a correlation center on the east coast which has about 400 members working in it. analyzes these casings throughout the entire United States and they're able to come up with what we call leads or matches. And if they come up with a lead or match, which may match another crime scene, it may match a test fire from a handgun, they will then send us that notification that we can begin working on. Some of the statistics from 2025 here we can see is that we entered in 80 different crime scene casings. So keep in mind we might go out to a crime scene and there might be 15 cartridge casings out there. We will analyze those casings to see if they all have similar markings on them and if so only one of those casings is entered into uh the Nivan database. So uh approximately 80 uh crime scenes that we entered uh about 161 test fires that we entered totaling 241 casings. Of these we were able to obtain 56 leads which is about 23% of what we entered into the system. Uh 2026 so far we have about 72 casings that we've entered in with about 30 leads. So we're at about 42% for this year. Um, of those you can see there for 2025, six of those were drive by shootings, uh, which we were able to solve and make arrests on. Six of them, uh, negligent dischar discharge of firearms, uh, one suicide, nine attempted homicides, and six of our eight homicides were able to be solved and linking firearms because of Nivan database.

Uh why is this machine important to us? Um because previously before this we had to send off all cartridge casings to the Department of Justice Crime Lab. The turnaround time for a match on these could take three to six months. Uh with the uh Nybin machine now we can enter it in and on average it takes about a day or two days to get a lead back. Uh we also have the ability to submit an emergency request and we can often get it back within two to four hours. Uh just recently this weekend we had a shooting out on Mercer Avenue and Carol Avenue uh at a vehicle and uh we were able to locate the suspects with our gang unit and detectives pretty quickly recover a firearm of which we were able to get a match on it through NY within a day. So, uh, one of the things is it's able to, uh, help us with the district attorney's office and being able to charge the suspects. It gives us that little bit of, uh, additional evidence. Um, again, it reduces the amount of time for us to quickly work on investigation. So, linking, uh, multiple crime scenes together, it allows us to utilize information from one crime scene to another crime scene and, uh, identify suspects a lot quicker for us. And it'll be back to Captain Perez.

Thank you, Lieutenant Sers. Captain Perez, I I don't This one might have been for the chief, but I guess this one was mine. Yeah,

I added this one in there. So, uh, we just wanted to kind of get in front of you. We talked a couple things like we know we had a rough start to 2026. This is a presentation about 2025 versus 2024, but we're about transparency here. um my our friends to the south and the next largest city to the south that may begin with an F. I don't want to say who they are because I don't want to bash them, but they had the same troubles that we had January with gang violence and and so we monitor our colleagues very closely. Uh we immediately developed a plan in January after we had 16 shootings and uh and and we developed a very very elaborate plan with our team because we had a comps meeting every Thursday. we were able to sit down and uh outline a very detailed plan uh about how we were going to address this and we we went into February with two shootings in March with one. So, um the other city announced today that they're going to be doing very similar thing to what we're doing. And I'm like, well, I'm glad we did it January, early February. We we didn't wait. Uh we don't need to wait for three months of data because we're constantly scrubbing this data every week. Um, if you walk into my office, and many of you have been in my office, this dashboard's always up. I don't even usually log out of it. I have to be told to log out of it, so it'll refresh sometimes. But I think Captain Perez kind of kind of hit the nail on the head at the beginning. Uh, these these numbers are a direct result in a um an injection of life into the police department. The staffing levels are higher than we have no room. I have no staff availability. Like right now, we're we're what we can budget for. were full. And I'm embarrassed to say that cuz my neighbors are not full at the other police departments. And uh we had a retirement last week and within the end of that week, we had a lateral from Fresno um that was that was wanting to come here that we had room for all of a sudden. So his position's already been filled. So our our civilian staffing ranks are very well funded and very well

filled and our crime analysts are doing great work. Uh this is a combination of everybody at the police department understanding what the goals are. Um understanding the support that this council and this community gives them and understanding the mission which is to improve the quality of life for all citizens of Merced. That is our simple mission. We did not over complicate it. It is to improve the quality of life. And so everybody works toward that same goal. And I think that we're seeing some great results and I couldn't be more proud of the team. It makes it makes being their chief very easy because there's very little I have to do every day. They run the department. Um there are very few times that I have to call our city manager and say we had a problem. There's just not a lot of problems over at the police department when everybody's functioning at the way that the level of these staff is functioning. Um I could not be more proud of what they're doing. Uh patrols up to 10 staff members, detectives are full. Uh my biggest problem now is you know I'm running out of equipment because I have too many people. So, um, these are good problems to have. I'm not complaining. Just trust me. I I'm just so happy, uh, how dedicated they all are, and I I feel like we just wanted to get in front of you and, uh, share some of the great work that's been going on at the police department. So, the team's available for any questions if anybody has any.

Thank you, Chief. Any questions for Chief Stanfield, Captain Perez, or Steam Lieutenants back there as well? All right. See not Jennifer anything from the public on this this information only we don't have anything mayor

thank you all right we appreciate you guys all your hard work and uh you the community this council invests a lot I think you know the improvements of the last couple years a product of of the investments but also really strong management as well too and we owe a lot to you guys and the community owes a lot to you for all your hard work and your and your guidance in this department. So, our thanks uh it's you know how important it is. You guys know you deal with it every day and you know how much the community cares and you know how much a safe community matters. So, thank you all for your incredible work. Look forward to uh continued success ahead.

Okay. Agenda item M. Business M1 appointment to the citizen stipen setting commission to fill the district 3 vacancy. All right. Council Harris. Thank you, Mayor. We did not have a lot of response to this and um Cindy Kelly stepped up uh even though she's on the focus group. Um like to overlook that considering that this is just really a temporary um board that she's on that she's being proposed for. And I think she will um do well with the stipen commission. So, I recommend uh approving her application. Okay. Jennifer, we have anything from the public on this?

We don't have anything, mayor. Okay. Uh is there a motion? Motion. A second. All right. Motion second. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll call for the question. You have a motion by council member Harris and a second by council member Smith. Mayor and council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously. And then Jennifer, with district two, uh, no, we did not receive any applications. How do you recommend we proceed at this point? I know there's the option of appointing somebody.

I mean, at this point, our next, um, we have our first public hearing on April 16th and then our second public hearing will be on April 30th. And hopefully by then we'll be done. So if we bring something by April 20th, they'll only make just the last meeting and or possibly the last meeting. Okay. So, Council T, any comments on that? What did you say, Jennifer? Then the the next meeting is April 16, correct? Yeah. So, that still give us time to see if any applicant can still put in, right?

I mean, they can, that's the first public hearing and our second, we're only required to do two public hearings and our second one will be April 30th. So they'll only if they do get appointed at the April 20th, they'll make m maybe just the one meeting and it's pretty much wrapped up at that point. Okay. All right. Good. Onward. Okay. Agenda item M2, request to add item to future agenda. Okay. Am I right? Mayor Prom Bole, anything for a future agenda? No, not this evening. Council Dupal,

I have one thing uhformational item. um would like a race communications government affairs uh person to present to the council on um project update. I know throughout the city uh there's complaints of patchwork and when that patchwork will be restored to city standards. So just an update for council and for the public. All right. any date in particular good into I guess outside of the May 18th would be the earliest that wouldn't require a motion. Is May 18th fine or would you like a sooner date? May 18th would be fine.

Okay, that work is that okay? We can certainly reach out and check their availability for that date and then report back if we have any conflicts. Okay, sounds good. Council member Jean, nothing tonight. Council Harris, nothing. Thank you. Council Smith, nothing for me. Council member Ta, nothing. Right. Nothing from me either. Hey, agenda item M3, city council comments. Start on my left now. Council member T, any comments from you, sir?

Yeah, I um I attend the ri the Merced Horizon ribbon cutting with some of my colleague here and staff here. So, it was a successful ceremony and um I think that place is awesome. You know, I love the conference room there, right? So, um other than that, then I also did the South Merced cleanup. It was successful. Thank you to mayor, uh all the community leaders, organizations, and who step up and help clean outside of Mercedes. So, thank you, Smith. I hope everybody had a great holiday weekend, get a chance to visit family. I got a chance to go back to Sacramento and see my 100-year-old grandma. So, happy Easter, everybody.

Council member here. Nothing. Thank you. Oh, council. How defer. Council member Dup.

Thank you. Uh, yes. Happy Easter to everyone. Um, I attended the League of California Cities Housing Community and Economic Development Policy Committee that I serve on. talked about uh three bills in particular that um drive more requirements for the city to do based on the state legislaturator's infinite wisdom. Um which um we provided recommendations to the executive committee of the League of California Cities. Um and that is all I have tonight. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor Pro Bo. Nothing this evening. All right.

Yes. Want to thank everyone who came out to our cleanup, our southside cleanup. We got over five tons of trash uh and did uh we had a great we had a great crew come out. A lot of other things too, but I'll I'll spare you guys the details and move on to a German. Agenda item in adjournment. Okay. Is there a second? Council member Harris has a request. Go. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to um adjourn this meeting in honor of Sheriff Lieutenant Frank Swigert. retired less than six months when he passed away. Okay. And I believe that council member I'm sorry, Mayor Proen Bole has got another one. Okay. Mayor Proin Bole.

Thank you. Um I would also like to adjourn the meeting in honor of Alan Simma who was a uh local realtor here who passed away last month. Okay. Procedurally, uh I'll I'll amend my motion as stated. Is there a second to the motion? Second. Submitted. Okay. Have a motion by council member Deont and a second by council member Harris. Mayor and council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously. 9 o'clock.