City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good afternoon. I would like to call to order the special meeting of the City Council. Today's Thursday, August the 20th, 2026. The time is 3 p.m. Clerk.

I'll start off with a roll call. I will note that Council Member Robles is absent, but we have all other members present. We have four. A quorum to proceed.

All right, excellent. At this time, I will open up the public comment opportunity, starting with in-person attendees. I do not have anyone signed up to speak.

I don't have anyone signed up. We have folks in the audience, but.

Anybody wishing to speak? All right, excellent. Anybody online?

And we have no attendees that are in the Zoom environment, so that would conclude the online commenters.

All right, then I will go ahead and close the public comment opportunity.

Just want to offer my congratulations to the mayor and council member Brewer and make a motion to adopt the resolution. Can we start by calling the item and make sure that we're on the item 2.1? Did you call that already, Jason? I didn't even hear you. I didn't hear him call the item.

Call the roll, but we can confirm that the public comment was open for the open session of the item, and that is for item 2.1, which is to consider making those appointments for the loan nominees for the offices of mayor and council member district, too.

Okay.

Okay. I repeat my congratulatory remarks and again, move to adopt the resolution.

And I will second it.

Well, thank you for that motion and second. And before I take the vote on this, I'm trying to wait for Council Member Robles to show up. So, Council Member Brewer, would you like to opine on anything on this item?

I have no comments but to say thank you. No, I have no comments except to say thank you to the residents of District 2, and I look forward to continue to represent and be present for all of you.

Thank you, Councilmember Brewer. I would also like to thank the City of Elk Grove residents for your faith and trust in me. Serving as your mayor has been one of the greatest privileges and joys of my life, so thank you all for continuing to believe in me and of course to you, Councilmember Brewer. What I really love and appreciate about this council is that regardless of districts, We work collectively for the best interest of our residents, of all our residents, regardless of where they might live. And I know that that is special and unique to our city. We can turn on the headlines today and see that is not the case in the cities near us. So thank you all for your leadership and your dedication to the city of Elk Grove. It does not go unnoticed, so thank you. All right, we tried to wait for Councilmember Robles.

We tried, Council Member Robles.

Would you like to say something? I think you should.

Oh.

I'm buying time.

Yes. One thing I do want to echo is an appreciation for all of my council colleagues. Again, you can look around the nation, you can look around just the local area as well, and you will see that there are a lot of councils and organizations that are not in sequence with each other. We can all have differences. In fact, we do have differences, and we all have different ideological and political perspectives. But what I love is that we can all work together and find a mutual solution that works best for all of Elk Grove. And so I want to make sure that I thank all of my council colleagues for that.

Thank you. And clerk, could you just reiterate what tonight's vote means since we didn't open it up? So this means that the mayor's seat and see how I have a lot more time. Thank you. What this means to the voters in case they're not following along?

Certainly. So to give this in some context, this is a procedural step that started when we called the election for November 3rd, 2026. And when we called the election, there were seats for mayor, council members in District 2, and council member in District 4. And so as we've moved forward in the process, part of that electoral process is posting public notice, letting people know that the election's coming, those seats were up for election, and that there was a nomination period. What happened as a result of the nomination period and what we're asking in tonight's action is a certification of the facts of the nomination period And that through the process of the nomination period, seeking from folks going from nominees to become candidates to show up for electoral office, the results is that their lone nominees for the offices of mayor and for council member district two were our incumbents. And so there were no challengers. And so as part of elections code section 10229, what it permits is that for a local agency, when there is an uncontested seat, so when there's a lone nominee as a result of the nomination process, which we're asking for you to certify tonight and validate in terms of that there were only the lone nominees for Mayor and District 2, you have the opportunity to appoint those members. those members that sends out the broadcast that we are allowed to then publish and let the public know that what we told you was going to be elected back in may well those aren't going to not all those seats are going to be moving forward so after the action tonight we will be updating our city website we'll be letting the public know the actions that were taken tonight that only one of the contests that were expected from back in the actions in may are going to be moving forward for the election in november so your seats that when you uh take the appointment that you were treated as basically being successful in the municipal election for that seat and it's for that term. So think of it that you're both incumbents, you still have your term to fulfill and we will not be making any changes until we get to the meeting scheduled for December 9th of 2026. That's when we will make that flip transition and when you will take the oath of office and there might be a retreat or refreshments, I'm not sure. that's based on staff, but that's when we make that transition and so that effectively you've earned those seats and you would take those offices of that new term, so.

Okay, very good. And there was a cost savings associated with this. Could you remind us of that?

Indeed. So estimated in the clerk's budget was $300,000 for running the three seats for election. Of course, the mayoral seat takes kind of the lion's share of the prize because that is the largest election that we have in Elk Grove. It's for the full jurisdiction, and then we have our bi-district elections. So once you remove out those elements of of having to hold elections for the seat of mayor at large and our district seat for district two, the estimated cost goes down to about $75,000. So we're looking at hopefully a savings of about $225,000 by making this appointment today.

Excellent, thank you very much. Council Member Robles, everybody had an opportunity to opine on this. Did you want to provide any remarks? Otherwise, we'll go ahead and take the vote. All right, thank you. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right, thank you very much. Congratulations. Onward, upward. And with that, we will adjourn the special meeting at 3.07. Bye-bye.