City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the study session of the city council of the city of Mareno Valley. I now call this meeting to order on March 10th at 6:02 p.m. Would any of my colleagues like to lead us in the pledge this afternoon? Council member Dogado will lead us in the pledge today. Please stand and join me by placing your right hand over your heart. Ready? Begin. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America for it stands.

Thank you, Council Member Delgado. Next item C. Roll call. Madam clerk, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, mayor. Council member Bernard here. Council member Delgado here, ma'am. Council member Bog Santa Cruz here. MPT Gonzalez here. And Mayor Cabera here. Thank you. Thank you. Next. Staff introductions, please. Patty Rodriguez, city clerk. Sonia Gomez, senior deputy city clerk. Steven Contin, city attorney. Brian Mohan, city manager. Lana Himenez, assistant city manager over administration. John Keller, assistant city manager, development. Angelica Ralpho, community development director. Kyle Winski, economic development director.

Errol Zamora, assistant city engineer, public works. Claudia Torres, special events and facilities division manager. Robert Hardinis, human resources director. Sarah Mack, chief of police.

Thank you very much, team. Good to see you all. And next is item E, public comments on matters on the agenda only. And a friendly reminder that pursuant to the Brown Act, public comments shall be limited to only those items on this agenda. Each person shall be allowed a total of three minutes to comment on each item. The mayor may however reduce the total amount of time for all speakers to comment on any given item if there are any numerous requests to speak or comment on the same item that may hinder the city council's ability to complete its business. Another friendly reminder that the city now offers language translation services through a free app called Wordly. The app automatically translates a variety of languages into English and vice versa. To use this service, please scan the QR code at the speaker signup table. For the visually impaired, please use your earphones or earbuds to listen to the verbal translation. If you do not have any such listening devices, please let the city clerk know and we will gladly let you borrow some for this meeting. Finally, in order to preserve the meeting to quorum, council and staff will not respond during public comments. Now, item F, our business items. We do have four items on our study session agenda this evening. And the first one is the Marino Valley College presentation. And we are joined here this evening by the president of Marino Valley College, Dr. Rudy Bessikhoff. But before we bring you up, I just want to uh turn it over to staff to introduce the item and then we will hear from you, sir. Thank you.

Uh thank you, Mayor, uh council members. um my privilege to um uh state that we do have partnerships with Marino Valley College uh Moveal Learns the Promise uh program I make innovation centersou or me memorandum of understanding and they're also a partner through our joint uh task force meeting that we have every other month uh my pleasure to bring up um Marino Valley College President Dr. Dr. Rudy Bessikov.

Mr. President, welcome.

Thank you and appreciate the welcome this evening as well as the invitation. Uh just want to say that it's good to finally be able to line our calendars up. I know that your regular meeting and our board of trustees meetings uh they they actually start not only at the same time but typically on the same day. So, it's a pleasure to be here today. Uh, let's see. Oh, oops. Oh, hold on. There we go. Okay. So, I I just uh thinking about this and thinking about the city manager's introduction, I think the word partners is very relevant to the relationship that we have and that I've been fortunate to um to come into now going on eight months of leadership at Marino Valley College. Something I'm very proud of. And I think about the fact that, for example, at the Burke uh uh business education resource center, it's incredible that we have a desk there and and and we're able to provide resources and information about Marino Valley College uh working in partnership with the city. Uh certainly we're very humbled uh that the city chose to honor us uh with the award for the IMAC innovation center. And just thinking about partnerships, I I think back about I I think it was six weeks ago that uh Mayor Pro Tam Gonzalez and Council Member Bernard actually got to come to our campus and have a uh community communitywide discussion. And uh made me realize that I probably want to keep my golf clubs in my closet as opposed to breaking them out. Sound like we we'll have some skilled golfers in the area, which would make me an impediment to uh to any recreation, I think. But uh certainly that um also think back to um

tomorrow is tomorrow morning is uh in in joint partnership with the two unified school districts. Uh we we're doing student of the month and um certainly remember running into council member Delgado uh at the last one and chances are it just seems like if I'm out in the community um supporting one of the five of you is out there or a member of the member of the team here is out there supporting with us and that's something I'm very grateful for. Full disclosure, this is my first time ever speaking to a city council me. Uh, and you'd think I'd be nervous to be honest, but quite honestly, I'm I'm among friends and I I feel good about that. So, um, just wanted to share that and and again just uh really thank the city for its partnership with MVC. So looking at who we are and our north star or our why uh really as we look at our mission, vision and values of the college um I think that really the three E that are at the end or the three E and the S that are at the end um about our core mission you know we are about education we are about empowering um our students our graduates and the people I'm lucky enough to call my colleagues um certainly we exist in a space where our three goals uh that are core not only to our college but to our district center around equity in college access, equity in support for our students and equity in success. Um seeing them as they move forward. Access certainly takes the form of being an open institution but also one where college is not affordable is a sentence we don't utter. It's something that and it it's a constant awareness campaign really with our community uh because often when you think about students and college you think student loans but the reality is for most of our students that that just doesn't exist especially with the supports that are available as we continue along the way. Also support is

something that's critical not just tutoring and academic support but really promoting that sense of community within our college. Um, I often tell people that the worst college experience I ever had was um when I lived in Colorado, I took a I took a Spanish class at night and my experience consisted of pulling my car up to the building, going to my class, getting back in my car, and going home. And it was kind of a vacuum experience. Our students should not have that. And they have so many opportunities to be parts of community that I'll speak to a little bit later. And then finally, success. Um, one of the greatest things to that you can have as a college president is a conversation about graduation. Wow, it might be too crowded. That's that's a good thing. That's something that's important. And really seeing students onto their educational goals. Um, attaining that associates degree if it's for transfer uh to a 4-year institution or with the many certificates that we offer that are honored by our industry partners. offering students opportunities for sustainable employment. And we really define sustainable employment as high wage, high-skll and high demand jobs. And that's really where we see things. And and as we do so, we really focus on our students in a learner centered environment. We strive to be inclusive. Um again, we we really want that sense of neighborliness. And um I I actually host a podcast and one of the things I always say about Marino Valley College is we have been the only higher education game in town since 1991. And of course being um responsible stewards not only of uh taxpayer funds but also resources that were dedicated to sustainability on our campus. I mentioned our programs. uh you know you look at our catalog and and and you look at our campus and there's so much there and and more than you might think.

I referenced certificates uh that we offer 62 of them right now and these are uh state recognized certificates of achievement uh that carry value that are fully accredited and result in students gaining those uh those three the high wage high demand high-skilled jobs or give give people the chance to advance in their chosen field and those things are important also um within areas such as real estate we offer lensure that comes with a lot of what we offer We also offer uh associates degrees, but I want to go down to the third point, which is our associate degree for transfer. Um, and I I want to take you back to actually my freshman year at the University of Colorado. Um, and I had a friend, her name was Wendy, and we sat down at orientation and I remember seeing her and she was I was class of 1986, she was class of 1985 for high school. And you know, it was great great to see her at orientation and uh she looked really happy to be there. And then we kind of broke off and came back and she was incredibly disappointed because a number of the classes she had taken at Community College of Denver were not going to be honored with the associates degrees for transfer. Our graduates who take these programs have an ironclad guarantee that if they go to a CSU, those classes will count. And as we move forward as as a statewide system of community college, uh something called the Calgetty agreements as well as I get those are things that provide similar reassurances for students that go to UC's and that's something we're very proud of. We talk about college affordability, our nonredit certificates. All nonredit instruction is free and it's it's an open entry open access o um program that students no matter where they are in life can enter programs and take courses. Um a number of them are in English as a second language and then we

off also offer some in business and other areas. So we have an incredible catalog full of programs and opportunities. College affordability is a huge huge conversation we have and those are things that are very important addressing in any insecurity that might be out there. Um and this is a staggering statistic that for every five students that are there four are experiencing some sort of insecurity be it housing, food, um a number of different things. Um, child care is another one that's actually right there that sometimes flies under the radar, but it's just as real. One of the things we do in providing those opportunities um and those resources for students is doing it in with a sense of community alongside. Um, I think specifically of our Emojia program, which provides support and that sense of community that it takes a village approach for our African-American students. I think of our the many students we have who have served our country and the fact that our veterans resource center as I'll mention in a in a few minutes is something that has really shown to be successful. Um Cal Works is a program that supports student parents and we so we have a number of those areas of community where students receive support that doesn't just come in the form of something being handed to them but a sense of belonging and that's something that's very important. Food insecurity of course is is at the top of the list and um through resources we have secured through grants and a number of privately funded sources each year through the statewide budget we've been able to maintain Mont monty's market and with that um we are able to address not only food insecurity but also clothing insecurity and one of the things I'm proud of is that what's often on the hangers might be things people could wear to job interviews down the road. So really just a kind of thinking big picture and really proud of my

campus because they are a lot of them contribute to the success of our students not just through the great work they do but their own personal resources and I think that's something that's great also uh along the way that something that we've also addressed in terms of student wellness is mental health and wellness and I'm so proud to say that a lot of the work that we do through our wellness center is very cutting edge had an extended conversation with our director of that program, Dr. Lynette Sullivan, a few weeks ago, and it was amazing to learn that promoting mental health and wellness, it was not about necessarily two people on opposite sides of a desk. Um, it's about our programs actually taking mental health and taking the conversation around it and busting the stigma around it through a lot of activities on campus. And if you walk around our campus, if you've ever come and of course we're an open campus and community, you're always welcome. But one of the things you'll see on the quad is we've got like kind of a wheel of fortune wheel. That's our health and wellness club. And that can you imagine mental health and wellness actually being a student club and that handled on that level of positivity? Well, that's what goes on at MVC and that's something that's great. As we continue to move forward, we have resources within the community to to address housing insecurities. But the big thing we are doing as we move forward is we're preparing to make another bid to the state uh for to get funding for student housing. And that's something we're looking at. And the design that we have as we move forward if granted would actually set up a situation with 280 beds for our students and that's something we're excited about. And certainly um as along the way um again we want to get rid of the sentence college is expensive. uh we just we don't want that to be part of the way people in Mareno Valley and in Paris see higher education. So we've done a lot of work and a lot of things have been happening and we've

we've been fortunate to receive some recognition. Um Hispanic Outlook magazine recognized us among the top 50 co uh colleges, not just community or excuse me, community colleges nationally. Uh that's something we're very proud of. Wallet Hub uh ranked us number 11 overall nationally in terms of affordability, but this is the one I'm really proud of, number five in the country in terms of student outcomes. And student outcomes is defined as the amount of student debt that uh students leave with. And then also the difference, the median difference between a high school graduate's wages and a community college graduate's wages. We're number five nationally in that area. That's something I'm very proud of. Along the way, we really want to reach our community of students who are already in the workplace. And a program where we are taking the lead statewide is CPL, credit for prior learning. Uh Arlene Serado at my college, um she works in she's a transcript evaluator. She's been at the head of that effort and when there are conversations about that statewide, she's up front and center presenting and she is leading the state. And that's something not not only she but our faculty at the Ben Clark training center as well as our business faculty we we're in the forefront and that's something that's great. Um again my gratitude to the city of Mareno Valley for recognizing um our IMAC innovation center this past year. Uh there is an independent organization in the state led led by former state chancellor Eloy Oakley called the college futures foundation. the uh this group uh did a study of all 116 community colleges and in terms of affordability ranked us number 12 and in the Inland Empire number one and that's something we're very also very proud of. I mentioned before that we want MVC to always be a hub for those who have served our country and so it was great to see that in California Military Times

ranked us number seven among all colleges not just community colleges but colleges and number 11 nationally. And then finally, um we certainly share and celebrate the achievement of MVUSD uh for earning the Golden Bell award for its work with dual enrollment. And that was um that was a result of a partnership with us. And as we move forward, we're also equally proud of our relationship with um Valver Unified School District. So some things are happening and hopefully pe I think I've shown that some people are taking notice which is great. So just to share a couple things about kind of methodology if you will. I know in city leadership you have approaches to doing things and I wanted to share ours a little bit. One movement nationally in terms of redesigning colleges and addressing uh issues of students taking 90 units to complete a 60unit degree. Uh taking years and years for what could be a two-year degree or for in the case of a part-time student a three-year degree. One of the designs that has come out nationally that um Marino Valley College has embraced not only the ideas of it but implementation are the four pillars of guided pathways making the pathways clear for students. I go back to my experience at the University of Colorado. I'm waiting to get something in the mail from them. I I did have a good experience there. But I remember in my orientation they said here's your 450 page catalog. Learn it, read it. This is your contract with us. That was my orientation. community college, what we look to do is clarify the path for students. Um, essentially we take all those majors and we put them in nine different pathways and we kind of engage students socratically and get them to think about and play in the sandbox of designing their own future. We always strive to help students get on the path, have clear schedules, have uh opportunities for students, and then once they get on the path, support them, not only with tutoring and all of the supports I

mentioned, but also being cognizant of the fact that for for everyone, education doesn't necessarily have to only begin in August or September. We offer a number of late start classes. And I think one of the cool nicknames I've heard at Marino Valley College is grade 8, which means in the second half of the semester, we roll off we roll out a whole schedule of classes. In this case, we're going to have over 60 courses available starting in March or excuse me, in April. And and I think that's something that's exciting. And then along the way, ensuring learning, uh, continuing that conversation about professional development and growth that keeps our educators engaged and empowered. and then also just using data to see how well we're doing and look at where we can do better. Uh on the right side of this presentation, you see a number of different things where we measure ourselves. Um the two that I'd like to point to that we're really focused on are this. Uh number one, persistence. Uh Marino Valley College has been doing a great job with promoting enrollments. Um, we're probably going to go from being about 20% of our district's enrollment by the end of this year to be accounting for all for 24.5%. So, we're getting people in the door and that's good. But, we need to keep them. We need to talk to them about taking a first semester and turning it into a second semester or taking that second semester and turning it into a certificate or a degree. That's really where the persistence discussion begins. And also, just as all of you, I I imagine traffic comes up sometimes in the in the course of this meeting, right? And and maybe bottlenecks and gridlock. Well, one thing we've identified as a potential bottleneck for students is that hurdle of math and the fact that the more students put off their math requirements, the less likely they are to graduate. We want to get them excited, and yes, even a linguist can say get excited about math. But we want to do that and get them through their math and English requirements. And this summer, we're actually going to be launching some boot camps to kind of help our community uh do so. So, those

are a lot of the things we're doing in terms of approach that we're very proud of. Uh coming this year, we of course we're going to be celebrating our students uh with graduation on Friday, June 12th. And as you can see, our our awards we last year we awarded, 1488 diplomas to our students, which is great. and a third of those were those guaranteed degrees for transfer. Also, getting getting students to either gain jobs or advance in the workforce, we awarded 769 certificates. So, um my rough math puts us at around 2,250, which is which is pretty good for a graduation. Want to highlight um a lot of the partnerships that have been mentioned. Uh the college promise is something that really again for uh those who graduate from an area high school. Uh the admission not only the access to admission that they have but also the access to resources. College corpse is a program that uh promotes volunteer service work but thanks to this program it's only volunteer as name as students can actually be paid for the work they're doing. Also, paid of apprenticeships is something that we're looking at. And of course, I want to express gratitude to the city for the incredible partnership that comes with Moval Learns. Um, as you can see here, I just wanted to highlight some of the areas where we are doing apprenticeships. Um, although Norcco College is the college in our three college district that offers construction, uh, we do offer apprenticeship in the construction trades because obviously that is a growing and and flourishing industry here. uh cyber security, dental assisting, uh and then IT, cyber security. Those are some other areas. Um we're we're doing quite a bit really to get our students well enrolled into the workplace and experiencing everything. Um the future ahead as our college continues to grow is something where

we're looking at a facilities expansion and improvement. Uh I had already mentioned our efforts to eventually obtain student housing and we look forward to that. But um in in about three years hopefully we look forward to uh cutting the ribbon and inviting all of you as we open our library learning and resource center. And one domino effect of that is that we'll be taking our current library space and dedicating it to fine arts. Um really having music and theater and dance programs that that really make us that that that four-dimensional comprehensive college. And that's something that we're looking forward to. Some of you were kind enough to attend the ribbon cutting, our organic chemistry lab. Um, which now means that students in Marino Valley do not have to go to Riverside to take those courses in STEM. And that's something we're very happy about. Also, because of the way that we have been managing our facility space um, in terms of assignable square footage and honoring those requirements, we've actually improved our score to put ourselves in line hopefully for a STEM building. um that will will hopefully happen sooner than later. And then finally, um with some exciting news that I'll be breaking in just a moment, um we are expanding our Ben Clark training center. Um one of our buildings that's also in our queue is building 2A, which will support our emergency management programs. And then also we have a a facility 2B that I'll be talking about in just a second. And so, as you can see on this front, we're looking at really extending a lot of things. And then finally in that concept of a comprehensive four-dimensional college, we are looking at on the on the mobile campus uh moving toward the building of an athletics field. We already have flag football, women's flag football that's going. Um I want to see soccer going as well and I know that there's some appetite for volleyball and um we want to actually have recognized athletics rather than student sports clubs and that's something we're very excited about. So, in terms of our facilities, as we grow, we're also growing in terms

of our thoughts and and the way our campus looks. I referenced the Ben Clark Training Center. Uh, this is a layout of it. The the new building that we're looking at is 19,100 square ft. Um, and you'll see that we are receiving funding through Measure CC and we're anticipating completion by summer of 2029. And I but where I really would like to go is talk about a lot of the work that is going out there with our school of public safety. Um already and I did see somebody from CalFire here today. Um one of the requests we've been getting is please open more sections. We need you know we need more we need more students um going in and studying and and have had similar requests in law enforcement and emergency services. I'll just share this anecdotally with you. Um, let's see. Back in November and December, I attended the graduation for our EMTs, for paramedics, and then also for our firefighters. And it was the only time I ever heard the keynote speaker at the graduation say, "If you're looking for a job, please see me after the ceremony. We're hiring." That's that's what the demand is like. And I see I see our our partner over there with CalFire nodding yes as I say that. And that's something that's happening. But um in addition to that um among within our programming with those three areas, we also have homeland security where we also have our we're building out our curriculum. So now this is kind of the big buildup and you can get your phones ready. We do scan a QR code. We are actually coming this fall and we're about 70% full already in terms of uh students. We are going to be launching our bachelor's program, four-year degree at a two-year college. It's awesome. bachelor's program in emergency management. And the incredible thing about it is at $46 a unit, this essentially means that students can obtain a bachelor's degree for less than $10,000, assuming they don't have any aid or scholarships or anything like

that. And that's something that is very exciting. And I mentioned um the uh the second building that's coming out there, which would be the 2B building. Essentially what we've done is we've uh walked our way and and just uh working with Dean Phil Rawlings and the department chair and some of the senior faculty, we've walked through the catalog and looked at all the courses, not just not just um in terms of industry specific courses, but the courses that are related toward getting that bachelor's degree, okay? Uh areas such as theater, for example, and looking at how this building 2B can be purposed to really fit the needs of those students. so that they have that extremely well-rounded bachelor's degree that the rest of the state will hopefully be taking notes on. So, I I will leave this up here another second or two if anybody wants to scan the QR code and I know it's also available uh within your board pack or excuse me, city council packet. There we go. Got it. had to change a little muscle memory there. So, anyway, um we are a community that really serves a diverse population of students. Um, but as we're move forward, we want to we want to strive to serve students in a manner that is more reflective of the Marino Valley population. Specifically, we are working to increase our outreach uh within the African-American community in Marino Valley. Also, if you look at our age group, um we still only about 35% of our students are over 25. And as we move forward, we really want to have a renewed focus. Of course, we honor our partnerships with our unified school districts, but we really want to shift our focus as well to include the 20 to 25 student as well as students over 25. And um one of the other misconceptions along with college is expensive is that college should be full-time. And and really if we are going to endeavor to

impact the lives of adult learners, we have to offer a schedule that tells them it's okay to be a part-time student. It's okay to finish in three or four years. Just stay on your pathway and we're here to support you. And that's a message that we're we really want to send out there in stereo. We have an incredible community of employees. Um, as you can see, we have uh over, you know, 375 uh faculty both full-time and part-time. Um, you know, often at graduation, uh, you, one thing I have never heard as a vice president, president, or dean, is I've never heard a graduating student say, "I'd like to thank my president." No, they they don't say that. And you, if you sign up for the glory, you're going to be disappointed. But what they often do say, of course, in addition to thanking their professors, is they thank those those those staff members, those classified professionals who really interact with them on a daily basis and and keep in touch with them. And I think that's something that's important. Uh for those of you who are interested in funds, our annual budget is at about $81 million. 25 million of that is uh one-time grants or categorical funds that we receive. Uh, and that's something where I guess I would ask those of you who who serve in office as you're thinking about the budgets um when when you have the January release up to the May revise, if there are opportunities for us to talk about how to better serve the community on an educational front, please know my door is always open. So, with that, I'll go ahead and close my presentation. He always finish by talking about money and ask. But with that, I'll go ahead and stop and see if there are any questions. Thank you very much, President Bessikoff. Appreciate the presentation there. Very thorough and a lot of good information there. So, really appreciate it. We'll go ahead and bring it back up to the deis to my colleagues for uh comments, questions. Council member Delgado,

great presentation, sir. Thank you very much for coming and and uh addressing our city about the Marina Valley College. But, um nonacredited free courses. Give me can you do you have another example of of those?

Sure. Um actually, they are accredited. uh they're nonredit [snorts] meaning that um in terms of the hours counting off your financial aid they don't and also the per the per hour tuition is zero. So that that's what that is. Mainly this is an area where we're looking to grow and expand. Um and we want to have especially in our career education areas um for a lot of our career courses we want to mirror those courses with nonredit sections um so that students can take them and essentially not generate units that would count against their financial aid. And again it's something that where cost is not a barrier. I think he's asking for the titles of the type of courses. Oh, the titles like Excel. She was just spelling Excel.

Yes. Excel office. Um, English as a second language is kind of one of our primary ones, but this is an area of growth for our college where we're going to continue to have more sections in the future in different areas. Thank you, sir. And um I've been on city council for four plus years and you run into people all the time that went through the Marina Valley College that are already at their their masters or uh have achieved a bachelor's. So thank you very much for what you guys do. Thank you. Dr. Bessikov, are you going to um be holding your graduation somewhere else now? No, we will be holding graduation on campus. It'll be on June 12th. Yeah.

Perfect. Thank you. Just one or two things here. Uh you answered a lot of the questions I was going to ask in your presentation. Uh very excited to see you know the future plans for expansion of existing programs. The bachelor's degree uh coming this fall is a huge deal and just being recognized by all these organizations really highlights that. So, one one of the questions I did want to ask about is if there's anything that you could share in regards to expanding beyond what's happening already at Ben Clark in regards to health care things like like nursing programs or anything else within the medical field. I know they have programs at RCC in Riverside, but are there any plans or any way that we can assist because we see the demand that the market is is asking for, but are there any plans for bringing any of those programs to

So, at at Marino Valley College, our medical assisting programs and then also our dental programs. And one of our next frontiers we're looking at for bachelor's degree is actually in dental assisting. That's that's something that we're looking at. I think really just um working together to create more opportunities on the apprenticeship, internship, and job placement front. I think that's something that's very important. Having said that, one of the things I've come to appreciate here in this city is that um for any career and technical education program that receives Perkins federal funding, there's a requirement that um those disciplines of study have advisory boards made up of uh faculty and other colleges as well as industry professionals. And whereas I've one of the things that really has um impressed me about MVC is how full those those advisory groups are with with people in the field and people in industry. And I guess my one ask would be to continue the awareness about it and and especially just um look for places where there may be opportunities for students to practice as they learn and and also be just in the reality of 2026. I know when I went to school, internships were, you know, pro bono or, you know, I almost felt like I had to pay them. Um, you know, but we're the reality we're in now, the the paid internship, the paid apprenticeship, that's something that it's, you know, just talking about the need of that um with potential employers is is critical.

100% agree with you. And that was the second part of that uh question is you know if there's anything else that we can do either you know as elected officials or even at the staff level. I know you work very closely with staff and they do an amazing job with the partnerships that we have established. But um you know there's there's Kaiser of course there's RUHS of course which have plans for future expansions. But then there's also some new um you know providers that'll be coming in later this year like Lomal Linda Medical Clinic, Radnet Rancho uh medical clinic that opened up not that long ago. So new opportunities especially Lomol Linda when we talk about serving our veterans making sure that they get that care uh Lomol Linda really you know has serves a large part of that demographic. So any way that we can help please don't hesitate you know making phone calls sending letters of support submitting joint applications for grant funding whatever that may be uh you you know that you have our support on that. And then um also beyond that. So you know some of us sit on different boards and commissions be it uh here regionally or even at at the state level like the League of California Cities for example that is very active in advocacy and legislative um uh advocacy going up to Sacramento meeting with the legislators proposing or supporting bills and legislation. So I also want to extend that opportunity. Every April the league goes up for the legislative day of action. Every single year we go up to the swing space in the capital and meet with legislators. Anything we could help with there as well. Please, please don't hesitate to ask and would love to support you on those efforts.

Thank you, Mayor Cabera. Look to my colleagues to see if there are any further questions or comments. Great job, sir. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Appreciate the partnership. Yes, sir. And next, we will look for any public comment. Madame Clerk, are there any requests to speak on this item? We do. Mayor Christopher Baka.

Good evening.

Good evening. Um, I was uh wondering uh the development agreement with Highland Fairview indicated that he was going to be funding um the college for logistic studies. Um the last I recall was Noral had a program. I'm not sure if uh Morano Valley has the program, but that should be um something that um should be funded by the per agreement by the WLC. And I'm just wondering, my question is if there are I I I see there are uh courses, but I'm not sure if they're for Norco or for Moreno Valley um under business and logistics and uh chain um the chain thing. Um uh so my question is has there been any funding by Highland Fairview? Will there be any funding? Is anybody looking into um holding the WLC or the development agreement uh holding them to their commitments and um if that's something that that u Mr. Is it the chancellor or the president can address if um that's something in the in the near future or is it something that just went out the the the way and nobody's going to consider that anymore or hold him up to the to the agreement with the WLC for the supply chain logistics and so forth that was supposed to be funded. Thank you,

mayor. That concludes all of public comments for this item. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. So we'll go ahead and conclude the first item and we'll transition to our second item which is going to be presented by our community development director Angelica Frasto Lup. And so at this time I'll go ahead and turn it over to our staff.

Thank you. Good evening mayor and city council members. Um, so first off, I'd like to mention that actually, um, public works director Melissa Walker is not here with us tonight. She's not able to make it. And so we do have, uh, Harold Zamora, who is our engineering division manager, assistant city engineer, who will be stepping in for her. And um the outline for tonight's presentation is we'll go over the pre-development process, the entitlement process, building and construction, public works, business license, economic development, and then we will finish with some Q&A. Um so through this presentation, we'll walk you through the development process. We hope to clarify some misconceptions that are often heard when discussing development. Um first I'd like to start by highlighting a few key points that the city does not develop property. Property owners develop their property. Similarly, the city doesn't build housing. Cities must plan for housing. And um also another key point that I hope that you keep in mind throughout the presentation is that the city of Marino Valley uh values or one of our core values is customer service. And we take pride in being responsive and um we have very aggressive turnaround um times. And so when applicants submit applications, we actually have goals that we try to meet and turn around the um the review to them. Um so staff reviews and processes applications. Again, we don't um and we can't control applicants or developers on how quickly they turn around or resubmit when we have comments. um oftentimes applicants will not address uh corrections that we've um identified and so that delays um that may cause some delays. Um, and just as a quick

example, and one example that I often like to to give is that um, you know, because we can't control others, one of the things that often happens is that um, developers think that they're saving money um, by perhaps not uh, hiring an architect. For example, if I want to if I'm a property owner and I want to develop a restaurant, I might want to save money by hiring kind of a general contractor rather than someone who specializes in restaurants and kitchens. That's just one example that may cause some delays. Unfortunately, applicant, developer, property owner may think that they're trying to save money, but in the end, often the delays will cost them more time and money. So, with that in mind, we'll get right into it. So, the pre-development process, um, this includes, um, oftent times site selection. So, where the property owner will start looking for a site, they might have a few sites in mind. We'll have to verify zoning. Um, I do want to emphasize here that the city's economic development department can assist with site selection. And a little bit later in the presentation, we will hear from um Kyle Borsenski, our economic development director, who will walk you through um the process and give an example of a project. Um so property owners um developers during this process are often doing their market studies, they're doing their feasibility studies, they're looking at various sites, etc. Um the next item here is property owner rights. So, um, property owners have rights to develop their their site and so if it's allowed by the zoning, if it's consistent with the general plan, then they have the right to look into developing their property.

And um, then the city offers a um, pre-application, preliminary review. And we very often times highly recommend that um applicants take advantage of this process. During this review, we provide detailed comments on what they can expect during the actual entitlement process and we route the pre-application to our internal and external um departments, divisions and partner agencies. And this provides information to the applicant on what they can expect e expect during the process and actually helps them save time so for when they're ready to go. So next we'll jump right into the entitlement process and the approvals. And I'll start with um you know what is entitlement? uh in an entitlement is securing the planning approvals to develop the land. Staff analyzes the project against the local policies and codes as well as applicable state laws. Um and the types of applications that we might receive are conditional use permits um uh specific plans, zone changes, plot plans. Um and so the steps for the entitlement process is a formal application is submitted. The um application is reviewed by staff and um the development review team includes planning, building, economic development, fire, land development, parks, MVU, special districts and some of our partner agencies would include uh AMWD as an example. So again, when we receive an application, the plans um are routed to the different uh divisions and

we meet as a group. Then we meet with the applicant to go over what the comments um may be and then formal comments are submitted to the applicant. Um oftentimes on the first review there may be quite a long list of comments and uh here goes back to the point on um we can't control how uh quickly the plans will be resubmitted or whether they will address all the comments. And again, sometimes that causes the delays. Meanwhile, staff is also reviewing for compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, SQUA, um as well as uh tribal consultation is often um began in the process. And staff will always encourage the applicant to do some community outreach. We want the applicant to go out and talk about their project and gain the support early on, which will help their process. um you make it a little bit easier for them and really just to gain the support of the community. Let's see anything here. And so um what are the um specifically now the approval process? There's really two kinds and one is a discretionary and one is an administrative or ministerial. The discretionary approval is taking the project before the planning commission and that is a public public hearing. Um that is going to be based uh the planning commission will get a recommendation from staff. uh approvals will be based on findings and oftentimes the project will have conditions of approval and the conditions of approval

are going to detail requirements for uh for the project for implementing the project. Um during a ministerial approval, the um the project will be approved at the staff level. And during the ministerial approvals, um it it's going to be based on primarily on are they meeting the uh objective standards that are listed in the code. Oh, sorry. I I should have mentioned earlier that um I did have city uh attorney Steve Kenttonia on standby if he wanted to mention anything regarding vested rights. And just really quickly, vested rights really is um when a project is approved, basically what it means is that the applicant then now has the right to develop the project per the approvals. City attorney, anything?

Yeah. So vested rights means exactly what our community development director just mentioned and there's another aspect of vested rights and that um pertains to which rules regulations apply to a particular project. So the general rule is that um if a developer has a building permit they have to comply with the rules and regulations in place at the time the building permit was issued. However, if we have a vested tenative map um which they it's a particular type of map that gives vested rights to proceed with the development pursuant to the rules and regulations in place at the time they submitted a complete application for the vested tenative map. So that moves the the standards and rules back earlier. So we can't change the rules that they submitted a vested tenative map and they come six months later and we change the general plan on them. They we we're limited to applying those rules. Um with development agreements, development agreements can even push those vested rights back further if we approved a development agreement, you know, three years ago, five years ago. we can only apply those u rules and regulations in place at the time we executed that development agreement five, six, seven, eight, 10 years ago. Um the other way the other type of vested rights we deal with now are the ones we know as um Senate Bill 330 preliminary applications. So now if we have a project that involves housing and a developer comes in and submits this preliminary preliminary application and then they come back year or two years later, we can't change the rules and regulations on them including our development impact fees. So with SB 330, it actually freezes the

amount of development impact fees we can impose. So, anytime we have a project that's brought forward to the council, what staff has to do is determine which rules, regulations, ordinances, development standards, zoning can we apply to that project. And all of it's going to depend on what type of entitlement they're applying for or seeking or what sort of entitlement they have in place. So, those are the two meanings of vested rights. One is which determines what rules and regulations we apply to that particular project. And one uh another set of vested rights is involves a situation where they already have permits and they have a project that's been approved and we can't make any changes after those permits or even after they break ground on on that's what vested rights is all about.

Thank you city attorney. So moving on to the building permitting and construction. Um so after the entitlement or the project is approved, the applicant will then submit to building plan check. So in other words, that's when they submit their construction plans for review to ensure compliance with state and local codes. Additionally, during this phase, the applicant will begin site preparation, grading, installation of necessary infrastructure. And in a little bit, I will pass it over to um Mr. for Harold Samura for a little more detail on the public works process. Um but before we go there I will finish with the building and permitting. So the steps on during this phase is first the plan review as mentioned uh plans are um submitted to ensure that they are complying with uh the California building code and any local codes um that we may have here in the city. Um city staff does verify contractors uh licenses to ensure that uh they have the proper uh licenses and credentials. Um once the plans are approved then we move into permit issuance and that is um gives the uh basically the green light to begin construction and during the construction um inspections are conducted again to ensure that uh the project is being built per the approved plans. Um, and sometimes here is where we may see uh some delays because the um contractor or the property owner has a change of heart and wants to change the plans while they're out in the field. And so when the inspector goes out and says, "Well, this is not what what was approved, you know, you got to go back and resubmit plans." And so, um, while sometimes the property owner, you know, may have a

change of heart, it's really not the best thing to do, especially not while out in the field and we're already having uh to we already have approved plans. Um, so once the project is constructed, then we issue a certificate of occupancy. Um I mentioned you know sometimes changes out in the field and so if there are changes out in the field then we would issue a stop work uh notice. Um during the building uh process we are also ensuring that um projects are constructed uh uh in compliance with the Americans with Disability Act and um during our entire entitlement and building and permitting process. economic development team works closely with planners and the building team to ensure that projects are moving smoothly. We offer check-ins either on a weekly or other um or bi-weekly basis. Again, our you know, we're here to help and so we want to ensure that projects get done and we want to ensure that projects are done on a timely basis. And at this point, I will go ahead and pass it over to Mr. Harold Zamora. Okay.

So, good evening. Um, as Angelica said, as far as the development process, public works has four touch points that are involved during the process. The first one is in land development and they serve as as kind of the intake for our engineering department and their primary responsibility is just to make sure that the developer and their engineer is designing to the current engineering standards and practices. Um we also make sure that they're putting in the proper infrastructure um for the development process. It's real important as far as what type of project they're putting in and the location. That's going to determine what type of in infrastructure goes into in place. Um whether it be utilities, storm drains, traffic signals, all that's determined in the land development section. Um we also take a look and see and make sure they're adhering to any state and federal regulations. One of the big ones and and one of the ones that are most confusing is storm water versus flood waters. Um, one easy way is I I always share is storm waters is the first 20 minute storm event. That's what you can consider storm water that's on site. Flood waters is anything beyond those 20 minutes is a good rule of thumb. That's more of a storm drain flood control issue. So that's something easy to decipher between the two. Um depending on the actual development and size and type, our transportation department gets involved and that section their their primary focus is reviewing the traffic studies if it warrants a traffic study. Uh usually the ones that will warrant those are the large commercial developments or large uh residential developments. So, our transportation department reviews the transportation uh traffic studies and just uh ensures that they're adhering to all the conditions that we provided at the at the start with planning. Um they also look at the

road configuration and just ensure that it's being built to our general plan. And then also they look at whether or not the traffic control meets our requirements during construction. So they're involved in making sure that they provide us adequate traffic control during construction so it has the least impact on the residents when they're doing their actual construction. Um then once everything's approved, plans and everything is signed by not just the city but also by outside agencies, then we kind of go into the construction permit phase. Now, this is another area where where people tend to get a little confused with what Angelica spoke about as far as construction and permit phase onsite. Um, we handle public right away. The only on-site permitting that engineering does is the grading permits. So, sometimes people will come to engineering and say, "How come you're not looking at the building and and looking at, you know, certain clearances?" And that's when we refer them to our building and safety department. So although we're named very similar, we handle two very separate um aspects of the job. One's on-site, which is Angelica's group, and ours is off-site public rightway. Um, and then lastly is if that development is located within one of our Moreno Valley electric utility service areas, then we get our department involved in providing the necessary services for them and then just conditioning them with the proper infrastructure that's required for their development. And then like I mentioned to you before, um depending on the type of project, if it's a really large project, um some of the ones that you're seeing on the east end, those require a lot of coordination with outside agencies. And so the engineering department kind of helps the developer and the engineer because um although our development process is actually very streamlined, it is

sometimes difficult if you've never gone through it. So we kind of help them along through the process. So depending on what it is that they're needing. So for example, if the service area is not within our Moreno Valley utility, then we we we put them in contact withce. You know, we talk to them. We we try to get ahead of it because we know has certain requirements that we're not aware of or not in control of. So we want them to touch touch with them early, you know, talk to them early and and that way it doesn't affect their development. Also, one thing to note as as you are well aware, we don't have water and sewer service. A lot of people think we do and we don't, but we do help put them in the right, you know, in contact with the right people, whether it's Eastern Municipal Water District or Box Springs. Um, so we serve kind of a as a as a facilitator for that as well. And then one one big aspect that I touched on earlier is flood control district. Um, flood control district has a master plan for the entire Moreno Valley area. Um, so sometimes, like I mentioned to you before, when you see a storm drain coming in, it's difficult to know whether it's a local facility or whether it's a flood control district facility. Um, the rule of thumb again is uh kind of the height of this uh counter here. Anything larger pipe size higher than this, that would be a flood control district facility. Anything smaller is a city facility. Um, I like to use illustrations. It's easy for me. Um and then lastly, um you know, sometimes there's these large developments that that do touch with like our WR COG agencies, the large regional size agencies, RCTC. Um and sometimes there's funds available through that. So, we put them in contact with them as well so they can work with them to try to see if there's any funds available for their development. And with that, I'll pass it back to Angelica.

Thank you, Harold. And so part of our process is ensuring that um anyone doing business in the city has an active business license. So whether it's a contractor or property owner is now built uh a commercial building, ensuring that the tenants have business licenses. So, a business license is required for all businesses in the city. Whether it's a commercial business, a homebased business, a nonprofit, or religious organization, everyone must obtain a business license. And the fees will vary depending on uh the type of business. And so next, I did mention earlier that we did have um Kyle Warinski, our economic development director, to walk you through um some of what's offered through economic development and uh give a case study.

Thank you, Angelica. Good evening, Mayor and Council. We're going to go over a couple key items that economic development focuses on with land development approval process. So amongst many things that we focus on in economic development, uh one of the primary roles is to focus on business attraction. Uh that's bringing in new businesses, stores, employers, investors with the goal of getting them into that approval process that both Harold and Angelica uh eloquently described. Another thing that we do is we focus on business retention and expansion. Those are our existing businesses that may be seeking uh expansion at their current location. They may be looking to relocate to another location within the city of Marina Valley or they may be looking to uh potentially look at a second, third, fourth location for their business enterprise. As Angelica alluded to, we provide site selection assistance for both of those attraction and retention efforts. So, if they're looking for an existing suite, we can help them find what's on the market today for lease or for sale. If it's uh the attraction, if it's developers that are looking at a new site, uh we often pitch them sites that are available. We know who the brokers are. We connect them with that so that it eases their ability to review what's available in the city and to make those direct contacts versus jumping on the internet and trying to find those themselves. Uh lastly, and Angelica touched on this and I appreciate that is we do offer personal llays through economic development to help support businesses, developers um and existing businesses through that approval process. Uh the idea is to help um sometimes translate what planning, public works uh say. They they often operate in very technical terms. uh business owners sometimes don't understand those and we kind of fill in to help them understand what what

they're trying to say because they're not doing something wrong, they just don't understand what they don't know. And so we try to help them with that. Ultimately, our goal is to get them through that approval process with their doors open as fast as possible. So certain things that affect development within the city. Uh I often use this five five tiered um wheel to demonstrate what our role is as the city of Marino Valley in the development process. So we are number one. Uh this includes uh city economic development, public works, planning, every department, every touch point with the city uh is reflective in the business community. Are we businessfriendly? Are we progrowth? Those things factor into these investors decisions to go through this land entitlement process. Number two on the wheel, residents. Those equate to customers or potential employees for these businesses. So, a company's not going to come in and look at somewhere where there's not going to be someone to shop uh or to uh utilize that service. Third, those businesses I just alluded to, they want to come into an area that is thriving, that is growing, that is not stagnant, that has customers for them to actually make money. Right. Fourth, Angelica alluded to this, is the city does not build anything uh beyond public improvements. Once in a while, we'll build city halls or police stations or rec centers and parks, right? Uh but beyond that in streets and signals uh the development community, private developers are the ones that you see embarking on investments in the community and going vertical with shopping centers, um residential projects, etc. And so we have to be able to attract those developers and maintain ongoing relationships with them in order to entice them to the table to invest and

develop within the city. Uh lastly and unfortunately one beyond our control is external market forces. That one you can think of interest rates, tariffs, construction costs, inflation, consumer sentiment, consumer spending patterns, all those things outside of our control affect the development process. And so one through four on that wheel can all be in perfect alignment. But if construction cost on lumber goes up tomorrow by 200 300%. You better believe that developer is going to look at their proforma closer and to see if they have additional budget to um eat those increased costs or if they go hey we're going to pause for a little bit and see if these prices come back down into the realm where we're able to pencil our project. So hopefully that uh provides some insight into the factors on what uh equates into development and and works on that. So Angelica alluded to a case example that we're going to provide and it's really how economic development, community development, public works works together. And so this corner, believe it or not, was the corner of day and eucalyptus. Uh there was a concrete batch plant there for many years. uh likely there was not much around it when it was constructed and operated for those years. Uh eventually things move forward, general planned and zoning changes and we find ourselves with a what we call a legal nonconforming use on a major commercial corridor. Not great for the business. They're likely getting complaints from neighbors, uh complaints from people driving down that street. uh not all types of businesses want to be right next to a concrete batch plant. Uh I don't blame them. And so what we do is we jump into that equation and say,

"Hey, Robertson's um can we help you find another location in an industrial zone where you are permitted?" Um mind you, when you have these examples, uh that company also cannot expand because they're legal to stay there, but they do not conform with the land use and the zoning on the property. And so if they want to do anything new, they want to expand and grow their business, they're prohibited from doing so at that location. What we do is we step up and help them find additional sites. So they look at those sites, remind you, we don't build it. So they have to actually build it. Uh they find a new site, they either lease that or they purchase it, and then they move their business location to the new site. What that leaves us with is this amazing picture. I don't know if anyone else in the room gets super excited when they see dirt, but that excites me. Why? Because dirt is opportunity to an economic developer. This is something that we have an ability to work on and create a higher and better use other than a batch plant in a commercial zone. So, we get to work on aggressive marketing to find tenants, find a developer, and to get a project together uh that will hopefully submit to Angelica's group in planning for that land entitlement approval. Uh, coincidentally, on this one, uh, the whole project was pre-leasased at 80, let me rephrase that, 86% of the project was pre-leased before they started construction. that demonstrates a great relationship between the city of Marino Valley and these investors that are looking to develop properties in the city. You don't see that too often, but this case um definitely showed that. So, once we get the tenants in there, the developer feels comfortable with the the mix of the buildings, they go ahead and submit to planning and public works for those land use approvals.

Once those land use approvals that Angelica described are approved, uh they now have their entitlements, those rights to build. They proceed with the plan check that Angelica described through building and safety. Then they get under construction. Uh once the project completes construction, passes their final permit inspections, businesses open and provide services, employment opportunities, uh goods for our residents to buy or to to find a job opportunity. So that's a quick case example of kind of how we all work together in uh development services here at the city. And with that, uh I think we're open to questions and I will give the clicker back to Angelica. Thank you. And uh mayor, council, just before uh questions, just like to add a few different uh pieces of information that uh weren't discussed. Um so the city website uh does have a plan check turnaround comparison. So we've actually compared to our peers within the Inland Empire. Um so if you go to um uh Marino Valley or sorry moal.org or ed. You will actually uh then type in uh plan check uh turnaround html and you will actually see uh the comparison and it actually shows that we can save um developers up to 2.1 weeks when it comes to the first review um as well as a number of hours related to that uh first review um and subsequent reviews as well. We also have a time and materials um um program. So if it if the development meets a certain criteria um for the larger developments, we can actually uh enroll uh the developer into a time and material uh

program in which they do an initial deposit of $100,000 and all of their um hours that are worked within the development team is then charged to that particular um deposit. and it uh basically uh fasttracks uh their um the city's ability to not have to wait for deposits and so forth and uh the the back and forth with the developer. We also have a strike team uh between economic development and uh community development in which uh that team is uh provided to developers. Um that's also on our website. Um, so just want to make sure I provided that additional information as it wasn't in the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you very much team. I appreciate the very thorough report there as well. We'll go ahead and bring it back up to the day before we go to public comment and we'll start with Mayor Pro Tim Gonzalez.

I have a couple questions. I only asked one. Um, and this is for Kyle. He you give us I know you gave the case study of the quarter and I was on the I was actually on the plan commission when um approved that that project a few years back. Compare the quarter and how it was pre-leased uh right with with the various um uh developers and attendants versus the town center right Allesandre and Nason. It probably has to do with also the economic factors in 2026 versus you know maybe 10 years ago, eight years ago. just just want to get your thoughts on that.

Very good question. Thank you for me to add my my two cents and opinion on it. We're obviously working very closely with the ownership group of the town center to perform that same attraction effort. Uh we were out in ICSE Western uh in September around the same time I arrived and I know we're going to be planning on attracting new businesses to that site uh specifically and elsewhere within the city uh during ICSE coming up in May. Um that doesn't mean that that's the only time we perform those actions. Those are just two of the larger commercial retail conferences within the western United States. Uh, so we're always in ongoing communications with the developer. Uh, sometimes they'll ask us for assistance, other times they're progressing on their own attraction efforts and hopefully we get to the finish line in which they have a good leased project, they start with construction, etc.

Thank you, Kyle. Council member Delgado.

Yeah, my question is for Angelica. um on the entitlement process oftent times I hear that it's taking a long time and there are a lot of um folks that look at this you have I mean it goes from hand to hand to hand department to department to department now how does that process work does it go say for instance you do your part on this this project you you hand it over to fire they do their part and then it's a combined report back to them and then they try to address all those issues and then come back to the city or how does that work Yeah. So it's happening the review is happening concurrently. So application comes in and then it gets routed to the different divisions for comments and every division is looking at the project at the same time. So again we do have um very aggressive timelines. So for first review I believe it's a 14 14 day turnaround. And I'm going to look at my cheat sheet right here. Um what was that?

Okay. Two weeks. Two weeks. Yes. Thank you. Um, so yes. So, so during those two weeks, all the divisions and departments are looking at the project together so that we don't have those delays. On our end, we do everything possible to make the process as fast a and easy as possible. Um, as Kyle mentioned earlier, um, it's a daunting task, especially for a developer who is not, you know, it might be their first project, maybe they're new into development. Um, so our job is to help them get through the process, get through the process quickly because for them it's time and money.

And then that was my uh part B to that is how long does that process usually take? And that's about two weeks. So you that's a quick turn. That's pretty quick. And then we put it back on them to address all the issues. Um, another question is oftentimes they do have corrections or they they have a plan check and they change something. Um, you guys ask them to change it and then they bring it back changed and said and then you guys bring it something else to them and say well now you got to do this. They complain that why didn't you just tell me the fir in the in the first place to fix everything. Well, guess what? they changed something which changed uh the project that affected something else

affected something else. So I think it's good for them to know that um there there may be delay on their part because of that and not us taking a chunk out of this and then bringing it back and then taking a chunk out of that. It's they changed it so now you got to fix this because it wasn't up to where it should have been in the first place.

That's correct. And that's why we highly encourage the pre-de the the pre-application because during that process we can help guide them and advise them talk about what their plans are. Um sometimes especially for developers who who may not have the you know the experience or the years of experience in development um we'll we'll get uh you know a a property owner saying well I want to develop my own property and I have these ideas. So we say to them it's best to really focus on you know what what your ultimate goal is because you might have various different ideas but if in the end you are not real comfortable or perhaps don't have the financing or the funding and so the project when you submit is going to be completely different like all of those are things that we can we we try to discuss and walk them through during the pre uh application process.

Thank you for that and thank you. Great job all of you guys. That's great.

And council member, if I might add, um thank you to council uh for your support and investment within the Asella software. So over the years, we've heard this exact comment and uh we've invested heavily in Asella. So we have a digital plan room that allows developers to digitally upload uh their documents and files. uh that came about um as um a requirement of uh COVID um but we were looking at doing something anyways but COVID accelerated that um as we weren't able to accept files um we had to set them aside for 72 hours and uh cooling off times and so forth but uh with the digital digital plan room has been a blessing so everything's now uh reviewed digitally we don't have paper everywhere um downstairs um also uh we have um with the Asella software, they're able to go in and see on the developer side what the status is of the roster and who what department has or has not reviewed documents. Um as well as um we have implemented about two to three years ago uh that we communicate with the developer and not just the consultants because a lot of times what we are hearing is the consultants were saying certain things to the developers which might not have been exactly what the city was telling them. And so therefore we're trying to save developers money so that the consultants aren't able to bleed them uh of any funds. Thank you.

Thank you.

I can add my perspective to this. Sometimes I see um delays that are caused when we are when we get an application, we have 30 days to deem that application complete or not complete. And sometimes staff will send them a list of items that we're required to do to make the application complete. And so sometimes there's a lot of delay from the developer in submitting those applications. And then even after the application is deemed complete once we get the SQL process kicks in sometimes staff and the consultants will identify that this certain study that was just submitted and completed creates these certain impacts. Now if we proceed with the study as is then it's likely you're going to have to comply with these mitigation measures unless you do this. So that gives them the opportunity to go back and do you know come back with another study or some alternative mitigation measure. So a lot of times the delay is caused by the applicant because they're thinking through the process as to how much money they want to incur or spend to mitigate something that's going to require an additional study. So that's where I see a lot of the delay happening is staff giving them the opportunity to improve the project or to do another study or to come up with some alternative to a mitigation measure that they that has been identified as being needed in the SQL process.

Thank you. And I have maybe one or two questions as well in case it didn't come up. If you could briefly briefly just talk about potentially some other factors in these development equations that could change or alter the standard timelines of the development and entitlement process, such as potential litigation with things like SQA, for example, that sometimes come up even after projects are approved by the council. um or even extensions that sometimes developers will request for various reasons uh on their own and maybe if you could speak to the limitations of extensions. Uh so if if you would like to speak on that please.

Yeah the I mean there are various factors that may cause delays. Um you know I think Kyle mentioned a bit about it. Some sometimes it's market forces, sometimes it's funding, sometimes uh the developer will, you know, think that they've lined up their their finances and have all the capital ready to go and then, you know, the the price of lumber increases and so now that's going to be a factor in in in their project. Um, if a project is entitled, the the entitlement is good for three years. if they are already um in building um permit issuance but they haven't or or you know plans have been approved but they haven't pulled their building permit those plans are good for 180 days they could request both through planning and building extensions of time um and so oftentimes we will grant those because we want to see the projects to come to tr to through uh fruition Yeah,

thank you. And then my last it's more of a comment not so much a question but obviously just want to say thank you for even um you know with the various macroeconomic factors that we're having to deal with headwinds tailwinds uh and the quickly changing economy with you know technological um innovation creative destruction you know artificial intelligence for example and how that's uprooting so many different industries um uh you know our our incentives right the city has done an amazing job of creating these programs like, you know, higher mobile, for example, or other incentives through our Marina Valley utility. And so that's something that I I know we've briefly it's come up in conversations over the years, but it's been a while since we've kind of really opened the hood on that and looked at what are some proven use cases uh uh throughout the country and even internationally of what some of these other municipalities and jurisdictions are doing. um whether it's allocation of funds or even things that don't require funding um to further incentivize businesses to try to attract them and put us at a even greater competitive advantage to even surrounding cities or other regions. So, you know, that's something that I just I'll kind of like plant that seed. I know you're constantly looking at those opportunities, but I think I would love for us to really take a deeper look at what are some other new programs that we could potentially implement here in the city to attract more businesses and attract the type of businesses that maybe we're trying to focus in on as well. Um, so not really a question, just more of a comment to kind of leave that with you all. So I'll look to my colleagues again to see if there are any other questions or comments. I don't see any more at this time. So thank you. Thank you once again for the presentation and we will go ahead and look for public comment. Madam clerk, do we have any request to speak?

We do, mayor. Thank you, Christopher Baka.

Good evening again. Um kind of sounds like a alternate reality here when it comes to the big projects. uh as far as them complying and going through the process. Um what exactly what exactly um is the requirements for these big projects that nothing has happened. Some of them have even gone through the wayside and have been uh reinstated after 10 15 years. Uh as far as Aquabala one is concerned uh I don't see nothing going on there. uh WLC um from what I understand it's the flood control that's doing the the work and uh you got uh Sketchers number three going in but as far as a WLC anything else you know they just move a little here and move a little there uh according to the whole presentations we're seeing here it doesn't make sense that's not happening it's totally alternate reality here what you're talking about and the reality of these projects Um, I also have gone on the websites to see if we see any updates and the only thing on there is in process. That's all in process. And it's been decades. It's been years and all the only thing you see is in process. So again, alternate reality. What's going on here? Why is this development these developments not held to what you're specifically claiming to be doing? So, are you lying? Are you making this up? What? I don't understand exactly what's going on here. Um, on another note, uh, I was, uh, scanning through YouTube and came across the Sanhene to a fault area. Um, literally

the fog goes through the corner of Ironwood and um Ironwood and uh uh Theodore and uh literally on top of that house right there where the tanks are. So, you know, God please. Anyhow, that area along the foothills that and then it goes out into toward Richie Canyon and down Gilman Springs, what came to mind was Tornado Alley. Why in those states, Tornado Alley, all those Texas, all those they continue building, you know, uh, mobile homes, these cheap homes when they're the direct path of tornadoes. This is the same thing with the upcoming Gilman Hills project that's literally on top of the San Hinto fault. That's insanity for the city to even consider annexing that area and building homes and businesses and stuff literally on top of the Sanhasinto fault. It's total insanity. It'll never happen. But the point, my point is, how foolish are you? You've been sold the bridge. Now you're going to be

Mayor. That concludes all of public comments for this item. Thank you, Madam Clerk. We will go ahead and move into our next item, which will be a presentation given by our police chief, Sarah Mack. Captain Sarah Mack. So, at this time, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you, Captain. Thank you.

Good evening, honorable mayor, mayor prom, members of council, and community members. Tonight, I will present the Marino Valley Sheriff Station 2025 annual report. Also, in the interest of transparency, I have also included a brief update addressing some public questions regarding the use of certain public safety technologies. First, I'd like to introduce our command staff. In 2025, we welcome two new members to the leadership team, Lieutenant Johnson and Lieutenant Harding, who are pleased to serve the station and the community within the patrol operations. They join a team of seven experienced and dedicated lieutenants committed to public safety in Marino Valley. Throughout 2025, the Marino Valley Station contracted contract provided 178 sworn personnel and 54 classified personnel. That staffing that staffing uh supported divisions including administration, clerical services, patrol, investigations, special teams, traffic enforcement, SEBAT, and a community service unit. Each of these units played an important role in supporting our mission of public safety and serving the community. This staffing level allowed us to provide effective law enforcement services. However, as the city continues to grow, additional personnel and resources would further strengthen our ability to meet the increasing service demands. In 2025, the Marino Valley Station handled nearly 117,000 calls for service, averaging about 200, excuse me, 320 calls per day. These calls range from emergencies and crimes in progress to quality of life concerns. This graph displays the part one crimes which

include homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, lararseny, and arson. Compared to 2024, homicide, robbery, aggreg aggravated assault, burglary, and vehicle theft all decreased. While theft, rape, and arson showed an increase. With the purpose of reducing crime in all categories, we constantly monitor these statistics closely to identify trends and strategically deploy resources, including specialized teams that focus on the prevention of and investigation of burglaries, robberies, and major thefts. while we use countywide special teams to assist with complex investigations such as homicide and vehicle theft rings. Gun violence remains a serious concern for every community. Our station maintains a zero tolerance approach focusing on prevention and strong prosecution. In 2025, deputies removed nearly 300 firearms from the streets. This graph display shows a 47% reduction in reported shooting incidents between 2023 and 2025, reflecting a steady downward trend in gun-related incidents. Most incidents reported as seen by the bottom graph should fall under the penal code section 246.3 which involves the negl negligent discharge of a firearm and often does not involve other violent crimes. In 2025, the station reduced response times across all priority levels. Calls

are dispatched on a priority system. Priority one being the most important priority, which is typically calls that are an immediate threat to life or property. While priority two is lesser, three is lesser, and four typically are calls that are past calls. The station has reduced response times across all priority levels, strengthening public safety and investigative effectiveness. Higher priority calls will always be an immediate receive immediate attention. However, we have also worked to improve service at the lower priority level. Priority 4 calls weight times have decreased by 24%. Priority calls are dispatched based off of the circumstances. We often the priority four calls get overlooked over and over and over throughout the day when deputies are pulled to respond to priority one calls. This leaves a high weight for the priority for calls which are calls that are past crimes that have occurred and don't have the same urgency. However, I fully understand that to the person calling the police, that is in fact a high priority to them. So to assist with this, we expanded our use of community service officers who can respond to non-emergency calls and investigations. They are highly qualified to do certain investigations. And what that does, it allows patrol deputies to remain in service to respond to urgent priority one calls. This allows us to address the higher priority calls while still utilizing different resources to address the lower priority calls. and significantly according to the stats by 24% throughout the last year for the priority calls to decrease the wait times.

Our investigations bureau includes 12 experienced investigators and master investigators who handle complex follow-up investigations. The bureau also includes specially trained deputies who focus on cases involving domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual predator and registrant compliance. These deputies work closely with victims, families, prosecutors, and partner agencies to ensure that sensitive cases are handled thoroughly and with the care that they deserve. In 2025, our investigation spiel handled 859 cases, including robbery, burglary, assault, rape, fraud, and missing persons. Many of these investigations required extensive evidence collection, and coordination with agencies outside our our jurisdiction and coordinated with multiple jurisdictions. Our special enforce team, our special enforcement team or our set team is one of the station's most productive units. They focus on high crime areas, violent offenders, and organized criminal activity while also monitoring emergency emerging crime trends. Set also worked closely with local businesses and apartment communities that have experienced ongoing theft, crime, and vagrancy. Through these targeted operations and relationship building, the team has helped restore stability in areas throughout the city. In 2025, our set team reported 286 criminal filings, 231 search warrants served, 71 weapons seized, 370 pounds of narcotics seized, 67 pounds of fentanyl seized, and $1.6 $6 million in recovered stolen property.

Our traffic enforcement unit operates 7 days a week and includes motor motorcycle enforcement deputies, collision investigators, and commercial vehicle enforcement. In 2025, the unit issued over 11,000 citations, investigated eight fatal traffic collisions, 664 injury traffic collisions, and made 288 DUI arrests. They also conducted 41 targeted safety operations and quality of life operations which included DUI driver's license checkpoints, DUI satur saturation patrols, distracted driving enforcement, motorcycle safety, bike and pedestrian safety, traffic safety presentations in schools, and know your limit campaigns. And the majority of the quality of life and traffic safety operations were done on OTS grants at no cost to the city. We also expanded our capabilities with three new BMW motorcycles, a Ram 2500 commercial enforcement truck, a DUI enforcement trailer, which was funded by the OTS grant at no cost to the city, and deployed additional radar speed trailers to be set up throughout the area in high-speed areas. These resources allowed the traffic enforcement unit to remain proactive, visible, and effective in addressing roadway safety while responding to the evol to the evolving traffic needs of the community.

Our community behavioral health assessment team or CBAT consists of three teams. This year we got up to fully staffing our three teams. uh consisted of pairing a deputy sheriff with a behavioral health clinician from Riverside University Healthcare System. They respond to individuals experiencing mental health crisis and provide access to appropriate resources. In 202 responded to,60 mental health calls and assisted patrol deputies with over 540 additional related incidents. Our homeless outreach team or the hot team expanded in 2025. They now provide two deputy sheriffs and one community service officer that are assigned full-time. The team responds to concerns from residents and businesses while proactively contacting individuals experiencing homelessness. Working with city partners, the team visited 753 locations, offered services 778 times, and made 436 arrests related to criminal activities. My favorite, our community services unit hosted and participated in nearly 170 community events last year, including shop with a cop, our famous trunk or treat, holiday cheer, the Christmas parade, and the public safety expo. These events help build partnerships and relationships between deputies and the community we serve. That completes the 2025 annual report. So I'd like to touch on some community concerns related to uh our growing technology

starting with flock. So I'd like to address I would like to address a technology that has been an important investigative tool for law enforcement agencies across the country and including here in Marino Valley. That technology is the Flock automated license plate reader system. Like many new technologies used in public safety, the use of flock cameras had gener has generated questions and concerns from f from members of the public particularly regarding public regarding privacy and how the data is used. These concerns are understandable and transparency transparency about these systems is very important. So, I'd like to briefly explain how these systems work, how they benefit public safety, and the safeguards that are in place to protect the privacy of our residents. Currently, flock cameras have been strategically placed at all major roadways and key entry points in the city. We actively have 229 flock cameras deployed. These cameras help deputies quickly identify vehicles that may be connected to criminal activity. The system assists us by identifying stolen vehicles and locating suspects involved in crimes. It also pre it also has proven to be an important resource in locating lost or missing persons and even persons experiencing suicidal crisis. From an investigative standpoint, this technology provides valuable leads quickly and efficiently, allowing investigators to identify suspect vehicles much faster than traditional investigative methods. As a result, we have seen faster suspect identification, an increase in the recovery of stolen vehicles and property, and greater overall investigative efficiency. Just as importantly, the presence of these cameras acts as a strong

deterrent, discouraging criminals from entering the city and committing crimes in the community. Overall, this technology has become an important force multiplier, helping our deputies and investigators solve crime more quickly while improving the overall safety of Marino Valley. We have also taken steps to ensure that the use of this technology is responsible, transparent, and respectful of privacy. First, it is important to understand that these cameras, what these cameras actually collect. Flock license plate reader cameras capture license plates and basic vehicle characteristics such as color, make, or model of a vehicle. They do not capture personal identities and they do not use facial recognition technology. These systems do not track individuals. Instead, it simply records vehicles that pass by the camera in public areas where there's no expectation of privacy, such as major roadways and city entry points. In many ways, it is similar to a deputy observing and noticing a license plate while on patrol in a public location. across the system. Access to the system is strictly controlled. Only trained and authorized law enforcement personnel are able to con conduct searches within the database. Every search is logged and recorded, creating a record of who accessed the system and why. To ensure accountability, these entities are regularly reviewed and audited, including monthly audits conducted by a lieutenant at the station. These safeguards help ensure the system is used appropriately and only for legitimate law enforcement purposes. Additionally, all data collected is maintained by the sheriff's department and is retained only for limited

investigations. The limited investigation period after which is automatically deleted in accord in accordance with department policy. This oversight measures measures and strict policies are in place to prevent misuse and maintain public trust. The goal of this technology is very clear to assist deputies in solving crimes, recovering stolen property, and protecting the community, not monitoring law-abiding citizens. When used responsibly, tools like this allow us to solve crimes faster, identify suspects more efficiently, and deter criminal activity while still maintaining strong protections and privacy for civil liberties. Additional technology that often raises concerns is our use of drones. Over the last year, we've made significant gains in public safety by establishing a station drone team. Drones have been monumental in increasing public increasing the public and deputy safety by allowing an aerial perspective to improve coordination, help deploy appropriate resources, and increase operational efficiency. For example, this allows us to quickly locate lost or missing persons, search large areas, identify crime scenes, and make safer, faster apprehensions of suspects. Simply put, drones provide immediate overhead view and live updates to responding units, which means safer, smarter policing. We currently deploy two DJI Matrice 30T drones. These platforms provide highdefinition video, thermal imaging, live stream capabilities, and real-time intelligence to deputies and supervisors

on the ground. These tools provide us with an aerial view to view to see what is happening as it unfolds, especially during high-risk and rapidly evolving incidents. We also utilize two DJI mini drones. These compact systems provide HD video, can deploy quickly, and are especially useful in indoor searches and tight environments. Our operators must be sworn deputy sheriffs or higher in rank. They are carefully selected by station administration. Each operator is required to obtain a commercial UAS pilot's license under 14 CFR part 107 through the Federal Aviation Administration. They must reertify with the FAA every two years and complete additional department specific UAS training and safety checks. This ensures our program meets the highest professional and legal standards. All drone flights and flight paths are thoroughly tracked and documented. Every deployment is tracked to ensure proper oversight and responsible operation. This level of documentation protects against unauthorized use, reinforces transparency, and strengthens accountability at every level of the program. Drone usage is limited to responding to calls for service. The program is not used to patrol the city. When drones are in transit, the camera is directed toward the horizon in the direction of travel, not toward unrelated residents or businesses. All flight data is recorded and any video footage or photographs are used strictly for evidence collection purposes similar to the sheriff's aviation unit. This program is governed by extensive policy development over the past 10

years to res to to ensure responsible and lawful operation. And that concludes my presentation. Honorable mayor, Mayor Prom, and members of council, thank you for your time and support, and I welcome any questions. Thank you very much, Captain Mack. We'll go ahead and bring it back up to the D is for any council comments, questions. Council member Dog.

Yeah, I don't have any uh questions, but just to comment on great job and thank you and your staff for all you do for our city, um our see patrol deputies everywhere and sebat and and motors and the commercial trucks. Um so, thank you guys very much. Great job.

Thank you, sir. I also don't have questions and just want to say thank you so much. I've done ride alongs with the SEBAT and along with your officers. It's amazing to see um the caliber of officers that we have out on our streets. Um I want to thank you for your leadership. I know that you know the way they act, it comes from the top. And um also I agree that the community services department is the best. They are everywhere. They are mentoring and um building our future um officers I think. Um, so I just really shout out to all of them and um, actually to all of your officers and mostly to you. Thank you so much, Captain Mack. Thank you, ma'am.

Um, I just want to thank you, Sarah, because you went over the technology piece. It was a discussion we've had numerous times. So, I appreciate you thoroughly going over that, explaining that to the public, um, how things are stored, where things are done, and and how policing is worked in this city with the camera system. So, I appreciate you um for for bringing that forward. Um I also want to thank you um for pointing out all of the different programs and that we are now fully staffed with SEBAT, which was always a concern because we were always operating at about 75%. So, um again, thank you. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you, uh Captain Mack for the great presentation, all the uh detailed uh programs that the sheriff's departments offer. I I do have one question. Due to the uh surge in uh ICE activity last year, did the sheriff department see based on the annual report um an administrative burden due to this activity? And was the calls of service from certain communities, did you see an impact there or a change in in in those calls of service? If you're referring to a rise in the crime rate, um according to the stats, everything has gone most uh things have gone down. Um, as far as ICE immigration enforcement, I'm not sure I understand the question.

Yeah. If if if due to the immigration enforcement, there was change in in you know, how the the police the the policing or anything that you had to change administratively because of that activity? No, we had no involvement in any kind of enforcement. So, we had no change um as far as anything that directly affected us there. There was nothing substantial or even noticeable. it was pretty much on our end. I understand the impact to the community, but as far as uh our policing or how we uh handle our services, there was no change. Thank you.

Yeah. And then to just kind of close this one out before we move into public comment, I also just want to say thank you. Love to see, you know, always the data, right? I I talk about data all the time. So, love to see the progress that has been made through the investments that this council and the staff have made over the past several years. always a good thing to see the various types of crime decreasing and response times improving. So, hats off to you and your department for getting that done. And also, you made a comment that you love the community events. We love them as well, especially seeing the explorers, those those young explorers out at events and all that representing the department and the city very well. So, hats off to them. And then lastly, just a comment to kind of leave this with you. I'm sure it's already on your radar, but um when we talk about the 602 letters or no trespassing, I believe back in 2024 it was SB 602 that made some changes. One of them was in regards to requiring these letters to be notorized and making it in some ways more difficult to get these letters. I believe this year, I don't know exactly where it is in the process, but I I think it's SB 468 468. That's a new one being proposed that will hopefully help alleviate and clarify some of those things. So, just wanted to leave that with you in case it wasn't on your radar, but I'm sure it already is. So, uh, that'll conclude my comments.

Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. So, now we will go ahead and go to public comment. Madam clerk, do we have any requests? We do not, mayor. Thank you, Madam Clerk. So, with that, we will go ahead and move to item F4, which is our fourth and final item for a fire department update. And at this time, I'll go ahead and turn it over to our fire chief, Jesse Park.

Thank you. Get plugged in for our IT guys. Sitting for a while. It's better to stand up. [clears throat]

Yep. Great. That's my screen saver. That's uh that was not in the city limits thankfully. That was JPA. Okay. Well, good evening. I'll be presenting on a range of fire department updates. This presentation will will focus mostly on the operations side uh not OEM or fire prevention. [clears throat] I want to start with last year's calls for service. 24,545 incidents were generated within city boundaries in calendar year 2025, which is a lot, but often we send more than one piece of equipment to the same call. So, a more complete picture is the total responses for all the equipment, which was 33, and 64. [clears throat] That averages out to just over 90 times per day your nine pieces of equipment are dispatched to an emergency. And a note on the call statistics. Um, as part of our cooperative fire agreement, we pay for every call that is dispatched. So, it's very important that every call is correctly attributed to the right jurisdiction. Even though we may be going to another jurisdiction, we're not going to pay for that call. Um, so sometimes you'll see a small discrepancy in the numbers from one report to another, but those discrepancies will always be minor compared with the whole. For instance, last year our equipment went to 33,543 calls. Once everything is reconciled, our actuals may go up or down slightly. [clears throat] Just so if you see on a city manager's report, it's off by a couple numbers.

It's really kind of the bulk. Not to blame the city manager. It's our fault. This is how the call types break down. Uh the vegetation fires, structure fires, other fires. As you can see, medical emergencies are still the number one thing that we go to. Uh quite a few hazmats. And then other calls are are all those things that you have ringing alarms and you have public service assist. You know, it's a call to help grandma up off the floor. That's kind of all gets lumped into there. The trend from 2021 to 2026 is an increase in 2.62%. So this is for unique incidents generated in the city and not the multi-equipment response. Right? If we extrapolate that out, we expect the city to generate over 25,000 unique incidents by 2029. So what is the strategic plan to meet the 2029 expected need of 25,000 plus calls? Simply put, you've given us the tools to make the necessary increases with the adopted budget, the CSD, the diff, and measure U. will need more apparatus. We'll need to update our existing stations to make room for the new apparatus and personnel and consider new stations based on the expected growth. Uh but also I'll present some new strategies to improve some efficiency as well. In order to accomplish our plan, we need to place orders early. As you can see, fire apparatus are taking longer and longer to build, especially the ladder trucks, which can take up to four years. If you think that that's excessive, you are absolutely right. In fact, things have gotten so bad that on September 10th of 2025, the Senate held a hearing. At the hearing, Senators Josh Holly, Andy Kim, and Elizabeth Warren chastised the manufacturers, calling on them to reverse their outrageous price increases and painfully long delays for new fire engines and ladder trucks. Senator Holly

said before, a new fire engine order took between 6 months and a year to get delivered. Today, those orders take two years on the low end and four years on the high end. Lawmakers from both parties were not convinced by the CEO's explanations. In a nutshell, smaller companies were bought out and this consolidation led to a monopoly. Currently, there are several class action lawsuits allegedly price fixing. Not only against the corporations that manufacture the fire equipment, but also the private equity firms that are playing a part in this issue. Uh, currently Marino Valley is not part of any lawsuit, but there are some here in Southern California. And how much are we talking about? Uh, $2.5 million per truck, which is more than a double from decade ago. But if you remember this picture from the past, we just cannot reach the tall buildings without them. You know, that's the firefighters on the ladder that's on the engine. The engine's only so big. So, we have to have these trucks. It's why we we need to. And as we continue to grow out, we need more trucks. So, it's kind of a it's something that goes along with Kyle's presentation. It's part of our economic growth strategy. We can't provide insurance to businesses if we don't have the correct protection in place. [clears throat] What can we do about it? Not a lot really. Um really, it's about communicating our needs and concerns to those who can make a difference. Some things I would ask of council is to support public safety budgets and then leverage your influence as leaders of the community. Um, what do I mean? Well, the only silver lining of waiting 3 to four years to get a truck is we don't have to pay for it till it's delivered. Okay? And we don't pay for the staffing till people are on it. But if we're running two-year budgets and it takes four years to get a truck, then we need to ensure that we're supporting the public safety budgets through the wait time so that we can have people to staff it when it gets here. [clears throat]

We ask for the staff about a year to year and a half out. So, we need your support on that. And also, you have influence with the county board of supervisors and the state legislature. Continue to tell them to fund public safety. Uh support the governor's budget when it includes the necessary public safety, which it did this year. And additionally, please speak city to city to ensure that our neighbors are also increasing their public safety budgets because the increase in calls is happening to everybody at about the same pace. And since all of our fire equipment goes across neighboring borders, we want to ensure that everyone is growing their fire departments at kind of an equal pace. Another thing is that the county fire is holding many workshops that we hope you will provide input to for this standards of coverage study. This was contracted to city gate and it will help provide a strategic plan for the county and also the cities if we participate with them. There will be community input, city manager input and council input asking everyone what do they expect from their fire department. And then this will go to the board of supervisors as a roadmap, a strategic plan for the future.

[clears throat]

I'm not naive though when we're talking about budgets. You know, firet trucks are essentially a one-time cost, but the staffing is ongoing and it keeps going up, right? The city and the county and the state are adding positions. That's good, but the bottom line goes up. I believe there's real effectiveness in cooperative fire protection using Calire staffing. It's very financially responsible versus funding your own city to fire fire department. And I'll show you why. CalHR is required by law to perform compensation studies and the 2025 study showed that the total compensation of the state firefighter classifications are below the average of the 20 fire departments reviewed for the comparison and the simple base pay comparison lagged by an average of 76%. However, when factoring in the total compensation, the lag dropped to 26.9%. Also, the state contributed less to employee retirement and health benefits than the jurisdictions surveyed. And it's important to recognize that state firefighters are scheduled to work more hours than the surveyed local fire departments. So costs will keep going up, but in essence, your firefighters work more hours for less pay than their contemporaries. And yet we feel we're still providing a a very superior service because of our bulk and our ability to to um really usher in all those services, those extra services that are there and the link is there if you want to see this study goes through it. [clears throat] Okay, we talked about our calls and what our plan is to do it. Also some of the challenges that come with it, but I also want to introduce some strategies for efficiency. You know, if you want to get fit, right, you can put on some muscle, but you can also lose weight. Okay? And what we've been doing when our calls go up year after year is we add muscle, right? We add equipment, we add staffing, but you just can't bulk up forever. At some point, you have to lose

the weight. And more efficient use of resources is our way of cutting some of that weight. We have taken a deep dive into the calls we're running to find out how we can be more efficient. [clears throat] 85% of our responses are medical emergencies, but not all emergencies require the same response or care. What we are focused on is getting the right resources to the right patient with the right amount of urgency. Okay? So, for decades, our fire EMTs and paramedics, we only have one option. Someone calls 911, fire engine goes, we assess them, and then either they go to the ER or they stay where they're at. That was the only option. That has severely overwhelmed the system and across the entire country. And we need to make changes, but the changes must come from collaborating with many groups. public health, the local EMS agency, EMD, the legislature, the various doctor associations that write the the rules for paramedics and there's more. There's plenty more, [clears throat] but we have partnered with those groups and I think that we're moving in the right direction. So, using a multi-year plan uh which isn't fully completed yet, we have made some significant improvements and truly I would say that we're at the forefront on much of this. I have to hand it to our county leadership. Uh they really are making significant strides that you just aren't seeing in other jurisdictions and you know um all of us we talk to our contemporaries, right? You know, fire talks to fire and police talks to police and we tell them what we're doing here. They're they're really impressed because we really are on the forefront of some of this. So here's the things that I'm going to review. Learning from data, emergency medical dispatching, optimizing standard responses, and then creating partnerships. So learning from data is combining

dispatch information with the electronic so 911 dispatch information with the electronic patient care reporting the EPCRs those are the ones the firefighters are doing on the ground to document we're actively collecting data on every type of emergency including the acuity procedures performed medications given the resources that were responded how long they were committed what time where did they go what did they do when they were on scene and then we use this in conjunction with the dispatch data to do that analytics that's available to us now with this big data sets what dispatch information am I talking about is called emergency medical dispatch so someone calls 911 and then they asks uh a series of questions by the call taker to get a handle on this situation why are they calling 911 the EMD dispatcher can provide pre-arrival instructions such as bleeding control or opening the airway, CPR, and then continued questioning results in what's called a response code. More serious problems result in quicker, more robust responses than the less serious problems. But probably our biggest achievement is becoming what's called an accredited dispatch center. The Paris ECC received accreditation from the International Association of Emergency Dispatch in 2024. And they do this by showing a very consistent high level of accuracy with this dispatch and EMD information. We're the 340th one in the entire world to be accredited, 13th in in California, and we're the first in and only in Riverside County, and the only one in the CalFire system. It's it's was a big lift. You know, they they worked for several years to accomplish this, but this has allowed us for what's called differential dispatching and that and

access to nurse navigation. And I'll talk about that in a minute. This [clears throat] is one of the things that it did. By becoming an accredited dispatch center, it lets us review and optimize our response codes. And doing this, we were able to save 3,991 hours of fire engine commitment time countywide. So, in other words, on calls that we would have normally required two pieces of equipment to go, we were able to adjust that, send one piece of equipment, making other pieces of equipment available for that 3,000 hours. We're also able to change the level of response for several call types [clears throat] to ambulance only. And this removed 400 4,930 responses from our fire engines, trucks, and squads countywide. This is based on 2025 response data in comparison to 2023 and 2024. [clears throat] We were only able to do this because of our accreditation and it's kind of that example of losing weight in the system. Right? Differential dispatching is a system that sends a selective response based on severity rather than sending on a maximum response to every emergency. So what type of selective responses are available? Now, this is where we had to create those partnerships with some of those different agencies that I was talking about. We used to be stuck always sending a fire engine, lights, and sirens to all our medicals and the patient could only end up in the emergency room. But now with the accreditation and differential dispatching, we're able to employ some alternate services. So, AMR [clears throat] is the county's ambulance provider, right? and GMR is their patient company or parent company. By partnering with GMR, we have been able to use what's called nurse navigation. Nurse navigation provides alternate health care destinations other than the emergency room, such as urgent care, behavioral health, and even pharmacy

pickup. We're able to use thirdparty commercial transport systems such as uh medivvans, but also Uber andyft. And this allows our limited ALS transports to remain available for the critical calls, diverting low acuity calls away from the ER. But it does have limitations. For instance, we have to be able to talk directly to the patient. We can't have it third party, right? You can't call for your mom because then we can't ask those critical questions. And patients have to be cooperative, right? That's the other thing. Sometimes they're not. Nurse navigation started in September 2025. Uh so we're still gathering a full year's worth of data, but soon I'll be able to provide a pretty good impact here. And I do have a slide on what we have so far for the the last 6 months. So nurse navigation, that's for people who call 911 who need to go somewhere but probably not to the ER in an ambulance, right? Okay, that's what that's for. Rivco one. This pilot program is for people who call 911 who need help, but they may not need to go anywhere, at least not right away. They call 911, they need help, but what they usually need are either licensed clinicians, social workers, community healthare workers, substance abuse, or mental health experts. In the past, we were unable to share our dispatch information and the EPCR because of HIPPA, right? and other regulations that are kind of out there that these control agencies have a have a control over. But we've been working through these control agencies to get the right information to the partners. And this works especially well for repeat 911 callers, right? Somebody that's calling over and over and over again. There's a reason why they're calling. What is it? We're not providing the the right

service, obviously. So, um out of this, a third of those offered these types of services are now accepting them. So it it is making an impact. So this is the nurse nav. Let's let's look at nurse nav affected Mareno Valley here uh in the first six months since we depart [clears throat] uh did it. So started um in September of 25. Now we're in March of 26. We were able to send 200 calls to nurse navigation. Out of those 200, 153 turned out to still need transport to the hospital by AMR. However, the majority of those were BLS. And so, either our fire engines were able to be available more quickly or potentially they didn't go at all. 28 times the patient was able to handle their issue with self-care, meaning they stayed at home or made an appointment for a later date. 12 of the calls were able to get a ride either by a family family member or Uber to the urgent care. And then there were six times that the patient was guided to virtual care using a TEDoc. So during the six-month period, our firefighters ran approximately 11,000 medical aids. Right? So nurse NAV has not really made a large noticeable difference yet, but it's a start to a program that really needed to take effect. And we hope that there's a cascading effect that over time does really yield some some good results. And I think if you kind of think about that those types of cascading effects, you'll come to some conclusions on your own how this really could help the community over time and keep people from getting those emergency room transport and hospital bills, right? That's kind of the goal. Okay, so to recap, the right resource ALS or BLS response, ambulance only or nurse navigation to the right patient,

accredited ECC performs a detailed call triage, find out exactly what the issue is. Then with the right amount of urgency, immediate code three fire department, immediate or delayed fire department, right? We can go without lights and sirens. We can also go to your house that way. non-urgent ambulance response, nurse navigation, teleahalth, Uber, or just get them a prescription. Figure out what's going on. The goal is to keep our fire engines and ALS resources available for the true emergencies that they're the only ones that are capable of handling. We go to a lot of things that somebody else who has a qualified background could probably handle. how the system has been built. So, to wrap it up, Marina Valley, it's busy. It's growing. So, so is everybody else. Uh we need more fire equipment and firefighters, but there are challenges. Uh we're working through the challenges and planning ahead. We do need your advocacy on this. Even with strong advocacy and steady planning, we still need to evaluate and improve our own service delivery. Bulk up then lean out, right? And we are making those improvements using data-driven decisions and building partnerships, continuing to innovate, but always focusing on what's most important, you know, our customers, our taxpayers. That's the end of presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. I will move down in case there's public comment.

Thank you very much, Chief Park. Appreciate that presentation. and we'll go ahead and bring it back to the Dis for council comments or questions.

No questions, just comment. Jesse, very very good, chief. Uh we appreciate you and your team. Um we love the or I love the analogy of uh bulking up and losing weight. I love that because it's true even with the police department or the sheriff's department um bulking up with deputies but trimming the fat or getting technology and that helps kind of lose the weight, right? So, uh great job for uh our public safety partners in our city and uh great job on that presentation. there.

Jesse, just just want to say great presentation and you you definitely have advocates here, you know, for for uh fire protection and all the needs of the fire department. So, thank you and um great job. Thank you. I appreciate that, sir.

Same. I just want to echo um my um colleagues and say that um the service that you provide and the leadership that you provide to those who work under you is exceptional. We love the multiaceted approach of um getting more services um for our dollars. So, thank you very much and thank you for being on the hot seat for the last month and taking it in stride. We appreciate all of your time and effort um for the city of Marina Valley. So, thank you. Appreciate that.

Yeah, and agreed with everything that has been said, hats off to you all. We we can't thank you enough for the work that you and and your department do uh to keep all of us safe. And uh I just wanted to just mention it uh to give them the highlight as well because this potentially if it not already isn't it could be and probably should be a partnership with the recently completed and opened Raven Health Center over at Vista the Lago High School. Uh very impressive that they just did the ribbon cutting was it last week and these students these high school students just the wealth of knowledge that they have at such a young age and now to have a a pathway or several pathways at the high school level at Vesta de Lago for future EMTs for nurses you know um so many different pathways that potentially so many of them will end up working uh within your department just so exciting and one of the things that they brought up as how they can partner more with the cert program. Um so I don't know if you want to share anything about that but um they were really excited about you know how do we get involved in that program and get more volunteers into that program so that we can be better prepared for any kind of emergency situations or anything like that. So just wanted to highlight them and the great work that they're doing over at Vista High School. But uh that that's that's all I have for this item. So thank you

sir. Appreciate it. All right. And we will go ahead and go to public comment. Madam clerk, do we have any requests? We do not, mayor. All right. So, with that, we'll go ahead and move into item G. Seeing there is no further business on our study session agenda, we will go ahead and adjourn this study session at 8:18 p.m. Have a good night.