City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm going to be la. Oh, I love Stay at home. sitting staring at the TV. She comes home late. Tell me where you feel soath

it would be too soon. I got up this morning. Well, I ran to the station and I got on the very next train. And when I open up my eyes, I was back in bed again.

To order. Madam clerk, may I have the roll call, please? Councilman Gro. Councilman Kennedy here. Mayor Promtoani here. Mayor McKeon here. Councilman Burns here. Councilwoman Vandermark here. Councilman Williams here. All present. Madam Cler, do we have any supplemental communications? We have no supplemental communications for close session. All right. Uh, madam clerk, do we have any signed up to speak on close session items? We have one speaker signed up.

Okay. The city council will now receive public comments for close session items only. When your name is called, please approach. Use both podiums. State your name and organization for the record. Moren,

bless you. There's a saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. And pictures are used in the court of law every day. And uh I've been coming here for quite a few years and I've had my concerns pictures there. And I think it's a really bad idea to stop people from showing their pictures on the screen there. I I believe it was probably Strickland's idea. You know, he's done a lot of good things, but limiting our ability to show pictures is a really, really bad idea. I believe in freedom of speech. I've talked about that before. And you're really limiting my freedom of speech by not allowing me to show pictures. And I'm asking you, Strickland isn't here anymore. I'm asking you guys to please reinstate the photos. I I'm really trying to be respectful, but I'm absolutely furious about this. And the second subject is recognizing excellent employees. And I talked to Teresa from public works

today and she's phenomenal. And I really think people who do an excellent job should be recognized. And I really hope you reinstate the photos. I don't want this to be a dictatorship. Thank you. Just on that comment on the employees, we actually recognize them during the mayor spotlight awards and we'll have some photos up today recognizing some employees. Thank you.

All right. Now, we'll go to close session announcement. So, including close session will be conference with real property negotiators, government code section 54956.8, 8. Property 21 and 22 Main Street, Huntington Beach, California 92648. Agency negotiators, Travis Hopkins, city manager. Marissa sir, assistant city manager. Chris Kasanova, economic development manager. Steve Holtz, deputy director of community development. Jennifer Via Seenor, director of community development. Negotiating parties not present. Surf City Partners LLC under negotiation price and terms of lease/payment. Conference with labor negotiators. Government code section 54957.6 agency designated representative Travis Hopkins city manager also in attendance Marissa sir assistant city manager Mike Viglota city attorney and Zach Z acting chief financial officer employee organization Huntington Beach Police Officers Association and uh Huntington Beach Police Management Association PMA council to have a motion and a second to recess the close session. One second.

Rescess to close session. I'm going to be an independent person for the rest of my life. But if she catches me at home, she's going to beat me all about the head. And that you come shouting, you better get yourself to bed. Come on, please let me stay at home, girl. When I'm tired alone, let me let me stay at home. Come on, please let me stay at home, girl. When I'm trying to lonely, please let me stay at home. I said come on. Down.

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Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. I'm dropping a line in the sea. myes. I'm sucking my stick right.

Haven't had a decent meal for 18 hours. down from London. Keeping my eyes on the clock. I'm sucking my sick right and wrong. leading to to be near. I need you. Need you now. while seeing around

I'm looking beyond Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat.

Looking like a fisherman. I'm dropping a line in the sea. that the gray star on me to my socks. I'm sucking my stick right down from London keeping my eyes on the clock. I'm sucking my sick right and wrong. Leading to be never.

to be near. I need you. Need you now. Stay a while and see if she find me You see the night is getting cold at night. I'm looking beyond the right la.

la. Oh la. I love you. What do you

do? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, I Oh, la. stay at home sitting staring at the TV. She comes home late. Tell me, honey,

where have you been? But if I didn't feel so down, I'd be sleeping underneath the moon. And if I never came back, you know that it would be too soon. I got up this morning too late to go to work. She told me to get out and she threw me down by Well, I ran to the station and I got on the very next train. And when I open up my eyes, I was back in bed again. Girl, I'm tired of lonely. Please let me stay at home. Come on. Please let me stay home. Girl, I'm tired alone. Please let me stay at home. I don't want to get a job cuz work is just a waste of time. I'm going to be an independent person for the rest of my life. But if she catches me at home, she's going to beat me. And then she come, you better get yourself to bed. Come on, please let me stay at home, girl. Well, I'm tired alone. Please let me stay at home. Come on, please let me

come on. If there's clouds in the sky, you can dry your eyes. If there's rain up above, you can give your love every day. Every day. When you smile at me, I can see you're giving all the love that we share. And it's all I'm living for every day. Every day, every day is sunshine. And I'm so glad that you're mine. If the rain and the snow and the ice is cold, deep inside, love is new. And the sun comes shining through. Every day, every day,

every day is everyday. Sun shine. La. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey.

around. He Heat. Heat. Don't you want Come on. Come on.

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Heat. Heat. Johnny.

Down. Down. Hey, hey, hey. I feel laal.

Heat. Heat. Ride with the winds that bring you gladness and see if you can see a place that's free for you and me. On and on and on the long and never know just what tomorrow's going to bring. Find your way every day. You can make it if you find a song to see. See how the stars can lead you far away. They're wondering do roll and ships sailing on the seas on not they go on and on and on the march along just what tomorrow's going to bring. Find your way every day. You can make it if you find the song you sing.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. and through the time you watch along. You never know what tomorrow's going to bring. Find your way every day. You can make it to sing.

la. la. La. Oh. Oh, you love Oh, hey. Heat. Heat.

la. Oh. Let go. Oh. Oh, I had a dream that made me sad. Not so many people can be bad. Everybody wants all they can grab. No one's ever happy with their share. People running don't have much to say. You better catch your dreams before they fade away. We're all here until we know not when

I'm going to take it. Break it. Take it if you can. I will show you. Oh, you you know we'll be together. You know we'll be together if we try. There's a name written on my door and it's mine. could be yours if you really want it and more. I don't mind for security. So have you. Don't you see? You could lay all your troules on me. Meh. Put all your cares away. Leave them to fade away. Let them go flying. I don't mind.

always being there for you to come and tell your troules to put all your kids away. Leave them to fade away. Let them go flying. There we go.

There we go. N love. La.

I love well.

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Down. Nah. Wow. Nat. Hey. Hey. Hey everybody. I love you. Heat. Heat. N. Child.

There we go. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hello.

I want you. Looking like a fisherman. I'm dropping a line in the sea. They're going to open up on me. My toes in my socks. I'm sucking my right and wrong. Haven't decent meal. I'll drink for 18 hours traveling away.

I'm sucking my sick right and wrong. to be never. I need you. You can stay a while and see me around. The night is getting cold at night. I'm looking beyond

Heat. Hey, Heat. Come ride with the winds that bring you gladness and see if you can see a place that's free from all this for you and me. On and on and on to the times you find you long and never know just what tomorrow's going to bring. Find your way every day. You can make it if you find a song to see. You'll see how the stars can lead you far away. Where wandering thoughts do roll and ship sailing on the seas on not and on and on the march along what tomorrow's going to bring. Find your way every day. You can make it if you The song you sing. Heat.

Hey. Hey. Hey. Baby. Hey. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. On and on the watch along what tomorrow's going to bring. Find your way every day. You can make it to sing. Once I had a dream that made me sad. So many people can be bad. Everybody wants all they can grab. No one's ever happy with their shs before they fade away. We're all here until we know when love has gone and won't come back again. I'm going to take it,

break it, make it. I will show you. You know we'll be together. You know we'll be together if we try. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Don't you feel I know I feel Hey, come on. Heat. Heat. N. I'm going to out. Hey Heat. Heat.

If there's clouds in the sky, you can dry your eyes. If there's rain up above, you can give your love every day. Every day when you smile at me, I can see you're giving all the love that we share. And it's all I'm living for every day. Every day. Every day. Sunshine. And I'm so glad that you're mine. If the rain and the snow and the ice is cold, deep inside, love is new and the sun comes shining through. Every day, every day, every day is sunshine. La.

Heat. Heat. Hey, down. Heat. Heat.

Hey. Hey. Hey. There's a name written on my door and it's mine. could be yours if you really wanted and more mind for security. So have you don't you see you could lay all your troules on meh. Put all your cares away. Leave them to fade away. Let them go flying.

I don't mind always being there for you to come and tell your troules to put all your cares away. Leave them to fade away. Let them go flying. N. Ah. La la.

Oh la. Oh, you love you. Heat. Heat. the patient patience. I'd like to reconvene the regular meeting of the city council public financing authority and call to order the special meetings

of the housing authority, parking authority, and successor agency to the former redevelopment agency of Huntington Beach. Madame clerk, may I have the roll call, please? Councilman Gr here. Councilman Kennedy here. Mayor Prom McKeon here. Councilman Burns here. Councilwoman Vandermark here. Councilman Williams here. I'm here, too. I was looking for your name. Butch. Butch. When did you get here? Butchy. All right. Tonight's invocation will be given by Huntington Beach uh police chaplain James Pike. Oh.

Let us pray. We give you thanks, Lord God, for a successful marathon weekend in our city. for those who raced, for those who pushed themselves into new places. We thank you that Huntington Beach is a place that people can gather and grow. We thank you for those in our public safety who are retiring, for their years of service, for their way of protecting. And we ask for a blessing in this next chapter of life. And finally, we pray for those who are elected to govern us, that they might govern with prudence and with wisdom. And we pray that the citizens who have gathered, we might work together for the sake of the common good and for a prosperous society. And we ask all these things in your name. Amen. Tonight, the pledge of allegiance will be led by John Vasquez of American Legion Post 133. Before John leads us in the pledge, I'd like to share a little bit about his bio. John enlisted in the United States Air Force in 2003 inspired by the events of 911. He served in computer systems operations performing cyber security roles during two tours in Romstein Air For Air Force Base in Germany, a statesside tour and an overseas deployment in support of the global war on terrorism. He was medically retired in 2011 and is a recipient of several awards including the Air Force Commenation, the Air Force Achievement, and the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary and Service Medals. After his service, John moved to Huntington Beach, working for Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems as a system security engineer, securing classified satellite ground stations, later consulting for a cyber security software company, and eventually founding his own local cyber security consulting business. He's an active member of the American Legion Huntington Beach Post 133, serving as a board member, California boy state chairman, and as part of the honor guard and color guard. John and his wife Heather are celebrating 19 years of marriage next week and have two children who attend Marina High School. Go Vikings at Mesa View Middle School. Thank you for your

service. Thank you. Thank you. Please remove your hats. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thanks, John. All right, close session report. City attorney, do you have anything to report from close session?

I do, mayor, if you'll give me just a second. So, city council unanimously supported filing a petition to the United States Supreme Court in two cases. People v. State of California versus City of Huntington Beach, case number 30-2024 01393606. And also BSby V V. What was the the description of that case? That first one. That's that's the voter ID case. Thank you.

As is the second one. BSB v Barnes OC case number 30-2023-11-01 36664. That's it, mayor. Thank you. Now to city council member comments. Was that your comment, Budge? Right. Yeah, I didn't.

Yeah, I just want to uh maybe apologize for being a little flippant. Maybe uh uh uh my humor was uh not very good last meeting when I maybe dissed bad mitten, the second most popular sport in the whole entire world. I had no idea. So, I want you to accept my apology. And then whoever in this room really, really loves bad mitten. I'm going to hand this off this bad mitten racket and five birdies to officer from right over there. And you can have it. Compliments of me. And please accept my my apology for Oh, whoever wants it. Who? Kenny. Is Kenny a big

Oh, you come and get it then. Thanks, Butch. I'm giving it to I'm going to give it to Officer From. Race on down there. Okay. Thanks, Butch. What a guy.

All right. All right. Uh, as part of my duties on council, I'm uh on OC Sanitation District, and I want to just let you guys know we have a plant in Huntington Beach. A lot of people might not realize it. It's all the way over at Brookhurst and just inside the wetlands over there right where like Brookhurst and um Bousard meet and they're building a wall and it's progressing uh on schedule ahead of schedule more like and uh it's kind of a tsunami wall that they're protecting the plant. So they're building that. So if you see the green uh wall up there that's what that is along those lines too. SARF bus, Santa Ana River Flood Protection Agency. A lot of people don't know that exists, but that is what kind of protects us down here in the basin from flooding. And that goes all the way up into the mountains and everything. And at starting at Seven Oaks Dam, comes down to Prao Dam. And that's kind of what I'm reporting on now. at probably by the end of this year. They're still in the planning stages, but that where Prao Dam is off the 91, that next door to it is the spillway. And they've already raised the Proto Dam through this project 27 ft. And then the spillway is going to be torn down where the flag is painted and and all that. And that's going to be completely removed and rebuilt. So, if you see that going, that is what saves us. and the completion of this project of the SARPA Santa Ana River Flood Protection Agency, it's reducing a bunch of our uh if not eliminating the um flood insurance for us in the city in the county. Huntington Beach has the mode most flood insurance policies

that are required. And I should have brought those numbers. It's pretty staggering on the the amount we have compared to other cities. Also, I want to just say that uh Huntington Beach Hall of Fame was uh this last

sports hall of fame rather um where Edison class 24 CIF champs were inducted, our own Brett Simpsons for surfing, Tito for his duties uh fighting and um coaching and all that. Joy Faucet for her uh work as a soccer player, Olympian, and then Cherokee Parks in his basketball. Last but not least, this uh city lost a uh a good guy, a very important member to our society. He's contributed a lot. He's a special guy. He brought he was a teacher at the high school, a couple of the high schools here in town. He brought golfing to it and he brought a whole lot of other things to a whole lot of people. Bill Rydenhower, he we had his memorial service and it is a loss to this city and but he will be remembered by many. There was over 200 people at least at that ceremony. So that's it for me.

Anybody else?

Uh I'd just like to say that I've learned a lot uh this first year on council and here is a takeaway that's worth sharing. Uh, not everything on the consent calendar is sinister. A lot of it is routine and and necessary. Uh, but here's my sincere concern. The consent calendar is also where multi-million dollar contracts and once in a generation agreements can get slipped into the bundle and slip on by, often unnoticed by the community. In a single vote by council, with zero discussion taking place, decisions are made that forever alter the trajectory of Huntington Beach, for better or for worse. And I'll say this plainly. If there's ever a place someone in government could put something they'd hope you wouldn't notice, the consent calendar is the place to do it. Not because that's always what's happening, but that is the place where shameful things can find their resting place. And that's why I'm asking our community to stay engaged, read the items, click on the attachments, and ask questions. If it's truly routine, it will stand up to sunlight. Transparency isn't drama. It's accountability and it's good stewardship.

All right, I'll go last. Just um sure you saw the agenda just I made the uh public comments portion brought it back to the way it was before. Um always trying to find the most efficient way to do things. I received a lot of comments that they really liked the adjustments I had made to to have agendaized items first, but also heard a lot from the community um that they preferred the way it was before. So, I just want you guys to know that I've listened to you and so we'll bring the public comments uh portion back up um for agenda and non-aggendaize at the beginning, but I do like the special committee announcements portion for people that want to come up before and highlight something going on that week. So, we're going to leave that. And then on a fun note, uh took part in the CR city marathon on uh this weekend, which was incredible. Um it was our 30th year in a row. There was over 21,000 runners from 47 states in 18 countries and it was incredible. I was there at 5:00 a.m. all the way till 1:00. I took part in every wave of runners on the microphone with the air horn. It was super fun. and then talk with all the champions afterwards. Um, including Dorothy Strand. So, she's 86 years old and she's ran every single Surf City Marathon Marathon for 30 years. So, it's amazing just hearing her stories. But more importantly, you know, I was reminded I reminded the runners that, you know, just how blessed we are to live in Huntington Beach and just I thank them for coming to our paradise of a city that we call home and while the rest of the country was in a deep freeze. I mean, they're out here from all over enjoying 70 to 75 degree weather, not a cloud in the sky. And I just think sometimes we we take for granted how lucky we are to live here. And that really was put into perspective to me by hearing the stories from people that don't live here and how much they wish they did. So, it was a really special event and I'm really honored that we really delivered an awesome There he is right there. Look at that guy with the air horn right there. So, it was awesome. So, I really appreciate everyone showing up and supporting it and we're a lot of good ideas to make it even better. But, it was a beautiful day. Those two guys there are uh

Marines. So they did the whole the Aninsley's Angels did the whole 30, you know, full marathon running that wheelchair there in two and a half hours. It was impressive. Those guys were just beasts and uh so it was super fun to to be with all the winners at the end. You see those stories, but I mean you can you can see the skyline. It was just it was a picture perfect day. So come out next year. And I I did put on video that I will do the 5K next year. So I'm I'm tripling down right now. Be there with you.

Butch will be there. All right. Um, next we're gonna do the mayor spotlight presentation. Again, we do these offsite and just want to kind of highlight people so they, you know, it's not lost just in the noise here, but on Tuesday, January 27th, we acknowledge the following groups for shining our community. So, we did the mayor's excellence award, went to Morgan Forester, who was in our community development department, and he's just doing great things in our real estate division. Everything that we uh wanted to implement and streamline and be really customer service focused, rolling out the red carpet, he's doing that on his own, which is great. Uh we also thanked our team of firefighters, Sean Hayes, Garrett Hill, and Adam Hunt and Zachary Young who were able to save the life of a choking victim, one of our uh ambassadors, night ambassadors down on Main Street. So he intended a ceremony to show his gratitude for saving his life, which was awesome. Um the HP Huntington Harbor Commission, thank Yeah, you can clap. The Nington Harbor Commission showed their appreciation for uh Sergeant Ron West with the OC Sheriff's Department who feeds a team of 12 deputies and or leads a team of 12 deputies and responded to various kinds of calls in the harbor. So the harbor commission really was appreciative of all his efforts and want to acknowledge him. And then we uh thanked the Sack and Stone uh charity group who has donated more than $20,000 over the past two years and have enhanced community events by providing photo booths at multiple events, hot chocolate at breakfast with Santa, swim caps at the annual pier swim, popcorn and treats at the overnight family camp out and so much more. So an an amazing group that gives so much. So we wanted to honor them. And if you guys didn't know, uh Fred's Mexican Cafe just celebrated their 25th anniversary. And so they're going to be celebrating with events all year long. They're actually having throwback prices to when they first started in 25 years ago. So make sure you go in there and and hold them to that. And like I just said, we uh celebrated the Surf City Marathon for their 30th anniversary of their race with all the, you know, 21,000 plus participants and just that

glorious day. So, um, Phyllis and and Dan and the team, uh, really just did a great job and I had some good conversations with Phyllis who's on the left there next to Pat about how to make it even better next year and and really learn a lot from, you know, every year we put on this event. And then lastly, we thank the many volunteers of Patriot Point, uh, Mark Maize and his wife, um, and Pat was instrumental in that Patriot Point project, and we officially cut the ribbon at the site last month on January 10th. We wanted to thank them and the many other people that put in so many hours over the years into making it into a beautiful spot it is today. And like I said before, if you guys see it at night just north of Golden West on right on the bluffs there, it's amazing to see. It's really beautiful and everyone's super proud of it. So, thank you guys. All right, continuing on uh my business highlight themes. I just want to take a moment to celebrate some of the exciting uh milestones we've recently uh marked in partnership with the Huntington Beach uh Chamber of Commerce. So, over the past few weeks, we've had the pleasure of attending several ribbon cutings, including the Boot Barn on Beach Boulevard, which uh Council Member Kennedy there is pretty much central casting. That entire outfit he bought was from Boot Barn.

I was actually jealous. I was wearing a bolo tie, but I didn't look as good as he did. Uh, we did Clash Coffee, which is inside the Sprouts at Warner and Golden West. Really good coffee shop right inside. So, go into Sprouts and check them out. RO Kids, RO I Kids, Teen and Parent Wellness Center. So, but channelled that ribbon cutting. And then we're also proud to uh recognize a major milestone like we just talked about for Fred's celebrating their 25 years in downtown Anderson Beach. So, a fun ribbon cutting there. All of us on top of the stairs. It was great. And then these celebrations are a great reminder of just the energy, creativity, and local pride that continue to drive our business community. And so building on that milestone, we're we're continuing, as you guys saw, our Minute with the Mayor series. And we just launched uh launched another one this past Sunday, spotlighting our local business, uh Susie Making Wave Salon, located at 320 Main Street. And so we just want to share that quick video with you guys. Oh jeez.

What's up, HB? This episode of Minute with the Mayor takes us down to Main Street and Susie's Make Wave Salon. Let's go meet Susie.

All right, Susie. So, tell me about Making Wave Salon. We've been here at 320 Main Street since 1997. We're a family-owned business. I work here with myself and my son and we love our community. We do men's and women's haircuts. We do hair color, corrective hair color and every extension hair extension method on the market. Love it. And what keeps customers coming back, would you say? Well, I would hope it's our customer service. Yeah. And then what what makes you uniquely served city?

We just love everything about downtown Huntington Beach. We love the community, the neighbors. We're a midsize town that feels like a small town. Everyone still knows each other. You know, everyone's dogs when they come by the front door. It's just a very friendly neighborhood. We love it here. So, if someone came in for the first time, what would you recommend they they get? Is it more just kind of customer preference?

Uh, you know, when you come in the first time, we do a thorough consultation with you and we discuss what your hair needs are, where you've been before, what we need to change or not change, and we go over all of that before we actually touch your head. That's another local gem right here in Huntington Beach. So, remember to shop local and keep Surf City thriving. I'll see you guys at the next stop. So, please go check out Make Wave Salon. And we want to thank Susie and her son JC who has given me a nice little trim up for being part of the series. And if you guys are interested in being featured, just apply at shoplohb.com. since we launched that first video. The next day, so many businesses applied that it actually crashed the website. So, uh, I make a commitment. I'm going to get to everyone. Um, we've already talked about filming schedules, but I think so far to date, we have over 30 plus businesses that want to be featured. I know that number is just going to increase from here. So, appreciate the patience, but I think it's really important to highlight these these amazing businesses in town. Uh, now to community events announcements. Uh, madame clerk, do we have anyone signed up to speak for the community events announcement portion?

We have three speakers. Thank you.

The city council will now receive public comments for community events announcements only. Each organization is allotted one minute for its announcement. When your name is called, please approach. Use both podiums. State your name and organization for the record. Dave Shankman, Jason Schmidt, Ruby Vagara. Sorry. Good evening, mayor, city council. Dave Shankman from the Kite Connection up on the Huntington Beach Pier. For those of you who aren't familiar with us, it's understandable. I did just recently start the business here in Huntington uh back in June or July of 1983. And we've only been up on the pier since 2000. So, we're brand new. I am here as usual with a monumental announcement. Now, tonight's is a little different. It might save your life. So, in just over a month, Kite Party 22 takes place at the Huntington Beach Pier. It has become one of the premier kiting events in the world. And you may ask, you know, how how am I saving your life? Well, I fear that had I made this announcement just a few days prior, the excitement and euphoria that you would have felt might have been too much for your heart to handle. So, I'm here a month early making the announcement and possibly saving your life. You're welcome.

What's the date? March 7th and 8th. March 7th and 8th. Always the time change while we're changing time. So, anyway, free for the public to watch. Kite party 22. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, U mayor and council members. My name is Ruby Vgara and I am the recreation supervisor at Murdy Community Center with community and library services department. Um I'd like to share an exciting upcoming opportunity in our department as we prepare for our largest and most fun season of the year. Um we are hiring for all summer programs including aquatic swim instructors and lifeguards. summer off for all sorry summer day camps, youth sports and office support positions. We've created multiple ways for applicants to learn more about these positions. Our first event is a virtual hiring fair um info session where we will be reviewing available positions, program details, how to apply, and interview tips. This this session will take place this Saturday, February 7th, from 12 to 1:30 p.m. Um, following that, we will host two in-person hiring fairs with on the spot interviews. The first will be held February 28th. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Good evening, council. A couple quick reminders and announcement tonight. Uh first, our third financial literacy workshop focused on banking services. You can bank on it, will be held next Wednesday, February 11th, from 5:30 to 6:30 at Central Library. Uh and residents can join either in person or online. Uh second, our second investment scams workshop, romance scams, in honor of Valentine's Day, will be held on Wednesday, February 18th from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. in the Talbert room at Central Library. And for those of you who couldn't address who couldn't attend our introductory intro scams class, scams 101, it will be available to watch on our website and HG HBTV. Uh lastly, I'm extremely excited tonight to announce that we will be hosting our first communitywide free tax prep day entitled TNaxes on Friday, February 20th from 1 to 6 p.m. at Central Library Room CD in conjunction with United Way of Orange County. Free IRS certified tax filing services will be available for anyone who meets any of the following criteria. Earning less than 70 grand a year, is over the age of 50, has a disability, is a veteran, or has limited English proficiency. The free tax prey will be in addition to the current free tax prep services being offered to seniors at the senior center by the AARP. And we'd ask anybody who's interested to please sign up early so we can ensure that we have enough tax prep volunteers in place to fully meet the demand. And also, please make sure you bring your tax documents. And a special thank you to Ashley and her team at CLS for arranging the location United Way for providing the trained volunteers for the event.

Jason. Yeah. So, so for the SCAMPS workshop, um that was really successful alerting our senior citizens. How many people showed up for that one? So, for the one uh that we did in January, it was about 25, but the senior one that we did in December on AI was about probably a hundred or so. Steve Leven, our super volunteer, is here tonight somewhere. he can probably answer as well as I can. Yeah. And also like um the tax TN taxes is the first time we bring that to Huntington Beach. Other cities have enjoyed that service for the United Way. This is the first time in recent memory that they've done it in Huntington Beach. Okay. But they do it everywhere else in the major cities in Orange County.

Okay. Well, I want to thank you for bringing it down to Huntington Beach and also I heard you're working with Newport Beach and other cities to extend it. Yes. So, we are uh extending the invitation to join the scams classes to our friends in Newport Beach and we're going to probably have some conversations with Seal Beach and some of our other neighboring cities. Thank you, Jason. Of course, folks. Hello. Today I'm going to talk about flock a bird. Roger. This is a portions for special comedian. Oh, I'm so sorry. No, it's not public comments yet. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. No worries, bud. We're looking forward to it though. So,

all right. Uh, next up, we want to have a presentation honoring Officer Avalos and retiring uh, police dog K9 Knight. So, I'm going to come up there. All right. So, on behalf of the city and city council, I am proud to recognize a very special member of our police department, K9 Knight. Beautiful dog, who is officially retiring after seven years of dedicated service. Since joining the department in 2018, Knight served as an invaluable partner to patrol and SWAT, completing more than 200 searches, assisting in 13 apprehensions and and participated in numerous deployments and community demonstrations that help keep our city safe. Knight served with distinction alongside Officer Avalos and together they exemplify the trust, discipline, and teamwork that define an outstanding K9 team. This partnership requires an extraordinary level of commitment both in on and off duty. We also extend our sincere gratitude to officer Avalos for his dedication and the lasting impact he has had on public safety in Huntington Beach. On behalf of the city and the city council, it is my honor to present this these commendations to K9 Knight and Officer Alvalos. We congratulate Knight on an incredible career and wish him a well-deserved retirement training his badge for a lifetime of rest at home with his family. And also uh I was requested to give him a nice present which every dog would love. But we have uh actual beef femur bones from the beef palace. Yep.

So, this has to be the first time this has ever been requested at city council meetings, but I have two of these nice funeral bones here for you. So, congratulations, Knight. And so, if the council wants to come up, yeah, you guys want to come and join me? with him right here. your family to come down. It's

up to them. Come on family. Come down here. Can you please come down? Visual come down.

One more. Okay,

looking right here. One, two, three. Think I got it. Awesome. Thank you. want to take them already. How

are you? Yes, Mr. Ovel. Congrats, brother. Thank you.

All right. Now to announcement of supplemental communications. Madam clerk, do we have any supplemental communications? Yes, we have supplemental communications. We have um two emails uh for item number 14 on the consent calendar email received regarding the proposed adoption of the revised city council manual and also a re a revised resolution received from Mike Vigliota, city uh attorney. Two revised resolutions received from the city attorney, Mike Leotaa. Okay. Now to public comments. Madam clerk, how many people do we have signed up to speak? 11. All right. Please call them up.

The city council will now receive public comments for any topic, including items on the open session agenda. When your name is called, please approach. Use both podiums. State your name and organization for the record. Andrew Einhorn, Mr. Amry Hansen, Tim Gettis, Dr. Bradley Smith, Kin Enaway, Katherine Goddard, Michael Selna, Eric Shine, Pat Goodman, please approach.

Good evening. My name is Kenny Noway. I'd like to thank uh start off my comments by thanking Councilman Twining for giving me the bird and also particular thanks to Chad for your statements given the responsibility of the city council people. That's very important. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. I came here to speak about um the agenda item concerning the audit. I wanted to clarify something because everybody says you get an audit, you get a clean opinion. What does that really mean? A clean opinion is a professional standard that doesn't judge the validity, good or bad, of financial statements. Instead, a clean opinion, as we received here, states that the statements are presented in accordance with general accepted standards provided by the accounting profession. I'm very happy to say that we got a clean opinion, but I wanted to make sure people understood the scope of it really. Also, I wanted to make this request to city council. I would like to obtain a listing of all of the costs, the costs that incurred by the city council and discretionary spending in excess of $50,000 that were not budgeted. I think the people of Honey Beach deserve to know what discretionary dollars are spent on behalf of the citizens because we shouldn't spend money just because we have it. Also, I noticed in the auditor's report, I'd like to get more information regarding the identified significant risk regarding compliance with federal grant requirements. I look forward to receiving the reports at the earliest possible convenience. Thank you. And thanks, Rich. Um, good evening. Uh, Tim Gettis in the

house for a brand new month and, uh, a new format. Thank you, mayor. Uh, how do you kill a vampire? You need to drive a stake through its heart. After many many full moons of our community being terrorized by the voter ID vampire, the state of state supreme court has finally driven a stake through its heart to stop the hemorrhaging of our civic blood and treasure of our uh and I mean this city council has wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless thousands of staff hours uh on its quicksotic quest to tilt at windmills Sacramento. It has alienated many residents in the community and will bring bring on waves of protests if not torches and pitchforks time from our towns folk if you do not change course. However, it looks like you are d going down the same wrong road again. And you I mean you have to think uh twice. We don't want to be loser city forever. This community, this counterproductive crusade has been the centerpiece of your ideological effort to turn Huntington Beach into a sanctuary city for maggots. Two of your champions, Tony Strickland and Michael Gates are gone and another may uh another may be uh leaving the deis in November. Isn't it time to return to Trump Sennylvania and give up trying to suck us dry? It's a state. It's a safe bet just with like many uh Republicans across the uh country, your mismanagement, misdeeds, and misplaced allegiances will catch up with you incumbents this election year. Already communitybacked

candidates are are lining up to dethrone you. Surf City, Surf City people uh power, Surf City people power versus outside special interests, right-wing extremists and those who would place ideological interests over taxpayer ones. You do not have you do not have the community's welfare at heart. All you have is a stake through it. Thank you. Mine's a little more lighthearted. Thank you.

Yeah. Uh, my name is Bradley Smith. I'm a 35-y year resident here in Huntington Beach. I'm a retired emergency room trauma physician and a retired commander for the United States Navy. Um, small world, my family member was your instructor at SEAL training school.

Yeah. Um my items are just some things. This is the first city council meeting I've actually been to in 30 years. So um mine is um conversations will be brief. You know, I see in these newspaper articles just about fighting for the right for night. You know, I live in a reasonably wellto-do area and um I just so many cities have these night pollution ordinances. Um why don't we consider one? I mean, I know you that's just something I'm throwing out there that, you know, why do we need to have you know, why do I need to have my pool lights and my landscape lights and everything on at 10 o'clock at night? I just, you know, we border the ocean by 180 degrees. We had an opportunity to have a really nice dark night sky and I just would like to throw it out there for the future if you guys would ever men and women would consider um just proposing something that would preserve our night and maybe make it so that we don't have to have our lights on at 10:00 at night or after that. I mean, I have a neighbor that keeps his pool lights and his landscape lights on till midnight, and I'm thinking, why? We're all in bed. Um, and then my second one is just it's more out of curiosity. um we have these ordinances and I don't know I spent well over 20 years in an expeditionary warfare unit you know fighting for laws and um let's just take noise for example we have a noise ordinance law and it has a decibel level it doesn't have an asterk by it that says what the noise is coming from it just says a decibel level

I've reached out to law enforcement to um and enforce uh ordinance that we have. And um I've been returned by saying yes, you're right. They are um breaking the um law or the ordinance, but and my thing is, well, why is there a but? There's not an asterk. A law is a law. An ordinance is an ordinance. You spent the time to debate the ordinance, write the ordinance, and in, you know, hopefully to enforce the ordinance. just I've come to see that it's really a police officer is more interpreting what he feels or she feels might be okay, but yet my thought was the police officer is really there to enforce it.

Thank you. Hey, Mr. Smith, could you fill out a a blue card and and turn it into one of the officers and uh and I'll get in contact with you? Oh, sure.

Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My name is Mr. Amory Hansen. I'm speaking tonight in support of item 24, the item to support legislation by Senator Strickland to allow judicial review of a city's regional housing needs allocation. This legislation will ensure a fair opportunity to resolve disputes regarding Huntington Beach and other city's regional housing needs allocation. Let's continue to fight against highdensity development in the hills of orange and in the valleys of Los Angeles and in the bridges of San Francisco. Once again, I urge a yes vote and I am 24. Thank you. Andy Einhorn, Huntington Beach. Governance is judged by results and in Huntington Beach the results are clear. Residents are paying for avoidable failures. The Pacific Air Show settlement fiasco exposed through a taxpayerf funed lawsuit that you all tried to hide the financial giveaway. The city's voter ID ordinance, sanctuary city, library and housing lawsuits all ended in costly defeats. This sounds like a distract magic game. However, it is not. You're playing with our tax dollars. Are more appeals coming soon? So will more litigation, bailouts, and payouts. Will you transfer more reserves this year as well? These were deliberate choices, evidence of poor fiscal discipline and wasted taxpayer funds. The result is clear. a collapse of leadership in Huntington Beach. As we have seen firsthand in 2026,

our leaders must reject Magavville ideology, stop governing through litigation, focus on fixing infrastructure, and return to the basic duty of governing locally and not chasing national political fights. The people of Huntington Beach are not powerless and we will no longer pretend your leadership is taking us in the right direction. It is not. The council has bled taxpayers dry with endless lawsuits and manufactured culture wars, reducing Huntington Beach to a national disgrace and no Olympics. Thank you. Michael Selna, 53-year resident. I'm here to speak about Senate Bill, California Senate Bill 868 and its positive impacts on the residents of Huntington Beach. Affordability is on everybody's mind, especially for those who rent their housing. 45% of Huntington Beach residents rent. Power bills are rising at twice the rate of inflation. SB868 would allow renters and owners to utilize plug-in solar units, sometimes called balcony solar, without regulatory red tape. Units up to,200 watts would be authorized, enough to run a refrigerator, TV, microwave, laptop. I estimate this could reduce a renters's power bill by 1/3 to 1/2, helping with the affordability issue. These units can be installed on a balcony or on the ground and are portable, allowing a renter to move to a new location and take the unit with

them. Utah has passed this and over 20 other states are considering this legislation. My request is that you allow me to work with staff to develop a letter in support for your consideration to be sent to the state senate. I would also be happy to work with Senator Strickland's office on this. As a footnote, I'm a licensed civil engineer in California with no connections to the solar industry and nothing to gain personally if a if SB868 is enacted. Thank you for listening. Sir, sir, if you can.

There's an idiot. Hey, sir, if you can, please fill out a blue card. I'd like to talk to you about that. We'll make arrangements. Oh, sorry.

Next speaker, please.

Go through my house and have a good time. Go through all the boxes in your garage. Yeah. You had a good time laughing about that. You take what you want.

Well, it's always interesting to come to these council meetings. One never knows. Good. Okay.

Good evening. I'm Katherine Goddard. I've been trying to figure out why the friends of the library and this city council cannot come to agreement about what seems to me to be mutually beneficial process. The friends of the library as a 501 nonprofit 5013C nonprofit is a community group of people who enjoy getting together talking about books going to hear new authors and donating their books to the friends of the library then working to turn around and sell them at a discount to anybody that wants them and using the gift shop that is incredibly interesting because it's so different from any other shopping mall shops you see. So that that group which has the money that they wish to donate to the city does use city facilities. This particular council seems to be uh stuck in a mindset about business with the definition that a business exists to make money and that the business owns things. in this case the library and therefore anybody using the library needs to pay rent. It's a standoff that doesn't make any sense to me. The friends of the library of which I've been a member for 30 years I guess is a group of people that just enjoy getting together and working together but also is heavily invested in the quality of books and materials in the library. That doesn't mean that group wants to select the books. It means that group wants to give money to the library for the books, freeing up taxpayer money to do things like, let's say, fix the fountains at the library in this magnificent building that we have where the fountains haven't worked for I don't know how many years, perhaps a full decade. So, I don't understand except for the fact that

there's two different business models there. One is looking at working together and donating and socializing and being part of a community and the other is you see your coun this council seems to think you're running a business as opposed to managing a city. If you're managing a city, you would be managing all the aspects of the city, the parks, the infrastructure, the lights, whatever, so that all of us could enjoy our various activities, including the activities of the nonprofit organizations. I understand your need for a relationship between the nonprofit and the city to define what that means. But what I don't understand is why you can't get past this idea of people volunteering time and money to donate to the library. It seems like an I just would like to hear some explanation somewhere along the line of why we're having this back and forth about the donation the friends wishes to give to the library. And I know it's somehow stuck on your concept of anou, but I think there's plenty of room in in the middle here to work this out. I'll just I would just like to point everyone to the January 22nd town hall we had at Edison where we talked about this subject in detail, provided answers, and we all look forward to finalizing the standard license agreement andou that we do with all our volunteer groups and nonprofits, especially in city facilities. Thank you.

Good evening. Um, I'd like to share my experience volunteering for the point in time count. Last Tuesday, January 27th, I was assigned to a team of four surveying uh four fellow volunteers, um surveying unhoused individuals in the early morning hours in West Orange County, specifically Garden Grove and Westminster area. We spoke to about 13 people. Two declined to answer questions, but the others were thoughtful and willing to engage. What stood out most to me was that all of them that we spoke to had ties to the city in which we found them and spoke with them. Um I think that's an important um issue to identify. Um there they were all in their 50s. Only one reported having issues with substance abuse. Um, and um, it's it's quite an experience that I'd encourage people to participate in. Um, and I was really reminded and thinking about Huntington Beach and how fairly unique we are and in that we've taken more proactive approach to address homelessness. I mean there was there were teams here in Huntington Beach doing similar work. Well, um that approach uh initially helped the city avoid litigation in 2019. More importantly, it reflects the understanding that this is the right thing to do to house people. Right? We know that housing the unhoused reduces crime and helps maintain and even increase property values. This is not just intuitive. is is supported by a

2017 UCI study. Everyone um currently living at the navigation center has ties to this community. Moving forward, I would encourage the council to move forward aggressively with the pathways project at the existing navigation site center site combining permanent permanent supportive housing with continued navigation services. It would be a major step toward meaningful meaningfully addressing homelessness in our city. And uh I want to note the broader need for affordable housing for seniors, families, and veterans. Addressing these needs strengthens our entire community and helps prevent homelessness before it happens. And finally, um agenda item 17, I hope at some future date you'll schedule a study session. um sometime in a council meeting. Uh that's the year-end audit for 2024 25. There's a lot of work that goes into that and it's there's a lot of good information and I think the public is interested in that type of information. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi there. I actually had some dental work done. So, I'm actually going to have my phone do the speaking for me.

I was threatened with arrest for allegedly obstructing an investigation. Yet, no police report documenting that investigation exists. When the officers first arrived, they asked me how things were going. I responded honestly, "It could be better. It could be worse." I believed I would have the opportunity to fully explain what had happened. I did not refuse to speak. I simply did not say everything at that moment. And it wasn't until after I was threatened with arrest that I asked for the officer's name and badge number. At that point, I was told, "We'll deal with that in a second." That second took 26 minutes, during which I remained under threat and effectively prevented from obtaining even basic identifying information. I also want to point out, how could I even make a complaint when no police report exists about this incident? On top of that, when the officer arrived at our home, I offered my flash drive containing all video evidence. Yet, he refused to take it. Not only was I denied the opportunity to fully explain what happened on scene, but my evidence was ignored, making the complaint process meaningless. This situation did not begin with law enforcement. It began when my wife and I were assaulted from behind by a jogger. That assault led to our dog being sequestered for 10 days. During that time, she refused her food and barely resembled the same dog she had been for over a month. This incident disrupted our lives in multiple ways. We were later told by animal control that we owe $145 despite our dog never being taken into custody and no clear explanation of what the fee represents. Instead, I was explicitly threatened with arrest for allegedly impeding and obstructing an investigation. This threat was entirely unfounded. Animal control had repeatedly told the officer that they were in charge of the investigation, so he had no investigation to impede. The person responsible for the incident was already being escorted into an ambulance. There was no one present for me to impede or obstruct. No impeding or obstruction was

occurring at all. Yet he threatened to arrest me and even said he would write me a ticket. That ticket would have required me to spend an entire day in court explaining this situation. a needless disruption imposed on me with no legitimate cause. During this interaction, I informed an officer that I wanted to record audio of the encounter. I was told I could be arrested for filming. The officer said, "Just like you wouldn't want someone to get audio of you, I responded that I could legally request that audio at any time." The threat remained. Video I possess shows additional concerning details. The officer's bodywn camera was flashing its red recording light the entire time, indicating it was recording. After I told him I intended to request that footage, he deliberately shined his flashlight at the camera and turned off the red recording light. The camera was also not worn properly. It was on his knee, not on his chest. When I later raised this with internal affairs, I was told officers can wear.

Sorry about that. Thank you. Let's go. Roger.

Police. I'm tell please city council. I'm telling you s the the police department here is getting get worse and worse and worse very rapidly. They're getting away with a lot of stuff. I mean they the public record act you're allowed to see the police body cammed. All right. They No. Nope. Nope. you have to subpoena if you have to subpoena to them what what's the the public records act for they won't tell you so you have to go and do the same every single one of the positions of any department what he what what your chief does he makes people change the positions so then that way they can say oh I was never trained for that I was never trained for that and they won't give you anything okay one of the things that they have now is called flock technology ologies flock like the birds of feather flock together. Okay. Every single time that you you take a and download within an app that's free. It's you're you're contributing to the flock technologies the flock uh hive and every single thing about you. It's known. Nobody's nobody's surve nobody is mass surveilling you. But it's all recorded. It's all recorded until somebody has to do an investigation. And that's a new word too for all the cops. Investigation just like he said. And and the next thing is that they threaten you for with arrest. This is this is supposed to be a free country. Every single time I come I mean it's insane on the the things that we let the police get away with. The flock technologies we have to stop because right now what it knows is that what they do they put a license plate number on and they know everything. They know everything that you have done for the past three years. where you went, who you met, who you met, who you talked to, how long you've been there. No, with no subpoena, no nothing. And in in Huntington Beach, once Huntington Beach has right now, we've been using it for

over five years. It's been quiet. It's been quiet. Nobody has to say anything about it because if you if it doesn't come from your funds and they get it from a donation, they don't have to say that they have it. In fact, they can lie. In fact, they have to lie because that's part of the contract. The contract you're not even supposed to see. It's only for them. How is this allowed? And they know exactly where you've been, how long you stayed, who what they're at the same time. This is evasive with no with no subpoena for $20,000 a year. For $20,000 a year for as many searches as they want. And it's not for just Huntington Beach. If you go anywhere in the country, they know exactly where you've been, how long you've been there. This is not right. We have to stop this if we don't in fa in u Pennsylvania there's a few counties that told flock that they don't want it anymore because one of the things is that they for 20,000 is that we have to give all our data to flock including all the liar data from the from the police department from police cars. This is bad. All right, madam clerk, is that it?

That concludes our All right. Next up is council committee appointment announcements. Council members, do you have any council committee appointment announcements? Seeing none,

uh AB1234 reporting. Does anyone have anything to report? Yes. Um, I attended OKOG last Thursday and just for the record, I want to say I support our Huntington Huntington Beach Police Department 100% and I think they're the greatest police department in the world. Thank you for keeping us safe.

Well said, bud. Anyone else? Openness and negotiation disclosures. Does anyone have anything to disclose? All right. Next, we'll move on to the public hearing uh to conduct a tax equity and financial responsibility act public hearing and adopt resolution number 2026-03 approving authorizing and directing execution of a joint exercise of powers agreement relating to the California Public Finance Authority and approving the issuance by the California Public Finance Authority of revenue bonds the amount not to exceed $325 million for Marisol HB LLC with no city obligations as well as payment in lie of taxes agreement. Does anyone have any exparte communications to disclose on this item? Seeing none, madam clerk, do we have any supplemental communications for this item?

No, there's none. Staff, please introduce the report.

Thank you, mayor. Um, our acting um CFO, Zach, will provide the um presentation. Before you tonight is a public hearing and request action to renew the city's terra approval for the Marisol senior living project. This item is returned to council solely because the prior TERA approval has expired under the federal tax requirements. Council previously conducted the required public hearing and approved this action. However, because the bonds were not issued within the allowable time frame, f federal law requires the public hearing and approval be renewed. In addition, the project is subject to a payment in lie of taxes or pilot agreement which provides a measurable fiscal benefit to the city. Under current conditions, the site generates approximately $22,000 annually in property tax revenues. Based on the projected assessed value following the completion of the and and stabilization of the project, we are looking at an increase in approximately to 242,000 in property tax at year five. The pilot structure supports projecting financial uh financing while allowing the city to uh stabilize and uh realize a substantial long-term increase in property tax. So tonight's request action is procedural in nature. Um it carries no fiscal impact to the city um and does not does not approve the project itself um or commit city funds or create city debt and simply ensures the continued compliance with federal law so that the project may remain eligible for tax exempt bond financing. Staff recommends that conducting a public hearing under the requirements of TERA and the Internal Revenue Code and adopting resolution number 2026-03 to authorize the issuance of tax exempt uh bond status. Here with me I have

Scott Stner um representing the uh the Marisol development and the bond uh and our bond council Cyrus Tarabi to help answer any questions that you guys may have. Council members, do you have any questions on the report? All right, I'm going to open the public hearing. Public hearing is open. Madame clerk, do we have anyone signed up to speak? We have no public speaker signed up. I'm going close the public hearing. Uh, council, any discussion?

Anyone? That was a good synopsis. I think it was just a continuation of what was uh approved last year. So, I just need a one-year extension. Um, there's no discussion. Uh, madame clerk, please call the vote. Can we give a motion? Thank motion as recommended. Second. Councilman Gr. Yes. Councilman Kennedy. Yes. Mayor Prom Twiny. Yes. Thank you. Mayor McKan. Yes. Councilman Burns. Hi. Councilwoman Vandermark. Yes. Councilman Williams. Yes.

Item passes 70. All right. Next up is city manager's report. City manager, anything to report? Nothing tonight, mayor. All right. Next up is the consent calendar, items 14 through 23. I'm going to pull number 14. Does anyone have any other uh items to pull? I wanted to pull 19, please. Okay. Uh I want to pull I lost my number here. Actually, that's Council Member Kennedy, I think. Yeah, maybe.

I meant 22. My I was just looking at that. My My apologies, Mayor. It's It's 22. Yes, please. 20, not 19. 20. All right. I'd like to make a motion to move the remaining items. Second. Did you get that motion? Andrew Gro, did you Andrew is pulling 20. 20. So, we'll move the balance. Okay. You pulled 14, right? Yep. Kon Vandermark first and second. And we'll be voting on item number 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, and 24.

Correct. Not 24. It's an admin. Yeah. Sorry. 24 is an admin. Just 23. up to 23. Councilman Gr. Yes. Councilman Kennedy. Yes. Mayor Prom Twiny. Yes. Mayor McKeon. Yes. Councilman Burns. Hi. Councilwoman Vandermark. Yes. Councilman Williams. Yes. Items number 14. Items number 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, and 23 pass 70. Thank you. All right. Item number 14, uh, city attorney. This is your item. Can you please present it?

Sure, mayor. Just a very brief presentation. Apologize if we got a cold. Uh, mayor and council. The agenda item is to amend the city council manual to add a requirement that any visual presentation proposed to be shown by a council member during a council meeting must be provided to the city manager the Thursday ahead of the meeting. This will allow staff to review the materials and discuss if needed with the council member. The goal is to protect the city from unintended liability that could come from excuse me creating a faulty administrative record. This will also allow the public to review the material before the council meeting. And that sums up my report. I know there's been some discussion. Does anyone have any questions? Sure.

Um, in theoretically, would that apply to this meeting? Good question. So, we had supplemental communication that clarified that the resolution would not take effect until the next council meeting.

Don. Uh, yes. So when I was running for city council, I remember the public would come up and as that lady addressed today early and they would give you the thumb drive and there was visual presentations and I kind of had forgotten about that aspect of it until this this item came up and somebody in the city uh said that we no longer allow that. So I I was a little taken aback by that because that's not even a public record. But my my thought was why did we do that number one and secondly on this problem I have with this to a certain extent is when there's a topic that's been agendaized if if I have to produce slides that would merely just support my position verbally basically my verbal articulation. Why am I required under this resolution to present them to you all 5 days in advance when you don't ask me to give you a recording of what I plan on saying in a meeting?

Good question. And let me start by saying this is a policy decision for the council. I'm just bringing this forward. Okay. Well, I think who can who who can ever answer that? I'll leave it to who?

No, no, I'll answer the question. But uh so so the purpose behind the again as I mentioned is to stop a record a faulty record from being created if the city if the staff is able to review what's going to be put up on the slideshow which looks like something that's being generated from the city. It gives us the opportunity to make sure nothing's going to be on the slide that could hurt the city in the future. And you're right, your oral presentation could do the same. But we can stop the meeting at that point and remind the council member that the discussion is getting off track, could be violating the Brown Act, or could be exposing the city to liability. It gives us that quick quick ability when you're speaking to do it. But if there's a presentation, we don't know what sli if there's 50 slides, we don't know what's in the slideshow.

Understood. But and let me caveat on that. So by the time I may have said something hypothetically that could put the city in jeopardy, it's been said. So on on that note, if a slide presentation was being presented and as the slides were going, they were gerine, as Councilman Williams said last time to the conversation, the slides are moving along. There's not a problem. A slide comes up. Um just as quick as I could have said something, you could visually see it and say that slide's inappropriate. Pause that slide for a moment. Why why would that not be a remedy?

It would be the like I said, it would give us some forethought. We It gives us an additional protection before the council meeting to review the materials. It's not something that's just being spoken off the cuff or whatever it may be. Even if it's a presentation that you've orally plan to present, it's something that's visual and it's something that's there forever on the on the screen. So, it's it's a distinction and it's something to help us um protect the city. And actually, if it's presented before if it's presented on Thursday, we can get it onto the agenda so the public has an opportunity to review the presentation and uh it gives public more input on the process. One of my thoughts is as a council member, our our job is to to be the stewards of the city. So, if somebody's going to come before us and I want to ask them questions and have the opportunity to get a true and real answer, not a rehearsed answer, I lose that advantage because the person's going to see my thought process, where I'm going to go with my questions, and they're going to have the opportunity to prepare the perfect statement, which is not really true and genuine to uh having to think on your feet and give us the public by virtue of this meeting a real genuine answer that can't be rehearsed in advance. Is there any thought to that? I mean there's they're valid.

I mean I think that's a good qu I guess depends on the context of what the presentation is and and who you're talking to and what the subject matter is. But um giving the public the opportunity to carefully review something thoughtfully present to you based on what you're presenting. It it again it just it enhances the process as opposed to detracting from it. If you want to play gotcha like if it's a gotcha situation where you want to call someone out. I mean that's that's again that's why it's a policy decision for the council.

It's not it's not gotcha. It's just like trying to get true and genuine answers out of people that at times we're making decisions on true and genuine answers, not rehearsed answers. Um I guess my other question would be, you know, we've been a city since 1909. There's been a lot of smart people uh that's have sat in these seats and some very shrewd city attorneys and all of a sudden out of the blue we have this item. Does anybody know what may have spawned?

The proliferation of the PowerPoint and the visual presentation by the city council is something new. Um I've been doing this for 26 years and this is really the first these last I don't know year over the last year. It's really like I said it's accelerated and proliferated and that's kind of the genesis of of why we're doing this or why we're proposing it. Again it's a policy decision for you folks. Thank you. Just curious. So, are there any actual cases where there's been litigation as a result of PowerPoint presentations? Not that I'm aware of. So, there's

this is a very unware of any other cities where where the council's putting up detailed PowerPoint presentations either. Not to say that it doesn't take place. Was this brought to you by a council member or is this genesis of your own? The mayor and I talked about it and um that's I guess to answer your question. Okay. So, it was brought to you by the mayor. Okay. If we could

Oh, let me let me clarify. It was not brought to vig. We talked about it. He was expressing to me there's been situations that concern him that could get us into potential litigation and violate the Brown Act and put things on the public record. So, he asked me about this this policy. I said, 'Yeah, let's let's bring it up and let's let the council talk about it. To me, I think it makes sense. I didn't bring this to the attorney. We t we talked about it. Those are exact words. As the mayor, the attorney brings things to you and he's thought this would be good guard rails to tighten up. Me personally, I think it allows plenty of time if the agenda comes out on Wednesday and you go, "Hey, there's something on there I want to discuss further." Just get it to the city manager so they can be updated to the agenda on Friday. So, update the agenda to abide by the 72-hour posting rule. That's all. It just creates it actually enhances free speech. It increases public disclosure because if you're putting together the presentation, you know, you've already gone through the work. You'd want to get it in there so the public can see it as long as possible. And so, that's all just creating a process for you guys to put up whatever you want to put up. Again, on the first three years up on council, like this that's never happened before where council members started putting up presentations. And so when when Mike Viga came to me with his concerns, I said, "Let's bring up this to the council meeting. Let's let the council members talk about it and just have a process so if you guys want to do that, just do it the right way and just agendaize it properly so you guys can put up whatever we want to talk about." Just like anything that staff puts up on the screen, it goes to the city manager and the city attorney just to scrub it to make sure there's no legal issues. And so that would happen with whoever wants to do, you know, put up a presentation just goes to them. and the other council members don't look at it and then it just puts gets posted on the agenda 72 hours before the meeting. I think it's a fair process. Again, you've already gone through the work of creating the presentation. So, what's the issue with doing it just a couple days earlier? That's all.

I I can address a couple of those things. Mayor Mayor, I I keep um hearing you say that we need to agendaize it properly. So, is it your understanding that these slides need to be on the agenda or agenda 72 hours in advance in order for it to adhere to the Brown Act? So, in talk with the attorney, it's when you put things up as coming from the council, you're speaking for the city. So, it needs to be properly agendaized if it's going to be on the agenda as a presentation. Do I have that correct?

No, let me clarify that. So, so the Brown Act allow if something's on the agenda, if Travis or I or whoever put something on the agenda, um you can have supplemental communications up until we're having the meeting um where information is provided to the council and then to the public. So, I don't know if that if that helps clarify what you're asking. Yeah. So it would seem that the basis of this resolution was based off of a misunderstanding that these visuals do not need to go on the agenda to actually adhere to the Brown Act. Understand there's a yeah there's a difference.

As a matter of fact, the the Brown Act actually contemplates the possibility. It anticipates a council member showing up with visuals and providing them to other council members on the actual day of the meeting at the meeting itself. And really the only stipulation is is that if you're going to provide some type of visual to a majority of the council members, you need to make it available to all of the public. So it actually anticipates this and probably the most effective way to pull that off is actually put it up on a screen where everyone can see it instead of trying to pass it out to everyone in the room. So the the Brown Act actually allows for that. So, in a sense, this policy would be more restrictive and restraining over what the Brown Act would allow for. Correct.

That's correct. And and I just want to make a point though that it's not if you put it up on the screen, the public still has to have the ability to get the physical document. Absolutely.

And so, um, maybe if we could, can we pull up the resolution? It's one of the attachments that we have on the agenda. I would just like to get a reading of that, uh, here for the meeting. I'll give you a moment to be pulling that up and I'll just kind of explain, you know, my rationale when I was going over it and initially not really seeing any issues with the resolution the way that it was written. But just like so many of these things, kind of like during council comments, you know, you got to really pay attention to the consent calendar and you got to click on the attachments and you got to click through and you got to look at all the details. Um, it was pointed out to me that not everything is as it seems uh in that resolution. So, I don't know if we have it ready to go attachment wise.

And before you pull the resolution up, I I I would like to make sure that it's the the last supplemental communication because there was an error in one of the resolutions that did not call out that the agenda or that the materials had to be provided the Thursday before the council meeting. Okay. Yeah, let's take a look at that. Um, I'll need a minute to retrieve the the amended resolution.

And may I real quick just an observation before councilman's u resolutions pulled. I mean, I like everybody up here on the dis like you guys like my council mates, but I mean there was already a contradictory statement. You said there's been a proliferation of presentations and mayor McKenon said in three years there's been none. So I mean it can't be both. Well, I just met this apologize because three years up to this point the first two years zero this last year a lot. So I mean I only recall

two in the last you know couple of meetings other than that I don't recall any other presentations being um presented unless I forget forgetting okay bunch um but anyway so I don't re recall a proliferation I mean I just think this might almost be um a reaction not not a proactive stance it's proactive in essence, but feels reactive in my opinion. But let's see the resolution.

Okay. So, if we can expand that a little bit. I don't know if you can, but um I can almost read it from here. So, hopefully folks can read it. Um I'll just go and go through it. So, it says whereas on March 18th, 2019, the city council approved a revised council manual by the adoption of resolution number 2019-09. Amendments to the council manual have been approved by resolution. Whereas June 4th, 2024, the city council approved a revised council manual by the adoption of resolution number 2024-23. Whereas the city council desires to amend section 4 of the revised manual to include a requirement that city council visual presentations during council meetings are provided to the city manager prior to the city council meeting. I'll just pause.

Council member, that's not what it says. Okay. Sorry, I'm trying to read one off my screen. So, there was one that was updated. Yes, that's what I was mentioning before you started speaking.

Okay, let's see if I could read it from here. Whereas, the city council desires to amend section 4 of the re revised manual to include a requirement that the city council visual presentation during council meetings are provided to the city manager. There it is, the Thursday before the city council meeting. So, what I read the first time around, it didn't have that qualification about the Thursday of the city council meeting. That's why I didn't catch it. And and then it was brought to my attention based off of the community. There's this uproar in the community like, hey, do you see what's going on? This is an attempt again, you know, at suppression. The very first motion that the mayor ever made as mayor was a suppression of visuals. And so, the pattern continues. And so it was actually buried way down. And if we could now scroll down to the red because so what was there before was simply turn it into the city manager. And I thought to myself, well, I got no problem with that because essentially that's what I do. Anytime I turn in a slide, I'm turning it into staff. The city manager is going to see it. But that's where you start to get this detail about the Thursday before. And so if we could go scrolling down, I believe it's going to be Oh, I forget what page it is. Just wait till you hit the red. It should be part of the attachment, the actual city council manual. Now, that's uh part of the exhibit. You might have to click over on something else. The copy that I have actually has the council manual attached. So, if staff could just click over to the manual, we'll see the the fine print in red. It'll be on page number nine of the council manual. There it is in red. And so if I have the same thing that you have there, which I believe this is identical now, that's where you get that added item under H. It says any visual presentation proposed by council members must be provided to the city manager by

5:00 p.m. the Thursday before the council meeting in order to be shown during the council meeting. So that's 5 days in advance. And number one, that is more than what the Brown Act calls for. Um, this is sort of a tightening, if you will, of our our ability to express ourselves. It makes it very difficult to be transparent with the public if we were to go forward with something like this. Just imagine there are many things that come up over the weekend, maybe things that come up the very day of a meeting. And it is not difficult to turn a slide in if a council member wants to use a visual to make their point. In fact, the way that it used to be, as Councilman Kennedy had pointed out, I remember the days as a candidate, any uh person, individual could come in here and they're going to speak at public comment and you could literally just turn in a thumb drive to one of the staff members prior to and they would upload it, no problem. You can go through a presentation. And then slowly there's been this sort of deevolution. And the devolution that began to take place was there was a stipulation on when public commenters could show visuals. Uh I have the minutes here is March 19th, 2024. It says Mayor Vandermark announced new procedures for public speakers beginning with the April 2nd, 2024 city council meeting. Request to speak forms can only be turned in starting 30 minutes before the meeting starts up until public comments begin. supporting presenta supporting presentations or audio visuals materials must be submitted to staff at and it gives the uh the email address no later than 9:00 a.m. on the meeting date. And so we went from you could turn anything in, you know, actually at the meeting to now any member of the public you need to turn something in at least before 9:00 a.m. on the meeting date. And now it's even devolved devolved even more to where nobody in the public can ever show any kind of visual presentation whatsoever.

Well, this this restraining this restricting has continued and now we see it taking place in terms of council members, the city council members themselves can actually provide a visual if this were to be adopted. Now, uh Stephanie, if we could go to my presentation. I know you got to click over to uh the the PowerPoint. Let's go to slide number one. And I just want to take a look at what the Brown Act actually has to say and requires in terms of agendaizing something. Yes, I'm sorry. Did what did I say?

I'm so sorry, Shannon. I I apologize. Lot going on inside this brain of mine. So, Shannon, not Stephanie. Um, so what we have the Brown Act requires the topic item be on the agenda. That's it. the topic on the agenda, not the slides on the agenda with a brief description. It gives the government code. As you see in these bullet points, it does not require council member slides to be turned in in advance or posted along with the agenda. To the contrary, as I mentioned before, the Brown Act anticipates late materials. If writings, visuals are distributed during the meeting, they need to be made available for public inspecting at the meeting. The easiest way to do that is to put it on a slide and you have the government code there. Additionally, because improvements are anticipated uh improvements are anticipated to be ha that's a whole another bullet. Forget that one right there. Uh bottom line slides are supporting material visual aids not an agenda item. And so that's all I have for that slide right there. And so the point I guess I would really like to make is look the Brown Act actually anticipates turning materials in at the meeting itself. These are visual aids. it is helpful to the council members to make a point. I don't see any sense in adding these restrictions to uh ourselves. And so what I would like to do is uh I would like to uh move to uh adopt the council manual with an amendment as presented. uh except what what I would like to do is delete uh the Thursday 5 ppm deadline for council member visuals and otherwise keep the amendment allowing the council to take positions on statewide initiative ballot propositions. So that's my motion.

I would second that.

And just a point of clarity, it's it's not just Brown Act concerns. It's concerns that uh presentations that will be put up on the screen are not gerine to agenda items that are publicly posted. So, this actually occurred last meeting. I know Don, you said it's not a proliferation, but it occurred last meeting if you guys recall where you wanted to put up slides that weren't gerine to the agenda item that we were discussing and voting on. And that creates a risk and a conflict for the city where now you're putting up presentations that are part of the public record as if you're speaking for the city. And if situations go ary, you're potentially providing ammunition for potential litigation. So that is actually the main concern is that just the presentation that's going to be shown is germanine to the agenda item and not so much the Brown Act. And Council Member Williams made a comment that I'm suppressing speech and now you can't provide a visual. That's not true at all. It's actually enhancing your guys ability to put up presentations and provide visuals. It's just creating a policy where you just please do it properly so it's properly agendaized and noticed for the agenda item you want to present and that's all. So it's again is the concern that Wednesday is not soon enough. I mean if you guys would like we can have you come in to agenda review on Monday. Um I've asked Marissa our assistant city manager to meet with you guys earlier uh to walk through the upcoming upcoming agendas to make sure you guys are up to speed on what's coming down you know for you to vote on. I know that's been happening these last couple weeks. So, again, just trying to find procedures and and processes that make sense and make it efficient and protect the city from potential litigation, protect us all up here from from speaking as a rep, as the voice of the city. And so, I'm always looking to like I made the the adjustments on this agenda item, making it more efficient, but always want to protect the city and its residents with everything I do. And

I just think this is a common sense policy to again you're going through the work of putting together a presentation, right? You're going to present you don't want to present that on on this agenda item coming up. So it just gets, you know, ran through the city manager and the attorney to make sure there's no legal trappings that can get the city in trouble. Then this gets approved. I would imagine if something happens over the weekend, Council Member Williams, right? Then he can just update. Well, and I was going to say this is a procedural rule. So, at any time during the meeting, council can vote to set aside the manual and allow something to be placed on the uh on the screen.

And council member Kennedy, your comment that it's reactive, not proactive, and it's it wasn't proactive because it's never happened before. So, we're reacting to something that is the attorney had mentioned it's making him uncomfortable that we're potentially putting ourselves in precarious situations legally. And so he's like, "This would be a policy that we could tighten it up. Still allow the council members to show visuals. Just put get it agenda 72 hours before. That's the agenda's rule. Has to be done 72 hours before the meeting, which is Friday by 5." So that was get it to the city manager by 5 on Thursday. Have enough time for him to review it with the city attorney. Make sure it's all good legally. Put it up and we're all good. And then, you know, something comes up over the weekend. I'm sure you can add a supplemental communication to the presentation. That's it. It's not meant to stifle anyone's speech or limit what they can do. it's actually to enhance it and also increase public dis discourse. So if there's really a presentation you want to take the time and thought and to put together and show the community, wouldn't you want them to see it over the weekend and really digest it and go, you know, they that's a really good point. I'm going to come down to the meeting on Tuesday and publicly speak about it. I really appreciate that that that foresight and that thoughtful presentation they put together. So wouldn't you want to get it up there earlier and increase public discourse? That that's when Mike Vig city attorney brought it forward. I thought it made sense and just creating a clear process. There's no ambiguity. There's not me up here going, "Guys, please don't put up that slide. We're not talking about that agenda item. Please don't do it." Okay, it's just one slide. Now it's two. Now it's three. It's this uncomfortable situation. It It happened um the very first night. It's happened three times since. So, it just made sense when the city attorney brought it to me that we just create this process to remove that conflict so everyone's on the same page. And I would imagine, like I said, if something happens over the weekend, you can still put up a supplemental slide. So, as soon as you put that guard rail in, what if something happens five minutes before the presentation and I just have an epiphany? I completely changed everything. So, is that going to be allowed? That's number one. Number two, to Councilman Grul's question to uh

our city attorney, um is does he know of any case, law, or precedent where a city has got into jeopardy from council presentations and violating the Brown Act? His answer was no. Is that correct? Well, visual presentations. Many cities have gotten into trouble by by presentations that were made by council members during meetings. Okay. What Don meant the visuals exactly what u the visual presentations? Not on the visual that that I'm aware of. Okay. Well, that's what we're talking about. The visual presentation. So, Councilman Grul asked you if if there's ever been uh any issue or case where a council was jeopardized by a visual presentation. You said no.

Okay. So now we're legislating for something that's never happened. So either we believe we we're going to be the first one, but more importantly is we do want civil discourse and public discourse. And I think if they see the agendaized item, that's going to be more than enough to move them to come down and not necessarily a presentation will or will not engage the public. the public's going to show up if they want to show up. Um, no matter how much information or how little information is going to be presented, I just think what we're doing is we're trying to now set a precedent. If you told me that there's been a ton of Brown Act violations from visual presentations that weren't vetted, if you told me that um Yeah, I guess if you told me that it would be a different story. Now, Councilman uh Williams, on that slide citing the government code,

yes. Were those bullets, let's go back to that if were they summarized by by someone or was that all part of the Brown Act delineation on Those are summarizations, but we could pull up the government code as well. And and I just I would add I completely agree with Council Member Williams that is exactly what the Brown Act requires. But Council, I think the main point and I would point of privilege if you acknowledge this happened last week. The main concern isn't the Brown Act, right? I think we've gone through that. It's putting something up on the screen that is not gerine to the agenda item we're talking about. And this actually happened last meeting. Do you recall? I I think you may I think Councilman Williams actually can elaborate a little bit on the

of So, uh I had a a conversation with the city attorney afterwards. Is it all right if I divulge our our conversation about that?

I I don't know what you're going to say, so probably no. that I guess you could begin to cut me off, but we had a conversation over essentially how the meeting went down and how my point was that I was on topic. I was on the Brown top, the Brown Act topic of the $1.3 million completion bond because we know about that $1.3 million completion bond only because there's a lease agreement that lays it out. And the visuals were going to be a visual of that lease agreement and we have to take into consideration when we're making a decision as council members, there's certain things we ought to weigh. And one of the things that we ought to weigh is whether or not that contract is in good standing or not. Hypothetically, if it was not in good standing, I'm not saying it wasn't. Hypothetically,

now we're getting off now we're getting off the topic that is actually Germaine to this to to the discussion here, which is do you want the mayor brought up this the mayor brought this issue up to make one of his points. So, I think it's all related. Yeah. And I don't I I don't recall the conversation quite that way. And again, the point is, okay, do you want to if something's to K to the mayor's point, one of the concerns is that items, discussion points, slides will be brought up that were not on the it was a topic that was not on the agenda. That's what we're trying to protect for.

And I guess Council Member Williams, it's like why take that that risk of the the kind of clunky back and forth with the attorney and a council member going, "No, this is Germaine." He's like, "No, it's not." I mean, again, like you're going through the the work of putting together the presentation, so why not just go through the extra step to make sure that it's signed off by the attorney, we're good legally, and then it's posted 3 days before, three business days before the for the meeting. Like, I don't I don't understand why that's a concern. It just makes everyone understand the process. Gives you plenty of opportunity to do it. Again, to your point, if something happens over the weekend, then just, you know, update a supplemental communication before in like, you know, that the Brown Act process. It's just trying to remove this ambiguity and this clunkiness back and forth and like arguing with the city attorney and trying not to let you guys like put slides up. I mean, it's just it's awkward. It I don't think it needs to be that way. I think this process is is pretty fair.

Can I respond to that? Go, Butch, before you go, can I respond to that? Okay.

Thank you. All right. Yeah. So, uh, to your question, it's a slippery slope. You know, I think that we all campaigned on on less government, more transparency. I'll give you a prime example of why, uh, this idea doesn't really work. Today, I was doing research all the way up to the final moments, talking with staff members, sorting things out. My slides radically changed, I would say, by 3:45 p.m. today before I turned them in. I got certain confirmations from, you know, different professional agencies that had they not responded to me and given me the information, I actually would have been stuck with a slide I would not want to be putting up. I probably could have struck it then. But the point is is that things change. We're living in an evolving world, right?

No, but I and look, I'm not because I want to get this right. So let's say you have your presentation sent on Thursday. It gets scrubbed legally and it's like good this is a good presentation and it's posted and then now you have a slide to update that same presentation. You could do it through supplemental, right? Because now you've already bless the your main uh presentation and things will come up and then you can just do a supplemental, right? If you're going to show it on the screen, I think you would need to vote to sus to suspend the rules and allow the additional communication to come through. Okay.

Which is just wild. It's more steps. It's more government. It's less transparency. We're all adults. We're all elected officials. Maybe we should just start turning in our notepads in advance, too, to make sure, like, city attorney, scrub my notepad. You know, we all have ideas that we're writing down. Again, I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to walk through and understand your point of view. I'm not being combative. I'm not being dismissive towards you. And I'm not being flippant. What I'm just saying like I just it's happened a few times now where it's this awkward back and forth argument with the attorney. Can I put this up or not

where this process just allows you to to do put the meat of the presentation in and then to your point if it does come up that something happens over the weekend? At that point then you hey guys it's really important you know okay let's as a board let's just wave it or set it aside. But I mean how often does that happen where you're getting like last minute updates again? Is it like should we give you heads up earlier? So instead of Wednesday the agenda's posted, we bring you guys in on Monday. Go, hey, here's agenda review guys. Here's what's coming up next week on the agenda. Here's as much runways you need to really do your research. Do you guys want like two weeks notice? Again, I'm trying to just create remove this conflict and this arguing back and forth with the attorney and just create a process that a process that everyone knows and makes it like seamless. That's all.

If I may just say one thing. So the dynamic right now you might be able to come in at the last minute with a updated slide and your council members here we're kind of all of the same uh thought process to a certain extent say no problem let's vote he says we need to vote on we vote 70 it's approved if you have an adversarial council and we know that us the HP3 haven't experienced that but you you guys had that adversarial you had different opposing uh camps and uh it was not cohesive it was it was fine But if there was four on one side of the aisle and three on the other side of the aisle and the person's happened to be on three uh this the team of three and they say I want I have a brand new two updates I just got confirmation put it to a vote he would then or she would then be stifled by the opposing council members who sit in the majority. So now you're basically saying well you can amend it to the last minute. He says you have to have a supplemental vote. we have a a dis that's split and you're in the minority. You will not get your visuals approved because you've come in at the last minute because in this day and age of information, you learn something uh last minute, which happens all the time. We have information flowing constantly. So now you have stifled your council member by virtue of the vote. And now we're talking about something there's never even been a proven Brown Act violation by visual presentations. Yeah, there's been a little clunkiness, but that's why we have this beautiful parliamentarian over here in order to moderate the conversation. It may have been clunky, but in the end, Councilman Williams in that case stopped the conversation and we moved on with the meeting. So, we have a method in place that works.

Go ahead, Bush.

I'll be quick. What I've seen and it's and not just tonight but maybe over the last three or four meetings is things h happen up here and others some of us are think there's some sinister plot going on uh um to quash somebody's first amendment rights. I don't see that. I read I read this this item and I thought that is great because two weeks ago or four weeks ago there was an item on there that some of us up here had different views on. We didn't see we didn't see anything until the surprise surprise uh uh slides came up and all of a sudden I'm going well I could have I could have liked that. I want to see both sides of everything. I want to see what you're thinking. I want to see what you're thinking. and I want to see what you're thinking. I want to see what you're thinking. I don't I I don't think I'm always right. In fact, I know I'm not. So, I'm I I like to look at opposing views. I just don't like looking at opposing views when I get about three or four minutes to read it up on a screen and then I have to think about what it is. And so when I saw this, I again, I don't think that there's some sinister plot to hide things from other council members or hide things from the from the uh from the public. I liked it because I said, "Oh, good. The slides will be out there on Thursday now." and the and the general public that that that pays attention enough that goes in there and opens up the the uh uh the items on their on the agendas that they get sent are they're there. So again, I don't think there's some sinister plot there. But now that I've heard everybody, I'm going, okay, I understand that, you know, you could have this you could have this uh this thought in your head. I

don't I don't believe it's true. I don't because I love all you guys. I would never do anything like that. But uh Chad oppos proposed an amendment. I think that was pretty good. It was getting there because you came up with a plan B. And I always say if you're going to shoot down plan A, at least have a plan B. And Chad had a plan B. Now, I didn't exactly, you know, agree with the whole thing, but I think you're on to something there. And if we can, you know, if there's going to be these last minute situations that requires a new slide at, you know, 5:55 on Tuesday of city council meetings, then okay, just let us know. That's all. I remember asking one of the council members up here, where the you know, I if I would have seen that slide, I would have changed my mind and the vote would have been totally different, but I didn't get to see the slide. So consider that when you're making an amendment. If I could just respond to that too, Councilman Twining,

Mayor Prom, sorry, not doing well tonight. I'm sorry, Shannon. Um, you know, I can only divulge to two other council members before we show up. I I know the desire to know what all of the other council members are thinking before they come in. And oftentimes there are opinions, you know, that could be embedded in these. And so I also see how there's the potential of this actually, you know, becoming a Brown Act violation because we as a majority are not allowed to confer, you know, with each other. And so it's going to always be a surprise if we're adhering to the Brown Act um of what's going to come out of somebody else's mouth. I I can kind of assume I could think that I know, you know, Mayor Prom, you know, twining. I think I know how he'll vote on something based off of, you know, a past pattern, but yeah, you you don't really we can't confer with each other in advance. And so,

two weeks ago, I would I would have changed my book, but I couldn't have shared it with you because I did share it with two other council members. I couldn't have I would have loved to have if I could, but if it's if it's properly agendaized, it doesn't create a brown eye conflict, right, Vic? Yeah, but as long as you don't discuss it with amongst one another, you can see you can see information. As long as you guys don't speak about it, it's fine. But one one point too just real quick is also with with with the presentation if it was agenda properly you know the Friday before and something comes up I mean you can always just verbally go hey I know this is my presentation was posted Friday new new details have come to light I want to verbally tell you what those are as well like does it always have to be a visual presentation I mean

I think agendizing like our personal like opinions or leanings you know prior to the meeting that has Brown Act violation written all over it and has litigation written all over it. And the attorney just said again it doesn't if it's properly agenda.

You want to clarify that because if somebody express that how they think that they might, you know, be leaning on something or they imply it and it's on one of their visuals and it gets put out there in advance. I've seen lawsuits where votes have been completely wiped out because a council member expressed uh to the public, you know, they're leaning on something just their opinion on on on an issue. Okay, we're getting so you're confl conflating a little bit. So if council members are expressing their views and and I that's part of the reason why we want to see these powerpoints before they go out. If you're expressing your views on a quasi adjudicatory matter, meaning something like a cup or something like that, if you're talking about it beforehand, that could absolutely be a problem, a due process problem. It's not a Brown Act problem. If you folks see one of one of the PowerPoint presentations and then four of you talk about it, then we have a brown hat problem.

But how is that any different if we see it but then don't talk about it? Now we're getting into the granular details of communication verbally or visually. And furthermore, that makes a good point because Butch said specifically had he seen that presentation, he would have voted differently. He just said that. So had you seen that? It's just information about council. Yeah. But information I mean like we say you know journalism should perpetually be objective but the biomission or what you write or how you write and what stories you cover your opinion is ultimately displayed by virtue of that general information. Information in and of itself can be

right and and you all should vote whenever you're voting. I I guess and again we're getting way off topic here but when you're voting you should be voting based on all the information that you receive. if it's from a council member, if it's from the members of the public, from staff, whatever it may be. So, you should consider all the information that's before you before you vote on private. So, so the the point I want to make, you just can't talk about it.

The the point I want to make that's much more general is like we're getting into this really detailed debate right now, which is interesting, which goes to show that we haven't put too much thought into this. When you govern and you add layers of more and more government, I've always said the unintended consequence of government is that it puts us in an area that we never anticipated. And I'll use the story of the nuclear option if anybody remembers this. In 2013, Harry Reid was a Senate majority leader. The Democrats were frustrated that Republicans were blocking all of Obama's judicial and executive nominees using the filibuster, the 60 vote margin and threshold. So Reed pulled the nuclear option, which dropped it down to a simple majority, and everybody clapped and they were able to push all of their executive uh appointments forward. In 2017, when the shoe was, you know, on a different foot and it was McConnell, guess what he did? He used a nuclear option and everybody laughed and said, "Why did you do that, Harry Reid? You made a huge mistake." The point in that thesis is that when you do something rapidly and you create another layer of government, it's always going to blow up in your face. Councilman Kennedy just made that point. He said, "What if we have a 43 on the DAS and people don't get along and then in two or three years this exact rule ends up blowing up in our face?" That's the way life works. That's the the the circular pattern of karma. So, you know, I'm I'm becoming more and more apprehensive of this. Go ahead, Pat.

I'm like kind of split on this as far as as orderly to run a meeting. I understand that. But I do have issue with the main reason we have like we follow these Brown Acts and Robert's rules of order is we do our homework, we study, we bring it all together and then we bring it to council and for transparency reasons we bring it out forward and have this discussion in public really not beforehand and if we want to have something and that's why I'm kind of sketched about I do most of I prep during the weekend and if I want to present something and I discovered something that I want to present and I didn't give it on Thursday evening then God I'd be kind of bummed out that I didn't have that opportunity to have it reviewed and everything else and it takes away well like you guys are saying that ability to present and for transparency it's built into again the Brown Act and Robert's rules that we the reason they do that is to have this discussion out in the open to have it transparent that we collect all our thoughts, all our investigation and we search answers and we don't come here with preconceived uh um decisions because we want to have the discussion. And I want to listen to what everybody says and then make my decision right here in the dis right in front of everybody during the disc after the discussion has been had because there isn't we're not going to be able to gather all the information that we want or that gets presented up here beforehand and that's part of Brown Act is that so you don't collude and develop little pockets of prejudged decisions that others won't have participation in. So really is I understand the theory of

it and I respect it for because it kind of does bring some more order to it but I the it's unfortunately I part of the show is to have this deep indepth discussion and I like bringing it forward and I'll do my investigation and maybe I'll talk to a couple people but when it comes down to it I come to the table clearminded decision free and make that decision when I get up here. And that's after we have a big sometimes those discussions are ugly as hell like tonight. And uh that's just the way it is, the way it's been designed. And I support that and I just don't kind of I'm kind of thinking we might be rushing into this. That's all.

And that's fine. Again, I just when uh the attorney brought this forward, I thought it's, you know, this is a good conversation to have because it's like, you know, I'll just I'll defer to my council members, but when this happens in the future, if it does, and there's this debate on what's up on the screen, which is now going to be part of the public record is not gerine to the agenda item. What's this? What's your guys' solution there? Like, what do we do?

No, I just that's why we're here to talk it out. Yeah. got to be one thing that I think has been kind of a little dodgy is respect for other people's input and everything and respect of listening and being open-minded and even in the presentation of things or any discussion. We got to be somewhat respectful and just listen and be open-minded. That's all.

No, I know. But I guess what I'm asking is when there's a a dispute of whether what's being put up on the screen is gerine to the agenda item that we're talking about or voting on there's been this conflict with the attorney and it's it and there's from what I've seen there's not an agreement on whether the attorney is right or or the council member is correct. So how do you guys solve that where I thought this process made sense because that would remove that conflict because the attorney would already bless it. So, if you guys keep it the way you want and that situation arises, how do we solve that?

I think that we solve it uh on a case- by case scenario in this in the moment as if it was verbal, right? How would we solve it verbally? You'd kind of cut them off or say, "Look, that doesn't, you know, that doesn't fly because it's not specific to the subject that we're talking about. It could put us in risky territory, hot water, whatever cliche you want to use." But we would we would actually have more of a lead time in the event it was a presentation even in the moment had it not been previously screened just by virtue of it being up on the screen and then nope that's not going to work is I mean ultimately it would be vague who says that

and it would just be back to the yeah same old vetting process and again this is a policy decision for you folks. I thought it was a good idea to maybe clarify, get actually more public in give the ability to the public to see the presentation beforehand, but I'm not wed to this. This is certainly not a hill I'm at all. We've already we've already, you know, beat this horse to Yeah. But it's also good to talk about, right? Let's be gentlemanly and lady lad ladyike about it where we all understand now if we leave it the way it is should this problem arise again I respect request as the chair if the attorney gives us direction that it's not appropriate to put that up on the screen will you guys agree with the attorney

well I would think on that note Casey and I appreciate that that direction you're you're taking it but first off I think we're all as professional uh acting as professionals on the das and knowing that we represent the city we would never want to do anything to put our city uh in jeopardy. But gerine is somewhat subjective, but I think we'll always try and be germanine to the agenda topic. Now, what I don't want to have happen is the second our parliamentarian says no, that we don't have the ability to then challenge him respectfully um to a back and forth debate. Maybe I can make a point that he he finally concedes and says, you know what, actually with that perspective, proceed. So we can have that professional, respectful dialogue and not just as soon as our parliamentarian says no go, we go, "Oh, okay."

And and that's not even part of the So Robert's rules does allow for you to to object to any any call I make. So yeah, I appreciate Can we highlight that real quick? That's just kind of the point that I wanted to make is that even if he advises us a particular way, says, "I suggest you don't throw that that screen up there. I'm I'm pre-screening you right now. I'm censoring I want to censor it." You can't actually censor us. We could say, you know, I agree to disagree with you. Nevertheless, I'm the policy maker. You're the attorney, the adviser. I'm going to press on and I'm going to show what I wanted to show. I can do that. Correct. First of all, I I would never censor you. The only the only time I would stop is if something was not on the agenda or it was patently going to get us into some kind of trouble litigation.

That's all I'm saying as a genomally agreement and lady agreement up here if we leave it the way it is. you all agree that if this issue arises again where the attorney is like, "Guys, this is not on the agenda. We shouldn't be talking about it." We listen to the attorney. Sure, you can question if that's true or not, but trying to remove that conflict. And if we all have an agreement up here to to follow that protocol, I'm fine with leaving it the way it is. And I think if the parliamentarian makes a judgment and there's still discussion, then I think it comes back to the chair to say, "Hey, here's my rule. We're going to follow the parliamentarian to be safe. That's the and I think that's what Robert rules and stuff. Perfect. So Chad, what was your uh motion?

Uh just to add to that though with regard to whether or not something would be, you know, a Brown Act violation. That's actually a full that's a council decision. That would take a majority to make that determination rather than just leaving it into the hands of of one. it. The motion is uh a move to adopt the council manual amendments as presented except delete the Thursday 5:00 p.m. deadline for council members uh council member visuals and otherwise keep the amendment allowing the council to take positions on statewide initiative ballot propositions. Um I moved it I think it was so just to clarify just so everyone understand so statewide positions. Okay. And then just remove this um 5:00 p.m. deadline.

Perfect. I'm okay with turning my slides in before the meeting to the city manager. So, there's still opportunity if you want to, however you want to put it, um, content gate or vetit or what, whatever you want to look at it. But, just to clarify that, too, so everyone's on the same page. So, if you were to give a presentation per the normal bionic rules, right? Then, we all have to get a physical copy and then the public correct gets a copy. Correct. If it's a presentation that's made at the council meeting, it's got to be provided to the public as Chad pointed out digitally or paper. Yeah. If it's a dig, it'll have to be provided uh physically to the to the public. I was like, how is that done? So, we'd have to print We'd have to print it out and hand it out to the public

to the audience. Yeah. Got it. So, so again, this is why we're having this conversation, guys, tightening it up. So, like how many copies like how does that work? I mean, so I was reading in a manual that actually what would suffice is even so much as putting up a QR code that people could and I I read that in a Brown Act manual that we don't actually have to provide physical copies to everyone. That that's the beauty of the screen is you present to everyone. In fact, I remember city attorney Gates when he was here, he presented a presentation on uh the Kennedy Commission and he said, "Folks, you can get a copy of this if you scan that QR code that's up on the screen right now." That was the way that it was made. a copy is made available to the public. It's it's acceptable. Thank you.

I would like to make a substitute motion to Chad's to leave it as is, not do anything. Yeah, just leave it alone. I second that. Strike it all. I I do like that. But there's something else in the manual that I believe the mayor had added along with this what he added. You talk about the statewide and and I'm Yeah. Okay. Okay. I guess let's just pat just your free substitute just remove you know all the additional presentation language but leave the the amendment that we want to be able to take a positions on statewide issues. I don't remember that part of it. Yeah, that's part of the the the manual update. So we can as council if we want to take a position on a statewide, you know, bill that's coming through.

And you know what, mayor, if we could if you Yeah. Take take we'll take it back and and table that issue and bring it back. We should bring it back clean. You guys good with that? Yeah. All right, cool. All right, I'll second. Yeah, you want to table it and come back. You want to remake that motion? Just leave it as is. Leave the manual as it is. Perfect. I'll second. Okay. Want to make sure that the presentation visual thing isn't coming back. We've completely struck that. Is that clear? That's gone. That's gone. All right. All yeses. Yes.

Okay. Let's see. That's good professional dialogue right there. And and I commend you, mayor, for um I know this was passion, but listening again here out loud and deciding, you know what, let's just move on. Well, that's always a goal, right? There's I don't want conflict up here, so let's just air it out and then, you know, see if there's a way to find a resolution. If not, we'll bring it back and try again. That's all. Try to move the deliberation. Yeah. Likewise. I know that was very um matter a lot. Cool. Call the role or all yeses. It's my turn. Is it my turn? Do you want to call the RO just to be safe? Yes. Do it. Already heard. I'm happy to call the RO if you'd like me to call the RO, please.

All right. The motion is to leave the manual exactly as it is. Correct. First and second was McKon. Oh, Burns and Don Kennedy. Kennedy. Okay. Councilman Gr. Yes. Councilman Kennedy. Yes. Mayor Prom Twine. Yes. Mayor McKeon. Yes. Councilman Burns. Yes. Councilwoman Vandermark. Yes. Councilman Williams. Yes. Motion passes 70. All right. Item 20. Andrew. Council member Grul.

Yes. So, I know this was simple. This was merely a rejection of bids or lack of bids. But I just wanted to bring up this point because since I've been on council, you know, it's kind of been mindboggling to me. I know Pat's brought it up on multiple occasions about how much it costs to re- roof the, you know, a building. And then this is something that I learned in government and I just wanted to relay this information is is that, you know, basic work like tiling, paving, roofing, sidewalk repairs, typically now what I'm learning is in government, specifically city government, they cost two to three times more than it should because state law piles on excessive mandates, these kind of rigid procurement rules, excessive insurance requirements that have nothing to do with the actual job. Why can't you just go out on the street and get somebody to be able to fix a couple tiles at the pool, which is what we're trying to do right here is a question that ultimately I asked. But, you know, the results here are obviously predictable. The that that taxpayers pay these Cadillac prices for pickup truck work. And this isn't about safety or fair pay. It's kind of about this oneizefits-all rule that's written by Sacramento that treats a $20,000 repair like it's a $200 million excavation project. So, I just wanted to bring the point to we did not we are rejecting these bids because the bids were just excessively over or we didn't get enough of the bids in addition to the hard work that public works has to go through with a limited number of contractors who are even bidding to begin with because of all the hoops and the barriers that they have to go through to get through that kind of government bureaucracy and then it leaves us in these situations where we end up spending $120,000 on a roof. So, what's the answer to this versus me just complaining is I do think that it's incumbent upon everybody to talk to their legislators and we need to take this to Sacramento in some capacity. Gracie, I look at you and uh you know try and just give some autonomy to these cities so that we can start developing our own set of rules in the way in which we bring vendors and contractors on board so that we can save money. Because when you look at these numbers and you say, "Oh, somebody's, you know, there's always this this nefarious conspiracy theory of like some you paid $250,000 to fix some tiles, somebody's brother or cousin or uncle's making money off of that." And it's like, no, the

unfortunate reality is is that that's just the way government works. And you know, I think it's it's fraudulent to some degree and that we so many people make so much money on the backs of the taxpayers, but I think that's something we ultimately need to fix. So, I wanted to bring that up within the context of rejecting these bids to fix the tiles at the pool, which seems to be a simple job, but it's not. And it's taking months and months and months, but I would also, you know, talk about prevailing wage. Yes. Thank you. I mean, that's one of them. Yes. The prevailing wage is an element. So child, can you just give the community like so what is prevailing wage and and how much usually does it add to like a budget or a contract?

So prevailing wages is dictated by the department of industrial relations. It's basically you're part of a union. Um it's welders, it's electricians, it's plumbers, a lot of the trades um in the industry. Um, so you do end up paying higher wages because they they do have um they're part of a union and so they have to be registered. Every contractor, every work that comes through our city, you have to have a DIR. You have to be registered with the DIR. You have to submit um payroll, certified payroll to make sure that you're paying these tradesmen, these trades people proper wages. And so there's a lot of compliance. There's penalties involved as well.

And that limits to council member GR's point, it limits the amount of companies that can bid on it because a lot of private construction companies don't have union labor. So therefore, they don't can't pay prevailing wage and so it just adds I mean is there a percentage is like 10 15 20% that you've seen over private do you know child? It's it's at least 20%. So, at least a 20% increase in the cost of a project because you have to use prevailing wage because that's just on the wage piece. And then throw in the insurance and the permits and the and the fact that there's a limited number of people who can even bid, right?

I I I when I was still working, I had a a union company and a non-union company. Uh, and my union people were making uh in excess of $120 an hour. and my non-union people were making about 85 or 90. So when you're talking about, you know, several hundred,000 to provide the inspection services, that that that is a lot of money uh the extra to pay for using prevailing wage, which contractors that do work for cities are required to do.

Have to bring a bunch of coffee cups. The unfortunate thing is it's it's almost that the government is founded on um something that John Rockefeller said prior to the formation of the Federal Reserve and that is competition is a sin. They wanted to monopolize everything everything with the banking and that's really why the Federal Reserve which is not a Federal Reserve it's a sham but that's why it was formed but John D. Rockefeller said, "Competition is a sin." And it seems like that's a foundational basis for government and that keeps a lot of very capable uh trades people out of the business and it puts it right into the wallet of the taxpayer. It's a shame.

So, I'll make a motion to reject the bid as as listed. Second. Somebody second. Yeah, I did. Casey, I second. No. Councilman Gro, yes. Councilman Kennedy, yes. Mayor Prom Twiny, yes. Mayor McKeon, yes. Councilman Burns, hi. Councilwoman Vandermark, yes. Councilman Williams, yes. Motion passes 70. All right. Uh, item 22, Council Member Kennedy.

Thank you, Mayor. I pulled this item actually almost um to highlight uh the inefficiency, but then to shine the bright light of basically kind of a compliment to the way we remediated this. So, this is again um something that's a pet peeve of mine. It's it's uh and we're solving these. It's it's a low bid. Come in, get the job, and then look for change orders and and look for all these different things. And we're changing that entire protocol. And director uh Vu has been very responsive to my request for how we uh allow the bids, who they are, transparency, what they've done, what their awards are, how they, you know, what their qualifications are. And I really appreciate that. So, when I was in my council briefing um the other day and I saw that we now need a new increase on a not to exceed of 300,000, I I said, "What is this?" So, the short story is we had let's say contractor A come in on the um what is it? The M uh the lift station. Yeah. So, on the lift station, they get the bid and they fail to foresee some shortcomings and next thing you know, uh, they're asking for more money. Um, we're not going to give it to them. We we have to bring in somebody who remedies the shortsightedness of, uh, vendor A. The only reason I pulled this is I was happy to hear I was not happy at the start of my conversation, but I was very happy to hear and I believe I'm correct in saying because this is what I've heard. Um the good news was we fired contractor A and we're suing them. Uh and we're going to go ahead and solve this problem. But what I thought was shining brightness is that

we aren't throwing good money after bad on a vendor that put us in the proverbial trick bag. So, uh, I want to make sure because I, you know, I've now said we fired him and and we're suing him. And is that a correct statement, city manager? I believe so. Yes.

Okay. So, I just want to you make sure I'm not espousing something that's not true. Anyway, when I found out that uh, Director Vu was there with one of her very capable um, right-handed uh, leaders. I don't know his title, and u, I was very happy. and she said, "Are you going to pull my item?" And I said, "For this reason, I'm going to let you know that I'm happy to hear that you guys took a stand. You got rid of a weak link and we're actually we didn't and we're suing them." So, long story short, ciao, that's the way you have to handle business. We have a saying in the private sector, no weak people. And that's exactly how we should be in government. No weak people, no weak vendors. Thank you, child, for doing that. On that note, I I move uh to approve uh the item 22.

Second. All right, Madam Clerk, please call the role. Councilman Grul, yes. Councilman Kennedy, yes. Mayor PM Twin, yes. Mayor McKon, yes. Councilman Burns, hi. Councilwoman Vandermark, yes. Councilman Williams, hi. Motion passes 70. All right. Item number 24, administrative items, authorized sponsorship of legislation related to regional housing number allocation arena. Staff, please introduce the report. Mayor, I'm going to introduce that report if it's okay. Hopefully not have such a fight about it. Yeah, go for it.

I apologize to the public and council. I've got this cold. Anyways, I'm pleased to announce that I've been working with Senator Strickland's office on legislation to begin reforming the re regional housing needs assessment allocation process. One of the problems cities face is that it's impossible to ch to challenge the housing distribution numbers in court. In part because of a couple bad court of appeal decisions, one of them Cornado v. San Diego SCAG and city of Irvine v. Skagg. This legislation, if adopted, would allow cities to challenge reallocation numbers in superior court. Uh we've been asked to sponsor the bill, and I think uh Shannon's got a slide on it if you guys want to see it.

Good evening. We wanted to add that um sponsoring legislation will help provide local control and that cities typically tend to sponsor legislation when they would like to seek change in state law. Um only legislators can formally introduce bill and as their city attorney stated, Senator Strickland's office has asked us to sponsor this bill. and obligations of sponsoring a bill would um strongly um expect us to provide goodface support like testifying and lobbying in Sacramento, which we are prepared to do with yourselves, our city attorney, and our state lobbyists. And there would be follow-rough if the bill passes to exercise authority provided in the law as necessary. So, you know, what sponsoring legislation of this nature would would provide um through the legislative session. Thank you.

No, I mean pretty sure I speak for everybody up here. It's just I mean all anyone's ever asked for, right, is just I mean the independent auditor years ago said the arena numbers the methodology wasn't based on facts. It was fraudulent and no data or statistics to back it up. So all we've ever asked for is a is a mechanism and a medium to protest those numbers and then give it the state and be like how'd you come up with these numbers? you know, we're 95% built out. Here's what we can deliver. I've said it so many times, like it's a misnomer that we haven't delivered housing. I mean, we're in the top five in Orange County and affordable housing being delivered and that's where we are in terms of population. So, we've we've done our fair share and and we're just to have a mechanism to actually protest these, you know, outrageous 13,368 units, which is the highest amount of units per acre of any city in California is just a welcome change. I'm I'm hopeful that the state will pick up and and pass, but it just makes so much sense because it's not a one-sizefits-all heavy-handed approach that the state has that's going to work. It's not working. It hasn't worked since Rena was first established. and so many cities can't can't live up to it. So, like I've said so many times, I know my colleagues have as well, is like if if the state was serious about solving this issue, sit down with cities and go, "Hey, like what do you what can you guys do? Let's put together your housing element, what you think is appropriate based on your unique characteristics as a city, your topography, your geography, your, you know, sensitive environmental elements like we have the wetlands." And it's a unique case-byase situation. So, this this would create a mechanism to hopefully to do that. So, I mean, I can't vote yes on this enough.

This is a for me, this is just a step towards local control, and that's my main mission. I think we're quite capable of governing our own city. Sacramento's proved that it can't do anything right. They've lost control of 76 billion dollars that their own auditors say they can't even find. And our lovely governor says, "Oh, well, well, maybe we'll do better in the future." No, you ought to explain where the hell that money went to. And part of it's going to this kind of crap where they're dictating overbuilding and high density stuff to cities that don't want it. So, this is a step towards local control and well, I'd like to take about 10 more steps towards it in any way we can. And I'd really like to send that message to Sacramento to stay the hell out of our city.

I'd like to thank Senator Strickland for working with us and sponsoring this bill um for allowing us to be part of it. He sat here with us. He was here just budding his head up against the wall thinking how what could we do to protect ourselves. We fight for local control, but we really have never had a mechanism to actually do that. So, um you know, like Pat says, we've got what you say 10 steps. I think we need about 20. Um, but this is a step in the right direction and I'm actually proud to move this item and um, thank you Vic for working with Tony on this.

One other bright spot is when I was discussing this item which is phenomenal and thank you to Mayor, Senator Strickland and his office. I asked what kind of financial obligation do we have for this and the answer was nothing. So, this is something where uh there really is something that uh we're going to get with no commitment of dollars and um the the upside would be just dramatically beneficial to our city. As the council members have said, local control is something I believe that everybody in this city is in agreement on. Uh we've tried to get there in different ways. Some ways the half the city likes, half doesn't. But the the idea of local control is is something that I think we can all agree on. This is a fantastic item. I'll be fully supporting.

Gracie moved it. I'll second. Oh, go ahead, Chad.

Well, I just kind of want to affirm everything that uh my fellow council members have shared and just reiterate how important this is to us as a city, Huntington Beach. uh you know there's a desire from outside to essentially erode what we consider to be you know precious to us. Uh we like our land use and zoning. We like our neighborhoods the way that they are. We're 95% built out. There's really not any space to be including these 13,368 units that have been prescribed to us by an outside agency. And I think it was pointed out that roughly about 8,000 of those units are at a 20% inclusionary rate. So anytime a developer builds a 100 units, only 20 of those will count towards putting a dent in that 8,000 number. The only way you get there is we're going to have to add over 40,000 units to our housing stock that is made up of about 80,000 units right now. We're going to have to 50% increase. As far as local control goes, I mean, we have this authority granted to us from the highest authority in the state. It goes beyond any legislator. It goes beyond a governor. It's the California Constitution. Doesn't mean anything anymore to be a charter city. And so, what it does mean and what that highest authority is in article 11 section 5, it lays out that we have supreme authority over land use and land zoning. We ought to be the ones that decide. Uh, and so it's part of our city charter. This is really part of the identity of what it is to be a part of Huntington Beach and it's something that's worth fighting for.

Absolutely. Good. All right. I'll move the item. Grace already did. Pat already second it. Awesome. Please call the role. Councilman Gro. Yes. Councilman Kennedy. Yes. Mayor Pert M Twiny. Yes. Mayor McKan. Yes. Council member Burns. I. Councilwoman Vandermark. Yes. Councilman Williams. Yes. Item passes 70. All right. Last item. Uh, Council Member items number 25. Councilman Williams, please introduce the report.

Okay. Shannon, if we could pull the PowerPoint presentation up and made me question myself for a sound like did I say the wrong name again? All right, so uh it's coming up and we'll jump in here at it looks like what's on your screen is slide number three. Yeah. Okay. So, with regards to this item, this is really, I guess you could call it a presentation and and really just a high view of uh 21 Main Street, which also includes 22 Main Street, the bathrooms across the way from it. There's a lot of questions in the community in terms of like how did this come about? Where's this coming from? They didn't know what was in the agreement. They didn't know where we're at in terms of, you know, the construction. So, uh the desire here is to simply put together a high view for you all. And so some of the key milestones you'll see April 2019 the city released an RFP and by May 24, 2021 city released what's called a request for qualifications. And so of the respondents there were four respondents but only three of them really qualified to provide what they needed. Um you had Rising to the Top Let's Go Fishing Ruby's Hospitality Group and uh Surf City Partners. If we could go to the next slide. And so then there was a council meeting that took place September 7th, 2021. And there was a recommendation that had come from staff and what the staff had recommended as it states to authorize and direct the city manager to execute an exclusive negotiating agreement with Ruby's Hospitality LLC in a form approved by the city attorney to negotiate the terms of the lease agreement for 21 Main Street. So recommended action what the staff had recommended you have there uh Ruby's hospitality group if we go to the next slide staff didn't work alone they actually worked for with the national

development committee at that time and the economic development committee as well and they gave their reasons their rationale for not recommending uh surf city partners uh they had noted as it says in the bullets it was most ambitious with required entitlement approvals you can imagine going through you know coastal commission state lens commission getting your coastal commission permit, the cups. There's a lot going on. Parking, outdoor dining, 81 seats, ABC license for alcohol sales. And so they note upon review, the construction timeline and revenue projections appear aggressive with revenue highly dependent on sales during the summer months and 40% of sales derived from alcohol. And they noted this is part of their report. Typical restaurant is about 20 to 30%. They say, "Additionally, because improvements are anticipated to be funded using debt, the proposal is riskier than the other two finalists." We go to the next slide. And so, you'll see that this is part of the RFP that Surf City Partners had proposed. You'll see in the highlighted section that they projected a timeline of approximately seven months. They had a goal in their RFP that was presented to council to be done by May of 2022. Next slide. Going back to our timeline in that same meeting, we do have the staff recommendation there. Going to the next slide, but this is how it went down on that day. Councilman Mike Posey amends motion to select Surf City Partners. It was seconded. It was moved and you had a 6 to1 with Eric Peterson, Councilman Peterson at the time being the only nay. Go to the next slide. And so this progresses November 2nd, 2021. uh the city enters into an ENA. It's approved March 11th, 2022. The ENA is amended to include 22 22 Main Street. So, before it was the Let's Go Fishing building that we all remember, 21 Main Street, and now there's this addition uh

to include the bathrooms. My understanding at the time was that it was expressed by the then city manager Oliver Chi there was a desire to upgrade the bathrooms and then talking with the applicant um they worked out a deal to where the applicant would renovate those bathrooms as part of the project and there was an agreement that took place November 2nd 2022. Interestingly, the exclusive negotiating agreement had expired and I looked into this and we couldn't find any documentation of it ever being reinstated. Nevertheless, the SUDI city press is on. November 16th, 2023. It's a key date. That's why it's, you know, in the red bracket there. California Coastal Commission approved coastal development permit number 5-22-0804 requested by Surf City Partners. We can go to the next slide. And so approximately one year later, we arrive at October 1st, 2024. There is a lease agreement with Surf City Partners that is executed. And so this is just simply a screenshot of that first page. I don't know if you folks remember it. Go to the next slide. my comments earlier this evening about paying attention to the consent calendar because so often multi-million dollar agreements and generational contracts are entered into that completely change the trajectory of our city for the better for the worse. This is one of those scenarios. So on that date, October 1st, 2024, there it is. It's there on the consent calendar. Does anyone notice it? Go to the next slide. We highlight it there on the consent calendar. It's item number 15. The thing is is that that day it never got pulled. It never got discuss discussed. It was just put on consent calendar and it was in there with the bundle got voted on with a bunch of other things all at

once. Next slide shows the outcome. And so it was at the time uh Mayor Vandermark motion by mayor uh by Vandermark and seconded by Strickland. And you see the outcome of the vote. It's to approve and authorize the mayor and the city clerk to execute. They're executing the lease between the city of Huntington Beach and Surf City Partners. And so there must have been some type of discussion in terms of what this lease agreement looks like. But on that date, October 1st, 2024, it was voted on and it was voted 70. So it begs the question, what does that agreement look like? Well, you do see one aspect of it. Approved the waiver of up to $50,000 in city fee permits. We can go to the next slide. And so here's the vote that we have and here's the lease terms and I'll just read from the top. You know, base rent $66,000. Now, if I could mentally take you back to what was in the RFP and the RFP, the proposed annual base rent was $180,000. Uh, but what we actually get in this agreement, we wind up with 66,000 per year. That's 5,500 per month with 3% annual increases. the percentage rent 3% of gross sales over$2 million per year. And so what is required is for this location to achieve $2 million in revenue and then from that point forward then the city will begin to get a cut of the revenue share. You could determine for yourselves, I'm not going to draw, you know, any conclusions for anyone else, whether or not you think that it could cross $2 million per year. The idea, I guess, is if it doesn't, I guess we'll never see any revenue share. Rent commencement earlier of business opening or 15 months following lease execution. And so what they end up receiving is 15 months of rent abatement.

And from the time that the lease was executed, which was October 1st of 2024, it extends that timeline out to December 31st, 2025. And then you see on top of this 15 months of rent abatement, they also get $300,000 of rent credit for restroom improvements at 22 Main Street. In other words, it's going to be another four and a half years worth of rent of just straight up rent credit that ultimately doesn't get paid to the city. And then the term, the initial terms approximately 19 years to align with the city's lease. We actually lease out the property at the pier. It's not our property per se, that sand and water that's underneath. It's state lands. And so we have a lease with the state lands and then we subleasase it out. And so they're just aligning the contract really with that that lease. But what that gets us is you have about 19 years right there with three 10-year extension options. And so we're looking at a 50year agreement. That's what I'm talking about when I say a generational agreement. This won't come up again for a very long time. And then in terms of fees that were waved, you see the waiver of up to 50,000 in plan check and building inspection fees. And so when the community wants to know how how did this come about? Well, you got to pay attention to these consent calendars because this is one of those things that got slipped into the bundle and it slipped right on by. It never got pulled. It got a 70 vote. all eyes. If you look at those terms, you don't think those terms were any good. That's what we're locked into essentially. But hey, we have what we have here, right? Go to the next slide. This is part of the agreement and it discusses that rent abatement that we were talking about. And I'll just jump to the highlighted section by exhibit E. It says in the event that the lease fails to complete the construction of the improvements as described in exhibit E uh within 15 months for the date of lease execution. All abated rent will become due and

payable without prior written approval for any construction extensions by the city manager at his or her discretion. And so just real brief, 15 months of rent abatement. Essentially what this says is look, that's an incentive to get construction done. If you don't have construction done in that time, you owe us back rent for those 15 months. Although the city manager at his discretion can give you an extra month or two or three if that's what you need to get across the finish line and that's really all that really contemplates. Going to the next slide that key date that I'd bracketed before. This one's an interesting one and this is actually a development that came up just today. Really this is why it's important to be able to turn these slides in prior to the meeting. November 16, 2023. Familiar date. We looked at it. Coastal Commission approved the coastal development permit requested by Surf City Partners. Uh this is actually uh lifted off of that coastal development permit. Anyone can see it on the lease agreement that's attached to the agenda. It's under the exhibits. Uh but I extract this section where it says on November 16th, 2023, the California coastal commission approved coastal development permit number 5-22-0804 requested by Surf City Partners subject to the attached conditions. Now we look at one of these conditions below and what you see is number two expiration. If development has not commenced then permit will uh then uh permit will expire 2 years from the date on which the commission voted on the application. And so what was the date that the commission voted on the application? November 16, 2023. If development has not commenced within two years then there is an expiration that takes place. I asked the city manager and staff, you know, as far as I know, we we haven't developed, right? There hasn't been any construction. It's like, no. Well, it begs the question. I I guess did did they ask the Coastal Commission for an extension because it does allow for

that. So, I reached out to them and they said no. Uh no extension uh has been requested or granted at this stage. It's too late to even ask for something like that. And they were shocked. They said no construction has taken place. Like, no, no construction has taken place. just this previous meeting, we uh green lit the $1.3 million uh completion bond, which was a prerequisite to even get permits. And so they said, "Wow, well, I'm going to have to figure something out about that." So they took a week to think about it. And this is actually they got back to me today. This is what they came to. And so this is kind of what saves the day on this. It was kind of interesting that that part of the conditions of this development permit was a hot dog cart. Um that's something for the future, right? We're gonna have a whole new restaurant, new bathrooms, and on the outside there's going to be a hot dog cart. They said, you know, we got around to thinking about it. This is just relayed to me today. And they said that, you know, because a hot dog cart was rolled out over the summertime outside of that location right now, uh, that actually changed the use. It used to be a fishing store, but by rolling a hot dog cart out and serving hot dogs, it changed the use from a fishing store to it became essentially, in their view, a restaurant that day. Therefore, uh they did, uh develop, they look at that as a development. So, I would say that's good news, I guess, right? Like, all right. So, that's not a problem. Uh and so that that just came about today. Let's go to the the next slide. Part of our own CUP as a city. And again, this is all an attachment that's part of the lease agreement. Uh we have one of the conditions five. It says prior to the issuance of building permits, which we have not issued yet. Uh, the applicant shall provide a parking plan that includes an executed lease agreement approved to form by the city attorney for nine off-site parking spaces located on the property lo located at 300 Pacific Coast Highway. So, I investigated that because look, I'm just trying to read the contract and get up to speed and understand what the contract actually says. And so, that's

what it says. That's what's needed as a prerequisite to even go and and get building permits. Um there is no lease agreement uh at 300 Pacific Coast Highway. Uh but after digging around, investigating a little bit more, uh the applicant had requested for that to be deferred. And our our city is very generous and kind even though there are certain terms in contracts. Sometimes they say, you know what, we'll give you a free pass on that one. And so a pass was offered up to him on that one. Next slide. Familiar slide here. Here's just a reminder of that rent abayment that after 15 months if the construction was not you know completed or you know then he's going to owe uh the back rent we can see this construction timeline what was the expectation in terms of construction next slide what was supposed to happen so they projected we'll be done by July 7th 2025 that's the soft opening date construction schedule soft opening uh January 1st technically January 1st 2026 that's the 15-month contractual completion deadline. That was the deadline that this was due by. Uh or else or else what? Well, according to the contract, if you go to the next slide, next slide, it gives section 37 uh default. The occurrence of any one or more of the following event shall constitute a material default and breach default of this lease by the lease E. Under subheading H, what does it say? lease's failure to complete the construction of the improvements, exhibit E, what we just looked at, and open for business within 15 months of the execution of the lease or other time approved by the city. And so we don't have what what do we have there, you know, right now? Do do we have that construction completed? Are we in this default territory? I'm not going to draw any conclusions. I'm just showing the community what the contract actually has to say. And in terms of what we actually have right now, how much construction has been done. Next

slide. That much. This concludes my presentation. Thank you, Councilman. very detailed information that sheds some light on something that's near and dear to me. When I was uh on the campaign trail, I really had two planks. Managing inefficiencies and creating opportunities. And this fell right in line with managing inefficiencies. And this kind of shows why last council meeting that although the construction completion bond is is is a good bond, what I felt and the reason I voted no uh and the reason when Chad asked me if I wanted to be part of this uh H item, I said, "Of course I do." Because when I took the time, I didn't read the lease before uh beforehand because I wasn't party to approving the lease. had I had I been party, it would be different. So, it wasn't until the completion bond uh came on the agenda that I took the time to because I knew there was a lot of time in between um the execution and where we were in today. So, I've read quite a few leases. I have a commercial real estate background. I spent a lot of time uh in that space. And so, the first first section I went to was default. And I wanted to see, you know, if somebody's been, you know, in play for this long. So, let me see. And I won't beat that that horse anymore because Councilman uh Williams has done a fantastic job with very detailed information. But I saw those same type things and you know we are allowed to confer with no more than two other council members. So I did spend some time with Chad. Um, and you know, I just wanted to say that our single biggest asset class, our single biggest

um item of value is as a city is our commercial real estate. There is nothing that has more face value than our real estate holdings. When I came on board, I basically when I found out how much real estate we own, including cell towers, which are no-brainers, I said to myself, we're basically a real estate company. And um we are we have a lot of valuable assets. So that's when I really sat down with leadership and I said, we first thing I asked for is how do we manage our real estate? And I was disappointed in the answer. The good news is this is not here to be doom and gloom. I just wanted to take a moment to point out the fact that our focus here is going to be continuing to improve the efficiencies of things that are of substantive value like our real estate holdings. So, in my last council uh briefing, you know, what you've heard previously is I've spent some time with my other council members. I'm not taking sole u uh congratulations on this. together as a team, we've worked to provide our real estate division with a ton of uh headers and different ways. And until we get a software system that can manage our real estate holdings, we've given them the opportunity to manage our real estate holdings via spreadsheets, which you know, uh, as I used to say, you know, companies like GE used to run with folders and paper pre-contracts or excuse me, pre software. So, we have made some great strides in managing our real estate holdings, holding our tenants accountable because of visibility. And I've heard from many people in the real estate division, including somebody I met with just the other day, said, "You know what? The information you gave us has helped us. So, our collections have improved. But what we need to do is we need to continue to focus on managing these things." And quite frankly, um, to be

candid, there has been a lot of missteps in the management of this asset. And I'm not laying blame on anybody. This is a very general statement. There's room to improve on all sides. So, I'm going to continue to hold people accountable, make sure they know what's expected. As they say in the private sector, I lot of cliches that I've grown to love uh because there's validity in them. and that is if you don't inspect it, they won't respect it. So, we're going to bring a level of inspection to everything that we put our hands, eyes, and signatures on. And that is one of my uh confirmed commitments to our city. It's really the only reason I ran for city council. I'm not aspiring for other offices, and there's certainly uh this is not for the pay. It's because I love the city, and I am to a taxpayer. Our customer is our taxpayers. and that's who I'm here to represent. So, when you can set policy to improve what we do as a city, especially on things like this, we're not talking about, you know, nickels, dimes, and pennies. We're talking about, you know, I would say maybe our our, you know, I haven't put a valuation on it, but I would have to say our real estate holdings probably in excess of a billion dollars. We have very valuable um land value in itself alone. So, with all that said, fantastic presentation by Councilman Williams. Not to place blame on anybody, just to expose and really kind of not even expose, let me change that. To kind of lay the landscape of how we got here, what we're doing to improve our process so we don't repeat the mistakes and we uh improve our process flow. And with all that being said, that is why I was happy to be part of this H item. Again, not to place blame on everybody, but there are uh people that need to own their uh duties, own their

responsibilities and their expectations. I will continue to do so. My other council members as well, I know, are doing so as well. We're growing and learning as a body and we are focused on bringing the best possible results to our customer, which is our residents. And that is why I was happy to be part of this. Thank you for your presentation, Councilman. Um, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this. I won't belabor the point. Uh, I think that you all have said enough already. My my objective here isn't to opine on how we got to where we are. I think it's more just to introduce more transparency as the public has been asking for it. When there is an absence of facts, people start to fill in the blanks with their own conspiracy theories. Whether the blame falls on the city in many of our business practices, whether it falls on other outside elements, that's ultimately for us to determine, you know, we've we've ultimately made it our point to try and make the city more business friendly. And dissecting deals like this is essential for us to figure out where we have holes in our system and how we can fix it. So, uh, that's really, you know, kind of the key for me here. And ultimately, as on a go forward basis, making sure that we put the best deals forward as Don has explained here. All right. There's no uh formal action requested. So, do I have a motion and a second to adjurnn?

Motion. Second. All right. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Huntington Beach City Council Public Financing Authority is Tuesday, February 17th, 2026 in the Civic Center Council Chambers, 2000 Main Street, Huntington Huntington Beach, California.