City Council - Regular Meeting

Meeting to order and ask the city, ask

the clerk for roll call.

Council member Little? Here. Council member Sander?

Here.

Council member Pulapati is absent at this time, but we do expect her shortly. Vice mayor Budge? Here. Mayor Gatewood?

Here. Call on the city clerk for a recording announcement.

Yes. This meeting is being recorded and will be recorded via Zoom, and we will get this up on the city's website within forty eight hours of adjournment of this meeting.

At a special meeting, citizen's decision to address the council for any matter not on the agenda may do so. At the time of matter, as it discussed under provision of California government code, the city council is prohibited from discussing or taking action on an item not on the agenda. Please provide speaker cards to the clerk, and we'll be called upon public Call upon the public hereafter this report. Do we have any public speaker cards for this special meeting?

We do not have any speaker cards.

Alright. I'm a go ahead and join

Recording in progress.

And go into closed session.

Thank you.

Do you wanna go kick him in and see if he wants to come out? Joe.

He can come this way.

We can get started. He got three. He'll come in.

Alright. Let's go. I'm gonna go ahead let me get my script. I'm gonna go ahead and call this meeting back to order and and ask for a report out from Adam.

Thank you, mister mayor, council members of the community. This afternoon, the city council met in closed session briefly and took up, two items of, business. First, it took up one case of potential litigation, regarding, litigation related to national opioid cases and received updates from and provided direction to legal counsel in that matter. Secondly, the city council took up a number of items of real property negotiations and received updates from and provided direction to its real property negotiators, and the council took no other action.

Alright. So I'm going to adjourn this meeting at 05:32 and and then start the next meeting. Now I'm gonna call this meeting to order and ask for a roll call.

Council member Little?

Here.

Council member Sander is absent. Council member Polipotti? Here. Vice mayor Budge? Here. Mayor Gatewood?

Here. Alright. I'm going to go ahead and ask for Stacy to go ahead read the television playback schedule.

Yes. The meeting of the Rancho Cordova City Council is recorded with closed captioning. The recording will be cable cast on Metro Cable channel fourteen, the local government affairs channel, on the Comcast and DIRECTV U verse cable systems. The recording will also be video streamed at metro14live.seccounty.gov. Today's meeting will replay on Thursday, April 9 at 9AM and Sunday, April 12 at 6PM on Metro Cable channel 14. Once posted, the meeting will be viewed on demand at youtube.com/metrocable14 and also on the city's website at www.cityofranchocordova.org.

Alright. Thank you very much. We're gonna go ahead and call on our man, Sean Hampton, in the back, who we refer to as s dog, to go ahead and do the pledge of allegiance.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in the pledge of allegiance. 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.

And I'm gonna ahead and welcome up. If you please stand for our pastor, Dan Sean, from Church. Give us an invitation.

Please join me in prayer. Heavenly father, we are so grateful for our blessings. Thank you for this body of public servants. We especially thank you for sacrifice. Yesterday, we celebrated Easter, the greatest sacrifice since time began.

Help us to understand that sacrifice is the best way for us to serve others. We're grateful for our leaders here at Rancho Cordova. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the community. I pray for continued wisdom, unity, and service to our community from these leaders. Thank you for the staff, the family of the public servants that continue to serve us. We lift up David Sander to you and and his family situation right now. We ask for prayers. We ask this in the name of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, pastor. Alright. Can I we're gonna go on to presentations? Can I go ahead and call on missus or mister Williams to come up of Project Sentinel Fair Housing to receive this proclamation of recognition of fair housing? Are they here?

Are they not here?

Anybody. There's no one here.

Okay. Moving on.

Hang on to it. If he shows up later

All right.

I will definitely give it is it him? Okay. Moving on. Oh, this is great. Okay. So we're gonna sing happy birthday. We have a birthday in the group. She is turning 37 today, and she loves when we sing and do her birthday stuff with so much pain. So let's go ahead and sing. We're gonna sing on three.

One, two, three. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Linda Buffs mayor. Happy birthday to you. Yay. Say something nice. There you go.

So much pain.

Alright. Gonna move on to public comment. Members of the public wishing to address accounts for any matter not on the agenda may do so by completing and submitting a speaker card to city clerk. For items on the agenda, speakers will be called on by the mayor at the point of the agenda when the items not be heard. So that mean, speakers are encouraged to keep their comments three minutes or less and state the name and community of the residents under provision of California government code. The city council is prohibited from discussing or taking immediate action on any item in the agenda unless the item to be demonstrated of emergency nature or the need to take immediate action arose after the posting of the agenda. Is there any public comment? Stacy?

Yes. We have five speaker cards.

We'll start

with Larry Leroy Ladd. Oh. Following Larry will be Reed Wages and Elliott. Alright, guys. You'll have up to three minutes.

Oh, you got a whiteboard. Let's do this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, the first thing is about Ratch Cordova as the artificial intelligence universe. Yes, sir. So these are the two toys I play with as an elderly person trying to contribute to my society. Love it. This is is a bird detector, which hopefully will pick up bird migrations at night that are and then this is a little, Geiger counter where I will check out what's going on in the new Folsom High School. So that's then on hard copy, one you know, that you guys have given us money to promote home libraries for students in Rancho Cordova.

And then I've told you before, there's things I do on my own. So one experiment is after a field trip to Splash, I donated a copy of the field guide to the class as a classroom book and then invited kids who wanted their own personal copy to write a letter to a business leader asking for the $20 for the book. And I expected a half dozen kids to do it, I got 22 requests. So there are the the five best essays I've saved trying to find a business person. The most important thing isn't probably not the book.

It's the is that somebody bothers to answer a fifth grader in their letter. So I'm look and especially if it's, like, on corporate station or something like that. So I'm looking for five people, business people who are willing to donate $20 for this book. Okay. And then my usual chemical stuff.

Update on the science of chemicals and politics. So the politics for perchlorate are huge right now. We're at war. And, you know, and Chinese ship full of ammonia perchlorate heading for a all that stuff. So that means back in 2003 when I was in National Academy of Sciences hearing on perchlorate ingestion, I got asked by the EPA, go out here. It's all the the perchlorate sites. Find exposed and unexposed ZIP codes so we can do, statistical analysis. And I said, well, okay. Let's do a quick GIS first. Thyroid cancer in this decade and then, because that's what you're worried about.

Connective tissue cancer it's how I GIS works. It's like a Venn diagram. So if you put all these different areas together and it all comes to one place, that's where you start. Well, the very first place I went to was down in Alabama. And, a child just died of Eastern equine and said, us in. Looked at national distribution and said, bingo. There's my third layer. And the EPA didn't wanna go there. But so I've sort of stayed there. So what I've done the last twenty years is try and get my questions answered When the time comes in a federal court to the super fund to raise up perchlorate level, I want my questions answered.

So that's why I keep doing all this stuff. So perchlorate, you know, I'm not gonna try knocking on doors here. I am gonna go to Ambiena and ask him, look. I would like to go twenty years ago, I went to where they manufacture perchlorate.

Please wrap up your comments.

Okay. So that's in Cedar City. It is, all changed, and, I wanna see how it's changed. And if, you know, after talking to Amy, then I'll talk to my good buddy, Tim Kane, because management for that plan is now in Richmond, Virginia. Thanks.

Thank you. Next speaker is Reed Wages.

Alright, Reed.

C o n.

Good evening. Good evening. My name oh, okay. My name is Reed Wages. The time hasn't started yet. Anyway

We're trying to give you more time. Don't pay attention.

Keep going.

No. It's fine. I just wanna make sure I'm like

You're doing everything perfect. You're nailing it.

My name is Reed wages, and I'm a senior at George Washington Carver. This school is a very special place for so many students in the Rancho Cordova area, including me. Being a Waldorf school, it provides alternative learning opportunities in a city that has no other high school like us. I come from a big middle school where I was bullied and treated like less than my peers. I was terrified of going to a traditional high school where the bullying would continue.

When I moved to Entre Cordova, I found George Hudson and Carver. Seeing that it was a small school, I was immediately drawn to it. Going to the campus for a tour solidified my choice to attend this school. The atmosphere of this campus is warm and welcoming, and that atmosphere has not disappeared in the four years that I've been here. At our school, I have never once felt like I didn't belong, and our school is a place for students to feel like they can be themselves and express their individuality without fear of judgment.

I love this school, and I can't imagine what it would be like for so many students at our school to not have the ability to attend it. We would greatly appreciate an investment into our school since it is in, the Rancho Cordova area. It would give our students a chance to continue to thrive in their education instead of go being forced to go to traditional school where they would not feel safe and, like, themselves. Thank you.

Hello.

My name is Elliot Rogozynski. I'm also from George Washington Carver. I'm a senior. I've been here all four years. I'm also the vice president of ASB, our student government.

I've been in the Waldorf education system my whole life. I came from a Waldorf k through eight school before coming here. And it's really a beneficial it's a different it's an alternate style of education that I think is really beneficial, and it's helped me a lot become who I am today. And Carver is a really it's just a special place that embraces that, embraces people for who they are. I it's being it's a small school too, so you have you know people.

You make connections, and it's it's really special. And I would not be in the position I am today if it weren't for this school. I would not be in a leadership role. I would not be doing stuff like this or have any interest in doing stuff like this, if it weren't for the school. So, yeah, it's a I could talk for a long time about it, but it's a really special place, and we would love if we could work out some sort of investment to the school. It's, I think, worth your time and effort. And we'd love for you to see that. And we're yeah. I I don't know what I'm saying. Thank you, and, happy birthday. Aw.

That's good.

Well, for one, you do know what you're saying because you're here saying it and asking for it, so thank you for stepping up and being here.

Mhmm. Next speaker.

And I'll just say everything they said is true. I met with both of these students and their principal recently toured the campus. I think we went in. Reed and I went in darn near every classroom during that tour. I mean, it's a small campus. You can hop around pretty quickly. And, yeah, it's it's a really special place. And so whatever we can do to assist, I'm beyond interested. I can't understate it. Or I can't overstate it enough how much I I hope we can help these guys out.

Next speaker is principal Lanicia Cobalt.

You nailed my name. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good after good evening to mayor Gatewood. Good to see you again. Thank you for coming to our graduation.

Funnest graduation out there.

I'm sorry?

Funnest graduation out there.

And it will be again.

Thank you.

And I wanna thank council member Joe Little for making sure that that graduation is going to be best and as fun as it has been in the past by making sure we're at the Crest Theater again. I'm here this evening to ask well, first of all, my name is Lanicia Kobelt. I'm the principal of George Washington Carver School of Arts and Science. I'm here tonight to ask you to consider a a bridge investment to help sustain our school and the students we serve. As you can see, Elliot and Reed, they're just two examples.

Elliot didn't say, but he rides his bike about six miles every day to school. He said it? Oh. Okay. Which is just a huge commitment that I don't believe I would have had in high school, to ride my bike that far to a school.

And I'm very proud of their growth and what I have seen from them since ninth graders to twelfth graders. Carver is the first public Waldorf high school in the nation and a model of what's possible when arts and academics work together to keep students engaged. We are also the only arts and science public focused Waldorf program this Far East. We provide a different kind of learning environment, one that keeps students engaged through the arts, hands on learning, and strong relationships. For many of our students, this is where they reconnect, stay on track, and graduate.

We have the highest graduation rate in SCUSD. Our campus sits on 15 acres right here in Rancho Cordova. I'm running out of time. But for growth, including the potential for a community garden and expanded community events that bring families together and activates shared space, We would need an investment of $250,000 to stabilize essential staffing, including arts instruction, sustain student programs and athletics, leadership, and engagement, and continue to expand our community programs with our garden. In return, Carver is committed to being an active city partner, opening our campus, hosting events, and providing clear updates on the impact we are making with Rancho Cordova youth.

Without this support, we risk losing a school that serves students who need it most. With it, we can continue to grow as a place of opportunity, connection, and pride for this community.

Please wrap up your comments.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Thank you. Thank you. Our

next speaker is Autumn Grishop. Autumn also submitted a public comment to be a I believe it was email. It's been distributed to the city council, placed on the city's website, and printed for the public in a binder in the back of the

council chambers. Hello again. I'm Autumn. I'm here to follow-up on the serious documented security concerns regarding the Flock camera system. I emailed the council last Friday regarding Flock's repeated history of security breaches and lawsuits, and I hope you all took the time to read over the email and review the references.

Council member Little has assured me that Rancho Cordova has ironclad policies in place, but a recent public records request made by a fellow resident confirmed that the city has no map of camera locations and directed the resident to the Sacramento County sheriff because Rancho Cordova subcontracts its policing through them. Council member litter also confirmed in writing that this council does not set its own law enforcement policy. So whose policies are we relying on? Flock has repeatedly demonstrated it cannot secure data. The problem is paying over $1,000,000 to a company that has earned so little of our trust.

There are more secure, less invasive alternatives that the city would own outright rather than renting indefinitely, such as city owned CCT systems, CCTV systems, which would also provide more jobs for the community. While chief Tamayo and council member Litter have validated my concerns as real, their defense rests on a trust Us model, and the evidence does not support that. Since February, Santa Clara County ended its flock contract. A California class action lawsuit alleged illegal data sharing out of state agencies was brought to the courts. In March, Dunwoody, Georgia delayed a flock contract over misused controls, and Modesto Police Department acknowledged improper federal agency connections all contributing to over 30 cities deactivating or canceling the FLOC contracts.

When I raised my concerns, council member Little acknowledged in writing that there are always undiscovered vulnerabilities in the system. I agree. That's why we need an independent audit, not internal assurances from officials who didn't know the system had no camera location map. I'm asking the council to conduct an independent public audit of how Rancho Cordova's data has been accessed and by whom and to suspend the program until those findings are made public. We never consented to being tracked. Thank you for your time.

That's all the public comment that we have for general public comment.

Alright. Let's go on into council's things. But before I do, Joe and the council are aware of what you guys are going through right now, and we are engaged in some some talks to help mitigate some of the stuff that you're going through. Hopefully, we can make you go. I know we don't have a lot of time before the the hammer comes down, but we're gonna do our best.

You're definitely being heard.

Yeah. We hear you. We were we're triple working. Joe, what you got? Feels like we haven't

been here in a while. Nothing the past week, really. Been really busy with work. But two weekends ago, I had a really busy Saturday. I started off with the Rancho Seroptimist annual Live Your Dream Award. One of the recipients was actually a city staffwoman. Oh. So who wants to pursue further education? And she got a nice little check to help her do that. And there are some nice, you know, familiar faces from Rancho all in the room.

So hoping to make that an annual thing. I've done it two years in a row now. It's my mom was in soroptimist for a bit, so it's kind of cool to be able to support what they do. After that, I was in Lincoln Village Park at the city sponsored Mays Freeman Youth Flag Football Camp, a member of the Lincoln Village community, had 85 kids out there running routes, all kinds of stuff like that. And I posted a photo of it, parents were commenting, where was this?

Like, I didn't hear about And so that just tells you the next time they do it, it's going to be even bigger. Then I ended that evening at the second year in a row at the Central Labor Committee's crab feed. I wore my Rancho name badge this time. And some union guy was like, we haven't seen one of those here in a really long time. I was like, well, who? Was it Donald? And he's like, no, light skinned black guy. I'm like, Garrett?

Light skinned black guy. I know why. Don't even use my name anymore. Light skinned.

They remember your face. Must have been a long time ago. But that was great. Two of our school board members were there. A lot of electeds, a lot of, you know, influential people in fact, so it was a jam packed good day.

Awesome. Light spin. Black guy asks cereal pool potty. What's going on?

I don't have anything to report, so I passed my time.

I like that. Speed and fast. Linda, what you got?

She has stuff going on at home that she doesn't wanna talk about. That's a private joke.

It's about chickens. All about chickens. So,

one of the coolest things that we did here at City Hall, a couple of weeks ago, our, first city manager, Ted Gabler, and our, number one city employee, Kurt Haven, came and talked about talked to staff about all of the things that we went through right at the beginning and what it's like to try to organize a city and just reminded everybody what our goals had been and why our goals are not. In some regards, they're different now, but in other regards, they're still the same. We had a pretty routine regional transit meeting. The only thing regional transit wants everybody to know is that the Blue Line is going to have some disruptions because they're now constructing the platforms for the low floor cars on the blue line. I did miss a couple of things because my sister-in-law moved back to Las Vegas, and we had to empty out her apartment over at BDX.

The police department had a really great seminar about mail theft, and I think we were all shocked to learn that the Postal Inspection Service is completely different from the US Post Office, and they don't seem to talk to each other. I think that was quite a shock. The only other oh, I know. But actually, the only other thing that was supposed to happen was the library. But the library couldn't get a quorum, so we didn't have a meeting.

That was very anticlimactic. What I really want to say, though, is to congratulate our Building and Safety Department for their exceptional turnaround with PlanCheck. The average plan review turnaround is just three point eight days, which, believe me, in the world of permitting anything, is an absolute shock. And it's just remarkable that they can get stuff done that quickly. But good for everybody around here who's trying to build something. And they really need to be recognized for that. So thank you, Mark.

Alright. So lots of stuff going on. First off, happy Easter, everybody, in in the rears. He's risen and risen indeed. And Palm Sunday and everything that goes into it to all my Catholics and everyone in between. We had a cap to cap meeting. I'm going to DC to go lobby for power. Literally, we have an AI ecosphere and and robotics center we're trying to build, and that only happens if you have enough power to be able to generate all the stuff. And as we build these things, we need our power generation to get better, faster, quicker, and smaller. And so we wanna be on the cutting edge.

So we had a meeting about that. I'll be going to DC in two weeks. Met with Saint Giovanni. They are looking at ways to reengage the community and be that nonprofit arm that we love. They started the most amazing thing called the food locker. And it gives buying food with dignity for our lower socioeconomic groups and to the point where they even take an account in your community. So we have a huge new, Afghani population that has moved into our city. So they're gonna make some of the food halal. So that makes it better and easier for people of different descents to be able to get the food they need to be able to take care of themselves. What an amazing group that they did, and now they're looking for a new kind of how they're gonna engage.

They floated some amazing ideas, like being the place where people that come over, they don't speak English, being you can go get English classes for, like, Spanish speakers. And I was like, wouldn't that be an amazing ministry to really reach out to community to be? You can't speak English, this church will take you in, start working on your English, and help you to try to find and get a job and reengage in the community. So amazing hearing, about those community members stepping up. Had coffee with the mayor. Micah showed up, and it was interesting. I love the individuals that show up and talking about stuff, and so that's always fun. Went to the Edu cultural event for my Bangladeshi community. It's fun. The food burnt my mouth.

Don't just eat something someone hands to you because it was just it was it was puff rice with jalapeno sauce. And I was like, this is not good. This is there's no milk to cool down my mouth. It's water. I'm like, that's just gonna make it worse. So I'm sweating because I'm gonna take it. You're not gonna embarrass me. I'm gonna eat this food. I'm gonna eat the whole damn thing. In fact, I might have seconds, which I did. That was a mistake. But it's interesting because they've all moved into one area of Anatolia. And there's about 200 in this community, and they're growing. And it's funny because they're a completely different culture than everyone else around there. And then I was like, well, what's the plural from Bangladeshi? And they're like, b a's. And I'm like, nope. Not using that. Nope. No.

That's not how we're calling you. I'm just gonna go Bangladeshis. I feel like that's appropriate. And it was fun, and I got to and I like I like that Rancho Cordova has some eclectic cultures, and I like when they pop their head out we can see them till we really because that's the cool part about Rancho. We are like the melting pot of the region. If you didn't know this, we we actually cure deafness in Rancho Cordova. So there's a group called C Chat. It's an amazing nonprofit. They're having a banquet this weekend. I was happy to personally buy a table because I care about their mission, and they're the only place I know.

They put cochlear implants in, which allow deaf kids to hear for the first time. And that's all based in Rancho Cordova. And it's interesting where they they ended up. They're actually in a building behind Goodwill. Goodwill, which I I'm not super stoked about that. I'd love to, like, bring them out. But they're like another shining star. It's like having them and United Way and all these amazing nonprofits that do real work in the community, and they're based in Rancho. Like I always said, Rancho Cordova loves good partners, and we don't like people that are mean to our community. And we have a giant chip on our shoulder, and we're very protective of our own, extremely protective of our own.

And so I I had some meetings with some mobile pop mobile country home individuals. We have some trailer park homes and stuff, and we care about every one of our individuals because we realize that the only place people can go from a trailer park is the homelessness if you can't live there. And so I'm very cautious because that is the neediest of us. Like, you can't get more, and you wanna make sure they're on things. And so we want people to be good neighbors. That's all I'm gonna say about that. I got to do which is very fun because my first time doing it was the CIEF Library Foundation. I got to give out books. Broke my heart because these families, these kids don't have four books at home. And and I got to talk to the kids about it, and they're like, this is the first time.

And we gave them five books that they chose out different for the boys and the girls. And they all had cool books. And so we brought them up. This lady gave a fun little speech. And then the kids came up, and they got to get books. And they made up stories about the mayor, which I didn't even know I was in charge of. They're like, yes, the mayor. And they're like, you know what the mayor's in charge of? They're like, yeah. The army. I was like, yep. He's the king of ranch. I was like, calm down. Angels. I have a big head, but you don't need to blow it up.

Listen. I'm just trying to give you some books. And so it was God bless the people that work at White Rock and Cordova, Meadows. I mean, lower disadvantaged community members to the class like, a majority of the classrooms are majority Hispanic first generation and Afghani first generation. And they have a program which works flawlessly. The parents show up. They drop off for their kids. The dads, if they go to work, they go to work. The moms stay and go to English classes. And if they don't have work, then the dad stays for English classes.

And so they're trying to treat first generation and not generation immigrants how to speak English so they can just go get a job to be able to help their community out. And they just need a little bit more money for food or a little bit more money for for books. They asked me for a donation. And, of course, you know, you're not gonna say no because Siri did it. And they're like, well, what are you gonna do for a certain? I'm like, well, I'm gonna beat Siri. That's for certain. So amazing group. I can't thank them enough for letting me be a part of that, but that's the kind of good things. Like, Rancho Cordova does the hard work.

I've always said that about us. And we're over there lifting up community that we got put in that got placed in our home and our families, and now we're making them part of us. So we have this huge Afghani populations. If you know, we're at they're at war right now. They haven't talked to their family in four to five months. They have no idea what's going on, yet they're still trying to soldier on and get jobs and get engaged in the community. So nice job to both those principals. Met the activities directors, met the translators, And they're doing God's work, I mean, helping out these kids to read. And they were so excited. They wanted to show me the kids reading the books right after we gave it to them.

So all the kids had all the books open, and they were re and they're super stoked to read. I thought everyone was addicted to iPads. I didn't know we read anymore. But, obviously, these kids are in there, and so it was great. I got to do the Labor Day tree planting. So thank you to Danny Langan from the Cordova Park Rec District. The president, he set this up. And I remember a long time ago, this was one of the first events I ever did as a council member. And they this is the best story I have. I had my little ones with me, and they were little, the ones that are now in college now. They're babies. And they had brought donuts. And so as a dad, I, of course, didn't pay attention, and I let my kids go eat three to five different donuts. No. There's no judgment here.

And so the person turns around, and they give my son a my sons a shovel. And they said, hey. Why don't you go dig holes while you're waiting for us to get stuff started? And then we'll all come out and finish digging the holes, and then we'll talk about the trees. So my boys heard that as, we're full energy. We'll dig all the holes. So they went through without them paying attention and dug every hole out for the whole thing to where there was no holes left to dig for the volunteers. And I was like, sugar. That's what you do. And so you need them.

I'll just sugar them up, but that it's great because every time they add a tree, it adds to our canopy and cools down Rancho Cordova and makes us look more beautiful. So we were in we were over by you, Joe, in your park, and we were and that was fun. So Couldn't make it. You couldn't make it?

Feel guilty when it's in my my neighborhood.

Yeah. I was like, where's they did bring it up. They're like, Joe's not here. And I'm like, oh, man. Last thing last thing is we're we're gonna go to New York. There's a couple of pretty cool businesses that we're gonna try to negotiate into coming to Rancho Cordova. If you didn't know this, we're on a big economic pull, try to bring more businesses in into into Rancho Cordova. So we're gonna meet with a bunch of businesses. And and the name and presentation is when you want something new and a better business, you need to move into our city. And we already have a bad reputation right now in California.

But us showing up in these places is turning people into that they want to reinvest in Rancho Gold. Because a lot of the hedge funds are based in California, and they're saying that if you want the money or series a and b money that you need to move to someplace in in California and for for the best looking place to be is Rancho Cordoba, the only city in Northern California that isn't in the red. So just putting that out. Nice job, Linda. Building the structure of the base. He does it as the queen of Rancho. Last. Micah, you got?

Thank you, mayor. I did appreciate the surprise stop in at your coffee or with the mayor to to learn a little bit about what you're saying and keep an eye on it. So I appreciated that time.

I'm glad you weren't checking

on me. Was checking on

sure I didn't say anything crazy. No. I like wants to check.

Pretty quick. So it was good.

That's good.

And then really quick, just a couple of items. You did mention the preparation for the regional advocacy trip to Cap to Cap that a few of us are going on. We will be not having our second meeting in April, so that's more of a public announcement that there is no second meeting in April for for the room. Some of us will make it be making that advocacy trip. And then I did appreciate the vice mayor mentioning the bringing in Ted Gabler, the original city manager and employee number one, or the first hired ever by the city, Kurt Haven, and really appreciated the conversation around being a start up city and how do we keep that innovation and culture alive in what we do and keep the bureaucracy, you know, behind us and minimal and keeping us nimble and quick.

So that was a fun conversation with the both of them since I was here with them early on in cityhood. So then last but not least, we are having a groundbreaking this week for Mayfair Veterans Village Phase 4. So really excited about phase four kicking off and moving forward. And we'll quickly move on to phase five and and and try to create a place for those who need it over that May Their Veterans Village. So Yep. That's it.

Thank you.

I didn't know we're doing stuff where we advance forward. So if you really want that, I can start reading my calendar. Alright. Moving on. This is consent calendar items. Consent calendar items are deemed routine and noncontroversial by staff unless a member of the council wishes to pull an individual item. For consideration, all items may be approved in one motion. On this, staff is requesting that we pull sixteen point one three from the calendar because it's not ready yet. Besides that, is there anything else anyone would like to pull?

I have a question on sixteen point six and a comment on sixteen point seven.

Please. You wanna pull you wanna pull sixteen point six?

Why don't we just go through it, and then you can make the motion

Okay.

At one time. So so my question on on sixteen point six is this has been this change is requested because of the volume of projects that have increased. Is this are we doing it every year? We start the projects at the start of the year, or is this because of inflation that the price has increased?

I see our economic development director walk in the room. So I will give a shot at that question and let her maybe fill in the gaps for us. What this is related to, the number of applications we're receiving for different incentive programs. So I think we have seen a lot of work from mister Chuck Wolf and and the consultancy that they provide. And so I think that's what related to the additional work and expanding that work that they're doing. So I'll let Amanda maybe provide a little more context to that.

Sixteen 0.6, Amanda.

Hello, mister mayor, members of the council. Amanda Norton, economic development director. Yes. So sixteen 0.6, Chuck Wolfe is a, the gentleman who does all the underwriters for all of our incentives and special projects. So when we first did this contract, we had it over five years, and with a lot of our work that we've been doing this year with quite a few incentives we had working forward, it required additional hours of him. So that's why we've increased the dollar a month to go over the $100,000 for rather than keeping it under that per year. The amount of straight contract stays the same though.

So now if we have the mayor doing a trip to New York getting more opportunities for our better looking city, are you going to request more next year, hypothetically, the way it looks like?

So we are still keeping the contract to the dollar amount for the total of the five years. Uh-huh. But the $100,000 allows us to go over that. So at this time, we don't I can't comment on what we bring in. Hopefully, we do.

Yeah.

But that will be decided at that time.

The goal is yes. The answer is yes.

So the answer is, like, let Chuck Wolf know that we're mister mayor is going to be bringing in more proposals, but make sure that it's within our 500 k budget. So Dang it.

Why are you shrinking my budget?

No. I'm not shrinking your budget. They're gonna be prepared.

All right. 16.7.

16.7. The question is, we have a lot of arts projects that are happening. And there's this whole CPG LLC that's looking into it. I was wondering if the city website has a page dedicated to artwork that we can showcase on this.

So not that I'm aware of. Is there a single repository or a public art page on the city's web page? But I can talk with our communications department and make sure that we have a central repository for that.

Yes. I would like to request one so then we can showcase what we're doing with all this that we're spending, and then we have an output.

And just for specificity, are you looking for a single web page dedicated to public art or to the arts in general?

To the arts that we're sponsoring.

Okay. Great. So specifically, the cultural planning group and MIG are being brought on for an update to our art strategic plan. And the reason that I'm asking is because as part of this planning process, we're going be doing community outreach. So I wanna make sure that as a part of this process that we have a what you're asking for is a dedicated web page, not for the update.

Go ahead.

Okay. I'm just asking for a clarification. Are you asking for a specific web page for the update to the arts strategic plan process or a web page for all that we're doing to support arts and culture for the city?

Number two. Yeah. Okay. I want all the pictures in one spot.

I think, yeah, we we can hear you. And as as we work on the actually, our strategic plan that could come out of part of the process too, what do we how we display and what are all work that we're doing at. So that's a good idea. And we

can do a chat GPT.

Yeah. Good idea. And a

lovely yeah. Good. You got it? Alright. Excellent. Thanks. So can you move can you okay. Do I have a motion?

Okay.

Is there any public comment?

Oh, is there any public comment?

There is no public comment.

Yeah. I already knew that, but I had to ask. Alright.

Okay. Hearing that, I'll move approval of items 16.1 through 16.12.

I think 16.1 is no longer on the menu.

Are we take

13.

3. No. 13 is the last one.

No. It was 13.

Sixteen thirteen. Yeah. The one at

the end.

Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. Do I have a second?

Other way around. Second.

Roll call.

Council member Pulapati. Yes. Council member Little. Yes. Council member Sander is absent. Vice mayor Budge. Yes. Mayor Gatewood.

Yes. Alright. Sixteen point 01/03. We wanna move to a date uncertain.

Correct. Okay.

Okay. While we're coming up with nineteen point one, did you announce the subject yet?

Do you No. I gotta do the We're

We need a motion to move that we Yeah. That we move, sixteen point thirteen to a date uncertain.

Do I need to do public comment?

We should ask for public comment.

Any public comment?

I do

not have any public comment

for 1633. Media.

Makes my soul

hurt. Do I have a roll, do I have a second?

Second.

Roll call.

Council member Polipotti. Yes. Council member Little.

Yes.

Council member Sander is absent. Vice mayor Budge. Yes. Mayor Gatewood. Yes. Thank you. Alright. Motion passes.

We have no consent hearing items. We have no public hearing. We have one or two. Okay. We have two cat regular calendar items. Can I go ahead and have the subject, please?

Fiscal year 2026 through 2027, community enhancement and investment fund grant applications.

Randy.

So can I request Randy K? Stevens to just go over what's new versus an overview of everything? Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening, mayor and council. I am happy to keep this brief and short. All of the information is contained in your staff report and your presentation this evening. We received 78 applications. We provided excellent and a lot of customer service to help people understand what was going on through the application process, especially those who are brand new. We are here tonight to also just explain a little bit about how the meeting on April 28 will be working. Right. I think you all are familiar with the categories that we typically see our applications brought to you in. Three different buckets arts, culture, history, entertainment, sports, community assistance, youth programs and services.

And then within each of those categories, we'll have, additional line items. As far as the funding goes, this is the breakdown of what you'll see coming to you on April 28. The community grant budget is $3,370,000 We currently have commitments from the council, at about 2,400,000.0, which will leave you with roughly a million dollars or generally about the same amount we see annually for your decision making, when applications come to you. And as far as where we are in the timeline, if you take a look at the quick, spot with the red star, we're here in April and we are planning to be here April 28 and if we get everything done, you won't have to see us again until the budget adoption. However, if we need to come back, we'll do so in May.

And then we anticipate the budget for the community grant program being adopted in either the first or second meeting in June.

Alright.

I have a quick question, miss Stevens. What's ACHS? Yeah. That's one

eighty k. So sorry.

Yeah. We officially call it, by acronym because it's easier to say, arts, culture, history, entertainment, and sports. And this type of sports would generally mean more all community oriented. Under youth programs and services, we also do have a lot of athletic programs housed there.

Thank you.

Thank you for asking.

Alright. Any public comment?

Yes. Do. Alright. So we'll start with Amy Wolf and Randy Smith. Are you coming together? Do you each want three minutes?

I'll come together.

Okay.

You'll have three minutes.

Thank you. Mhmm. Hi there. My name is Amy Wolf. I am the director of training at Four Paws to Freedom and a service dog graduate.

I am retired emergency fire and medical dispatcher, which also served Rancho Cordova community for twenty years. We are a nonprofit that trains or assists veterans and first responders with mental health disabilities to train their own service dog. We also assist local police departments, fire departments with therapy canines to help their staff with critical incident debriefings, going out and providing education. We currently have nine dogs out in our community. So we are hopeful.

We offer our program at no cost to our veterans and first responders for their service dogs. And our community, as far as our police, fire, schools, and nursing facilities, they have very limited budget. So we are hopeful that we're able to continue to offer our programs at very limited cost for their agencies and expand into going and providing a medical emergency fund for our students and their canines, and help to support the agency's canines while they're working as well. So thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you for letting us meet everybody.

The additional public comment that we had for this item was from Rodney Gangste. That was submitted via email. It's been distributed to the city council, placed on the city's website, and printed for the public in a binder in the back of the council chambers.

Alright. Excellent. Moving on to 90 Padu. Thank you, Randy. We are going to Stacy, can you go read subjects?

Yes.

Albert, get on up here.

A resolution approving the Rancho Cordova active transportation plan to improve walking, biking, and rolling in Rancho Cordova?

I didn't know this, but the, Bangladeshi community says we have one of the best areas, and they wanna know when you're gonna make it better. So good job, guys. Whole community thought it was awesome.

Staff report. Hit it. Good evening, mayor and council members. Good evening, mayor and council members. Albert Stricker with the public works department. And Rancho Cordova has amongst the finest amenities in the entire region. And our transportation network, especially our active transportation network, are is an important part of accessing those amenities, promoting economic development, and the high quality of life that we enjoy in Rancho Cordova. And Drew is going to tell us more.

Thank you, Albert. My name is Drew Hart. I'm a transportation planner in our public works department. And tonight is about celebrating a milestone for the active transportation plan as we culminate the the the finish line, of of getting of finalizing our active transportation plan. So tonight, I will just introduce you all to our approach very briefly, jump to the plan recommendations, including how we're building on a strong foundation of of one of the best places in the region, creating a clear vision on how to get even better, like you mentioned, mayor, and how to continue, to invest in our community.

And then, ultimately, we'll be looking for a motion from the city council to approve the active transportation plan. The plan updates two different documents, the pedestrian master plan from 2011 and the bicycle master plan from 2016. Both of these documents served us very well and gave us the vision and the foresight to plan our infrastructure and investments to improve walking, biking, and rolling in Rancho Cordova. And this updates both of those documents and brings them into one. And this gets beyond just improving people that walk and bike in those modes of transportation, but it's how people get, especially youth, get to school and get people get to jobs and people get to light rail.

It really creates a strong and sustainable community that is robust. The the active transportation plan was largely funded from a grant from Caltrans. And then throughout the project, we had tremendous help from, some of our project partners. And like the mayor said, Rancho Cordova loves our partners. And not to disparage any of these partners that we have up on the screen here, but the best community partner throughout this project was the community.

They really showed up and gave us a lot of great input throughout the entire process the last two years. So whether it was a idea or a comment on a sticky note and put on one of our boards at a Good Neighbor Day event or whether it was taking a community survey online, whether it was showing up to one of our workshops or putting a sticky vote a sticker voting for their preference, we really appreciate all the community feedback. And we heard a lot of themes, much more that I can fit onto one slide. But the number one theme that we heard throughout the process was the desire to have greater separation from traffic. So whether you're walking on your feet, whether you're riding a bike, or whether you're rolling in a chair, the desire to separate from moving from from vehicle traffic was was number one.

The the recommend the pro plan recommends policies, programs, and projects. I'll get to projects in just a moment, but I wanted to touch on policies and programs. There are dozens of action items recommended in this plan spanning 40 different area topics. I'm not gonna share all of them tonight, but I wanted to highlight a few. We've had because we've had such great community input, we want to harness that great community voice into more formal advocacy groups that they can provide city staff and and leadership feedback.

Also, we wanna do a better job of data collection to make sure that we're having the impacts that we're hoping to have. We heard a lot about bike parking and the need for there to be a safe and secure place to lock your bike once you get to your destination. Because if not, the next time that that person tries goes to run that errand, they're gonna grab the car keys instead of of grabbing their bike. And wayfinding, we heard lots about the need to for to improve our wayfinding to help people navigate the trails that we have. We certainly heard a lot about emerging technologies, especially the need to educate the community on ebikes and e scooters.

For the projects, the plan and I there's no expectation that the map that you'll be able to digest the map right here in the next twenty seconds. But I just wanted to show there is a wide cross section throughout the entire city of identified projects. And these are just the top tier priority projects, not all of them. And they span different types of improvements from very minor interventions, like striping a crosswalk in paint, to larger investments of under crossings or over crossings. And there are also 22 streets where we've identified key, sidewalk gap fill projects.

On the bikeway side of the equation, likewise, there's different types of bikeways. Like, there are different types of crossings for pedestrians. And, the four main types of bikeways include shared use paths or bike trails, bike lanes shown in there in yellow where it's a stripe on on the side of the street. When there's a vertical barrier of some kind, a curb, a planter box, a plastic posts. We call those separated bikeways shown in purple, and the bike routes are where those are quiet, calm neighborhood streets.

And there's not a need to separate bikes from vehicles because the speeds and volumes are low enough. All in all, this is an ambitious plan, and we've identified rough cost estimates. This this plan is not fiscally constrained. It captures everything that we heard from the community. And but it does the cost estimates does help us as we program these projects into our capital improvement program as and also as we apply for grants and working with the developers.

About two months ago, we had a community our our O Works session here with city council. And one of the requests was, how are we doing compared to our peer cities? And so I wanted to report back on that. Looking at the raw numbers of total miles of bikeways throughout Rancho Cordova versus other cities, we're right in the middle of the pack. But as you know, these agencies vary very they they differ quite quite a bit from this different sizes.

So we wanted to normalize this data to something that more provided an apples to apples comparison. So when normalizing the data to number of road miles, city of Rancho Cordova leads the pack.

That's right.

Wow. Sorry.

We're number one. We are number one.

Normalized the numbers that came out and showed us as number one? It's amazing.

We yes.

Check's in the mail. Did you give you another bonus yet?

So what this means is that for every 10 miles of roadway that we build, we're building five miles of bikeways. For every 10 miles of roadway the city of Sacramento builds, they're building three miles of bikeways. In Folsom, four miles, and so on and so on. The city of Rancho Cordova really does have a great network already of bike trails, sidewalks, crosswalks, but all all all bikeway types, and active transportation infrastructure. This is cause to celebrate, but there are, this plan also identifies ways that we can reach higher heights. All of this is available in an interactive, user friendly story

Sorry. Sorry. True. Yes. Question. Was is this the proposal, or is this existing?

This is just existing. Okay. This is where we sit today. Awesome. Great question.

Thank you.

So we're all yes. Projecting into the future, we want to continue to keep that competitive edge. All this is available on our story in a story map, which means an interactive, user friendly plan that is slightly different than a typical PDF document of 400 pages. But don't worry. We have those as well.

The appendices and the entire plan are all available on our city's website, cityrentrocordova.org/walkbikeroll. And that is also the hub for all things active transportation. So as we get closer to May, there's a lot of May's bike month celebrations. All of that will be in, on this website as well. So city council tonight, it is a celebration of two years of hard work and 2,700 touch points with the community.

And I hope that the takeaways tonight are that we're building on an existing strong foundation, where we're a leader, and we wanna continue to stay a leader and keep that competitive edge and reach new heights. We have a clear vision moving forward, and we have room to grow. Despite being a leader, we have room to grow, and the community let us know that, particularly in safety and comfort, there are ways that we can improve. And this plan is a very powerful tool for applying for grants and bringing in more outside dollars to make these improvements in Rancho Cordova. And investing in our community, this is more than just an infrastructure plan.

This truly is an economic driver where people can get to the places of work, places of education and recreation, and developing a strong and sustainable community where businesses and people want to locate and to stay. So the recommendation tonight is to pass a resolution adopting or approving the active transportation plan to improve walking, biking, and rolling in Rancho Cordova.

Thank you very much. Stacy, do we have any public comment?

The public comment that we received was received via email from two individuals. The first one is Arlette Hoddle, and the second is Deborah Banks.

Alright. Guys, do you have any questions?

Or Yeah. I I have a a Linda, please. Just a a compliment to begin with.

No. Don't don't get their

heads big now. Now. Now. Just calm No.

They're continuing a tradition, which is really important. The very first transportation plan we had was also not fiscally constrained. And coming from county government, it was an absolute delight to have the Public Works Department simply put down on paper everything they thought we'd need without saying which we could afford. Just this is our goal. This is what we'd like to do.

And so when you tell me it's not fiscally constrained, then, like I said, you need to be congratulated again. Just a comment in terms of how we separate pedestrians from traffic. In Capitol Village, we have all those nice tree lawns between the sidewalk and the back of curb. What I have discovered is that the tree lawns are hazardous. They are very difficult to walk across.

And after time, it's not like they develop gopher holes, but they definitely develop pits and valleys. And it's beautiful to look at. It absolutely does the job. But they're very difficult. And it's almost as though in front of everybody's sidewalk, there should be a little extension of the sidewalk to get you from your front door down to a car, the Uber, whatever might be waiting down on the street. You know? So just a thought.

Alright. Thank you. Guys, anything else?

Just a little anecdote. I love the shared use bike pass as a government defense attorney because California law calls shared use bike pass trails. So even though it's improved, even though it's asphalted, cemented, we're not that we want people getting hurt on our bike pass. If they do, we're not liable and see that every day in work. It's a fun legal fact not a lot of people know in California. We're one of two states, I think, that has a law like that. So build more of them.

That's from our lawyer. All right. So let's go ahead and do I have a motion to move forward?

Move approval of the active transportation plan.

Do I have a second? Second. Do I have roll call, please?

Council member Polipotti? Yes. Council member Little?

Yes.

Council member Sander is absent. Vice mayor Budge? Yes. Mayor Gatewood?

Yep. Alright. Number 20, is there any future agenda items, guys? Seeing none.

Yes. Yes. I would like all meetings to be this fast and quick.

Can we put that as a 10 item?

And and and for other council members to follow lead on my council reports.

Listen. I can't do that. I this is so tiring.

Actually, mayor to follow lead on my council report.

Me. Council members can do Alright. Secondly, I before I forgot, thank you to the San Juan Soccer Club for throwing a free recreational soccer camp. Everyone's invited. It's this weekend. I know it was late from the sixth to the eighth, and they're bringing some cool people in. They're feeding them, and they're teaching them how to do soccer even better in our community. And I love when nonprofits get more engaged and give services that you couldn't get in other cities. Lastly, we were able to complete all these upcoming agendized items in closed session during our 4PM special meeting. Therefore, there won't be the need this need for the next closed session. Is there any public comment on these items before we adjourn?

There is not.

Excellent. I'm going can I I have one more thing? Ask the city attorney to report out from closed session.

We provided the report at the beginning of the meeting. No need for report out.

Excellent. Before I adjourn, see Linda wants to be adjourned.

Yeah. Let's just thank, everybody from George Washington Carver for coming in

and Thank you, guys.

Sticking it out through the meeting.

We appreciate you.

I told them they could go. I texted them and said, no need. We're not gonna be offended.

Oh, we appreciate the we appreciate meeting you all.

And I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn the meeting.