City Council - Regular Meeting

So we're gonna go ahead and start the meeting in about five minutes. We actually did have our roadway assist vehicle, the one that scans the roads. Was supposed to a be few

minutes ago, but it showed up a

few minutes late. So we're gonna do a quick five minute break so we can go out and take a look at it, and we'll we'll reconvene in about five to ten minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Everyone's welcome to join us, but we will go ahead and get started just a few minutes late today. All right. Well, thank you, everybody. Appreciate that. We got to go out and look at our machine that's out there checking our roadways and seeing the condition that they're in so we can better, make sure those roadways are are safe and, prepared for our community.

So, we appreciate you letting us take that little break. We're gonna go ahead and call this work session to order, and we will start off with public comments. Citizens are now invited to comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the Visalia City Council and items listed on the closed session agenda. The council ask that you keep your comments concise and positive. Creative criticism presented with appropriate courtesy is welcome. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes, and a timer will notify you when your time's expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. Anyone wishing to speak at this time, please come forward to the podium over here. Alright. And seeing no one running up there, we're gonna go ahead and start our our work session with item number one, which is vacancies, recruitment, and retention

Council Members. I'm Amy Powell, the Human Resources Manager with the City, and presenting with me today is Rachel Archer, Management Analyst in Human Resources and Risk. Today, we will be presenting on Assembly Bill two thousand five sixty one. As you may recall from last year's presentation, AB 2,561 requires public agencies to present during a public hearing on job vacancies, recruitment, and retention efforts prior adoption of the annual budget. This law was enacted to address widespread public sector staffing shortages, to improve transparency for governing boards, employees, and the public, and to encourage agencies to evaluate their recruitment and retention efforts.

Included in this law is that bargaining units can come and make a presentation during this meeting. We did reach out to all five of our represented bargaining units and none chose to do so today.

So the data contained in this report was compiled as of February 28. This slide shows the status of our city workforce as of that date. We have seven twenty three budgeted positions, six seventy eight are filled as of that date, and as of February 28, we had 45 vacancies. So this is a citywide vacancy rate of 6.2%. This reflects the health of the city workforce and the efficacy of our recruitment and retention efforts.

This chart breaks down vacancies by bargaining unit. We are pleased to report that none of the vacancy rates within the city's five bargaining units met or exceeded the 20% vacancy rate threshold. Of the 45 positions that were vacant as February 28, six have been filled. Four are in various stages of the background process. 13 of those positions have had names certified over to the department for interviews, and we expect to fill those soon.

Five are difficult to fill due to various reasons. Some of these are like the professional, land surveyor, the wastewater treatment plant superintendent, and senior communications operator positions. Communication operator positions are challenging to fill, and this isn't just a city Visalia issue. This is a nationwide issue. There are currently seven vacant communications operator positions within group m, and, we are pleased to report we recently conducted another round of testing, and this produced our largest list of candidates in a long time.

That candidate group is now moving through the interview and testing process. So this page right here, this is a visual breakdown of that data. On this chart, you can see the number of budgeted positions by bargaining unit in the dark blue. The light blue shows the amount of vacancies by bargaining group, and the green line shows the vacancy rate. So at the top of the chart, you see that 20% vacancy rate threshold that triggers further reporting and would show to us that there is a possible issue.

As you can see, we are far below that rate, reflecting the health of our staffing levels within each bargaining unit. So this slide right here is an overview of our recruitment process. Hiring the right people and filling critical vacancies is fundamental to maintaining the level of service our community expects and deserves. So step one, you'll see on the top right, is vacancy and requisition. So departments will identify a vacancy and submit a requisition to initiate the recruitment.

Step two is job posting and advertisement. The position is posted and advertised to attract a qualified and diverse applicant pool. Step three, application screening and examination process. HR screens applications for minimum qualifications and administers any exams if required. Step four is eligible list and certification. Qualified candidates are placed on an eligible list and certified to the hiring department. Step five is department interviews, selection, and appointment. The department conducts the interviews, selects the top candidate, and makes an appointment. And then we have onboarding and probationary period begins. So the new hire is onboarded and begins their probationary period.

So we aim to complete this process within ninety days, and we are often, very often, successful in doing so. The bottom of this slide details our recruitment activity within the six month time frame from September 1 to February 28. We had 34 recruitments. We received and reviewed seventeen ninety two applications, and this was just for full time. So if you include full time and hourly, we received and reviewed 2,593 applications within the six month time period.

We hired 32 full time new hires, and then we had 14 promotions. So this details our recruitment and retention efforts. These strategies represent the core elements of our ongoing approach to recruiting and retaining a strong workforce. These programs help us remain competitive in today's labor market. So we maintain competitive compensation and offer longevity pay to support employee stability and acknowledge long term commitment to the city.

Alternative work schedules remain an important tool for supporting work life balance and helping us attract candidates. Our overall benefits package along with access to the city's wellness clinic is a valuable benefit we provide to city employees. We also rely on programs like our employee referral program and education reimbursement, which reinforce professional development and help us retain experienced staff. As part of our learning and development programs, we also provide quarterly manager and supervisor trainings, which help strengthen leadership skills, promote consistency across teams, and support employee engagement and retention. So together, these efforts remain effective in strengthening our workforce and supporting organizational continuity.

That concludes our presentation for today. We'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. And then the next steps would be to open the public hearing. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Any questions or comments? Thank you for the report. Okay, let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come forward.

And

seeing no one, I will entertain a motion or any additional comment or questions.

I move to accept the vacancies of recruitment and retention effort report as required by Assembly Bill 2,561.

I second.

We have first and second. All those in favor, please vote. And I'm not seeing anything pop up on my screen. I vote aye. Item passes four zero with council member Nelson absent. Thank you very much. We appreciate the report. Alright, next we're gonna go on to item number two which is fiscal year twenty five, twenty twenty six mid year review.

Good evening, council. My name is Renee Nagel, I'm the Finance and Technology Director for the City of Visalia. With me, I have Nicole Ritchie, who's our Finance Manager, and then I have Amy Swearingen, who's our Financial Analyst with the City of Visalia. Today, we're here to do a couple presentations. And so this first one is the fiscal year 'twenty five-'twenty six, which is the fiscal year that we're currently in, and it will be ending on June 30.

So today we're going over the mid year financial report. So here's how our budget cycle works. So we adopted the two year budget for fiscal year 'twenty four-'twenty five and 'twenty five-'twenty six in June 2024. And so at that time, fiscal year 'twenty four-'twenty five, we projected a surplus of 4,500,000. And then for fiscal year 'twenty five-'twenty six, we projected a surplus of 4,800,000.

So then what we do is we come back several times throughout that two year budget. And so the first budget review, which was for fiscal year 'twenty four-'twenty five, which was also known as a mid year report, we presented it in April 2025. We reported at that time the revenues and expenditure projections for both budget years. Then we come back for a second budget review, which includes fiscal year 'twenty five-'twenty six, which is also known as the mid cycle in June 2025. That report reported the revenues and expenditure changes for the midyear, which is for the year we were starting fiscal year 'twenty five, 'twenty six.

And then it requested we addressed any revisions that were for fiscal year 'twenty five, 'twenty six as well. So today we're here for the last piece of that two year budget, which closes out that two years. As you know, we've been presenting and we've already done we're in the middle of the next two year budget. And so today, we're going over the final midyear numbers for fiscal year 'twenty five, 'twenty six. And during off years, we only present the general fund.

It is our single largest fund. And that's because staff is busy working with departments to prepare the entire city budget, six year capital plan. And so we only focus on operations in the general fund when we come for the report. We do review all funds, and we've done that earlier in the fall in this kind of winter months. And so we're only, again, bringing the general fund.

And at this presentation, we reproject general fund revenues and expenditures for this fiscal year. So the midyear report, for those that do not know what it is, it projects the revenues and expenditures for the current year for all operating funds, only the general fund as mentioned. And then, of course, we come back with five months of actuals. We use history. And then we project out based off of contract changes of what we think our expenditures will be for the year, and then what our revenues as we continue to monitor what revenues we've collected, some of the reports that we're receiving as well.

And then we provide updates to counsel on current economic conditions in this report. And this report also allows for adjustments to be made based on current trends, additional appropriations if needed. And then we use this report as well. We build upon these numbers budget and then, of course, to look out into the next four years as well. So this report is to provide transparency of Visalia's finances.

So this slide talks about the general fund revenues for this fiscal year. We're projected to be up from budget by $9,500,000 Majority of these increases are sales tax, property tax, and all other revenues. And most of this increase is due to when we adopted the budget. We were very conservative with our numbers. And that's mainly due to the economic conditions when we were adopting the budget.

And I mean, we're typically conservative. And allows us as well that if there's any changes, you don't have to make a dramatic decision. You can sit there and say, Okay, what is it that we need to do to balance a budget? And we've been fortunate over the last several years to have continued growth in Vicilia, and that's what we're seeing today. And that's what these numbers show as well is that continued growth.

And again, in sales tax and property tax and in all those other categories to have an increase of almost 9,500,000. Sales tax is our single largest revenue in the general fund. And so we typically like to focus and monitor it a lot. Plus, it's your number one change indicator if there's an economic issue. Throughout California, there's lots of cities that are seeing some issues with their sales tax.

We're seeing lots of negatives throughout California. Luckily for Visalia, we have strong sales tax today as we sit here. Our sales tax is up from budget by $2,300,000 which is a 5%. We're up from last year's actuals of $1,400,000 which is the 3%. And most of this is due to our diverse economic structure here in Visalia, which includes a lot of business to business transactions that occur in our industrial park.

Our sales tax categories are wide range, and some cities don't have that luxury to be able to do that. And I think that helps balance Visalia as well. In addition, we've continued to have lots of growth in our residential and commercial development, which has allowed us to continue to increase our sales tax base and continue to draw additional taxable activities from our neighboring cities, which would occur in their towns if they had those types of businesses that we've got today. So that helps us a lot here in Visalia. For our expenditures, our operating expenditures were down by three point or excuse me, we're up from budget by 3,900,000.

That increase, we knew once the budget was adopted that we were going to be over the budget. And that's because the MOU on the negotiated changes in the contracts occurred after the budget was prepared. So when we went in for adoption, we knew that those numbers weren't reflected in the adopted budget, but we just didn't have the time to go in and redo all the budgets for all the divisions. So the budget was adopted knowing that it did not include any of the current MOU agreements that we had. So then when you go down to the operating expense, which allocation minus your reimbursements, that's basically us allocating out some of our internal service divisions, which would be finance, HR, city manager, those type of staffs.

It spreads it out amongst all the divisions and including to your enterprise funds. So those costs are up as well by 1.7. And again, that's due to the higher wages. And then we also have transfers out. It's up by $3,200,000 which brings us our total expenditures up by $5,400,000 compared to budget.

Staff is recommending a total of 2,700,000 to be appropriated for these four projects this year. So if you put all of it together with what Renee said, we have 112,000,000 for operating revenues.

Hey, quick Go to the back slide before that. The police, bear cat ballistics window, I get for not replacing it, but we were on a support call in Porterville, believe. Correct? Right? So, we were offering support, did we get any kind of insurance that pays for this, or why are we paying for this?

Why don't we have please come up and talk on this project a little bit?

I'm okay with replacing it. Just a quick question.

Jason Sells, our police chief. So on yes. It was it was damaged in a tactical operation. One of the windows was damaged. The county has offered to reimburse the city for that. That's about a cost of $3,000, but it was determined. This bear cat's 18 years old, and it's and what we learned from this incident as well is integrity of the existing glass in the remainder of the vehicle needs to be replaced immediately. And there's no insurance to cover that.

Okay. So for our twenty five-twenty six general fund projections, we have operating revenues totaling expenditures are $107,500,000 leaving us with a surplus of $4,500,000 If you subtract our recommended capital of 2.7, that leaves us with a surplus of 1.8. Our current general fund surplus and emergency reserves policy, if we are to keep our current reserve policy, which is 30% of operating expenditures, we would need a total of 27,400,000. So currently, we have a balance of 24,000,000. We would need to transfer an additional 2.8 out of our general fund surplus that we're projecting, and then we're estimating interest earnings to be about 600,000.

So that would get us to the total and keep us at the 30%. So this chart right here, we've seen a lot, but it shows the importance of keeping our emergency reserves up at the level that we have it. We just increased it a couple years ago to 30, but we used to be at 25%. So the green are all of our years that we maintained that 25%. The yellow is our new policy of 30% that we were able to maintain.

You can see during the recession, we used up our 25% in a matter of about five years. So it's really important that we keep this and council's done a great job of us keeping that there. With our current general fund policy, we are to deposit the remainder into the Civic Center Public Safety Currently, we have 11,600,000 available. So with the remaining 1.8, that gives us a projected fund balance of 13,400,000. This policy can be changed at any time. Council would like.

So as mentioned earlier, we'll present and talk about a five year preliminary forecast. So one of those years is the current year we're in, and then that leaves us with four years, which is fiscal year 'twenty six-'twenty seven through fiscal year 'twenty nine-'thirty. So this is our assumptions that we've made in this preliminary forecast. As mentioned earlier, we're always conservative, especially right now with the economic uncertainty. We feel it's really important to be conservative with our revenues.

And then with our expenditures, we try to look at contracts. We try to predict what some of our expenditures have been doing, increases in fuel prices. All of those continue to rise on us. Technology, I've talked about technology over the years and how those increases continue. We've gotten word on those as well that they are really rising much higher anticipated.

And so we're going to continue to increase those as we continue to look into the future. And we always assume as if we're we always assume we're fully staffed, and even though we know we have vacancies. And we do that because if revenues don't come in as projected or expenditures come in higher, we know there's always changes throughout the year, and that gives you additional funds, almost like a cushion, to be able to fund things like we just talked about. Those four projects that have come up, there's always going to be projects that come up once you've adopted a two year budget, even if you're doing a one year budget. Things come up that are not anticipated or a well goes out in the park.

So we've always been able to use those types of funds to fund those and never sit there and say, well, where am I going to cut? Am I going to not replace this vehicle? Am I not going to buy this technology today Because we need to replace the well at the park, we can't lose our infrastructure that we currently have. So we've always budgeted as if we're fully staffed. So when you put those assumptions together, again, this is our forecast.

We're going to be refining this every time we come to you. And we're going to be coming back to you with the operating budget for the month of June. And so we're going to be, over the next several weeks, refining these numbers even more and continue to dive into them as we get more data into our system. We've gotten a lot of our payments already in, and we're constantly combing through those revenues and looking at it so we can try to be as accurate as possible. This number does differ from what you got in your staff report.

It actually looks a little better. And that's because, again, as we come through numbers, there's a lot of numbers we're putting together. We have to go through each division, and each division has a lot of operating line items. And in there, we had found that with our forecast that we presented in the staff report, it was missing. It actually still had debt payments in there, and we're going to be retiring some of our debt. And so this forecast removes some of those debt. So that's why you see a larger surplus at the projection also is very it's conservative, but yet optimistic as well, too. It assumes no recession. It assumes continued growth in revenues. Again, no vacancies.

It's fully staffed. No additional PERS increases. We know there's some legislation right now proposing some changes in PERS, so it's not reflected in here. No change in wages because those are all negotiated. And then of course, no new state or federal mandates.

One question.

Is the refined definite number, is that something you get in June then where we know the final surplus amount?

Oh, no. So we don't really know our final number until we actually have everything in, which our expenditures, we don't get completely in until September, October, right? Because we have a lot of behind the scenes that we do, all our journal entries. For revenues, our sales tax, we get a end of year cleanup. We don't usually get that until the August.

So even for revenues, we have lots of things that we're still unaware of, even though we've started a new fiscal year. That's what takes so long to bring you the financial statements, is there's a lot of numbers still moving and changing through the months of September, October, and November. So tonight's recommendation recommends to appropriate $2,700,000 in the additional capital projects. Those were those four that we've shown on the slide. And then if counsel desires to amend the surplus policy.

Are there any questions for staff?

Thank you. Councilor Morsodo, do have any questions?

No, no questions. Thank you for the report. Happy to see that we have a surplus another year. So definitely thank you to the taxpayers of the whole area for that. The only thing that I would request is to make a one time amendment on the surplus policy to provide a small amount, 1%, maybe 2% of those fundings to create a grant for the arts here in Mesoia.

It doesn't have to be something that's reoccurring. It'd be a one time with the surplus. I'd also like to see the youth grant that we already have in place to be increased to 100,000 if possible. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Pachinkin, any questions or comments?

Yeah. Great report. This is my eighth year on council. Ever since my first one, I think we've been saying there's a recession coming. So, like the conservative approach that we've been taking here.

I'm super excited we have a surplus. I know this council has been talking about ways that we could help our community, maybe fund some more homeless prevention programs, or maybe have our hope team out there more, a way that we could fund that. Those are kind of things that I would like to see at this budget with the surplus funds. Because that's the number one complaint in our community is the amount of homeless people in our community and what their effects on the community. Think Visalia has been doing a great job providing the navigation center in so many different things.

But at a certain point, I think our residents are getting pretty fed up with it. And so I would like to see some of these funds move towards the projects that we have we're working on as a council.

Vice Mayor Wynne, any questions or comments?

Yeah, I just wanna clarify. The 30% reserves, those are called our emergency reserves, right? So if we had some big catastrophic, that's

where

we would pull it from, correct? Correct, okay. And if we put the 1.8 in civic center fund, that can be pulled out as well, correct? Correct. And do you and is it your crystal ball vision that this sales tax a

And think

that's very important important conservative. There's multiple reasons, not just the revenues, but also on expenditures. We assume that departments are going to spend what we've projected for them to spend. And there's lots of reasons. Sometimes things get delayed. There could be a vacancy that causes them not to get to that. Or it's more difficult to do than anticipated, there's research that needs to be done. So a lot of times, the expenditures will be less than what we projected, and then of course our revenues as well. We just had a meeting with our sales tax company who monitors our sales tax. They're projecting higher than us, but they, per each meeting, can change it up and down.

It's harder for us to come back to you and go, oh, well, we projected it to be a six, but really it's a two. And so we are very conservative. And there's also payments that change each quarter. Some companies miss file. And so one quarter you can be up because it went here, and the next quarter they take it away. And that occurs all the time. And our people, our businesses miss their payments. So we'll base our forecast off of what we've received, but there could be several large companies that are missing their payments that they're going to make it up maybe in the next quarter.

Yeah, perfect. I like your conservative approach. I'd rather we find out we have more money coming than not enough. I just want to be clear. You know, the budget's guideline.

You're doing the best with what you have and your knowledge that you have in history. So I have no problem amending the surplus policy to provide more funding for homeless enforcement or something, some help, because as council member Pachigian said, it is the number one complaint of our citizens. And I was at an event on Saturday night, and that's all I I don't like to go out and social anymore because that's all I hear. What are you gonna do about the homeless? And so I would have no problem directing some money in that direction, especially due to the fact that we probably will have a little bit more coming in later on.

But I do like conservative approach, and thank you for answering all my questions.

Thank you guys very much for this report. This really excites me because it shows that foundation. When I'm reading the newspaper that Fresno's gonna be negative, you know, 38,000,000, I think is the last number I saw, LA was gonna be short $880,000,000 to find out that Visalia is actually beating our amount that we anticipated which was a positive already really shows how strong of a foot that we have here financially in Visalia. And it's really to the fact that we don't have much debt, if any. The city doesn't get into debt.

It also is to the fact that our industrial park is booming. We have one of the strongest industrial parks in the country, which is providing jobs. And it seems like every day people are asking me, oh, is it true Carvana's coming out? Oh, and we're getting the third Amazon. And we're getting a new Sam's Club in Costco, second Costco. And it's like, yes, this is all because of our industrial park, because we've been so successful. It's bringing jobs into our community and those jobs are translating to more people who are buying houses. Our house numbers are excellent. Then they're turned around and needing the infrastructure of commercial sales. So our numbers are looking great because as a community we're really thriving.

So I just say kudos to this council and the previous councils and all the staff for really establishing an environment where our community can be successful and can be doing well when other people are struggling. So I really want to say thank you for that. It's a great time to be in Visalia and it's a good time to be strong because we're able to pay for a brand new Civic Center for nearly $100,000,000 in cash. So I really appreciate that report. I did have a few questions though after all the good stuff.

I do have a few questions I want to ask. So under budgeted in our expenditures with the majority of it from our police and our fire. So it looks like 2,400,000 for our police and roughly 925,000 for our fire. So why is there such a huge discrepancy? Is that because of the additional like 30 plus officers that we hired or why is there such discrepancy of $3,500,000 on those two accounts?

Well, is comparing it to budget. So if you compare it to last year's actuals, the difference even more different because there were lots of vacancies. But when you compare it to budget, we assume that as if we're going to be fully staffed in all areas. So that difference is just the MOU changes that occurred. There were several larger MOU changes in this three year contract, longevity. There were some specialty pays, a lot of big items that made a difference with our vacancies. And so that's what you're seeing there.

Okay. So that's from when counsel decided to aggressively go out and fill those positions and give our first responders a major pay increase.

Yes, so that three year agreement, not one of those items were included in the budget. Again, because at that time, we were already preparing the numbers. Our sheets were already were prepared when negotiation occurred. We went ahead and moved forward with that clause when we presented that it did not include any of the MOU agreements.

Fantastic. I just want the community to know why there's that major discrepancy. And then my other question I have is the three point two million dollars of transfer out to other funds. Can you kind of get in a little bit more detail into that just for the public to be aware of where is that going? Because it looks like it's going into a black hole at this point, and we want a little better definition of where those $3,200,000 are actually going.

Yeah, there are several items that's in our transfers out. That includes to some of our funds that we subsidize. In addition, we have our debt payments in there. And so that larger number is for some of those funds that we subsidize. Again, it's their MOU changes or their operational increases as well because that would increase that subsidy. And then, of course, the convention center. In the past, what we would do with the convention center is their capital wasn't very large. And so we have a transfer set amount of $400,000 for their capital. And then we would just save it if they had a project that was larger, and it could be over multiple years. Last in the two year budget, there were a couple of larger projects.

One of them was the telescopic seating, which was a couple million dollars. And so we're going ahead and setting aside that money for that project, because at any given point in time, they could replace it, and that would come out of here. So it's better to have that money set aside for any of the budgeted projects that were approved by city council. So whenever they move forward, the money's there versus you having to take it from the fund. And if the revenues dip, it could send the general fund into a negative, which then would have to come out of your emergency reserves. So the better policy is to go ahead and set those monies aside. We do that currently in the general fund, so it's just following suit with what our practice is and applying it to our other funds as well.

Okay. So basically, that's pre paying some capital projects that we have on the books for future years. Do we have a

specific Well, projects are already budgeted

Right. For their For future years.

Yeah.

Yeah. Do we have a specific breakdown of that $3,200,000 of where all the funds are going?

I don't have it on a slide. But majority of it, I can tell you we could go over debt if you want to flip to the debt slide. So have So in there, the general fund portion of debt is $2,400,000 And so you do have that coming out of that category, the transfers. And then, of course, you have your animal. We subsidize the animal shelter. We subsidize the convention center's operations and then their capital.

I mean, this portion is already budgeted. We already know what that debt is, right?

Yeah, knew this. Of that

So why is there difference of the $3,200,000 then?

Because the 3,200,000 majority of that is going to be your MOU changes, any operating increases over those other funds. And then you're going to have the capital that I just talked about. And again, the telescopic seating of that is approximately approximately $2.02 to million dollars 2,500,000, so that's just one project.

Okay, so the majority of that's gonna go to future

Yes.

Convention projects? Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, all right. That makes a lot more sense because that number's gonna look closer that way. Okay. All right. And then let me see if I had any other questions. No, I think that's it. Okay. Thank you. And I kind of concur. I don't want to put that remainder how much was it? $1,800,000 in the Civic Center. I think we've made some promises to our community, and those are probably going to cost us a significant amount of money. So I would like to hold off on that $1,800,000 at least for right now.

Can we table that? I was actually gonna ask if you

guys have examples. So are we talking like a clinician for the

Hope team? We're talking about having the Hope team go out there more on the weekends and nights.

Well, like, I know Chief mentioned that we're gonna lose the grant that pays for the clinician.

So I

was just wondering is that something that you guys would consider then?

I mean

I think I would wanted to kinda open that up to just pause those funds to talk about what we could actually do with them and talk about potential

I'd be open to table in this thing until we got more plans of what we're, the homeless, because we've been talking about this a lot lately. I'd be open to tabling this to another meeting where we actually come back with concrete plans, programs that we could put in place?

Counsel, we will come back with some recommendations for you based on input from police and code enforcement, the sweep team, and so on.

Because I

think there may be some different ways we want encourage you to think about approaching I'd some love of hear from them.

And are you guys Okay with prefunding those colliding seats at the convention center at $2,200,000

Bridget, you're just putting away

a small amount so that it adds up eventually, right? That was actually budgeted for this year, but we were trying to determine if we could hold off a little longer on those so it would set it aside. So if we do need to move ahead with that project, it is there because it is a very large expenditure out of a capital budget. But it could moved. Oh, could be, yes, absolutely. Any point, you could choose to move that. That's my point is that we come back and say no, let's throw that 1.8

back or half of it or whatever. We have some options. Don't have to make all the decisions tonight.

So then, I mean, hypothetically, could just agree to transfer those funds to the Civic Center and then pull them in the future date if we needed them.

Yes. Okay.

Those are all my questions. I appreciate it. Let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anyone from the public wishing to speak on this item, please come forward and state your name and city of residence.

Good afternoon. My name is Maria Guilen. That's g u I l l e n, accent over the e. And I live in Visalia. And I am far from a financial wizard here, but I did want to make a couple of comments regarding the report.

Vice Mayor Nguyen mentioned that the budget is a guideline, but I have always held that it's also something that reflects the values of our community. Where we place our our money expresses our values and what we consider to be important for the residents and the quality of life here in Visalia or whatever town we live in. And one of the concerns that I had was that if I looked at the projected revenue for, or expenditures rather, for fiscal year 'twenty five, 'twenty six, I looked at the police line item and saw that of the operating expenses for that fiscal year, it would be, it would take up 43% of the total expenditures. When I went to look at parks and rec, I saw that it was 12.7%. I tend to agree with Council Member Sotto that perhaps some of the revenue surplus could go to enhancing some of the arts programs.

I understand that the arts consortium may be losing a lot of funding. This organization helps very many people. And oh, I also oh, and when you were talking about putting money into unhoused helping the unhoused, my concern was, again, you talked about police and code enforcement as opposed to other things that could help people that are unhoused and other ways to deal with the situation. That was my concern as well. I also wanted to ask real quick about the sales.

It was interesting to know that the sales tax and property tax make up 80% of the total revenue. And so my question and right now, we're doing really well in regards to sales tax. But I wanted to know if, in fact, the staff felt that the recommendation or the promotion the motion that had been turned down about a month or so ago where we would get a consultant to tell us or to question the public about whether they'd be willing to raise it to do other things, good things for the city would have been a good idea and would threatened our current sales tax situation.

Jim Rees, Visalia. On, table one on the presentation, I didn't I didn't see it on the screen. On the the general fund projection for 2425, actuals, shows a deficit of $104,402 And I'm wondering what that is and what where that, how that's covered. The budget variance at the far right, dollars 4,000,000 in surplus because 'twenty five-'twenty six budget shows a $4,800,000 surplus. So I'm wondering, did we actually run a deficit in 'twenty four-'twenty five?

And if we did, if somebody could just explain how that is covered in the next year or how that deficit is actually covered. Thank you.

Anybody else? Okay. Let's go ahead and close public comments in. And if you wouldn't mind, I think there was two questions. If you wouldn't mind answering those two questions.

Point?

So I think the negative that was mentioned, which is in prior fiscal year twenty four-twenty five, so we ended the year with a negative 104,000 in the general fund, but most of that is due to that large fund transfer debt. You'll see that it's 20,000,000 and we're projecting it to be 9,000,000. And that huge increase was that new GASB change requirement where we had to set aside funds for leaves. It would be sick leave vacation accruals. And so that was a one time set aside that caught us up back to two years and went back to fiscal year 'twenty three, 'twenty four, and 'twenty four, 'twenty five, which was required of as far as setting our size.

And then going forward, we still have maintain that GASB, but it's just the cost difference, and it's not the set aside of the structure of setting it up. So that's what took us to the negative. And then when you combine that fund with all our other funds, like we have unassigned monies as well. So with a general fund, it covers your revenues over your operations. And so we didn't have to transfer any money out of the emergency reserves because we still have money in advancing our other funds for grants that are on a different timely basis. And so therefore, we did not have to transfer money out of a reserve. I think that answers one of the questions.

The other question I think was whether or not this would change the potential outcome of a park sales tax measure.

I don't believe so. I believe what our sales tax is doing is, again, Visalia has a strong base right now. Again, we don't have crystal ball. So where we're good today, six months from now, Visalia may be struggling. There's lots of cities up and down, and you mentioned a couple there, but there's even more, Bakersfield, a lot of them close to us that are struggling with their sales sales tax, again, we've gotten a lot of new development, an industrial park, but just everywhere.

We've got a lot of good restaurants. You've got a lot of good shopping. We've got a lot of entertainment that we can do. And our surrounding, we are the hub, the bigger city here, and all of our surrounding cities don't have that. So fortunately for us, they come here. They spend their money here. And that's what you're seeing in our sales tax. Now, if the economy were to turn, I can't tell you know, what that you know, how hard of a hit would Visalia have. You know, we always hope that if the economy turns for us that it wouldn't be it would be a blip, and it would be a small one. But that's why we have an emergency reserve.

I can't tell you, what a future sales tax look like for the city. If the economy continued to be strong, I would assume that our sales tax would stay strong and along with an additional sales tax enhancement as well would be strong.

Wonderful. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from council? So, I'll make a

motion to receive the midyear budget update for the general fund for fiscal year twenty twenty five-twenty six. Amend the general fund surplus policy per staff recommendation and appropriate funds for capital improvement projects, 2,717 thousand 100 as outlined in the report, with the caveat that we bring back homeless prevention programs. 2,000,000 in homeless prevention programs.

There was one per unit.

You said appropriate 2008.

Oh, sorry, $2,717,000 and $100,000 Good?

So to be clear, not to confuse it, so what I heard earlier is so we're gonna continue to put the 1,800,000 in the surplus in the Civic Center to potentially move for future projects once we've come back and council has decided which projects or how you'd like to use that?

Yes, I one hundred

second that as amended.

Perfect. We have first and second. All those in favor, please vote. And it's not popping up on my screen again, but I vote yes. Item passes four zero with council member Nelson absent. Thank you very much. Alright, next we're gonna to item number three which is a review of capital improvement programs. Staff report please.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Nicole Ritchie, finance manager joined by Renee Nagel, our finance and technology director. And this evening, I'll be presenting the proposed six year capital plan as part of the budget development process. This will be our fifth review, and we'll be focusing on the capital funds, including this portion of the CIP. The capital improvement program represents a six year capital plan.

The first two years, 20 six-twenty seven and twenty seven-twenty eight, are proposed for appropriation as part of the upcoming budget adoption that will take place in June, While the remaining four years are provided for planning outlook purposes only, the CIP being discussed this evening focuses on maintaining and improving the city facilities and infrastructures, supporting reliable service delivery, and planning proactively for future community needs. As we move through this presentation, you may notice some repetition. Again, that is to ensure clarity and transparency to both council and the public. This slide outlines the capital improvement review process. The projects are identified by departments and reviewed based on available funding and then brought forward to council for review and feedback.

Based on that feedback, staff will refine project timing and funding to ensure that projects are thoroughly reviewed before final adoption takes place in June. So this slide represents our capital funds that we are reviewing this evening. As you can see, the first two funds, corporate yard and the library impact fee, we do not have any proposed projects within the two year portion of the budget. However, there is projects that are being planned for in the outer four years. The upcoming slides only represents projects within the two years.

However, we have staff available to answer any questions if needed for the outer years. The remaining seven funds proposed in the first two years is approximately $2,500,000 and the nine funds for the outer four years is $27,000,000 And as a reminder, any projects in the upcoming slides that are highlighted in PEACH are for multi funded projects and is only showing that portion of the fund. This first slide is for the corporation yard development impact fee, which is supported by development impact fees and is restricted to capital improvements for new expansions to the corporation yard facility and equipment. Over the six year period, there's only two capitals that's being proposed totaling 2,800,000. The fund currently has budgeted to conduct a master plan for the Corporation Yard.

Once this is completed, staff will return for approval and potentially to add new projects. The library impact fee is supported by development impact fees and is restricted to funding capital facilities and equipment for growth to library related services. There's no proposed appropriations in the near term. Approximately 550,000 is planned in the outer years for the library expansion and planning efforts. The fire impact fee fund is supported by development impact fee and is restricted for growth related improvements and equipment strictly to fire.

This fund is contributing 5,900,000 towards the new public safety facility that's under currently under construction. The general fund is fronting those costs, allowing the project to move forward, and the fire impact fee will repay the general fund over the next ten years as revenues are collected. The first project is the Public Safety Impact Nexus Fee Study for $150,000 This is multi funded and shared with the police impact fee fund. The second project is a traffic signal preemption system to improve emergency response times at signalized intersections, and this fund totals approximately 250,000 in the two year budget period. The Police Impact Fee Fund is also supported by development impact fees and is restricted to use on police facilities and equipment necessary to maintain police service levels.

The Police Impact Fee Fund contributed 3,400,000 towards the new public safety facility and it's expected to pay the general fund back in six years as the revenue is collected. The first project is the police portion of the multi funded public safety impact nexus study and the second second project is the police workforce study. Together, these projects both support regulatory compliance and long term planning. This slide represents police measure T fund, which provides a dedicated $1.01 4¢ sales tax to support public safety. The revenues are allocated 60% to police and 40% to fire with representing the police allotment.

The request has one project, which is to replace a police patrol unit that was taken out of service due to a prior accident and is partially funded through the accumulated depreciation and the Measure T Vehicle Replacement Fund. This was recently brought before council on April 6. The police unclaimed fund consists of money seized under the state law and is received on a limited and irregular basis as the fund maintains relatively stable balance and is used conservatively for one time expenditures that support the law enforcement operations. The two planned capital expenditures requested include the replacement of the SWAT communication system and a remote firing device, both of which support specialized public safety operations and total 37,000. The narcotics forfeiture fund accounts for revenues received from narcotic related seizures, which are subject to court determination before being released to the city, and based on this, revenues in this fund are variable and not guaranteed.

The 180,000 is proposed for night vision equipment to support law enforcement

Florida.

Is state is The is still responsible, however, for the major maintenance to the facility, which is funded through the subsidy of the general fund. The first project is a $300,000 retain retaining wall repair at the Rawhide Stadium to address early signs of structural deterioration. And the second project is 140,000 for accessible walkway improvements, support the ADA accessibility. These are one time capital projects aligned with the city's responsibility for major maintenance.

Real quick, can you talk about the retaining wall repair? Where is that at specifically? I've never heard of this project before.

Afternoon, Mayor. Jason Huckleberry, Director of Engineering and Building. This is right field. Far right field. There's a large pasture area, I think they call it. There's a retaining wall at the back there. That's like a DG gravel parking lot behind it. That wall has started to see a small separation. We've had structural look at it. It's not immediate danger, but we're just monitoring it and we'll need to do some type of shoring up to make sure that doesn't continue.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Good to note too is that in discussions with the current owners, there may be some changes out there too on that far right field that may actually eliminate the need to actually look at it. So we're still kind of looking at it as we

go. Wonderful. Appreciate it.

All right. So the last fund tonight is the Convention Center Fund, which is supported by both facility generated revenues and the general fund contributions. All capital projects for the Convention Center are subsidized by the general fund. The significant increase in capital in fiscal year twenty nine-thirty, or I'm sorry, 3031 is reflects the planned Convention Center renovation project. And it's anticipated to be funded through a bond and supported by general fund. The existing 2014 debt refinance is expected to be paid in full in fiscal year 2930.

So I have a question on that one too. So it'd be funded by a bond, but it would be paid for by our general funds, correct? And then is this a project that we've already approved? Because I don't remember talking about this. So this is just potentially updating and maintaining the convention center to keep it to modern current standards.

Yes.

But it's a project that we have not covered at all. It's just if we do decide to move forward, it's going to be a $23,000,000 project.

That's just a number to put out there that we think could be semi realistic at this point. There is money, I believe, the second year of the capital project, Samantha, that would begin to look at a design for it if the council approves that. But definitely, if we're going to retain Convention Center as a viable center, we're gonna need to make some major improvements to it.

Okay, but this 23,000,000 is just kind of a shot in the dark. Have no idea really

what It's a ballpark if you'll

pardon That the makes a lot more sense because I'm going, when do we appropriate $23,000,000 that's

why it's in the out.

Thank

you. Project number 13 is on this list right here is the Convention Center Master Plan and Feasibility Study. So that will actually hone in that out years projects and could give even more projects that haven't been identified in that six year capital plan or reduce some as well. So again, that's project number 13 on the list here.

So in fiscal year 'twenty six-'twenty seven, we have approximately 846,000 allocated towards critical facility maintenance and system upgrades. And in the second year twenty seven-twenty eight, we have four and twenty eight thousand, which as Renee had had as outlines the upcoming CIP presentations. The CDBG will be discussed later this evening. Measure N will be returning on May 4 for a public hearing, and the general fund will be concludes our capital fund presentation. Again, no motion is required this evening.

We're just seeking your advice.

Fantastic. Thank you very much for your presentation. Councilwoman Patricio, any questions?

No, like all the other ones, very informative, great presentation. Thank you.

Council Member So to, any questions? No questions. Thank you for the report. Vice Mayor Wynn,

any questions? Yeah, sorry.

Fantastic. Let's go back to

the corporation yard. Can you pull up that slide? It's way up in the front. Yeah, the first one. So I see that they have a 1,700,000 fund available, 2627. But then you have a project out like 2829. Is there some reason this is delayed? Mean, is it why that couldn't move forward? Because today's dollars are going to be cheaper than they are even in two or three years, and we have the money.

Yeah, we're currently conducting a master plan. And so once that master plan is finalized, staff will return back to city council to get approval on that. And at that time, you'll probably see and some changes in projects as well. So for right now, we've pushed any of the funds that have a master plan or a nexus study. We push those projects kind of more out into those outer years in anticipation of the master plan making changes and then bringing those projects forward if needed.

Okay, thank you. I knew there was a reason.

And the master plan is actually ready to go out for bid. It has not actually started yet,

but And it will be this then on the police narcotics fund, how do we get more of that, chief? I mean, assume we have that you're spending 181 because you have 180 in there. I'm sure it's not a done deal. But I see a lot of things on social media where you guys are being quite profitable with our drug enforcement in the area.

That's more drug dealers than No, Bustmore.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Jason Sellser, police chief. So those are asset forfeiture funds, and there's lot of legal issues that go with those. So we seize the funds or we seize assets that are taken from those types of arrests, and then they have to be adjudicated through a court process as to whether or not those were associated to the criminal activity, what we can actually receive. So, we actually have pending amounts of funds that are still pending in an account, but until those clear the judicial process, they're not available to us. And sometimes that could take years, and in some cases, we may not ever have access to that money at all.

So it just depends on the types of cases that we get, what becomes available. But there's also been a lot of changes to the law with regards to asset forfeiture in recent years, so it's nowhere near as accessible to us as it used to be in the past. It's far harder to come by now.

Yeah, I would think the attorneys and judges might want to help pay for the court costs for that. Thank you.

Had just a few questions. So none of this is anticipating any changes to our current amount that we collect in impact fees. So when we do our Nexus study, then obviously we will update all these and you're gonna have to re budget for the entire thing with the new amount that's going be updated, correct?

Correct. So what we have over these funds over the last several months, we brought forward a lot of funds that are all our impact funds basically, right, over the last three months. And this is our last group of impact funds. There's a lot of nexus studies that we've said we've needed to do, and there's a lot of those projects. Some are underway right now. Many of the funds still have to have a nexus study. But what we've projected out in our revenues is only off of what today's rate is, estimating CPI increases, which is what we're allowed to do. If the fees are increased, then staff and there's additional projects, because some of the funds are also having a master plan being done. They're dependent on a master plan. So there'll be a lot projects that will be changing in those out years.

Again, some of them moving forward. A lot of changes, a lot more projects will be added as well.

Okay. And then my next question is the library impact fee. I've actually never heard of fund before. Can you kind of just tell me a little bit about that? I was under the impression that the county paid for our libraries. I didn't know that we also participated. And is that something, obviously we collected through our impact fees. Is that a state law that's collected through that or is that a local policy that we collect library impact fees?

This is a local fee, so it's an impact fee. It's not a state requirement or anything. The city passed this several, well, we passed it, gosh, I don't know, thirteen, fourteen years ago, maybe fifteen? 'five, 'six. 'five, 'six? Gosh, time flies. And so the city passed this with the last enhancement that was done at the library. And so council voted to put an impact fee in place to be able to collect monies to do enhancements, meaning future growth. Obviously, it cannot be used for remodels or anything like that. But it can be used for future growth due to development.

And so over the years, you didn't see it is because there were no funds available. The general fund advanced. Council approved to advance the city's share of the growth improvements to the library. And the general fund paid back that advance, I think, two years ago. It's not a lot of money, so it took a long time to pay back. And it was only a couple $100,000 improvement that the city did. And so here we are today because we've again got funds available. We'd like to do a nexus study and then of course look at some additional project due to growth again.

So it's strictly for growth. How does that work with the county? Because my understanding, the county runs our library. Do they also own the building? And then so how does that work? We pay to increase the size of the county's building? Or I'm I'm kinda confused.

So it it can vary. It doesn't necessarily have to be that particular building. It may be that we expand somewhere else. At that point, it was looking at increasing with a children's library expanding the historical section of it, and the council at that time determined that was worthwhile to putting some money into to help make it happen. So if there was gonna be a future expansion of the library, it could be on the current site, or it could be somewhere else in the community, then you could choose to use it for that purpose.

Interesting, okay. And so we're roughly collecting around $25,000 a year, give or take, depending on development. Okay, fantastic. That's all I have.

During tough times, want to note this fund only brought in about 7,000

It's not a

lot, but

it's Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Just something I was not familiar with, so I appreciate the information on that. So, let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come forward.

And seeing no one, will close public comments and no motions required. So thank you very much for your report. I think this is a really productive meeting and a lot of good things in our community. So we're gonna go ahead and adjourn to closed session. We welcome everyone to come back at our regular scheduled at seven p.

M. Good evening. We're gonna go and call to order our regular session of our Visalia City Council meeting. We will start with invocation I'm sorry. We'll start with our flag salute by council member So to, and then please remain standing for our invocation by fire chaplain Jeff Adderton.

Everybody please rise. Ready to begin.

Justice for all.

Would you join me in

a word of prayer? God, we come before you and we thank you for the opportunity to be led in this place by your spirit. We ask tonight that you would keep us safe, keep our minds and hearts clear. May kindness and love rule in this place. And, father, we're also keenly aware in the last couple weeks that communities around us have suffered significant loss and, within the sheriff community. And so we ask for protection for those who respond to our needs in this community and promote safety. Lord, I pray that you would continue to guide, continue to lead, and continue to give us favor. In Jesus name, amen. Amen.

Thank you, chaplain. Alright. We have no special presentations today, so we'll go ahead and move into our public comment portion. This is the time for the general public to comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the Visalia City Council. Each speaker tonight may speak for up to three minutes during the general comment period on a matter that is not on the agenda.

The public may also make one comment for up to three minutes prior to the consideration of the consent calendar and immediately before any regular agenda item is heard. The council asks that you keep your comments concise and positive. Creative criticism presented with appropriate courtesy is welcome. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes, and a timer will notify you when your time has expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. Residence. Anyone wishing to speak? Come on up to the the lectern right in the middle here.

Irene Lappin, Visalia. A word about last Thursday's neighborhood presentation. This one addressed the Tulare Avenue so called rehabilitation project. It was, in my view, another example of both poor messaging and execution. It's happened before. Now, you know the old saw, too many cooks boil the broth. Either too many cooks were involved in the messaging or there were only one to two cooks who didn't know what they were doing. Now granted, there may be a shortage of meeting places available near the West End of Tulare Avenue. I don't know. But a school cafeteria was an awful choice.

There were no signs outside and none of the doors. Also, the setup with the seating spread out all over in a badly echoing sound system with rush hour traffic roaring through the two open doors. The suggestion box was placed too far away. These are such basic rudimentary things, call them housekeeping tasks, if you will. I don't know how they could have been overlooked.

Now this postcard that we got in the mail said there would be a presentation, but had no mention of questions or comments from the public. So I emailed the contact person. He said there would be, quote, there will be a time for residents to voice their concerns and questions, complaints, etcetera. As always, with these outreach meetings, we would ask you kindly wait until the appropriate time to share. That never happened.

Then at the end of the talk, the presenter said, Okay, now we're going to split up into groups. So like a dummy, I sat there while attendees eventually trickled over to the sidewall where a bunch of maps were set up. Maps I didn't need to see, but that's fine. I waited for the comments. I looked forward to see hearing them. But it seemed like forever. The time never came. Everybody Everybody went home, and so did I. So please know that looking at maps is not splitting up into groups. Splitting into groups refers to when you start out with a large meeting in a company, for instance, or government.

The facilitator may then assign the group to work in smaller teams to brainstorm different solutions. This wasn't a meeting. Meeting. It was a presentation by government to residents. And by the way, presenters, please don't keep calling us you guys. Last, counsel, please urge staff when announcing future events like this to say what they mean, mean what they say, and stick to the plan. Thank you.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and close public comments seeing no one else heading up there. We're gonna be skipping items of interest and we'll go on to the consent calendar. Let's see, this is the time for members of the public to provide public comment on an item that is on the consent calendar. Comments will not be taken individually by the public. If an item is pulled by a council member, each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes and a timer will notify you when your time's expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. Anybody wishing to speak on an item that is on the consent calendar? Seeing no one, we're gonna go ahead and close that. And council member So to, do you have any items you'd like pull off consent?

No items, thank you.

Vice mayor Wynn, any items?

No items, thank you.

Council member Pichigan, any items? No items pulled. And I have none, so I'll entertain a motion.

Motion to approve the balanced consent counter.

Second. We have first and second. Please vote. Item passes four zero, and Councilmember Nelson is absent. Thank you very much.

Next, we're gonna go on to regular items and public hearing. We'll go on to item number one, which is a public hearing to adopt 26 annual action plan and twenty twenty five annual action plan amendment. Staff report please. We're a little quicker there. Thank you, Margie.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council. My name is Margie Perez, the City of Hawaii housing specialist, and I am here to discuss the second public hearing on the 2026 annual action plan and 2025 annual action plan amendment. The City of Islaya receives HUD entitlement grants, which are known as the Community Development Block Grant and the Home Investment Partnership. HUD administers programs and grants that provide housing and community development assistance. CDBG supports community development for providing decent housing, suitable living environment, and expansion of economic opportunities.

CDBG requires all activities to meet at least one of the following: benefit low to moderate income person or areas, eliminate slum or bike, or meet an urgent emergency. Home Investment Partnerships, also known as HOMEs Funds, supports increasing affordable housing opportunities, eligible activities. Homebuyer eligible activities include four homebuyer assistance, rehab for owner occupants, rental housing production, and tenant based rental assistance, also known as TBRa. The funding process includes the following steps. Develop five year consolidated plan, also known as a comp plan.

Establish activities and project goals. And every year, the city is required to produce an annual action plan, which implements the comp plan activities and projects. Award contracts as approved in the comp plan and amendments are required if there's any inappropriate unspent funds or additional funds received. The annual action plan also requires a thirty day public comment period, which is running from March 20 through today, April 20. Within

the

thirty day public comment period, there are three public meetings. The first was held on April 1 during the Citizens Advisory Committee meeting. The second was on April 6 for review and comment of the public hearing of the I apologize, the draft plan. And today, we were here for adoption. Table one, which is the twenty twenty six CDBG in home allocations.

When our annual action plan was formulated, it was based off of estimates. HUD had not released the annual allocations. Our estimates at $1,500,000 for CDBG home funds and home funds at 4 and $25,000 As you can see, our actual received was about approximately $1,000,000 for $75,000 reduction in CDBG home funds for CDBG funds and $15,415,000 in home funds for a reduction of 9,000. In total, the city is receiving a reduction of approximately 85,000. Therefore, will be several line items that will be reduced.

Table two, our 2026 CDBG projected resources include. You can see our estimates were approximately 1,150,000. Our actual is $1,100,000 for a reduction in approximately $75,000 Table three, our 2026 CDBG proposed funding includes we did have to reduce our administration to stay within percent cap. We were estimating at 240,000, but we will have a reduction of approximately 15,000. Our public services also had to be reduced to stay within our 15% cap.

We were estimating 180,000. There will be, in total, 168,000, a reduction of 12,000. Our affordable housing projects were not impacted because it does not have a cap. Our public facility improvement projects were reduced by our ADA compliance project by $48,000 as noted in the staff report. Any increase or decrease of program income will also be to our ADA tree wells project for a reduced allocation of $75,000 Table four, our 2026 home projected resources.

Our 2026 annual allocation was estimated at $425,000 Our actual is $415,000 for a reduction of $9,700,100,000 dollars Our 2026 proposed funding includes administration at 10% of $50,000 and our Home Crescent Metals project was reduced by 9,270 to fit within our allocation. Our 2025 annual action plan amendment, we are transferring about $900,000 from our emergency shelter development project to our ADA Tree Wells project to allow more time to develop an emergency shelter project. Action tonight, staff recommends conducting public hearing and a motion to approve and appropriate our 2026 Annual Action Plan and 2025 Annual Action Plan Amendment and a motion to enter into all contracts as listed in the Annual Action Plan and Annual Action Plan Amendment and authorization to submit to HUD. Thank you.

Thank you for that second report. Any questions or comments from counsel to staff at this time?

Not at this time.

All right, then let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anyone wishing to speak on this item, please come forward and state your name and city of residence. Seeing no one, we will close public comments and any further discussion or I will entertain a motion.

So I'll make a motion to approve the staff recommended motion.

I'll second.

First and second. All those in favor, please vote.

Yes.

Item passes four zero with council member Nelson absent. Thank you very much, Thank Appreciate your report. All right, next we're going to item number two, which is a measure in public hearing.

Good evening council. Amy Swearingen, budget analyst with the finance department. Tonight, I'm here to go over the measure in ten year plan and 2627, and 2728 budget for our first public hearing. So, measure in is a half cent sales tax for essential city services such as police, fire, recreation, as well as maintenance of parks, roads, and city facilities, and the measure uses a detailed ten year plan. So tonight, we're doing a public hearing to receive comments on the new ten year plan and the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven and twenty seven-twenty eight proposed budget.

We came to council on March 16 for council to provide comments and make changes as requested. On March 26, we took the plan and budget to the sales tax oversight board. And then tonight, we're here for our first public hearing. The new proposed ten year plan is for years 11 through '20. The plan starts in fiscal year twenty seven, twenty eight, which is the second year of our biannual budget.

The proposed ten year plan continues with the original intent of the plan, providing essential services and maintenance of parks trails and roads The plan continues to fund everything that the current plan funds plus add additional full time employees capital and increased maintenance funding Our additional plan elements for the essential city services category for police we are going to hire personnel and purchase the required equipment and vehicles for seven police officers, two community service officers, and two professional staff. For fire, the elements are to design and construct Station 57, purchase a Station 57 engine, and hire three of the required nine full time employees for Station 57. For streets, it will be increasing the annual street maintenance of 4,000,000 by point 05% annually. For parks and recreation, the annual trailway, tree, building, and park maintenance is increasing 2% annually. For the maintenance and emerging needs categories, building maintenance will have an increase of one point from 1,100,000 to 1,500,000 annually, and the remainder of the 8% will be budgeted to fund the emerging needs.

For the youth category, of the 2% of the sales tax, it will fund 2% of budgeted revenues for police recreation youth programs. And then for the uncertainty fund, we are going to continue to maintain the uncertainty fund at 30% of operating expenditures. This is the proposed ten year plan for essential services. It has all of our new items in blue added to the plan. This is the proposed plan for the 2% youth police and rec programs and for the 8% maintenance and emerging needs for the whole ten years.

For the proposed two year budget for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven and twenty seven-twenty eight, we used the sales tax projection to increase 2.5% per year. For expenditures, fiscal year twenty six twenty seven is based on our current plan which is year 10 of the plan and for fiscal year twenty seven twenty eight We're using the new proposed plan it uses updated cost estimates and includes all the new amendments For new positions per the plan for 2627 we are adding two police officers and one police professional staff for fiscal year seven-twenty eight, we are adding one police officer and one police professional staff. For fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven, the plan amendments are to replace a wrecked police vehicle, additional appropriation for Station 51 construction of $21,000,000 and increased the building maintenance to $1,500,000 annually. So for fiscal year twenty six-seven, our proposed budget for Measure N is $39,600,000 And for fiscal year twenty seven-twenty eight, our proposed budget is 19,200,000 projected fund balance for each year. So fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven, the projected fund balance for measure n is $20,200,000 And for fiscal year twenty seven-twenty eight, it's 21,800,000.

So for tonight our recommendation, there's no action required just to hold and conduct the first public hearing for the new proposed ten year plan and for the fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven and twenty seven-twenty eight budget. And staff will be returning on May 4 for the second public hearing and will be requesting approval of the plan and the budget.

Perfect, thank you so much. Councilor Kuchigan, any comments or questions?

So I will say this. Voters passed Measure N and we made a promise with them that we would follow through on everything that we promised in this measure. I believe that we've done this and we've kept our word to the voters. I'd be really scared to see where we would be without this measure. I think we learned a lot of lessons off measure T, and we corrected those with measure N. And I'm really happy the way this is played out, and I'll be fully supportive of it tonight.

Councilor Morsodo, any questions or comments?

Just thank you for the report and of course thank you to the voters.

Vice mayor, any?

Yeah, could you go back one slide, Amy?

Look at the, okay. I'm just looking at the 2% youth programs. It says beginning cash of 1.7%, and then the projected revenues ending cash of 1.7%. Is that what programs I know PAL's paid out of that. Is there anything else that's paid out of that? Or does that use all of that money?

PAL is in there for the police side. And then the Manuel Hernandez program is also part of it is paid for the rec side.

So there's no excess funds in that at this time? I guess that's why I'm seeing the revenues, I'm not seeing the expenses. Was that back a couple of slides?

The expenses? Yes. We combine them together, but it's that one above. Yeah.

Okay, so basically whatever's coming in is going out. Is that there's not an excess?

We did not program out the full of the projected revenue because it's 2% of the budgeted revenues is what gets transferred into that fund. So our cash is growing.

Your cash yeah, that's my there is a balance in there that can be used for other youth programs

Yes.

Two that we're funding right now. Is that correct?

There is still excess. It's within about $40,000 there if it all comes in as budgeted. But there is beginning cash in there that is carrying over. So yes, there is additional money.

Okay, I was just thinking about Council Member So to's request about maybe increasing our youth grants, and that might be an area that we should look at. Thank you. I'm supportive. Thanks, Amy.

Thank you very for your report, and thank you for the voters for supporting this. Obviously, the majority of this is going to our public safety. And then I also wanna thank the the committee who make sure that we adhere to the rules and regulations of this measure that originally passed, and for all the time and effort the committee spends in making sure that we're doing what we're supposed to on our end. So let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anyone wishing to speak on this item, please come forward.

Alright, seeing nobody, we will go ahead and there's no item, there's no motion to approve, so we just wanna say thank you. Yeah, let's close public hearing and thank you very much for your report.

Thank you.

All right, next we will go on to item number three, which is an ordinance update.

Good evening, counsel. Tracy Robert Shaw with Neighborhood Preservation. We're here tonight for the procedures and penalties. The proposed amendments are being done. We found some errors in the ordinance that we're correcting, as well as making some changes so that the ordinance reflects our best practices, which is we have implemented, which is best for the community.

We added some definitions. Oddly enough, we did not have a definition of administrative citation. Person, responsible party, and violation. So we've we've added those definitions to clarify that. We also changed working days.

There were several places in the ordinance where it said working days and some places where it said calendar days. Code enforcement has already has always used working days because it gives the public a longer period of time than calendar days. And so what we've done is just have gone in there and made it all consistent throughout the ordinance and used working days. And we also called out when the offices are closed because a lot of the city offices are now closed on Friday. So that is a day that we would not count against the public when we're making a determination on them to request an appeal.

We've also removed the requirement to pay a deposit on fines in order to have a hearing. The ordinance was written where if you had $500 in fines, had to pay $250 deposit on those fines to even ask for a hearing. Code enforcement has never done that. And so we've made that change to pull that language out of the ordinance. And that's just to make it fair to the community that's requesting a hearing.

It's pretty harsh. You're requesting a hearing, and we're going to make you pay a portion of the fines up front. So we removed that language. We also removed the requirement to make all corrections completed within ten days. As all of you know, our complaints vary from the simple fence to substandard housing. So we're not going to require somebody that has to get a building permit ten days because that would set them up for failure. You cannot get a building permit in ten days. You have to submit plans. Often you have to hire an architect. So there's there's no way for somebody to get that done in ten days.

On the flip side of that, if you have a broken sewer line and sewage is running down Mooney Boulevard, we're not going to give you ten days to fix that either. You have to fix that now. So we pulled out that language, to reflect how we handle business. And it's not arbitrary. We have a standard. If it's a life safety issue, of course, it's less time. If it's not a life safety issue, of course, we're going to give you more time to fix that. But ten days is not workable for most violations.

Is is graffiti going to stay at ten days or are we is that going to come?

Yes.

This time or?

That's called out in the ordinance and it's actually if we notify you in person it's three days.

Okay.

Yes, that doesn't change.

Okay, thank you.

We've lost Can someone who's received violation request a written extension if they're having trouble completing within the ten days? Your staff has that Yes, discretion

always. And we're always going to give that allowance, again unless it's sewage running down the street, we're not going to do that. Let me go back to this slide right here. In addition to this, there was also some typos in the ordinance in regards to the California Civil Procedure Code. And so we changed that. In one area, it was just a typo completely, had the wrong number. And in the other area, it actually left off the second part of that California Civil Procedure. So we fixed that in both places. The time frame for an appeal hearing, I

don't know if all of

you look at that section of it. I had difficulty making sense of it, and it's what I do. And so it was like fifteen days before this and thirty days after that. And it was a mess. So now it's just sixty days. We have sixty days to give you a hearing. If there's a reason we can't give you the sixty days, we can work with that. If there's a reason you can't have the hearing in sixty days, we can also work with that. We also added the language from California government I'm sorry, from government code section eleven fifty three. So it just referenced that code, but it didn't have any language in the ordinance to let somebody know what that meant.

And so we've added that language in there. Any questions?

Councilor Monsoto, any questions or comments?

No, thank you for the report and thank you for the cleanup. I'm sure citizens are gonna appreciate it.

Councilman Puchigian, any comments or questions?

Yeah. I'll be fully supportive of tonight. I think the changes are actually more resident friendly. And I think it's more fair. It makes things a lot more clear. So I'll be fully supportive of it today.

Vice Mayor Wynn?

I'll support as well.

Yeah. Thank you, Tracy, for putting this together and also for being a little more flexible to our citizens. Long before I was ever on council, I had encroachment permit issue, and there was no way I could get anyone to come out and lay a new sidewalk in a ten day period. And you guys gave me grace. And as long as I was showing my effort that I was hiring someone, that you guys were willing to work with it. So I appreciate the fact that we're actually doing this in writing. It probably makes your job easier that, you know Yes. You get little bit of flexibility. And at the end of day, it's gonna be better for our community. So I appreciate you doing this update to our standards.

Let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anybody who wishes to speak on this item, please come to the podium and state your name and city of residence. Boy, everyone's quiet tonight. Okay. Let's go ahead and close public comment and I'll entertain a motion at this time.

I'll make a motion to approve staff recommended motion.

I second.

Person second. All those in favor, please vote.

The law.

Item passes four zero with council member Nelson absent. Thank you, Tracy. Appreciate your report. Okay. Next, we'll go on to item number four, which is an ordinance authorization and airport lease agreement.

Here we go. Good evening, miss mayor, miss vice mayor, council, and this is Jody Miller, airport manager. And I'm here today to present pretty straightforward one, hopefully. So this will be introduction and first reading of ordinance number two twenty twenty six zero two that'll authorize the city manager to execute an airport lease agreement between the city of Iselia and the United States of America Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration. With that being said, quick background on it.

In 2011, council authorized the lease with the FAA. It's for our automated weather observation system at the airport. AWOS is what we call it. With the FAA, it is and so this lease is just for the equipment and the antenna needed to run that system, which is what allows us our navigation aids that the people can that way you can land in bad weather, all that sort of stuff. Without this antenna system, we would only be able to operate during the day and when the weather is good.

So this is what allows us to be productive twenty four seven, three sixty five. In 2011, that lease was for four years, expired in 2015, and we've been working just on a month to month basis since or sorry, year to year basis since. And this is just getting it all official in writing. That way, we're both sides know that we're in agreement going forward for that system. The equipment is all in split between our a closet terminal and then an additional equipment room that they have in their space in one of the t hangers at at the end as well.

So it's no it's not for their offices or any of the other facilities that they have at the airport. It's literally just the antenna space and then their the equipment needed to run that antenna. The lease will be for a ten year period upon adoption. And, of course, I'll come back in thirty days for the second reading and proposed adoption of ordinance number two zero two six zero two. But, yeah, like I said, short and simple today for the airport stuff. Questions?

Any questions or comments?

Nope. Nope. This must be straightforward night tonight on our items because everything's pretty easy night. Pretty easy. So, no, I'll be fully supportive of this. It seems like it's pretty good for us. I will fully support it tonight.

Fantastic. Let's see if anyone from the public wants to speak on this issue. We open up this time for the public to speak on this issue. If you wanna speak, come state your name and city of residence.

Didn't think anyone would wanna talk about this. Alright. Let's

go

ahead

and close public comment, and I'll entertain a motion.

I move to introduce the first reading of ordinance number twenty twenty six dash o two authorizing the city manager to execute an airport lease agreement between the city of Visalia and the United States of America Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration for the specified terms and rent rate.

I second.

First and second. All those in favor, vote. And item passes four zero with council member Nelson absent.

Thank you, guys. And while I'm up here, I'm gonna steal a moment. Airport Wings and Wheels is this Saturday.

There you go.

From ten to two, free to the public, lots of activity for kids, all that sort of stuff. We're expanded this year. We're now just crossing our fingers for no rain. So, hopefully, we see everybody out there.

So why is it every time we hold this event, somehow there's, like, rain on the forecast?

I it's It burned us.

Year was a little mess. Yeah, this week. I don't know. Alright.

We're crossing our fingers.

Alright. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Let's go ahead. And any closed session report? Nothing to report this evening. Fantastic. Then we'll go ahead and adjourn this council meeting. We welcome everybody to come back to our next meeting, will be Monday, May 4.