City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to welcome everyone to the, to the February 17 regular city council meeting. Let's go ahead and start with the roll call. Vice mayor Reid?

Here. Council member Pratton? Here. Council member Sandhu?

Here.

Council member Farmer?

Here.

Mayor Rodriguez? Here. If you'd all like to join us in a silent prayer or moments of thought, we did have another significant volunteer in Galt pass away this week. She's the founder of Lahime in town. So we have maybe some thoughts for her.

And then after that, we will do the, flag sloop. Thank you. Tina, can you read the replay statement?

This meeting of the Galt 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.saccounty.gov. Today's meeting replaced Friday, February 20 at nine a. M. And Saturday, February 21 at nine a. M. On Metro Cable Channel fourteen. Once posted, the recording of this meeting can be viewed on demand at youtube.com/metrocablefourteen. Thank you.

Are there any additions or deletions for the agenda? If not, I will take a motion. Oh, no. Sorry. I just like motions. We don't need to do that. So no additions or deletions any from anyone? Okay. Item c, we have presentations. The first presentation is a certificate of recognition for Horizon Church.

I'll take that one. This certificate of recognition is for Horizon for putting on the Night to Shine event here at Galt High this last weekend. What we're gonna do is we're gonna play a short video, and then I'll call the representatives up from Horizon to present the the certificate. So as they're making their way forward, I'll read some, notes that I had. On behalf of the city of Galt and it's on it is our honor to present this certificate of recognition to Horizon Community Church for hosting the twenty twenty six Night to Shine.

Night to Shine is part of a worldwide movement championed by the Tim Tebow Foundation, where churches around the globe come together on the same evening to celebrate individuals with special needs, affirming their worth, dignity, and value. Here in Galt, the global vision became a powerful regional reality. This year, 241 honored guests were celebrated as kings and queens, each supported by their own buddy walking throughout with them throughout the evening, and an addition of 275 volunteers who gave their time, energy, and heart to make this night unforgettable. In addition, 25 different high schools, nine separate churches across Sacramento and San Joaquin Counties partnered together. This mean this means this wasn't just a local event, that this was a lead a regional collaboration with Galt serving as the host city, for something truly special.

Those numbers are impressive because just last year, it was under 200, and the year before that, it was 175. But what was really this really represents our community. Because of your leadership and the months of preparation and every honored guest got to walk the red carpet, was crowned as royalty, and experienced a night that they will never forget. Horizon Community Church and the partners did more than just host this event. You positioned Galt as the place of compassion, unity, and service, and you allowed our city to play a meaningful role in this worldwide celebration.

On behalf of the city council and the residents of Galt, thank you for shining so brightly, not just in our city, but across the region. Congratulations, and well done.

Madam Mayor, can I say something?

Yes, go ahead.

Yeah, I just want to say, if any of you have never been to this event, like you've never helped or volunteered, I just started helping last year. I went as a buddy to a friend of mine's daughter, and that's who I went with again this year. And it is a great event. Like, you have no idea how much these kids like, it's I mean, and it's special that it's at Galt High School. As someone who, myself, graduated from Galt High School, I'm

in the gym. And I'm like, it wasn't even my own prom wasn't even this great.

I mean, it's you saw the video. It's phenomenal. Like, the attendance is crazy. And people have been coming up to me since then. They're like, what was going on the other night? You know, they had the flea market grounds blocked off. There's always limos in town. It is a phenomenal event, but they're always, you know, needing people to volunteer. So I've been trying to spread the word and get more people that wanna participate next year, especially as buddies. So if you want to have a great time, hook up with Horizon Church. Hopefully, you guys can continue. A big thanks to Galt High School for allowing you to the facility. So that was great. Thank you.

What a great example of that something our town can get behind. That's wonderful. And I apologize to mister Vacaressa to have to follow that. So our second presentation will be Cal Cal Waste Recovery Systems. Rudy Vacaressa.

Good evening, Mary Rodriguez, vice mayor, councilman. Tonight's presentation is an annual presentation that Calloway's provides every year, regarding their service. And with that, I'll turn it to Rudy.

Yeah. Thank you, guys, and thank you, madam mayor and council. And, yeah, we're just happy to be part of the community that can do great things like we just saw, and we're gonna try our hardest to continue to be a part of that. But like I said before, my name is Rudy Vacareza. I'm a representative of CalWaste.

This is we try to kinda do two things at once. We give you guys an annual service update of the services we provide, and then it's also paired with the annual rate increase that we need to do with our customers. So I'll kinda jump into this and make this relatively quick for the sake of everybody's time here. I know you guys have a financial analysis tonight, so I'll try to keep this quick. But, as I think most of you know, I know most people here, my family's been the service provider here in Galt, officially since 1985.

I think we provided services before that, but our first contract started then. So you could go to the next do I do that or does somebody else?

Okay.

So Probably not. It's probably not on.

But not as I agree.

Okay. It says it's on. There it is. Vibrated. You know how to work this thing? No, I don't. Okay. But either way, while they're figuring it out, we can keep going. So from a traditional service sense, we provide residential, commercial, and industrial collection in the city of Galt. The standard residential service that we provide is a three cart system.

It's a trash cart, a recycling cart, and an organics cart that I'm sure you are all aware of. The standard service, aka the most common service, is the 64 gallon trash cart, which you see on the left. The hue of that color is a little off, but the trash cart's obviously gray. And then we also provide, like I said, commercial service, which is front load containers, both recycling, organics, and trash to commercial businesses. And yeah.

So okay. So with that said, we recently had to amend the service contract back in 2023 related to the state's thirteen eighty three requirements, which is around mandatory organics recycling, which I'm sure you guys are all tired of hearing about at this point. But, just to give an update on that, the city, us with the help of the city, has gotten all residents and commercial businesses into a 100% compliance, which means that everybody's doing what they should be doing and sadly paying for it at the same time. But with that said, there's other requirements. We have to do annual route audits.

Roughly, we need to audit about 10% of the residential routes in the city, which results in about 800 customers that we have to go out to. And we pretty much flip lids and have to see what's in these residents' carts as well as commercial businesses. We'll be performing our route audit sometime probably at the March, weather permitting, and that entails we usually have some people out there in golf carts and a team of people walking around. We notify customers prior to that, and then we have to report back to the state about what's in those carts in the route audits. And then we do outreach and education.

For the standpoint of 1383, we do quarterly commercial newsletters related to any updates in organics collections, and then we do an annual residential newsletter that goes out when our service calendars go out as well. We do a lot of other outreach in the community that I'll kinda touch on in a little bit, but maybe the next slide here from programs that are out there, which is what I formally mentioned. This is just like a tonnage update of the tonnage collected in the city year over year. It's kind of bland, but, you know, from a trash perspective from prior year, we're up about a 150 tons from 2024. And in recycling, I think we're pretty much flat and extra 50 tons.

And then organics actually dropped 40 or so tons. But our annual tonnage year over year is up about, let's say, like 300 tons. We used to calculate a diversion percentage related to this where the city's at 50% diversion, those things. But with 1383, the state's targets have changed, and they're more program oriented. Unless you need a certain percentage of diversion, it's more of, are you doing the programs that the state wants?

So with that said, it's not on in the slide, but part of our agreement with the city is there's a franchise fee component to allowing us to be this whole provider. And in 2025, we paid roughly about $740,000 in franchise fees to the city. And we also operate a material recovery facility, which is just a fancy word for a big recycling center in town It's just on the end of Enterprise Court. And part of that is the city collects a a host fee from us, and that means that any ton except any material accepted that's non Galt generated. The city takes a host fee related to that, and we paid the city roughly a $108,000 for that in 2025.

And, something else, a program that we've done in the community this year that we just wanted to highlight was organics related, and it's the compost donations that we've done in kind of a partnership with the schools and the Sunrise Rotary. But we've delivered about two truckloads of compost to Liberty Ranch High School for their ag program. And then for pretty much each elementary school, they have a school garden. And I'd say, you know, we probably delivered four sixty four gallon carts worth of compost to those elementary schools for their school garden in conjunction with Sunrise Rotary. Sunrise Rotary donated the plants, and we kind of did it together.

And we tried to kind of close the loop where we delivered the compost in the cart to kind of show kids that, hey, those the cardboard, the food scraps, the lawn clippings that you've been putting in those carts now turn into compost. So just wanted to highlight that. And then on another note, we we do participate in the schools very heavily. As I think you guys are all aware, we gave out three scholarships to high schools for the a somebody told me to remember this term, but it's the, like, a technical scholarship. We did two at Galt Uni or at Galt High School and one at Liberty.

They're about $500 each, but we awarded those in 2025 and plan to do more. We would actually give out more. We're trying to increase participation in the scholarship program, to be honest. So I'm kinda jumping around here, but now this kinda gets into the rate increase side of this presentation. So there was a letter delivered to the city, I think on January or December 9, to give notice about the rate increase that we must do every year.

The resulting rate increase ended up in about, from a it's on a CPI index. It was about just over 5%. It was, like, almost 5.1%, but there is a ceiling in our agreement that states 5% is max. So with that said, commercial and industrial rates will go up 5%, but the residential rates go up just shy of about four and a half percent, and that's due to the fact that we do a recycling reimbursement. So the value of the recyclables that we get each year from the city is credited back against the rate increase.

So the results of that is just about under right about 4.5% for the residents. And then this is the last year of the three year organics phase in rate increase back in 2023. Rather than go for the whole rate increase in one year, we spread it out over three years. So the result of that is I think you can see it in the third to last column there is there's an additional $0.30 tacked on to the 4.5%. Roughly, it's about a 2.5 increase for the 64 gallon, which is by far the most common service that residents have.

And on the bottom, once again, it's 5% for commercial, and the most common commercial service that we have is a four yarder. It's about a $30 change in rate or $35 more than. And then for the three yard recycling, which is the most common recycling service other than the free cart that you get, it's about a $20 change in rate. And you guys feel free to stop me. I'm sure this is not what you wanna talk about.

But so with that said, we also provide additional services to residents of Galt. Each resident is included in their monthly bill. They are these services are available. There's a handy hauler as well as a bulk item pickup, and these are the counts. A little down from last year.

You know, your crystal ball is as good as mine as to why they might be down, but these are the service counts. There's about 2,600 handy hauler services and about 1,400 bulk services. And bulk services are a couch, refrigerator, things like that that won't fit into the Handy Hauler. So it roughly came out to about 2,000 tons that we took off the streets or in the garages of people that we think that's a great service that, you know, those items don't end up on the side of a city road or a county road. And that's something we've done for the last fifteen years here in Gull.

And then this is just a list of the community organizations that we support. And like I said, we've been here since 1985 and longer. But, you know, some to highlight is the Sunshine Rotary, the extravaganza, the National Night Out, and, you know, our door is always open. If you guys have someone looking for something, send them our way. So like I said, this is just, I think, informational. I don't think we're acting on anything here tonight, but I appreciate the council's time, and I will step away now. And if you guys have any questions, I can definitely answer them. Oh, and then I gotta plug our app. That's the last slide. So we have an app.

Download the app.

Thank you. Don't run away, though.

Oh, no.

Counsel, do you have any questions or comments? And we'll start with the vice mayor.

First of all, thank you for the app. I end up checking it every Monday night to figure out what trash cans I gotta put out Tuesday morning. I did have one question when I looked at the tons that were collected. So we're supposed to be moving our food scraps and all of that to the organic waste as over putting them in the trash can. Right?

Correct.

But those the tons for the mixed organics keep going down. So is there I mean, why do you think that is?

You know, a lot of the tonnage, especially with organic waste, has to do with moisture. So like when it rains and I'd say about less than 10% of what's in there is actually food scraps. It's mostly like lawn trimming. So it's your old green waste can. So a lot of it has to do with moisture.

I don't exactly know, but it's actually it's been kind of a trend across the state is when the first programs roll out, the organic tonnage spiked and then they sort of leveled off and slightly dipped. People are continuing to use their garbage disposals. And I think, at first, they thought they weren't allowed to, and then they realized that they were still allowed to. But I I don't have a definitive answer for that, but I think a lot of it's moisture. You know, the 2023 was a huge rain year.

Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

Mister Bratton, nothing. Mister Stadue?

Yeah. I have just first of all, thank you for the presentation in detail. I don't know is the right time to ask the question you or the staff. You know, it's not like when any rate increase citizen always have a concern. And I know some may be not concerned, but some they have a limited income, they always can have a concern. And I see that bottom of this said 5% per agreement with the CPI. CPI for twenty six to twenty six, twenty five to twenty six, what the CPI you guys in a contract? And this totally on the CPI and also with the projection.

So it's a it's in a past CPI adjustment, and it's actually not a standard CPI. It's the water sewer trash CPI index that we use, but the adjustment is from, I believe, February 24 to February 25 is the adjustment period that we use. It's not a projection.

So this is CPA just for you guys using for all other city or just because I know the CPA usually we don't have here especially in even in Sacramento, they usually use the Bay Area. And I I mentioned that before, it's very ridiculous whenever they're using the Bay Area, you cannot compare Galt or Sacramento with Bay Area. But I'm just asking, is that CPA you guys using when this garbage? Is is that local area or from the Bay Area?

You know, unfortunately, it's not local. We actually use, like, a national CPI index. We don't use the Bay Area index, which is actually higher than the national. So I don't know if that gives you a little bit of comfort, but we we don't use the Bay Area Index. We use a a national index.

Okay. So that means you're telling me from there, the 5% above the 5% CPA CPA. That's why we you're asking 5% increase. Right? I don't check it, but I'm just asking all the word out asking staff. Or there is another thing in the contract is that's why you guys come up as a 5%?

I mean, I can like so it's in the the agreement was the Yeah. The CPI index that we use. And Frank, go ahead, maybe.

Yeah. Was just gonna say it's in the agreement. That was one of the items that was negotiated. But what was negotiated also was a cap, a maximum. So even if I recall when this was negotiated, it was shortly after or shortly during the time of extraordinary unprecedented inflation. And so that's why there was a cap put in there. So if that should happen again, there would be some protection to the city.

So the 5% cap is maximum or there is also is something is a minimum cap?

I don't recall if there's a minimum, but I do recall that there was a maximum.

Yeah. Don't There is not a minimum, but 5% is the cap. I mean, like this year, we should have got 5.1, but it capped. And this is the first time it's capped since we renegotiated. But that 5%, I think, has been there for about the last fifteen years. And I think this is one of the first times we've ever actually hit it.

All right. Thank you for the clarification.

Yeah. So yeah, thanks for being here tonight, Rudy. Yeah, just to kind of piggyback on Councilman Sandhu's questions. As you know, Rudy, I was a part of the ad hoc committee with Councilman Lozano at the time. We've worked for, I don't know, it was like more than a year to try and negotiate all that. And that was one of the things we tried to work in there because you know, as people know, the CPI, for people who don't what this is, is a consumer price index. So it's like almost like tied to inflation sort of. And so, you know, you see spikes in costs, but we were able to, you know, come to an agreement to cap it at five. So even when the CPI was more than five, five would be the maximum.

And maybe to correct myself, the cap was there, but I think it was previously at seven. And this time we came around, we brought it down to five. Right.

And I mean, you know, looking at, you know, we have roughly 8,000 households. Maybe it's a little different now, but that's roughly like, I was looking at the one popular can, 64 gallon, if that's the one that most people have.

Yeah.

At $2.5 increase, you know, if you do the math, it's like 20,000 some dollars. I mean, in the scheme of the operation of wasting $20,000 in one year is like a drop in the bucket, really is. I know that you guys had, you know, we were you guys provided a lot of comparable rates for other cities when we were looking at that. And the structure that you guys have come up with, we felt was very competitive. So but I have a question. And maybe you can't answer this now, but I was curious. So I find it interesting how, like, other counties, like in our county, they require us to do certain things. I was recently in Roseville, which is Placer County

Mhmm.

If I'm not mistaken. And my daughter just moved there, and they don't even have recycle cans. They said they're not they're not required to have recycle cans, so they don't throw their cardboard away and recycle and I'm like, how is it that another county doesn't even have to do that, but yet, is it vary like that from county to county? Population.

It it does. Yeah. So there's it's not necessarily county to county. There's certain areas within county that are designated low population areas.

So Ralesville's low population? No.

But it could be that a little sliver of it goes in there. And some cities, counties, municipalities, whatever you want to call it, they have differing services where they'll have just a recycling cart and an organics cart. And they're saying there's no such thing as trash. I know that's not the case for Roseville. But or it's a different way where they run a dirty MRF, which means they throw all the recyclables in just the trash can, and then they sort through it.

We don't run one of those here. We run a clean MRF. But each county has the ability county, city, whatever you want to call it has the ability to change the program as long as it's meeting the state's goals. And by far, 98% of jurisdictions run a program like we have here, which is the three cart system.

Yeah. So I do I do find it interesting your comment about how they used to care about the diversion rates. And now it's just like, well, as long as you're running the program.

Yeah.

I just find that funny because I feel like, you know, big government, like the state, is always fast to implement programs, you know, and then pat themselves on the back because they're saving the planet or whatever. And then they just really, well, we don't really care how much you're diversion. As long as you got the program, we're good with that. Like, it just, I just, it's like if they really cared what they were doing, they would be, not that we want them to pay, you know, super close attention and micromanage what you guys are doing, but I just, it's just frustrating when, you know, because a lot of the population is, Mr. Sandusas, you know, this rate increase and stuff. All this is tied to these these continued, you know, pieces of legislation that keep getting handed down. We need to do this. We need to do that. We need to do that. Yeah.

It's the same thing with Galt and its water. You know, the restrictions that are put on our water and wastewater, you know, that's what causes our water increase because they keep lowering the the the standards. And so all that comes with the cost. And so people get frustrated at their local government when, in fact, this stuff is just being as a pass through from big government. So, anyways, not to get in that conversation. I do want to thank you guys for all you guys do in the community though. I know you guys had a list up there, but you guys, every time I turn around, you guys have your logo there. I see your logo on something that you're participating in. You're always giving money to this and that and everything. You guys don't have to do that.

You could just do what you do in the community, but the fact that you guys contribute a lot of money to events. If there's a big event in town, there's probably a 90% chance you guys are involved with it in some way financially. So I just wanna say I do appreciate that. So thank you.

Yeah. No problem. And related to the rate increase, we don't try to rest on our laurels. We've we've done the thing where we try to forego the rate increase for a year and then come back and get it. We just find it a little a little better for everybody as if we consistently do this year over year and chip away rather than wait four years and have to come back for a 20% rate increase, which is what has happened in the past. So we don't take any rate increase lightly. We know the effect on the community. We we're out there every week picking it up. So I just thank you for the council for your time. And if you have any more questions, great. If not, I can

I I actually have a quest a couple questions? The route audits you talked about

Yeah.

Our commercial businesses, are they included in those routes?

They are. We only have to do, like, a dozen in the city of Galt. We do those are a little more quiet. You know? I mean, we just kinda do them. We contact the business owners and let them know that we're doing them. But pretty much, it's just me or somebody else riding in the front load truck that day looking in there with a little checklist, you barely know I'm there. The residential audits are a little different. It's like a golf cart driving around with a guy in a yellow vest that you've never seen before looking in your trash can. So it's a little more public.

Yeah. And then if I understood you correctly, it sounds like if the community is diligent about recycling and not throwing it in the trash, that that helps to offset the costs because you're paying the city back, or is that recycling buyback, just what the city the the city itself does, not the residents.

The the first part of what you said. So the the better Galt residents are at recycling, the more funds that will go against their rate increases. So their rate increases will be less if we were better at recycling. There's a little nuance to that. There's material markets that come into play and the price of cardboard and that kind of stuff. But fundamentally, the better Galt residents recycle, the less their bills will be.

Thank you. All right. Anything else? All right. Thank you so much for coming and giving us that presentation.

All right. Tran, you want to Trung? Sorry. All right. Thank you, guys.

Maybe I'll just add just a few words. You guys know that Calways, they helped us with the pallet project also over at Walnut, and just wanted an update that that project's been done, so they're a partner to to the city there too. So

Yeah. It looks great out there. I just drove by the other day and thought, oh, it looks great. Thank you. Alright. Moving on. Item d, public comment. Tina?

Under government code section five four nine five four point three, members of the public may address the city council on non agenda items. The public comment section is for the City Council to receive comments except for brief responses to questions no discussion or action may be taken on any item that is not listed on the agenda. Please limit comments to a maximum of five minutes consistent with the city council procedural guidelines the mayor reserves the right to shorten the time limit for speakers to ensure the efficient and timely completion of all city business on the agenda No public comments on this item.

All right. Okay,

go ahead and come up and

Trunking together, thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Lautenheiser? Lutzenheiser. Lutzenheiser, I apologize.

Okay. Mhmm. Everybody says that. I'm Ron Lutzenheiser. I live, technically outside the city, but we use this waste disposal.

Hey, Ron. I'm trying to talk into the

Oh, okay. Sorry. Ron Lutzenheiser. I live outside the city, but we use this waste disposal. And I'm not starting trying to start anything or whatnot, but some of us who don't fill our cans, like on the green waste, they we have every week to pick up.

But on recycle and trash, we put those out maybe once, maybe twice a month. So we're paying for service, you know, that we don't need. Now we can afford it, so, you know, we pay it. But there's probably a lot of people, retired people, whatnot, that this is an extra cost to. I think someone should look into that. I called, and the only thing they could offer me was a smaller barrel. And the cost was only, I think, about $10 a month difference, which is immaterial. But I would suggest that someone would look at that. Maybe some arrangement could be made for lower income people. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Lutzenheiser. And I would have said your name incorrectly too because I grew up with Lautzenheisers spelled the same way.

You did where?

And well, it's called Granite Bay now. But Sorry? It's called Granite Bay now, but it was Placer County out in the middle of nowhere.

Other parts of our relatives go with Lautzenheiser because in German, that's the way it would be pronounced. It would be pronounced Au, which in German is.

Gotcha.

My dad said Lutzenheiser, so that's what I go with.

There you go. Well, thank you.

Thank you again.

Okay. Item e, reports by city council members on regional boards, commissions, and committees. Mister vice mayor.

I don't have anything.

Mister Pratton?

Well, I got a few. Let's see. Start with February 4, 708th Street Council Board Chambers. Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission, the LAFCO Commission. Not a lot on the agenda. We barely had enough people there to run it, but I think we approved the budget and had a couple of speakers. So it was pretty pretty low action. Anybody got any questions on it? Check with me, and I can update you. Let's see.

Then we went to a cast meeting, February 10, that was held here at City Hall. And cast meetings are always great. Cast is the city and and schools get together. So we have the superintendents, the police chief, and city manager and and Sean Farmer is there. It was it was some good information.

They talked about the schools educated us a little bit on the updated us on the amount of kids that are at the schools, whether their enrollment's up or down, which it's it's up from last year, but it's still very low. Right now, there's a lot of folks that think we need another middle school, but we don't right now. They know the fee in the future, they will, so they're moving in that direction. Seems like it works out to per household, you know, because all the new houses that are going in, there's always a lot of discussion about, you know, all the extra kids we're gonna get. But the reality is it takes about four houses to get one kid for the high school and one kid for the elementary school.

So so it takes a lot of houses to get the kids. One thing I thought was interesting is the high school is getting some getting kids coming in from Elk Grove now. So some of the kids have transferred here, which helps us as far as numbers because that's how they get their money is by per head. So since the enrollment is down a little bit, that's that's good. If we got too large or then we wouldn't be able to take those kids.

But for now, that's helping. Summer school's gonna be held at, Galt High this year. And nothing else that I saw in there noteworthy. Mister Farmer may have something to add to it. Then we had the BCC meeting, which is the Basin wide Air Pollution Control Council.

And that that's one that I Skype into, and they just report on how much stuff got burnt in the air last year, some of the, costs to the rice burning and the some of the legislate legislative platforms that they work off of. So that's it for me.

Thank you. Mister Sandhu?

Nothing to report tonight.

Mister Farmer?

Yeah. Thank you, madam mayor. The only thing I attended was the cast meeting as as Councilman Pratt and mentioned. And it is a good meeting. We only meet every quarter, but it's a very good way that the city and the school district can talk about things that kind of affect each other. And one of the main things we do talk about is the enrollment and how the development that's going on in town affects that. And I have to say, we usually talk about this at length each meeting. One of the biggest misconceptions that I see, and on social and those of you who know me, I'm very you know, I observe social media pretty heavily. And I talk to a lot of people in the community. And one of the biggest myths that we hear is people under the perception that we need to build more schools.

Or that McCaffrey Middle School is full. And when are we going to build another middle school? I see that probably weekly comments like that. When the reality is, as Mr. Pratton mentioned, that they've actually foregone some school sites that were designated to be school sites. They've actually decided to let those school sites go and have been negotiated or are negotiating with developers to develop those sites into something different. The data that they gave us at the CAST meeting was from their consultant they hired who does a projection. They do all the calculations with the growth anticipated and all that stuff. They said that it's going to be at least ten years before they would even consider building another school. That's ten years.

They said by the year 2032, which is in six years from now, that they project that McCaffrey Middle School will only be at 65% capacity. So here we are people thinking their middle school's full. And in six years from now, they only projected it to be at 5%. They also expect only a 5% increase. This is in the elementary district.

So this would be this reflects amount of people, how many you know, the younger generations, if they're having children, how many children are having these are some of the data points that are affecting. They're only projecting a 5% increase in the next six years. So that's 189 students in a district that has about 4,500 kids. It's a very small number, and it's honestly just not keeping up with the pace of inflation and the cost of teachers and facilities and things like that. So this is why you see schools passing bonds and always want to try to go out for bonds because they just literally don't have enough money coming in.

As Matt mentioned, you know, the the the the point that how many students are yielding per household has actually dropped. So for the elementary district, it's point three. So basically, it takes so for every household, you get point three students. So it's basically a little more than three houses to yield. And then the high school is point two five. So it takes four houses to yield a high school student. So regardless of how much people think all is growing, it's not being reflected in the numbers of the schools. The good news is enrollment is up a tick, but it's been stagnant. It's just now been climbing. So hopefully, they can keep some consistency there.

But we also did talk about school safety, which we always do. They're going to do an active shooter training at Liberty Ranch this year. Last year, they did at Gault. So they do alternate the schools and which ones they do. And this helps our police officers and teams be familiarize yourselves with the campuses.

So then, God forbid something did happen that that our officers are trained and and familiar with the campus itself and makes everything go as smoothly as possible in in in those kinds of situations. And we did talk about some other policies that had to do with walking out for, like, protests and things like that, which have kind of been going on in other cities. So we talked about some of that stuff. But, overall, it was a good meeting, I always look forward to those. So I think we got a good relationship going between the city and the schools for sure. So and I think that's all I had since the last meetings. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. I attended the Policy and Innovation Committee for SACOG. There was a lot of discussion. That was one of those meetings drinking the water from the fire hose.

But some of the things that were talked about obviously transportation funding is a huge issue right now, especially as at the federal level they're cutting a lot of the programs. And so we talked a lot about advocacy, especially when going back for cap to cap. They're putting together some good programs locally or within the state. The senator state Senator Calderon is working with SACOG trying to get a bill through the SB three seventy five that they're hoping will accelerate. There are some programs that were implemented, but they are programs that were approved, but they weren't implemented.

So I guess we need another bill to say to implement the one they already said they were going to do. So to do that and to improve governance balance, and part of that kind of goes back to what we were talking about with the recycling. They set these really goals and then, you know, with all of these threats and then kinda pulled back and say, okay. Just as long as you're doing a program, that that's what they're trying to hope with with transportation and housing so when communities aren't able to meet some of these demands, that there's less punishment, I guess, for the community. So which is kind of a good thing, especially being small, we have our challenges try to fit into that one size fits all mentality that comes from Sacramento.

So that's part of what they're working on with that SB three seventy five, so watch for that. That will be coming. They haven't drafted all of the language for it yet, but hopefully it comes across and it will be something that we can get behind. The one thing that they are going to that SACOG is going to be due to to do, and I cannot remember the exact name of it, but it's a household goods survey. And so this will community members will be approached.

It's one of those things where they're gonna come and ask you to participate, to say, hey, where do you go for the week? Just give me, you know, just how many miles do you drive? How many? And this has nothing to do with the what's at in Sacramento right now. This is for SACOG to try to determine what our transportation needs are going to be over the next decade, basically. And then some people can opt in to do a week long one, and basically they're gonna be asking people to journal everywhere you go. If you just ran to the to Walmart to go pick up the butter that you forgot to get last time, they want all of those. So how many miles? What did you go for? Who all went?

How many people were in your car, things like that. Because of the way people are feeling right now, it might some people may feel it's very intrusive and there might be ulterior motives behind it, but it really is a good thing and will be very helpful for us to prove that we need transportation funding. And as we all know, especially here in Galt, that ninety nine needs a lot of help. So we need as much money as we can. So please participate if you if they if you're approached.

That will probably be coming out within the next few months. So if you see that, that's that's what that's about. And I think that that's pretty much there was a lot going on, a lot to talk about transportation. So if you have any additional questions, go ahead and reach out to me. Okay.

Item F. Information Consent Calendar. It is recommended that items one through two be acted on simultaneously unless a separate discussion and or action is requested by a council member. We have item one, receive and file warrants for period ending 02/04/2026, and item two, minutes of the regular meeting of 02/03/2026. Does anyone have any want any discussion on any of those?

Okay. Hearing none, I will entertain a motion.

I'll move.

I'll second.

Okay. Moved by council member Reid and seconded by council member Pratt and Tina. Vice mayor Reid.

Aye. Council member Pratton.

Aye.

Council member Sandhu.

Aye.

Council member Farmer.

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez. Aye. Cast five zero vote. Item g, scheduled matter matters of notice of, public hearing. Doesn't look like we have any. And item h, regular calendar, city treasurer's office. Mister Farrell.

Madam mayor, thank you very much. City council members, good evening. Tonight, before you, you have the treasurer's report as of December 2025. But before I get to that or touch upon that, I just wanna always give you a little little economic rundown. And so, according to EDD, they're they're not my numbers, but according to EDD, our the unemployment rate here in Galt is 6.5%. That was as of the end of of December. Countywide, they say it's 4.9%. Now whether some of the those numbers are due to seasonal workers, I'm not sure. I don't know. It just shows just what the numbers are.

So I just wanted to, let you know about that. As far as, housing information, I combined the December and January, so December 2025 and January 2026 together. And during those two months, there were a total of 34 homes that sold. And the just to kinda give you a few statistics, I'm gonna just give you the median tonight, and that is it's basically a three bedroom, two bath, approximately 1,700 square foot home, and that was built in 1993. Now I will I will tell you the list price.

The list price was $549,000. That does not mean that that's what it was sold for. So the sales price was $536,500. So you can see the housing market is just softening a little bit. And it if you do the math, it's the the square foot per by the closed price is about $308 per square foot.

If you remember, probably about a year ago, that that three zero eight was probably right around $3.20. So, again, it's just a touch of coming down. It's just a softening just a little bit. And the last thing is, of those 34 homes that sold in December and January, 21 of those sold within the first sixty days. K?

And and 14 of those were actually under thirty days. So it they either go quick or they don't. How about that? So tonight, I'll talk about the treasurer's report. And and, really, I wanna talk about the banking relationship that we have with, our local bank, Farmers and Merchants Bank.

Right now, as of the December, we had about $2,121,642,000 dollars with Farmers Merchants Bank, and that's approximately 15% of our our total portfolio. But one thing I wanna mention is when the city of Galt incorporated back in 1946, I wasn't there, but when that was eighty years ago. And so we have actually we, the city, have have actually been with the city of Galt for eighty years now. And officially, it's August 11. But that's that's a long time.

And the reason and and I'm sure someone has asked, why haven't you changed in eighty years? And there's two good two good answers to that. One is I know the council and and myself, you always want to, and we preach this, shop local. Do business locally. And in banking and of our banks, and there's three in town, think about it. First, there's Wells Fargo. Well, they're not necessarily a local bank. Right? Then there's Banner Bank. Well, they're they're headquartered in the state of Washington.

And so then you have Farmers and Merchants Bank who is, you know, located in Lodi. That is our local bank. And and Farmers and Merchants has been here since more well, a little bit beyond 1946, but that's when the city incorporated, and that's when who we started doing business with. So that's number number one. Then number two reason why we stay with Farmers and Merchants is because they work with us.

They we'd I negotiate rates with them all the time. I could put some of our funds in with the state of California local agency investment fund called LAFE. I could. But Farmers and Merchants has come back and said, hey. You know, if if we're if we give you a little bit few more basis points more than LAFE, would you put the money with us? So I absolutely. And and you also you know? So that's why we have over $21,000,000 with them right now. So we have, in a money market alone, again, higher than the late rate. In December, we earned 4.11%.

We have about $15,000,000. And in our regular checking account, we had 1,600,000.0. Again, that's a snapshot as of December 31. And then also we have a certificate of deposit, which expires this coming July, 07/07/2026. And that was, that was a one year certificate, and that's at four and a quarter percent.

So when that matures, we'll sit down and negotiate once again. But that's the relationship that we've had for the past eighty years is is they work with us as far as, you know, as far as, you know, negotiating the right rates. And, you know, as such, I just in December, I agreed to stay with them for another five years. So I think that's and and, you know, they know that they're gonna have that money. And so for the next five years and so it it kinda it it goes it's a win win for both both Farmers Merchants and for our taxpayer money.

Okay? And and one other concern I wanna address is if you're wondering about, okay. Well, how safe is that money? And every dollar above the $250,000 FDIC insurance corporation, you they, Farmers and Merchants, has to collateralize those funds. So what that means is that for every dollar that we put in, they have to place into a a separate third party custodian a dollar 10¢ of of securities.

So if anything ever happens, say, to farmers and merchants, we go to that third party custodian and then take those securities. So we we are we then know that we have that safety in in those securities. Now having said all that, I will also say that during the first six months of our fiscal year, the the city earned a total of a little bit over $3,000,000 in interest, which that's, I want to say, a record. Now you can't necessarily multiply that and say, okay, well, is we're going to earn $6,000,000 in a fiscal year, in our fiscal year, because interest rates are ticking down. And so I I can't I won't say that, but I will say that we've never earned $3,000,000 in the first six months for the city.

This is truly, you know, a a new record. So with that, I will answer any questions that the council may have. Otherwise, I ask for your approval for the treasurer's report ending of December 2025.

Thank you, mister Farrell. Thank Mister vice mayor, do you have any?

No questions.

Mister Pratton?

No questions. Very informative. Thank you.

Mister Sandhu. Mister Farmer.

Yeah. Just one question. You said that you re upped your relationship for another five years.

Yeah.

That means, like, that you're gonna keep our our our standard, like, checking accounts and things with them. Right? That doesn't mean that that and just to clarify, that doesn't mean that you've promised them that you're not gonna put money in anywhere else except them for the next five years.

Oh, the the the yeah.

That's correct.

Our checking account is going to be there for the next

five years.

Right. Right. Because I know you do have sometimes you put absolutely. Yeah.

We got we got bonds. You know.

Yeah. I didn't want the I didn't want the public to misunderstand that.

No. No. We just we guarantee that their checking account will be there for the next five years. Yeah. Period. Yeah.

Well, so that's all I have. And I just wanna say again that it's nice to see, you know, an unprecedented number of interest being made due to your savvy skills. You're earning every bit of that $500 a month that we pay you to manage millions of dollars.

Thank you.

I like to throw it out there because people don't know that.

So 600, just for the

Oh, 600. Sorry.

Well Alright.

Well, I think we're overpaying you

for Well,

yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Alright.

Alright. Thank you, Mr. Farrell. I really appreciate it. I love all the you don't have to come and bring all of the EDD and all that kind of stuff, but I do appreciate hearing it. It's

great. Won't talk about EDD again. How about that?

Oh, no, no. I actually Oh, you mean, really

it's enjoy

unfortunate that it is as high as it is. But it's good to hear because most of us don't go look that up. And the home cells. It's good to hear.

Yeah. It's good information.

Yeah. Good information. There we go. We'll put it that way because sometimes it's not good to hear.

Yeah. No, I understand.

Mr. Farrell, do have one more question. If it's not a big deal, if it's a big deal, next time you do a report, you know what will be interesting for you to add if you're able to just do the whatever, is when you give us those numbers about what the median price in Galt is, whatever, give us a comparable city like Lodi or Elk Grove, somewhere around us. Because I think it would be interesting to see the barometer of what houses are selling for in Galt and what the economy looks like, the strength of it versus another town. So if you have that next time, that would be awesome.

I will make a note of that. Thank you. Council member Farmer, thank you.

Alright. Well, I will enter entertain a motion.

I'll move to approve treasurer's report as stated. Second.

Okay. Moved by council member Pratton and seconded by council or vice mayor Reid. Tina? Vice mayor Reid?

Aye. Council member Pratton? Aye. Council member Sandhu? Aye. Council member Farmer?

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez? Aye. Motion passes five to zero.

Thank you.

Alright. Moving on to the city manager's office. Consultant agreement with Position Interactive Incorporated for the City Of Galt branding initiative. Miss Mendez.

Does it go any bigger than this? Is this how it

normally Let's see. There we go.

There it is.

This is what happens when our community engagement analyst does our presentations. They look a lot fancier, and then we don't know how to work them. So good evening, mayor and members of city council. Amy Mendez, assistant city manager. I am joined here this evening by Genesis Alegria.

She is our community engagement analyst. And if this initiative is approved this evening, Genesis will be leading the consultant team and this project and implementation over the next eight to twelve months. The item before you this evening is the City of Galt branding initiative. As you may recall, one of the six priorities in the City of Galt's 2025, 2027 strategic plan focuses on quality of life and on preserving and enhancing Galt's small town charm. A key outcome under this priority is to evaluate and implement a citywide branding initiative that clearly defines and strengthens the city's brand identity.

Currently, the city utilizes a city seal, a city logo, and a separate Galt Market logo, which were all developed at different times and lack cohesive design standards or consistent application. As a result, public facing materials ranging from city communications and signage to economic development and tourism materials vary in appearance and messaging, which dilutes the city's overall identity. You may see out in the community, we have vehicles with the city seal, which is behind you. We have the wayfinding sign logo, which is on a lot of our signs. Our business cards, it depends on whose card you have on what logo is on them.

There's really no consistency and no standard in how the logos are being applied. And that happened as a result of our wayfinding signage logo. I think the former city manager was a fan, and that became sort of the newly implemented logo. And so there's really no standard at this point in the community or in the city, which is why you see it kind of applied along different in different locations. So what is a brand, and why does it matter?

A brand is a clear, consistent identity that communicates who we are and what makes us unique. It also is what we may be known for. It includes more than just a logo. It includes our reputation, how residents, businesses, and visitors perceive the city, our story, what makes us unique, and why. It communicates our values and priorities.

It also is a visual and verbal identity, our tagline, logo, colors, messaging tone, etcetera. Developing a clear, authentic brand will support economic development, tourism, and community engagement. A strong brand is a strategic framework for how the city presents itself authentically and intentionally. You know, from a tourism standpoint and from an economic development standpoint, you know, we want to attract visitors and businesses to our city. And we need to tell them why they should be visiting here.

And I think that's lost sometimes in the presentation of our logo, the lack of a tagline. We don't have a story that goes along with our logo. And this all comes into play with a comprehensive brand story. After careful consideration and meeting with several branding and marketing companies, staff selected Position Interactive out of Sacramento to lead the City of Golf Branding Initiative. This firm has worked with several agencies on similar initiatives, including Downtown Sacramento, Visit Sacramento, Monterey, as well as others.

They have a strong approach to community engagement, which we believe will be a vital part of this process. This initiative is expected to take eight to twelve months for a full brand rollout. The brand process will begin with what we consider to be the most important phase, which is a discovery and community engagement phase designed to gather input from internal and external stakeholders. This phase includes an email survey, individual interviews, and group interviews to capture perspectives from city leadership, staff, residents, businesses, and community partners. The goal of this phase is to understand how Galt is currently perceived, identify community values and aspirations, and ensure the resulting brand is authentic, inclusive, and reflective of the community.

Can you advance the slide? I'm gonna ask the IT director to fix my remote.

Oh, did it work for you?

Phase two is brand strategy and identity development. Building on information gathered during the discovery phase, the consultant will develop a comprehensive brand strategy. This phase includes defining brand goals, identifying key target audiences, and establishing a clear brand tone and messaging framework. The consultant will also develop a tagline, a brand story, and positioning statements that articulate who Galt is and what it stands for. As part of this phase, the consultant will prepare two or three logo concepts for both the city of Galt and the Galt market to establish a cohesive and recognizable brand function.

Phase three, following approval of identity development, a complete brand system will be developed to guide consistent use across all city departments. This includes the verbal framework such as brand mantra and key messaging, as well as visual standards including logo usage, color palette, typography, photography style, iconography, and supporting graphic assets. These tools will ensure consistency, clarity, and flexibility across departments, programs, and external partnerships. One of the keys here that I think we need to touch on has to do with how many people in the city are utilizing our logo and designing their own flyers and branding material. Public Works does it for a lot of their outreach as it relates to recycling and the organics.

That's what Public Works typically is working with Genesis on. The Galt Market and special events, their staff are consistently working with Genesis on developing materials and outreach for special events and parks and recreation programming. And everybody has their own style and theme, and that shows really when it comes to what we're putting on social media. Phase four is implementation guidance and rollout. To support successful adoption, the scope includes six months of consulting support to guide implementation and provide ongoing guidance.

This phase includes monthly planning sessions and proactive guidance to help Citi apply the brand effectively. Rollout support may include development of campaign materials such as videos, social media assets, email, and presentation templates, and design support to ensure a smooth, coordinated, and effective launch of the new citywide brand. The last thing we want to do is put together a comprehensive brand guide and not roll it out properly. We have one community engagement analyst, and that's Genesis, who's sitting here. She will be leading this initiative, which is a heavy lift.

I mean, you're working with a consultant, but there's a lot of engagement in the community and with stakeholders that we're going to be doing. And rolling out a brand and ensuring that all of our city staff understand and roll it out just as effectively as Genesis does is really gonna be important. We don't want it to be disjointed, and we wanna make sure that there is a guide that really provides an ongoing support for our staff. So if Genesis, heaven forbid, leaves ever, there's something there and some guidance for future staff to utilize. But the rollout is going to be important as well, because we really want buy in from the community on this.

The last thing we want to do is put together a branding guide that we haphazardly put out in the community, and it ends up being not well received. And so that's what the consultant really will be helping us with. As I mentioned earlier, the branding initiative is more than a visual refresh. It's a strategic tool that supports how the city of Galt communicates, how we build trust and enhance the community pride. It increases the city's ability to attract businesses and visitors.

By grounding the brand and community input, the city ensures its identity authentically reflects Galt's character while positioning the city for future growth. A cohesive brand framework will also improve efficiency by providing clear standards and tools that can be consistently across departments, reducing fragmentation and ensuring a unified message in all public facing communication. Tonight, we are requesting a one time allocation from the general fund for the City of Galt branding initiative. This contract is not to exceed $120,000. Future budget allocations for a phased implementation of the new logo and tagline, which includes applying the new logo to city vehicles, business cards, uniforms, leather head, signage, other materials will be done through the budget process as we phase it in over the next several years.

These future allocations will be included in this first budget go around for fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven, and we'll likely start with more of the outward facing logos on city vehicles, city uniforms, and begin to phase out the old city seal and the old city wayfinding signage logo. We're also asking that we have two city council members appointed to an ad hoc committee to assist us over the next several months as we work with the consultant to do outreach and also develop the brand, the logo, the taglines, because we will be working hand in hand with the branding consultant. But we wanna make sure we have City Council input as part of that. It's a little bit easier than us coming back to City Council with two options of logos and having design by committee done from the dais. I think it'd be a lot easier for us to have a couple of council members assisting us as we go through the process.

And it won't be a heavy lift, but we just wanna make sure we have input from the council as we kind of move forward with this. There's a couple of questions I want to just make sure I address with regard to the wayfinding signage. So those are all relatively new signs. We have no plan to get rid of the wayfinding signage logo. We will still utilize that for wayfinding purposes.

The signs will remain, and we've actually spoken with the consultant already to ensure that there is cohesiveness from the wayfinding sign logo to the new logo that is developed. Additionally, the Galt Market logo will all be complementary of each other so that we don't have something drastically different that rolls out. But again, I think it's really important for us. For ten years I've worked with the city and we've had the city seal and then the wayfinding logo. The Galt Market logo desperately needs to be redone.

And the Gault Market is going be working with us as part of the committee on this. But we want to ensure that the Gault Market appears to be part of the city, because I think that a lot of people think that the Galt market is not a function of the city. And we really want to turn that around and make sure, especially as we go through the market master plan, that there's a refresh that's done with the market logo and all of the branding moving forward. That concludes staff's presentation. If you have questions, Genesis and I are here to answer.

Thank you for that. Counsel, do you want do we have any speakers? We do. We do. Do you want to ask questions first, counsel, and then get speakers? Or just go ahead and go straight to the speakers.

Speakers.

Speakers.

Okay. Harry Wenzel.

Good evening council members. Harry Wenzel from the West Side Of Galt. And I just added up, I've been a citizen of Galt now. This is going on eighteen years. I don't know where the time went. This, I think, is one of the more interesting items that comes before the council. I think it's a really important item. And I fully support that we need to do something here. But I don't think it's, and as Amy mentioned, it's more than just logos. Okay?

So I wanna approach it a little bit from the business side. Tonight, what you're looking at is approving $120,000 Okay? So I guess the first question is, are we meeting our obligation for the approval of spending the 120? Do you need three bids? Or how do you if you're going out because it seems to me that you're making an exception.

I could be wrong, but that's what you guys are here to figure out. Okay? And we talk about we talked to some other firms. I mean, as a citizen, I'd like to see what those other firms were because this is a very interesting subject. So with that, the other is more when you read the contract, when you look at the presentation, this is about as good as it's gonna get, you know, in in terms of presentations of staff giving something to the council.

But then it moves to the next question, which is when you read the contract, are we getting all of these concepts into the contract? And do we have timeframes where we're gonna have like a pause and say, where are we going? It's an important item, I think. So I the logos. And I see documents coming out. Documents for this kind of stuff is very hard. Because you really need to boil it down to where the council can always have this backdrop as they're working on things. Where staff always has this backdrop. And you have to have simple enough documents where they say, well, I mean, how are we doing this? Okay.

So what I see there is the attachment exhibit A, I think is a little bit sparse. Because remember, if you do run into a problem where you say, well, no, no, that's not what we wanted. We wanted documents. We wanted something functional. And I don't see that as a big rewrite. I just see the presentation and the agenda report. I see some of that incorporated back into exhibit A. So this is like putting a little safety net on. I'm sure this is a great company. I have no doubt.

And then the other thing is when you look in exhibit A, they talk about 50,000 units to roll out and stuff like that. We got this 120,000. And then we have a payment schedule. And I think, I mean myself, I'd be more comfortable if that payment schedule said, yeah, you get it. But we expect, we don't have like a, know, this much should be done at this point. We should be seeing documents by this point. So what are you gonna do? You get out there, you get out there seven months and you don't have any of the deliverables yet, but you've made all these payments. So I think those are things to contemplate. I think it's just good business.

But I fully support what what's being done. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, those documents. I like the logos we got right now, but I'm sure I like the new ones just as much. And that's all I've got. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Wintzel. No other comment. Thank you. Alright. Counsel, mister

Reid. I should've had a question. What was it?

You can come back to it if you want.

You wanna come back around? Yeah. Okay. Mister Pratt.

The only thing I when I read the contract is I look at the additional if we purchase anything through them, I guess flyers, brochures, whatever, they add 20%. So anywhere we can keep from doing that would be appreciated. Other than that, I support what I see.

The consultant, that is an additional cost if that's something that we're interested in. What we really wanna see is the templates that they're providing. So they will be providing us with a lot of built in templates that we can use for social media purposes. So instead of creating something new for whether it be a recreation program or some type of special event or just a general public announcement, we have a supply of templates that we can pull from. And so there's not much in terms of printed material that we would be looking for.

This is really just for us to have our presentations, our templates for social media, in addition to the business card template, the email signature template, all of that will be coming through from them electronically. And we did, just to touch on Mr. Wentzell's question, we interviewed three different branding agencies, and all of them were over $100,000 They were all comparable in terms of their deliverables. And there is a heavy lift on the rollout piece of it, and that is to assist us from a staffing standpoint on the rollout and ensuring that we have all of the training and professional assistance as it relates to that. And that'll be for staff with Genesis, but also with the other staff in the other departments.

Mr. Sandhu.

Just for the clarification, thank you for this agenda item. I believe I'm going to support it. But just for the clarification, there's $120,000 lot of money. This is especially from the general fund. And there's 120,000 that the contract we have with position in track incorporation or that's the money we needed so then we can distribute whatever they done the service?

The contract for 120,000 includes the rollout, brand rollout, but it includes the beginning stages as well. So, all of the community engagement and outreach, the surveys, the assistance, and whether it be community stakeholder meetings that we do, or having them join us at the Saturday market to collect information from residents, that will be part of it on the community engagement piece. And then moving forward, it would be the brand guide document. So the logo, once it's decided, the tagline, the mantra, the photography. All of you received a sample of the two guides that we had from Downtown Sacramento and for Visit Sacramento.

And that's really the tangible document that we'll have at the end of the day, which is the brand guide itself. And then the rollout is the other part of it. So that's a comprehensive $120,000 for all of that.

Right. And the other thing, you know, you already answered my question, but I asked, you already did other two companies for interview. And who was these companies? F Dairy's

was one of them. I actually met the company Honey. They're from Sacramento. They were at Cap to Cap, and so that's where that lead came from. And then I remember who the third one was. The two final contenders were Honey and Position Interactive.

So at the interview, you and Jen said that, so you guys feel this company is much better than the other company, both ways work wise and then also as a contract wise?

It was actually very tough for us to make the decision. I think that Honey is a wonderful group. I think at the end of the day, what it came down to was the end result and the graphic design and the branding guide position, I think, would meet our need a little bit more than what Honey would provide. Those were the two final contenders though. And we had several meetings with them. It wasn't just one.

All right. That's it for me at this time.

Thank you, Amy. Well, I have a few things. So I did have a question about what you brought up about the 20%. So that jumped out at me. So but I think, you know, overall, first of all, I think selecting selecting the right company for something like this is important.

This is not something and I think any of you that know me well enough is I can sit up here and I can just I can I can nitpick nickels? I can do that. But this is the kind of thing where you can easily I would say, you know, there's more to a good deal than just a great price. I'm glad to hear that the other people were all comparable in the same wheelhouse, but I think interviewing and getting a certain feel for or and whatever the criteria is that you felt confident with this is the one that you wanted to bring to us. I I am not an expert on this, but I would say that I would this is where the council gives trust to the staff that you guys have done your diligence in selecting the right company because this is not something again, when's the last time we did this?

Like, we probably have never done this, to be honest with you. We probably internally created these logos and things. So this is an important thing. And a $120,000, we have to look at this as Galt is a business. We this our city runs as a business. And in addition to that, the Galt market is a business. And the Galt market is something that we are well known for. I have bumped into people in other states that have said, oh, gall, is that where that flea market is? I mean, it is and to be honest with you, I think many aspects of the market have become very complacent over the decades. I think it's time to it is time for a refresh because we want to be able to sell.

I I look at this completely from a business standpoint. If you want your business to be successful, you have to you have to have a message. You have to say, who are we? Why should you buy from us? Why should in our case, why would you move here? Why would you want to open your business in our town? Why would you want to come to our Gault Market? All these are things that you're basically trying to sell someone on. And if you don't have a good sales pitch, if you don't have a good if your if your materials don't look good or your logos don't look good, all that, all that has to do with marketing. And anybody who has a business or has ever been a business owner knows that marketing is important.

If you don't invest money in marketing, you're you're that is money that is a good investment for your business. And so I look at this as a great investment to do that. I personally hate the old logo. I think the bird or the crane on there. I know we have the the bird festival, but it's like the bird festival's weather. I I just think it has nothing to do with Gault, in my opinion. This is my opinion. We I might catch flack for that, but I think there's so many other things that we could be identifying in our that could be a part of our logo that would help, you know, identify Galt in his history or anything like that. So I would look forward to that. I think this is a long time coming.

I do thank you, Amy, for giving this information to me in advance. I've been looking over it for the last few days. I think this company will do a good job. I, of course, like the community outreach component of it because you know, but I will say in advance, no matter how much community outreach we do and how much participation we get from the community, which I hope we get a lot, we're gonna have those people that go, oh, that looks stupid. Who picked who picked that?

That's the dumbest thing ever because they just weren't involved. So I would say that the public's watching this. If you are interested in being a part of this, be involved. Because we're going to give you and the rest of the community ample opportunity to put input into it. But eventually, at the end of it, it's going to come down to us up here to make that decision.

And I think the only other thing I would wanted to mention was I did ask you, Amy, about you know, this is coming from general fund. I did ask you, well, can we use this TOT money to use this? Because for those of you who don't know, we collect travel and tourism money from our hotels, and that's that money is intended to be used for to be spent to, you know, for things like this. And you said, well, that money goes into the general fund. So we could earmark it however, but it's still coming from general fund.

So I appreciate that. I just wanted to know that so in the spirit, it could be coming from TOT. And that money should be being used for things like that. And I think this is squarely in that, Will. And I'll end my comments with, I would very much like to be one of the two ad hoc members before my term in counsel is over. So just throwing that in the ring. But that's all I have right now.

Thank you. Mister Reid?

Alright. A couple of things, that stood out to me when I when I read it was, the scheduled payments. Like, we have a payment scheduled 15,000 every so often. But I didn't see anything in there about it's kinda what comes back to what Harry said was, yeah, you get paid on this schedule if you've done everything or if you've done nothing. And so that was one of the things that concerned me.

And really, because I've I've worked with consultants and and some of them are really great and some of them are ahead of schedule, but we how many times have we been up here to, you know, reappropriate funds or do all these other kinds of things because the contractors or consultants are behind. And which leads me to my second thing was I didn't see anything in there about any type of penalties if they're not doing what they said they're going to do. Right? If at twelve months, we're at you know, they've done six months worth of work and it's gonna take them another six months after that, what is what do we have on our side to protect us from you know, at the end of twelve months, we would have paid them all a $120,000 if we stick to that schedule. What do we have to safeguard us to make sure that the work actually gets done?

Or what penalties do they have that they have to repay us or something if they don't do or fulfill what we want them to do. And then the last thing is much like councilman Farmer, I would very much like to be one of those city council members involved in that as well.

That's all.

Are you for or against the bird?

The what what? The

bird. Bird. The bird?

Yeah. Have to decide if I want both of you guys on that. It's

a sandhill crane.

Never once in my fifty years living in this town have I been in the state limits of Galt and seen a sandhill crane fly in front of me anywhere. Oh, I'm

so have seen them. Have you? Oh, yeah.

I've seen over the market, but those aren't the sandhill cranes.

On the East Side, they they do well, not as much now that Liberty Ranch is going in, but they used to be all right there. I actually am very much in favor of this, not in favor of the bird. But I do have a little bit of concern because I am not a fan of the logo that is on the wayfinding. And so that was my big question as, you know, that came to me. I would rather I mean, I know those were expensive, but if there was any way that we could phase that out, that would be great.

That would be so for the ad hoc committee, that's my vote. But I do have to say, this was actually a discussion for SACOG, for a committee or something on SACOG. And just so the community is aware, that budget was up to $1,800,000 for that branding. So I actually think this is quite a deal. And going back to I I don't know that the city has done this in the twenty years I've been covering the city.

They did do something for the Galt market when that logo came out. I don't know how big of a deal it was. But I can tell you that in the Galt Herald archives, if you were to go into the city of Galt, there are probably, I would say, at least 10 different logos that were given to the paper to run with whatever. And, yeah, so there has been very little consistency. And it's already been said that business wise, marketing wise, we need some consistency.

We need and it needs to be done well. So I definitely am in favor of moving forward with this. And I you know, I'm fine with the two gentlemen. If they want you know, they wanna be on that ad hoc, I don't have an issue with that. But I would like to I am excited about this. This is something I'm very excited about. And I if Genesis needs a shoulder to cry on during this, because it's it's gonna be a lot, I you know, I'm here for you. I've gone through marketing campaigns. This is pretty extensive. So more power to you.

But I believe you can do it. So anything else? Okay. Should we do two different motions? Or we can add the ad hoc into that?

You can

do it

as one. Okay.

Yeah. Well, before we make a motion, could we see if staff could respond to some of the concerns that that Tim and Matt had about the the this payment schedule? Because now that they mentioned that, I I too kind of in the same boat where is there some sort of, like, this is where we need what we need to see by this point before they get paid kind of thing? Or I mean

Yeah. So they're required to provide a detailed timeline in by March or before March 2026.

Okay.

That's part of the contract. Their failure to provide any of this, we would consider that to be in breach.

Okay.

And then we have a set of remedies that we can we can follow if they fail to perform. There also is a timeline laid out, estimated timeline of eight to twelve months, but again, that's gonna be that's gonna be finalized when they provide that detailed timeline prior to March 2026, and their failure then to follow that, they'll be in breach. So and and their failure to just perform, we can walk away. We have also have a termination for convenience clause in the contract, so we can walk away at any time. Obviously, if they've done any work product and we've received the benefit of it, we have to settle up with them. But that's fine because we've received the benefit of the work product. But if they fail to perform, we can just walk away as well.

So what you're saying is that any time we feel like it's just like, we're not really happy with what they're doing for us, we could say, okay. We're gonna pay you for what you've done so far, and we're and we're gonna bail. Correct. Okay. Yeah.

And to just for your knowledge, we did call all of the different agencies that position has done work with in the past and everybody had wonderful things to say about them. So there was a handful of them that Genesis reached out to, and everybody was very much in favor of their service and support and the end product.

Okay. I will entertain a motion.

I will make a motion to authorize the city manager to execute an agreement with position interactive to complete the City Of Galt branding initiative and authorize the general fund appropriation in the amount of a $120,000 to fully fund the agreement and

add the addition of myself and Councilman Farmer to the ad hoc committee when it's formed. Before I second that motion, Matt and Paul, are you okay with us being the ad hoc? Because I mean, kind of threw our names out there before anybody got a chance.

But you guys were interested to do it. I'm good. Okay.

I just wanna make sure that somebody had their fair say.

The only thing I would clarify. Sorry. The only thing I would clarify is we're gonna give that timeline in March or by March and it's a eight to twelve month estimated timeline which could take us past the election. So I just want the council to be aware of that for ad hoc purposes.

Okay.

But if we needed to, we could replace do have an alternate?

I would just make the replacement appointment if that if we come to it.

Okay. So we have a motion on

the floor. Alright. Second the motion.

Okay. I'm not gonna repeat his thing. Moved by vice mayor Reid and seconded by councilman Farmer, Tina. Vice mayor Reid.

Aye. Council member Pratton.

Aye.

Council member Sandhu.

Aye.

Council member Farmer.

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez.

Aye. Motion passes five to zero. Okay. Our next item's under the community development department. Before this item is discussed, I I want to state for the record that the property under consideration is located within 200 feet of my residence out of abundance of caution and to avoid any potential conflict of interest or appearance of one. I am recusing myself from both the discussion and the decision on this matter. I will step into the lobby for the duration of this item. And if someone, the city manager, the vice mayor, please have someone notify me when the item has been convened. Yeah. Concluded.

Thank you. We'll give her a couple of moments to exit to the lobby, and then we'll start the item. Alright. So item h three, Community Development Department Director Carlone.

Good evening, Vice Mayor, Council Members. Tonight's item is to review the permanent local housing allocation PLHA loan for Mercy Housing's Grizzly Hollow. In 2017, the California Department of Community Development, HCD, created the PLHA grant program through SB2, which is funded through real estate transaction recording fees. PLHA can be used towards a variety of affordable housing and homeless prevention activities. The funds are awarded in a non competitive way for larger cities and counties.

And in 2022, Galt entered into a consortium with Sacramento County to administer the PLHA funds for the smaller cities in Sac County. Our portion of this current PLHA funding pool is $438,712.35 I'm just gonna say 438,000 for the evening just to make it easy. It's about 3% of Sac County's funds. So we have until March 1 to respond to HCD, otherwise we lose these funds, which makes this a very time sensitive item. Because of that, staff is recommending awarding all of Galt's PLHA funding for this round to Mercy Housing to rehabilitate Grizzly Hollow.

Grizzly Hollow is an existing 54 unit deed restricted affordable housing development. It was built in 2006. Mercy Housing owns and manages Grizzly Hollow, and they are requesting to use the PLHA loan for upgrading all of the HVAC units on-site, which are now twenty years old and in need of repair and replacement. The city will offer the PLHA loan to Mercy in a low interest fully deferred loan. It is a fifty five year term, which is common for affordable housing development funding that allows the developer to actually pay for the loan over time.

It is deferred, but it does allow residual receipt payments. So basically, in affordable housing terms, if there is cash flow on the site year over year, some of that money can go towards loans we would be in last position on the property behind the other funding sources so the recommendation tonight is to adopt the resolution to authorize city manager to accept the $438,000 loan from HCD to establish a revolving loan fund to appropriate that money into our revolving loan fund and then approve that award to Grizzly for to Mercy for Grizzly Hollow. I do have Wendy Mertens here from Mercy Housing if we have any questions for that team. Otherwise, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thanks.

Thank you. Council, any questions?

I actually have a Chris, do you have anything to add to this? I knew you were around when that got built. Can you familiarize me a little bit more with that? I mean, know where it's at. I'm just trying to understand the significance of that project as it pertains to this money.

Well, a per you know, just in general, I mean, it was a good affordable housing project at the time. My memory is a little bit hazy on the development of it. But like any affordable housing project, it provides housing to income qualified families. And this project is unique compared to like Galt Place, another senior development where the density is very high. This Grizzly Hollow development, by all accounts, is run very well.

Mercy Housing is a nonprofit organization that has a great reputation in the affordable housing community throughout the state. So based on the age, they do have needs that over time, the HVAC will need to be replaced and be more efficient, help lower bills for the residents that live there.

So are the residents there, unless I'm confused with what we're talking about, aren't those those are not rental properties, are they?

Yes, are.

All of

them are rental properties? Yes. Oh, Okay. I did not realize that.

They're only elicone.

Okay. That's where I might confuse it. So I was thinking like, we're going to get many people who are in the home. Okay. That makes a lot more sense. All right. And so what what sort of so for people to is that what what are what are the income somebody can be just just a brief not a not a at the get into the weeds of it, but just a brief overview of, like, that particular area. Is it you say it's income restricted. So it's not like Section eight, is it a mix of different types of things? Or what is it?

So the entire development is deed restricted. So all of the units on-site serve residents that are low income or below, so extremely low or very low income. I don't know the rents off the top of my head. Wendy may know that information, but the entire property serves lower income residents of

Yeah, not asking for what the rent is. Was just curious if it was different levels of like with Gault Place, for example, there's some apartments that are section eight, others are not. I'm just wondering if this is a mix or if it's all pretty consistent.

It is a mix. So 30% are restricted towards 19 units at extremely low, 14 units at very low, and 20 units at low. Those are the different tiers of affordability. But I don't believe there's any Section eight specific, but Wendy can answer if she has that information available.

Yeah, if you wouldn't mind maybe enlighten us a little more. Wendy, what was your last name, Wendy? I'm

sorry. Hi.

My name is Wendy Martin. I'm the asset manager, and Kara works for

I'm Kara Warden. I'm area director of operations.

Okay.

So to answer your question, no, we don't have project based section eight, but we do have tenants. Yeah. We have

a tenant they're tenant vouchers. And if you need to know the exact number, I can provide that.

Right. That's not necessary. Just that but the entire the entire complex is is a rental, and it's all income based.

And

Jenny provided the breakdown. And so we are serving extremely low at 30% given that, like you said, Chris, it's low density. So, you know, the funding that you will be providing tonight will help will provide a lot of assistance, for the property just because we are not generating the revenue that a higher density property would, right? Because the expenses are the same, you have to pay a full time manager, maintenance, you know. And when we target lower income at 30% AMI, the rents are really low in comparison to what we could get.

How many units are in that?

19 units. So 19 that are 30. Go ahead.

Oh, you say total?

Total. Yeah, 54. 54, okay.

And it's a big site.

Yeah. And so my last question would be, and I don't want I'm trying to figure out this to come off the wrong way, but I I see a lot of I I know this money is coming through, some affordable housing, you know, to prevent homelessness kind of. That's the whole concept of it. Right? I see a lot of money that goes through some programs. I've been seeing a lot lately going through some some stuff that is is specifically for homelessness stuff. And I feel like the money is, for lack of a better word, it's squandered a lot. I don't feel like it's making a real impact. Do you do you estimate on this 400,400 thousand and change, do you estimate, you know, the line what percentage of that money do you actually think is gonna be actually spent on, like, upgrading HVACs and things like that? Or is there gonna be, like, some ad admin costs in it?

I mean

No. We're not gonna take any money. So we are going to be able so I I put the budget together. So it's 438,000, and we've got some soft costs. So it would be like title fees, prevailing wage consultant, borrower legal fees because we've got to review all the loan documents.

We've got other regulatory agreements, so we need to have legal review the documents to ensure that we are in line with the other four agencies that we have on title. So we've got legal fees, and then HCD is charging us a thousand dollar fee, so that they can approve the transaction. The rest is HVAC replacement. So I've calculated based on the bid that we've got, 32 HVACs. If there is any savings on this, I've spoken to Jenny, we can reallocate any line items and everything is gonna go to HVAC.

So they provide an itemized where the money's going to go and when it's spent we'll know that where it was spent on. I mean the city will because we gave them the money is it is there some sort of I forget the word I'm looking for but accountability of the money?

Yeah, this is a reimbursement based loan. So it'll come and draw us. So we'll take in the invoices. We'll review for compliance. And then we'll pay them.

Got it. Okay. All right.

And being that it's Mercy, we're a larger nonprofit. So we're going to be able to take an internal line of credit so we won't have to pay for interest, which is a savings. And just so you know, like Chris says, that the property has a lot of needs. Our organization and we have run out of money. But over the past five years, we've invested almost $1,000,000 at the property, roof, exterior paint. So this is gonna we focused on the exterior, and now we need to start focusing on the interior of it. And so, again, this is just gonna help us.

Okay. I add Member Farmer, if I can They add one will require a building permit. Through the permitting process, Jenny's department will be highly involved in certainly inspecting the work as it goes through the process. Okay.

Yeah. And I know this is not our money per se. Right? I mean, it's being given us that we allocate, but I mean, it's not like golf. But I just ask these questions because, I mean, it's commonplace as you know nowadays to people to say, well, we're nonprofit. That doesn't necessarily mean all the money gets used for the the purposes that's intended. So I I just, you know, just wanna make sure there's some accountability. So it's nothing I don't I'm not familiar with your organization specifically or anything. So these are just general questions.

And if it makes you feel even better, we we have CalHFA HFA and HCD that's reviewing this. Affordable housing is one of the most regulated industries. So we're having to report to them as well what we're doing. Even though it's not their money, They wanna review what are we putting in the building. Even though we're the 400,000 is not coming from their pot Mhmm. Although it is HCD, but it's a different pot. Might be confusing. They wanna know what we're doing.

Yeah. Alright. Well, that's all the questions I have. Thank you, ladies, for answering those. I don't know if council has questions Council for you before the

member?

Council member Sandhu? Thank you, vice mayor.

My just a clarification on Jenny. That the last date we said is 03/01/2026, that the last date, if we don't use that money, nowhere it can go?

It will go back to HCD.

And when we know we have the money? Maybe how many years ago or month ago or

So we have already submitted our draft loan documents to solidify our position with HCD. And then we have until the end of next week to submit the council's resolution and the updated loan documents to secure the money. So as of next Friday, the twenty seventh, we will have requested the funds. In the meantime, we'll sign the loan documents. We'll close escrow, and we'll get the money from HCD to proceed with the project. So that's the next steps for the loan.

Okay. And the other thing, that money usually came from, like, an affordable housing. Right? You can use that money to give the existing affordable housing or you can give that money if somebody will bring a new project. The the reason we might be giving that money to Mercy Housing because we don't have enough time?

Basically, yes. When I first started here, we did look for new projects, but that is a long process to go through. And there was no land, there was no extra funding to support that development. So unfortunately, with this short timeline, rehab was really our only option. And so luckily Mercy was very willing to work with us on that.

All right. So Mercy Housing Data, the nonprofit organization, right?

Yes.

And did we any review or research? They might have some other non profit properties. Is this same port in city of Galt or there is no other property?

Within Galt, were no other properties that were available for this funding at this time, but PLHA is ongoing. We will get another allocation of funding in the next couple of years, so we will have the opportunity to look for another project in the future.

Okay. And then that money is kind of loan money? I did see in the report something is a loan or we just give this money came in too and we're just giving to

So the money given to the city is a grant and we send it back out as a low interest loan. So that's part of the reason we are establishing the revolving loan fund is because we will take payment from Mercy, and then in the future, we'll be able to reuse that money as well.

Thank you. That's it. That's my question.

All right. And I just want to clarify. I did a little bit of research and the breakdown of the units. 19 of these units serve families that earn $35,000 a year. 14 of them serve families that make less than 59,000 a year, and twenty twenty serve families that make less than 65,000 a year. So that's the breakdown with the income per the units. Is there any public comment? No public comment. Okay. Thank you.

Then I'm looking for a motion to adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to accept $438,712.35 from the Department of Housing and Community Development for a permanent low local housing allocation program, establishing a revolving loan fund appropriating that $438,712.35 to the revolving fund, and then approving $438,712.35 loan for the rehabilitation of Grizzly Hollow and the execution of all related agreements and documents.

I'll move to approve h three as as just read. I'll second it.

Alright. We have a motion by council member Pratton and a second second by council member Farmer.

Vice mayor Reid.

Aye. Council member Pratton. Aye. Council member Sandhu. Aye. Council member Farmer.

Aye. Alright. Thank you. And then we'll give a couple of a minute for the mayor to come back in.

Thank you, ladies. Thank you. Have a good night.

We're on H4 now. H1? Four. Oh, I was gonna say.

From the Department of Finance.

All right.

Moving on to the Department of Finance. Fiscal year '24 or twenty twenty four twenty five annual comprehensive financial report.

Good evening Mayor and Council. Lila Menor, Finance Director. The had completed or the city's independent auditors Lance, Sole and Lunghard had finished their review of the city's financial statements for the fiscal year twenty four-twenty five year and I wanted to say that we had a clean audit and that they have issued an unmodified opinion. Should

we make a motion to get a new clicker?

So the annual comprehension financial report or the ACFR was completed using the GFOA standard format, which is the introductory section, which has a transmittal letter, the financial section, which has the independent audit report and management analysis on our financial statements, as well as a statistical section. So the next few slides will give you a financial highlight regarding what was reported in the ACFR. So the government wide net position is $291,800,000 which is an increase of 8.93. The net position, basically what this is, it kind of determines and lets you know what the financial status of an organization. So if you have any increases or decreases, that will let you know if an organization is improving or declining.

And so based on what was reported, the city is in good financial position so that we do have the ability to meet our future obligations. Total assets had increased by $26,300,000 and this is mostly due to our investments in capital. Liabilities have increased by 480,000 and this is just from our pension liabilities. Revenues had increased, and this is attributed to all of the new homes that were built and new utility services that were added, which was an increase in usage and revenues from that. And not only that, we did have an increase in property tax.

Total expenses increased by $8,000,000 and this is mostly due to the Measure Q expenditure and spending plan. So despite all of that, even though our expenditures did go up, the City is still in a good healthy position overall. The general fund results ended with a 32.9 with an increase of 10.79% and again this is due to property tax coming in. And out of that, 21,200,000.0 is unassigned and that will be going towards budget development. And finally, then general fund net budgetary results.

The revenues exceeded budget and increased by about almost $2,000,000 And aside from it being property tax, the other part of it is for charges related to building and engineering plan check and building permit fees. And expenditures did come in lower by $2,670,000 and that's because we had some capital improvement projects that were planned but didn't start or didn't finish as of 06/30/2025. And with that, I just wanted to thank the finance department team for all of their hard work and commitment for completing the ACFR and for city staff that helped in the preparation of this report. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Great. Thank you. Do we have any public comment?

Harry Wentzell.

Gary Winslow, same guy that was here about two subjects ago. I haven't changed. I keep a chart, and I hope it becomes a pointless chart in the year 2028, ending July 2028, because we got new software coming in, state of the art software, and we got other upgrades. And we've got a staff that I mean, you can just feel the energy off the staff. So I don't know that the staff's gonna be satisfied to issue a act for two thirty two days after the close of the fiscal year.

I would hope not. I predict they won't. So just a little housekeeping thing here. The transmittal letter is dated December 22. I tried on my chart. It doesn't matter. I mean, we're gonna get this thing figured out. But that's like, if that ACFR is sitting around, I would like to see it posted the website and something goes out, see if anybody's interested. There's probably one guy in golf that's interested, but I think there's probably more. That would be nice.

There was a one time, I don't hear it so much anymore, where you would talk to citizens about the Galt market and probably four out of five of them, they couldn't tell you who the mayor was. They didn't know where the city hall was. But they would tell you the Galt market was losing money. It something you couldn't talk people out of that. So on page 16 in the analysis, once again, the Gulf market has brought in about $1,100,000 that stays in the recreation department.

And the central services, that's after the central services scraped off about $265,000 And overall for parks and rec, central services scraped off a million $2.00 2, including that $265,000 And that's always been a concern of mine. I think that needs to be relooked at next year because I think it's just an allocation. And so that's just a thought. The $814,000 of revenue, the statement down below is we got, I don't know, Measure Q contributed $1,240,000 to that. But I think Major Q is about $5,000,000 if I recall right.

Anybody recall? And I thought most of that was going to go to the Parks and Recreation Department. So I don't see any reason why Parks and Recreation shouldn't have a fund balance that reflects a lot of that. I know there's a lot of expenses that Parks and Recreation have, but I think Measure Q is a big deal. And I think that it's something that should be highlighted in the notes and even a tabular that says, We brought in X many million and this is where the money went.

Okay? Some of it went to the slide, etcetera. I'm not going to speak for a long time tonight because it's pointless because it's, you know, such a big subject. However, if you look on what's called page seven, it's the introduction to the analysis. And you look about halfway down the page, you see that the total assets increased 26,361 thousand dollars Liabilities were discussed, dollars 480,000.

Total revenues, dollars 7,000,322. And total expenditures, 8,000,047. So we had, it wasn't quite a million dollars of a loss. So there's either a bullet point missing on here or we've worked arithmetical magic to the accounting equation because it didn't come from net income or loss. It didn't come from borrowing money, but it came from somewhere.

And I would imagine that maybe that is grants or something like that. So that's your mystery. You can think about that, put you to sleep tonight. But what I do want to do is spend a minute As somebody who really supported the new Oracle system, I would like to see the city break out from all the other cities. I don't care what the other cities are doing.

And I would like to see the city issue a brief financial report that says here's where we are compared to budget. And I think if you set that new Oracle system up, you can push buttons, and that would be something that then counsel could refer back to that. Are we on budget? Are we off budget? Or whatever. I would like to see that as some sort of a goal. And I don't think that that is a big challenge, not to this group and not with, you're driving a race car now with that Oracle system. And it's a good job. This is a big job. And really appreciated by me anyway.

So that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wintzel. Any other No, markup. Thank you. Okay, counsel. Mr. Reid, do you wanna lead us off?

Sure. I'll kick it off. My biggest thing with this is it's great that we're having the that I think this is the second time in a row we've had this act for report come back with no findings, which is fantastic, at least while I was here. My biggest, concern always is when our expenses outweigh our revenues. Right? So my my one question about that is, of those expenses, the 8,050,000.00, how many of those, and you may not know, are onetime expenditures compared to, ongoing expenditures?

For that the expenses?

Mhmm.

A lot of that is capital, so it's mostly one time expenses.

Okay. Alright. That makes me feel a little bit better. That really was my my biggest concern after looking at those in the report.

Mister Bratton.

I just wanna say I appreciate the public comments on this. Otherwise, I support. It's good.

Councilman Sandhu.

Thank you, mister Lela. Thank you for, you know, to give this report. Thank you for your work. I know it's a long report, a lot of work. I believe my question, Vice Mayor Harid already asked, so that's for the, you know, public clarification.

Even the report is the revenue increase 7,300,000.0 expenses increased 8.5, and end of the report say finance position remains stable. And that's why I believe you, if you can little bit might be in a brief explain to the public. I read the report, do understand, but public sometimes, they'd say, how come we are in a good position if we have more expense?

We're in a good position because we citywide are you know for all of all the funds across the board that's including all of our enterprise funds we and you know we've received you know the increase and so that's why we're overall have an increase in our net position so that's just all of that, that's what caused the increase.

And the other thing is mentioned by a measure Q expenditure, what's included in the measure Q?

The measure Q we received $4,900,000 in revenues as of sixthirtytwenty twenty five.

Thank you. Thank you for your clarification.

Yeah, thank you for that. I was going to ask one of questions, what was the measure Q? So just to understand it and try to maybe use an analogy that's a little more easy to understand is even though it may look like we spent $8,000,000 the revenue was $7,300,000 you know, you mentioned that a lot of those expenses were the one time expenses that were were Measure Q money. Like for example, the slide and the playground, know, all that stuff that we've been doing Measure Q money. So it's not like we're it's not like we're saying the city of Galt brings in a million dollars, but right now we're spending, you know, $1,500,000. This is not a consistent. This is we had some money, some capital. We've we've never spent that and it reflects as an expense.

Correct.

I wasn't quite clear what mister Wentzell's question was about the arithmetic not adding up. I I I would just ask you, Leila, that if, in fact did you understand his question about that?

Yes. Because he was questioning the difference between what made that change in the revenues. And he was correct. The big change from last year to this year is $1,400,000 in capital grants that we didn't receive Okay. This

All right. Hopefully that answered his question. I appreciate for Mr. Wentzell, this is the Super Bowl meeting for him. He looks forward to this every year.

And we appreciate, you know, him him standing up there on behalf of the 25,000 people in Galt asking questions. I will say it it is nice to see that after, you know, being here over seven years, sitting up here, mister Sandhu and I, you know, are the ones that have fresh memories of the doom and gloom, you know, reports and talk about how we weren't going to mow grass anymore and we were going to freeze this position and that. And and I feel like it's nice to see we've turned a huge corner. I believe that the general fund, when we first came on council, was like $18,000,000 It was somewhere in that neighborhood, 17,000,000 or $18,000,000 So we're at like $32,000,000 So it's nice to see that the city has, for lack of a better word, that we seem to be on the right track financially. Because that was a huge thing when we came on council.

You know, it was like I mean, we literally hired a city manager previously based on the fact that we needed someone with financial prowess. And so I'm glad that we are getting clean reports, that our financial, you know, investment stuff seems to be going well. One thing I've said here before, my dad used to always tell me, it's not how much money you make, it's how much you spend. So it's always something I try to think about myself when I'm in my own personal finances, and I try to apply that a little bit of knowledge or that apply that thinking when I'm up here. I am no by no means a financial expert, but I just look at it just in simple terms.

And I do think one last comment that mister Wentzell mentioned. I I do think it wouldn't be a bad thing that in some point in the future, and maybe won't maybe it won't be in my tenure. Maybe about a better thing in the future for future council members that are here longer that I I do would I think it might be smart that if we look at some point to reevaluate the central service costs. I know we, you know, we do central service instead of like a direct allocation. You know, instead of just billing specific items and then whatever that money is it is, we just say, well, we're just gonna take a flat 23.3 out of each funds.

There is there has been questions as long as I've been in the office for seven years. You know, why we just take 23% out of every fund, you know, it's just like a blanket thing. And I know it's easy to do that, and it and it's it simplifies things. But there is a lot of concern over the years in the community that when you have things like fund o six, which is parks and rec money specifically, and then now you have measure q money, which has been allocated specifically to parks and rec, that when you're peeling off certain percentages of those, there is questions in the community about where is that money going exactly and why is it 23.3%. So I just feel like in the future that we can look at that and say, do we need you know, because that 23% was returned by somebody, probably a consultant or somebody at some point.

How many years have we been using that number? Do we need to reevaluate it? Maybe do we need to look at going back to direct allocation? What would the cost be to do that? Because I know it's more cumbersome. These are just my thoughts.

There are future plans once we get the system fully implemented. That there are future plans to revise and look at our cost allocation plan. Okay. And what we'd probably do is look at the methodology of how things are allocated across the board, and it'll be a lot more fair and equitable across the way.

Perfect. That's what But

that's like going be

a little bit further once I get the financial assistance.

That's good to hear. I look forward to it. And again, I may not be here at that point, but I think it would be good just to, you know, to take a peek at it. So thank you for that. That's all I have.

Yeah. I didn't we talk about during our Strategic plan? Yeah. The strategic plan, we talked about that a little bit. That's what I what I had written down.

I thought we talked

about that.

Yeah, just didn't want to start anything right now as I'm kind of changing our entire financial structure. So I wanted to kind of wait till that's all situated first before I started and implemented a new cost plan.

Yeah, that makes sense. And just an FYI, I know back in 2008, it was a big controversy already. I mean, this cost allocation. So that's I mean, it's been around since at least then. But I do know that what was happening before that was also controversial specifically for Parks and Rec. So it kind of seems like the Parks and Rec department kind of took the brunt of, or at least that's what it sounded like. I just a quick question about Oracle. I mean, you, first of all, for ACFR. And thank you for the presentation. I did sit through we did do this at SACOG.

It was a much longer presentation, so thank you. And I have to do that one twice because it goes through my committee first and then the board. So thank you for this presentation. It was very lovely comparatively. But Oracle, where are we at now in that process?

We're in our right now we're doing our meetings for our implementation. And they're going to be here well, we've been meeting like every day. And so they're going to do an on-site meeting the end of the month in March for us to kind of review our procurement process. So right now we're building our foundation of the financial system, like what our procurement will look like, the process workflow. Redoing our chart of accounts. So that's the phase right now that we're in.

That's a lot of work is what I'm hearing. Yes. And so just for future because, again, I think Mr. Wentzell and myself would be really excited. When does the prospect of being able to push that button to get us the information we're looking for? We're a couple years out? Is that what we're

Their estimate is about eight to ten months. Okay. And so depending on how you know, if everything kind of goes smoothly, and I'm, hoping everything does. But our team has just been very we've been working really hard behind the scenes just to make sure that all of our deliverables that we've been working with Oracle, that we are meeting those. And we're getting a lot closer, especially with our chart of accounts.

Great. Well, thank you for all the hard work your whole team. You.

Madam Mayor, I have one last question. I'm sorry. I just forgot to ask it. On the Measure Q, the Measure Q money that we take in, just like Measure R, is it detailed in a separate fund? Or is it actually, like, under, like, subcategorized, like, under fund o six?

Measure q is rolled is a general sales tax, so it's rolled in as general fund.

Right. Okay.

But if, you know, if future if counsel wants me to, you know, separate that and so that you can see the difference. Because right now it's combined. But if you want, you know, for future years, if you want me to budget and show it separately, that's up to

you.

I would very much like that. I mean, I don't want to make a lot more work, but hopefully the new software you have will make things like that simple. But I do think it would be nice just for accountability purposes and also for the optics to the public.

Yes. So I can

do two. We can do a, you know, a combined, and then I'll do a separate one for measure.

Thank you.

It might be nice just to kind of piggyback on that and outside of your department getting the final numbers, but if Parks and Rec, during their annual review of, you know, we took in 4 point, what was it, $4,900,000 and then this is what we got for it type thing so that they can see not only what's come in but what the result of that has been.

So for the market they their revenues they received $2,500,000 and they contributed $916,000 So that's a net $1,600,000 And that's, again, rolled in with the Parks Fund.

Lele, is the market revenue the gross revenue? Is it and I'm sorry, I don't have this right in front of me. I didn't look at that specific item on the aquifer. But is it trending steady? Is it trending up? Or is it trending down compared to, like, last year or maybe the year before? Do you know?

I don't know. I haven't had a chance to analyze that.

Was it I don't know if in

future, if you wanted me to kind of do a separate market comparison from prior years, that could be something I could bring back.

Yeah. Mean, it's because that was to be honest with you, when we were getting those financial reports, the doom and gloom reports that I mentioned where we're going to have to start making do major things, it was all that premise. The market's losing money. And so now we're bleeding money from the general fund to cover those those shortfalls. And so that was like the driving force behind all those financial decisions. So it is nice to see. And I from I do remember that it was up last time I think we were presented with this. But it would be nice to see, you know, if it's trending. Because it is you know, that is our golden goose for at least Parks and Recreation. So it's nice to see what those what that revenue looks like from each time from year to year.

So I think that's why the community did say that the market is losing because that was the message coming from up here, that the market was losing.

Back in '18, for sure, was. Yeah.

Yeah. 1819. And then and then COVID hit, and it first went down because everything went down. And then because you were outdoors, it actually started to go back up. But yeah, it would be nice to see what is trending, especially as, you know, new activities and stuff were implemented there. It'd be interesting to see the benefits that, you know, the extra love there has has brought.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank thank you. Okay. I'll entertain a motion to accept by motion the fiscal year twenty twenty four twenty five annual comprehensive financial report and the fiscal year two thousand four twenty five single audit report and the auditor letters.

So moved.

Do I have a second? Second. Moved by councilman farmer and seconded by councilman Sandhu. Roll call. Vice mayor Reid.

Aye. Council member Pratton.

Aye.

Council member Sandhu. Aye. Council member Farmer.

Aye.

Mayor Rodriguez. Aye. Motion passed five zero. Alright. Do we have any communication? None. City clerk's report? None. Comments by staff?

And continuing that trend, no comments by staff.

Someone must need to get out of here. What? It's close

to the number. Yeah.

Okay. Comments by city council. Mister Reid.

First, I would like to Armando's not here. So somebody else is gonna have to tell him. I've heard a lot of good feedback about the bird festival. Unfortunately, I was unable to go because I was getting ready for my vacation. The second thing that I wanted to say for Parks and Rec is I felt really bad for the Parks and Recs workers that I saw when I was driving home the other day when it was just downpouring rain.

And these guys are out there cutting the cutting the weeds and cutting the grass all on the sidewalk, and it's just downpouring rain. So wanted to make sure that they got a thank you. And everyone else that works out, public works, PD, all those people that work outside, like, I had one of those jobs where I worked out in the pouring rain, it was not good. So I'm I'm just thankful that we have all those dedicated city workers that are out there when it's not comfortable doing their jobs. Thank you to public works for trying to address the flooding on Simmerhorn.

Like last time we had the rains, they went out there and they dug trenches and did a bunch of a bunch of things, and it worked for a while, but once we get a lot of rain this morning, I emailed Trung and city manager saying, hey. This the flooding is back. And within a very short amount of time, there were the signs out there telling everybody that it was flooded. And it's actually a lot better this time than it was last time because the whole entire street was flooded, and now it's just down to one lane. So I appreciate everything that you do to try to keep everybody safe. And thank you, everybody that's that came, gave all your reports. It's a lot of stuff to go through over a weekend. So thank you. That's it.

Alright. Councilman Bratton. No

comments tonight.

Wow. Council member Sandhu.

Very short. First of all, thank you for all city staff for their hard work. Thank you for the public comment. And there is a few events I did attended On February 7, I attend the bird festival and it was well organized. And there is lot of people I met and there was a lot of community members there.

Second, I also attend the police award ceremony with madam mayor. They was well organized, good food, and it was very nice to see the police chief with recognizing he's a hardworking police officer. And also, you for the city. They was helping that event. And that's all, madam. Here.

Thank you. Councilman Farmer.

Yeah. First of I just had a question for Trung. Are with the anticipated weather and looks like rain for the full next week, are public works anticipating doing a sandbag station at all, should it be needed?

The sandbags are available. They were set up this weekend.

Okay.

And we don't have our guys.

Do we have social media out that states that? I just worry about the communication of the public.

We can make sure that Genesis puts

that Okay, there thank you for that. Because those questions will come for sure.

Yep.

I wanna thank Paul and Bonnie or Madam Mayor Rodriguez and Councilman Sandhu for going to the police thing. I was not able to attend. So I appreciate you guys having a presence there and representing the council there. And I just wanted to mention, as you mentioned, madam mayor about Gloria Stemler who had passed away. She was a very well known person in the community.

She founded Lahaim twenty years ago. She was very involved with things like Meals on Wheels, Girl Scouts, and other stuff, and she was a great lady. I remember we used to meet with her when we would meet in the mornings for our little economic group. I forget what we called that group, but she was she was a great lady, and so it's she'll be truly missed in the community. So condolences to her family and her friends. And last, I think I just had there was one other thing. Can't remember what it was. Looking at the staff thinking who I had to do. Oh, just thank you again to to public works. Again, I know I thanked you outside of the meeting, but for all your quick work on the reflectors and the painting of all the medians and stuff.

I've seen some of the the regular rock throwers on the Internet that have been complaining about it have acknowledged that that was done, they seem to be thankful for that. So I appreciate all that. It's it's it's you know sometimes we don't sometimes we are reactive and not proactive but if we react quickly I think it goes over well in the community so I just want to say thank you of that. And I think that's all I have.

Great. Thank you. Okay. I actually have a little bit. For one, I don't I mean, this isn't direction. Can we consider getting an attached microphone at that podium? It was almost embarrassing at the planning meeting, watching people come in and almost drop it on themselves or not being able to get to it or whatever. I just I don't know if we could get it to be attached. Because as people pull it down, they end up pulling the whole thing. And it happened a little bit tonight.

So anyway, just a recommendation that we do I don't know if we can stick it on super glue or something. I don't know. I did attend the police awards. It's just amazing. What was it just always strikes me of, the community that they have.

And, of course, they are bonded because of what they're doing, but it it goes beyond that. And just see the families. I actually was able to sit with Kevin Tawn's parents who show up and have shown up for the last thirteen years to these awards ceremony. It's just phenomenal. And to listen to, you know, all of the great things that these officers do that most people don't even think about.

They complain. They get pulled over for a ticket or what or something didn't get done the way they want. But they I just don't think enough gratitude goes toward to our police officers. So I want to express my gratitude and it was wonderful to see these awards. I am and we don't have to do it tonight, but I don't know if public works probably was not prepared.

I didn't reach out, but the thought occurred to me on my way over here. If we have an update or if we have a timeline of anything happening on airs, it is my understanding that certain homes do not want speed bumps. So I'm curious if we are going to be doing that entrance median, if we've moved forward with that decision at all or. You mean do you mean Adaire? I'm sorry. That's what

I meant.

Sorry. Adaire. Leap, sorry, Just an

a update. So we actually did send out the letters and received all the letters back. There's four locations. Three of the locations, we got the numbers, the three out of four. So over so three three out of four locations are good. One location, there's only two that voted in, so that one's out. So I'm looking at we're looking at putting a project together to put those speed lumps at the three locations that were accepted.

Okay. And then what are did we decide not to do the entrance median?

No. We did.

I thought we decided also to do the entrance from East Stockton. There were you know, how the medians are along Carillion going on to those streets. There's a median that little islands.

I don't believe that was included

in that speed lump. It wasn't in the lump, but I thought we had talked about that.

No, is something we do plan to do. I think we were just prioritizing the speed lumps and then the island will come back as a later project. Okay. That was a little longer term. Although,

with all the negativity, with all the medians and stuff in Dunham, it may be a good thing if we don't do that medium right away. I don't know. I'm just saying.

There's a lot.

You know, if I I don't do me

for every comment about a curve right now. You

know, no one complained about those those little islands going in on those streets coming off of Carilion because they were needed and they and they look nice. I think we'll be okay putting it over there on Adair. But, yeah. Again, it's back to the people complain and they don't necessarily praise when things happen. I saw again, for public works, I saw on social media I very rarely go on there, but unfortunately this time I went on and someone was telling everybody that there is for sure a stop sign going in on Bosso And Carilion. Has that been publicly announced? Has that been even a 100% decided?

We haven't I've updated the city manager's office and we posted the we did the speed study, and we we are, I believe, in the the process of verifying with the police chief and posting the the speed limit sign so they can do enforcement. And it looks like it meets the warrant for the speed signs to stop sign right there on Bao Sao And South Carilion. So we're in the process of verifying also with the police department. And we'll be probably installing that with the notification proper notification probably sometime in March.

Oh, okay. And then that'll get a full crosswalk? Yes. And will that be flashing crosswalk?

We're still working through the details.

Okay. Okay.

I think. Oh, and then I and I don't know, Leila. Leila or Lila? It's Leila. That's what I thought. But everyone was saying Leila. So I was like, oh, no. It's Chris' fault. Okay. When CalWaste was here, I didn't want to ask with I mean, because he doesn't know. But the fees that he was saying that the city collects or that CalWaste pays, that goes into a public works fund or an enterprise Into our enterprise funds or our utility funds. So and it's that's, you know, the solid waste fund. And then what do we pay out of that?

Well, that's for solid waste services. So that's the enterprise funds. Whatever the fees we charge, that's what we use for investments services for those services. So like if we for the water fees or for the water bill, water stuff is used for that. So operations, any kind of capital improvement, all of that gets paid for that.

Do they pay a road damage fee or something like that?

And

that's so it will go toward roads as well? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That was my main question. Sorry, didn't mean to ramble. No, no, no. No, I appreciate it. And I knew this years ago covering it, but it had my mind was gone. But other than that, does anyone have anything else? Alright. Seeing none, we'll close this meeting at eight, yeah, 08:32.