City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening. We're going to call to order this regularly scheduled session of the Atascadero City Council. Does the mic seem off a little bit? Okay. All right. And we will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance led this evening by myself. So please stand if you're able and join me in saluting our Pledge of Allegiance. All right, thank you. We will proceed with roll call, please.

Council Member Funk? Here. Council Member Newsom? Here. Council Member Peek?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Darius? Here. Mayor Bobo?

Here.

All present.

All right, thank you. Well, if you're listening in on one of our many avenues to watch the City Council meeting or listen, or if you're here in the chambers and we have quite a full crowd, we welcome you and thank you for participating. We're going to begin this evening with presentations, some employee recognitions, and we're going to turn it over to the City Manager, Mr. Lewis.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of council. This is one of the best things we get to do at council meetings is recognize our fabulous employees for their tenure. As you know, we're a real choice place to work. Employees love working here and they stay with us a long time. So it's always a privilege to recognize people. Tonight we have a couple of five years of 15 and a few 20s. So really, really exciting. So I have some great remarks I want to share about our fabulous employees. So I'll start with Marcellus Rodriguez. Come on up.

Marcellus, are you here? Does he make it?

He's an officer.

You on a call?

Well, I'm going to speak about him anyways, because he's working and he deserves to be recognized. Before joining the department, Marcello spent five years serving in the United States Air Force, where he earned the rank of E-5 Staff Sergeant. So clearly he's no stranger to disciplined hard work or being told what to do.

Marcello.

Marcellus joined the city of Atascadero in September of 2021 as a police officer recruit. After successful completion of the police academy, he was promoted to police officer. He is currently an integral part of our patrol team and was awarded the prestigious MAD DUI award in 2023, so definitely keeping our streets safer for all of us. One of the things that really stands out about Marcellus is his sense of humor. In this smile, you can see, well, kind of, that grinch thing. Marcellus has a great sense of humor. He brings plenty of laughter to the officers, dispatchers, and all personnel he comes in contact with throughout the city. He has a way of keeping things light and making the people around him smile, which is definitely a valuable skill in this profession. Outside of work, Marcellus enjoys spending time with his six-year-old son, who keeps him plenty busy and probably provides more challenges than any call for service. When he's not working or spending time with his son, you can find Marcellus at the gym or participating in combat sports. So congratulations to Marcellus on five years. Next time, please to introduce and recognize the fabulous Lorelei Capple.

Come on up, Lorelei. And I see you're back there.

Lorelei is a Tascadero through and through. Lorelei graduated from a Tascadero high school, went to Cal Poly. Come over here. Then spent a few years in the private sector before being hired five years ago as the, get this title, Deputy Director of Community Development, Economic Community Development, Long Range Planning. Wow, I far prefer your new title of economic development manager in the city manager's office. And she was relocated to our office because Lorelei is a dynamo and is a huge talent and a promoter of our community. One of her biggest strengths is her just ability to cheer for our community, sell our community. I think she knows everyone in our community, doing business in our community. It's a great source of information for me and a real positive force for business and for an ambassador to business-city relations, which is really important. She's always bringing new and exciting things to Atascadero and to our Atascadero businesses. From that first call to Valley Fresh, from its first call to its ribbon-cutting, people are always in touch with Lorelei, and she's there every step of the way as new businesses come to town. She also brings fresh ideas to the city employee culture, which makes her a wonderful contribution to our office. Outside of work, Lorelei can be found spending time with her husband, Louis, cheering on her kids, Joelle and Drew, and all of their adventures and spending time with grandpup, Odie, right? Lorelei, thank you so much for great service on five years. Lorelei, you can go right over there. All right, celebrating 15 years, Anjanette Ordonez. Come on up. Come on up here. I can talk awesome about you. Anjanette is one of our super, super, super employees. She's an integral part of the Itasca Police Department for the past 15 years. Prior to joining us, she spent 12 years with the Santa Maria Police Department, bringing with her a wealth of experience and knowledge that has served our department well. Anjanette has played a significant role in shaping our communications center and the dispatch team we have today. And we all know that's a stressful place to work. They're critical decisions made with a very short amount of time, supporting our officers and keeping our community safe. Super important job. She was instrumental in establishing and refining dispatch protocols and standard operating procedures, helping create the consistency, professionalism, and proficiency expected of our dispatchers. In 2016, she was promoted to dispatch lead, and in 2024, I was pleased to have her promoted to the newly created position of dispatch supervisor. She is the leader and backbone and core of our dispatch center. Ann Jeanette was recently recognized for the chief of police commendation for her exceptional performance during a critical call involving a non-breathing infant. Her calm demeanor and professionalism under extremely difficult circumstances exemplify the important role our dispatchers play and protecting our community and supporting our officers. She's led the communication center through significant staffing challenges, helping rebuild the team while continuing to train and mentor a next generation of our dispatchers. Her leadership commitment and investment in our people have helped create the strong team we have today. And a consistently strong team today that's staffed like we are is really something in dispatch. It's impressive that we have our continued sustainability over there. Anjanette's impact on APD goes beyond protocol staffing and answering calls. The professionalism and proficiency of our current dispatch team reflect the standards she has established and the time she's invested in those around her. Outside of work, Anjanette is a proud mother of four. She enjoys spending time with her children, salsa making, Christmas, who doesn't love Christmas, traveling, and cheering on the Dodgers, which is a pretty good effort these days. So Anjanette, thank you for 15 years. Another 15-year employee, Chris Robinson, our fire captain and paramedic. Chris, come on up here. Chris was hired as a reserve firefighter in March 2011. He had previously worked as a seasonal firefighter with CAL FIRE and had put himself through paramedic school. That's impressive. We were able to steal him away from CAL FIRE as a full-time firefighter in August of 2011. Chris brought his invaluable wildland firefighting experience with him, and he has been a strong asset to the department ever since. He promoted a fire engineer paramedic in May 15 and a fire captain paramedic in October 18. Those are pretty close because he's a sharp one. We're lucky to have him. Chris is instrumental in the department's emergency medical services program. He is a CPR instructor and a paramedic field training officer who trains our new paramedics. He is the department FTO liaison field training officer to the county, as well as a member of the county's QAQI committee. Chris maintains all of our EMS supplies and ensures all EMS equipment is functioning and up to date. So super important. He spent time as a member of the North County Urban Search and Rescue Team and recently assisted in the rewrite and update of the city emergency operations plan that this council just approved. That was a huge project. He has continued his training by becoming a qualified duty officer for our department as well. Off duty, he loves to keep busy with his two kids, Amelia, five, and Luca, three. He enjoys woodworking, camping, and those many, many adventures with the kids I know he loves dearly. So please join me in recognizing Chris. All right, now we're moving to 20 years. What was the music like 20 years ago? Kind of fun, huh? Sandy Scott, lead maintenance worker. This is crazy because I remember when we brought Sandy Scott on. That was 20 years ago. Sandy Scott is the lead maintenance worker in the building maintenance division of Public Works and is responsible for keeping everyone happy with their work environments. Sandy began employment with the city in May 2006 as a maintenance worker at the pavilion on the lake. It didn't take long for us all to realize what an exceptional worker he is, and he was reassigned to maintain the newly constructed Colony Park Community Center, which he continues to do today. Due to Sandy's excellent skills and abilities, he was promoted to building maintenance specialist in 2007 and to senior building maintenance specialist in 2012. Sandy has worked at every single city facility, including the police and fire stations, pavilion, community center, city hall, corporation yard, ranger house, zoo, every building. Most of the employees know Sandy and are aware of the legendary customer service he provides to them in maintaining and improving their work environments, truly enhancing the quality of life for his coworkers. We're grateful Sandy doesn't know how to say no. So when we need something bettered, improved, repaired, upgraded, Sandy is always the guy for that. There isn't much that he hasn't done or that he can't do, including plumbing, electrical, carpentry, roofing, masonry, landscaping, and the occasional appliance repair. He has an impeccable work ethic, and he makes things happen. He is definitely the go-to guy in our organization. Sandy is one of our own and grew up in a Tascadero and is married to his high school sweetheart, Joanne, and they have six children together, a bundle, a bundle of grandchildren, I would say, and have provided a loving home to over 100 foster children over the years. This is the kind of man he is. That deserves, I think, that's amazing. Outside of work, Sandy likes rock crawling with his Jeep and spending as much time as possible at their family cabin in the mountains. And just a personal note, Sandy's family and his extended family are very precious. His parents are special to Debbie and to me. And I remember talking to his dad 20 years ago saying, your son needs to get a good city job. And I'm really glad you did because we are a way better place because of you. Sandy, thank you.

Thank you.

Another 20 years. Tom Little, fire engineer for the next few days. Come on up here, sir. Tom was hired as a reserve firefighter in 2000 and then as a seasonal firefighter in 2002. He became a full-time firefighter in 2006 and promoted to fire engineer in 2011. Tom has been a member of the fire department's grant writing team and successfully has helped us receive grants for a safer firefighter position, extrication equipment, and personal protective equipment. Tom was also a member of the North County Urban Search and Rescue team for 10 years. He is a qualified line EMT and has worked as an expanded dispatcher for the U.S. Forest Service. Tom has been a department qualified officer in charge for four years and has also finished his fire technology degree. Most recently, he has taken all of the fire inspector one classes in preparation to assist the department with fire prevention. However, starting next week, Tom will begin his role as our new fire captain fire marshal. So Tom is being promoted to that. He's going to do a great job. Good pick, Chief Banzon. Good pick. Helping our community grow safely and stay prepared for fires through fuel management. We're proud of you on your promotion, Tom. Tom and his wife, Colleen, she's right over there, just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. That's awesome. And they have two children, Matthew and Marissa, and two grandchildren, Caitlin and Grayson. In his off time, Tom enjoys spending time with family and friends and enjoys going to concerts and playing the guitar. Should have brought that tonight. Tom, thank you for 20 years of service. Council members, if you'd like to come out, we'll recognize our employees. If you all could just stay there, the council is going to come greet you, and then we'll grab a picture. Thank you all for your tenure. Wow, that's, let's see, 50, 25. That's over 100 years of service right there. Looking good.

Okay, we are going to move on now to our consent calendar. The consent calendar consists of items that are normally considered routine or non-controversial by city staff and will be acted upon by a single action of the council unless otherwise requested by a council member for separate consideration. Public comment will be allowed on consent calendar items prior to our taking action. But I will now, I will first ask if any member of the council has any questions or would like to pull an item. I'll start on my right with Council Member Newsom.

I'd like to pull six for discussion and a separate vote.

OK, item D6. OK, in that case, any other questions or an item to pull?

I have one brief item on four. On four, OK. Just to clarify, I am not asking to pull.

OK, go ahead and make your comment on four, and then we will vote on one through five.

This is a question I want to clarify with Mr. DeBar, just understanding that these are repairs to culverts for our storm drainage. And so just to define culvert, that my understanding of that is that we're talking about the structures that move water underneath streets from one side of the street to the other for storm drainage, but not things that run alongside the streets or things on private property. Is that correct?

That is correct, Council Member.

And two of these culverts are storm drain systems, so they do cross a road. The ones on El Camino, they actually have storm drain inlet boxes between them. But the others are culverts that are open-ended on each side of the road.

Okay. Thank you. Sure. To follow up on that, though, to be clear, the city does not maintain culverts on private property. We do not. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, with that then we will pull item six. We will open up the floor to discussion, to open up the floor to public comment on any of the items on D1 through D5. Okay, seeing no public comment on those items, I will bring it back to the council for a motion on D1 through D5.

I move approval of the consent items D1 through D5.

I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion by Councilmember Funk, a second by Mayor Pro Tem Derris. Roll call, please. Councilmember Funk?

Yes. Councilmember Newsom? Yes. Councilmember Peek?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Derris?

Yes.

Mayor Barbeau?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you. We move on to item D6. Councilmember Newsom, you wished to pull it, and I believe there might have been some other questions too, but did you want to begin by asking questions, or do you want staff to give a presentation?

I'll go ahead and have staff do the presentation.

Okay. All right, thank you. Go ahead, Mr. Lewis. Chief, do you have the presentation available?

We do not have a PowerPoint prepared right at the moment.

Okay, so I'm happy to open up comments here.

So this item, let me pull up my staff report really fast.

To be clear, we don't normally prepare a presentation for items on the consent calendar, so there is the staff report. Mr. Lewis will summarize.

So the item before you, and I think it'll be more important to answer the questions you may have, is adopting a draft resolution expressing support for the City of Paso Robles to submit on behalf of all cities in the county a bid for the San Luis Obispo County Ambulance Services contract. And so this has been an effort that's been in the making for over four years with the idea that cities wanted to make sure that we had reliable, modern, updated, accountable, and transparent ambulance services. And state law changed a few years ago that allows cities to come together and bid on providing ambulance service. Our existing provider has been providing reliable service for 80 years, but the process has never gone to bid. And so there hasn't been a competitive process that makes sure our residents are getting the very best, most cost-effective ambulance service possible. So for a number of years, years we've been working with the county of San Luis Obispo who actually oversees this contract to put forth a request for proposal to create a competitive process to make sure that we have the best ambulance service. This is a very serious service where time is critical. And cost effectiveness is critical. We've seen some significant increases in our costs. And so that's why this is before you tonight. The action tonight is simply an affirmation of support. This does not obligate you to anything. This is not a contractual relationship with anyone. This does not commit finances or legal issues. There's a number of questions we have yet to resolve because we haven't seen the RFP. So it's anticipated the county will release the RFP this month, early next month. When we see that, just like the current ambulance provider, I expect that to talk about how many ambulances you should have, what performance indicators are, what reserves you should have. We'll have a lot more answers as we submit our response to that RFP, the seven cities. with our partner. So that's what's before you tonight is a resolution of support to the city of Paso Robles who's acting as the lead agency in this. This proposal, if it went forward, does not create a new government, a new JPA. It's very similar to the five cities fire authority model where the city of Rio Grande is the administrator of the service and handles the finances and legal but the two cities share that service. And this would be a very similar model. So I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about this. It was put on consent tonight because the council previously, your strategic planning supported this effort, supported regional efforts, and there wasn't a binding commitment. So that's why I'd put it on the consent. I'm happy to answer any questions, the chief or I.

Thank you. Did you have any specific questions?

I appreciate you taking the time to address it. I think the title for the public's feedback was support for the county alliance. Have any of the other city councils voted in support of this? You said all seven cities are showing support. Is this...

So all seven cities to date have allowed the city managers and chiefs to work on this proposal. So far, the city of Pismo Beach approved it last week. It was on their consent agenda. And this evening, Morro Bay and Rio Grande are considering it, formerly the councils. And then there'll be other meetings throughout September.

Okay. I just pulled it for discussion because in prior conversations, we had determined there was a lot of unknown answers. Additional information was also showing that some of the other fire districts after two years of implementation are seeing rate increases substantially. If there are additional rate increases above and beyond, does that get sent to the counties for reimbursement or does that get sent to the cities to just absorb that increase in services?

i can i can speak to that so i think we're referring to one and this was the sonoma county public private model that had a rate increase a year after implementation and i think the question is how do we know that won't happen here and so i do a few answers so prior to the previous private ambulance providers departure their employees received a significant wage increase when the new provider assumed operations hired many of those employees and the alliance honored the increase These higher personnel costs were not anticipated or incorporated into that alliance's original proposal. The transport volumes provided in the IRFP were actually higher than the actual amount of transports as well. And so the alliance developed this proposal staffing model and costs off of transport volumes that were identified in the RFP. that were far higher than it actually was. And so that did require them to continue that service, and it did cause an increase of 16% over two years. I think in our situation, we'll have better information. We have a better team put together. And I think as far as rate increases, I do want to mention that SLO County approved a 62% rate increase for ambulance services in 2025. And so that's what the current provider we have, which was not spread over time, but was implemented immediately.

Thank you.

I appreciate it. Council Member Funk, you had questions? Yes, most of them have been answered, but I did want to understand, if the competitive business process proceeds as is encouraged in this resolution with the county, is there some kind of MOU or agreement with special terms that will come before this council, and at what point would we have, in that process, would we have the fuller analysis of the financial risks and benefits?

Absolutely. So once we see the RFP and what the county is asking for for a successful bid and how the selection criteria are laid out, that will give us more insight onto how we will respond to the services we're providing. During that time, then, when we see the framework that the county is suggesting, we will have legal agreements to talk with you about. We will have agreements on how this is funded, where the money comes from initially, what happens if an agency backs out. So there's a lot of those questions we've been working on, but we need to see the RFP to have specific answers. So I would expect that when the RFP is released, And bids are being formed and submitted. We'll be having formative discussions with the councils. I anticipate sometime in the spring where all of that would have to be wrapped up. If we were selected by the County Board of Supervisors, all those agreements would have to be approved by you by separate action at that point in time.

Okay. And the we that you're talking about would be the alliance of cities. That's correct. With Paso as the lead. Okay. Okay. And am I correct in recalling that when this came before the county board of supervisors and they voted to proceed on the most recent vote to proceed on this path, that every single fire chief essentially in the county, all of the city's fire chiefs and most of the jurisdictional fire chiefs were there present and supporting the measure.

Yes, all seven fire chiefs and city managers were at that meeting in a show of unanimous support, which is why I said all cities. Now councils are voting on it, so we'll see where that lands. But city managers aren't usually that far away from their council's direction. That's not a good place for us to be. So yeah, you had all seven of us there.

Yeah, okay, great. And I did also recall seeing Chief Tom from Templeton and some other folks that are not city chiefs but are also leading of agencies in that service and folks from CAL FIRE. Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Darius, any questions? Okay, Council Member Peek.

Yeah. In the event that the alliance wins the bid, the county, if it goes through and it wins the bid, what are we looking at? Startup costs? Where's that money going to come from? Are we each individual, each city's ponying it up and hoping that we get reimbursement? The unknowns are there. So if you could speak to that.

So I think, again, we need to see the RFP to understand our costs and how that would all work. But each of the cities ideally would be supporting this operation for the short term until reimbursement from Medicare and insurance companies started creating the revenue just like it does now. And we would pay ourselves back. So that is the initial model. But there's a lot of detail still to sort out once we see the RFP. Also, some of this is going to be proprietary business arrangement, right? We are going to have a private sector partner that we're working with on putting our bid package together. But yes, the idea, our concept being cities would front resources and parasols back in the short term as payments started flowing.

In the long term, is it reliant on the federal government continued support?

No, it is not. And so we're very aware, and there is a lot of discussion being put out there, that if the federal government additional subsidy is called the GEMT subsidy, that that is going to go away. We don't know that, but if it did, and that would actually impact rural ambulance service across the country, so that would be a real issue for the nation. But if it did, the current ambulance provider does not get that now, and they're still very profitable. And so we're not doing this for profit. We're using this to put all of the resources we have back into the service So our residents get better, more effective ambulance service. So to answer your question, no, if that went away, it does not mean our proposal goes away. We would continue to plan conservatively. I think what it does do if it went away is we won't be able to roll out some of the service enhancements that we're anticipating. And I can't speak to those tonight because I'll be part of our proposal. But we do have several service enhancements we anticipate that those resources would allow. But it does not impact our ability to respond or be in the clear.

Does the proposed alliance already have a private partner in mind?

We do.

And speak to the extra layer of government in Paso Robles that's going to be maintaining this alliance and the whole project itself. Are they going to be existing employees up there working extra or new employees?

That's a great question. I'd be really happy to speak to that. So I think there also are some framing this as a big government takeover. We're creating a new government. That isn't the case at all. This is actually a very lean model that brings communities together to improve service. So basically, Paso Robles City is would be the managing agency and their fire chief would be the executive director of the alliance and their finance department would you know coordinate the finances of the audit the attorney so it's not a whole new board a whole new government a whole new they basically would be a service provider we would pay them a management fee but those costs would be very transparent because each city manager would serve on the oversight board of the alliance that's the board if you will your business people your city managers to make sure that the operation is transparent So now, finally, publicly, all financial information about our provision of the service would be available. We'd be able to see how much it costs per call. We'd be able to see the revenue coming in. And council members would have more input through the city managers on how the service works. So it is not, and I think there's some suggestion that we're trying to compete with local small business. We'd actually hoped to have this slow ambulance as our partner when we were pursuing this, but they didn't choose to be our partner. And so we're still trying to move forward with better service. We don't want to compete, and we additionally are required to hire all of their field personnel if we were selected. But no, this does not create a new government. It's very similar, like I said, to a Rio Grande. The city of Rio Grande is the business agent for Five Cities Fire Authority. Now, they do have a board of council members from each city that oversees that operation, but it isn't a whole separate legal entity. Rio Grande just does the back office stuff. So

that's what we're doing we aren't trying to compete with small business but we do prioritize the health care needs of our community and want to get the best service possible thank you i have one question before we go out to public comment in the staff report the recommendations that the council adopted draft resolution expressing support for paso to submit a bid on behalf of all cities in the county they're going to develop the finer details of that bid in conjunction with the seven city managers and fire chiefs?

That's correct. We have a monthly meeting now that we work on, and we'll accelerate those once the RFP is released with our partner.

And when exactly then would it come back to city councils for further consideration?

So I would think there would probably be a couple decision points, early 27 and then spring 27.

And that decision point, though, would be whether each city says, yeah, this is a good bid, we want to participate in that bid?

I think it would be, yeah, I think approving the legal framework, the financial framework, those sorts of things. I'm being a little careful in what I say because a lot of this is part of our bid and our potential bidder against this is sitting in the audience. Okay.

All right, thank you. We're going to go out to public comment. I know we did have a request from San Luis Ambulance to pull this so it got pulled anyway. And so please, if you want to speak, please step to the podium and and so we don't have to walk across the room. So please state your name for the record. You have three minutes.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council.

My name is Chris J. Vine.

Can you get a little closer to the mic there?

I'm the general manager of San Luis Ambulance. For more than 80 years, we have been the ambulance company serving your community. I'm here to comment on the item D6, the resolution regarding Pass Robles' lead alliance bid for the county's ambulance contract. A number of the goals of the proposed alliance, such as long-term sustainability, enhanced dispatch technology, and expanded behavioral health resources, are all worthy goals. My concern is with the challenges created by the alliance model and whether it has the ability to accomplish them. Emergency medical services are always evolving and improving, and we have consistently demonstrated our commitment to meeting or exceeding the county's system performance standards. The system in place today is already operational and financially stable. It's fully staffed by an exceptional local workforce. Its response infrastructure is already in place, and its leadership team has decades of experience running this system. It's also flexible, adjusting to what the community needs. For example, two basic life support ambulances have already been added this year, and next week another advanced life support ambulance comes online. all while charging below the maximum rates permitted by the county, demonstrating a focus on balancing cost and performance rather than maximizing revenue. The alliance does not yet exist. As Jim mentioned, I'd ask you to consider several specific concerns before lending it your support. The alliance model creates an entirely new organizational structure an executive committee of seven city managers running a countywide ambulance system for the first time. While working with subcontracted ambulance company under an untested arrangement, that's a major undertaking and adds substantial risk when reliability matters most. The staff report names PPGMT reimbursement as a key source of the model's added revenue. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service has proposed a rule that would set reimbursement rates substantially below those assumed in the alliance model. If that funding is cut, as proposed, this model may not pencil out, leaving open the question of which partner cities would be responsible for additional startup costs capital improvements, cost overruns or operational shortcomings. The resolution also says it will foster strong local partnerships and community-based EMS. But when the day-to-day ambulance operations are subcontracted to American Medical Response, a large national corporation headquartered in Texas, it's hard to see as a truly local EMS partnership. Before lending support to this resolution, I'd ask that you look closely at whether this model is truly financially and operationally stable and what obligations it would create for this city and its taxpayers while also considering the benefits of the reliable, well-functioning system serving your community today. Thanks for your time.

All right, thank you. Next speaker, please. Mayor Mrakas, I said go ahead and please approach the podium whoever's next.

Mayor Mrakas, Mr mayor and city council members, my name is nate otter and I address you this evening is both a 29 year employee of San Luis ambulance and a 26 year resident of a task at arrow. Mayor Mrakas, My wife JESSICA was also employed for 27 years with San Luis ambulance before retiring, she is now a small business owner in our Community. Together, while both working full-time for San Luis Ambulance, we raised two beautiful girls here. I mentioned my employment, my family, and my community together with intention because one cannot be separated from the other. When my girls were young and attended San Gabriel School, my wife and I would bring the ambulance for school demos and speak at career days throughout their time there. It is a regular practice for San Luis Ambulance to donate staff members and ambulances to provide demonstrations and speak at career days throughout San Luis Obispo County. Both of my girls played numerous youth sports in Atascadero while growing up. San Luis Ambulance has sponsored their softball teams, their soccer teams, and donated ambulances to cover cross-country events. At Atascadero High School football games, you could see San Luis Ambulance's logo proudly displayed as a sponsor on my daughter's cheer box that the cheerleaders would stand on, and we regularly have an ambulance present at the game in case someone gets injured. San Luis Ambulance has not only made it possible for my wife and I to own a house and raise kids in this great community, the owners have also ensured that San Luis Ambulance is part of this community. In fact, San Luis Ambulance, a locally family-owned and operated business, has been supporting this county and its communities for more than 80 years. Their level of support, outreach, and engagement is unique and special. It is what you get from a local company whose sole focus is to care for the community that it serves. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Good evening, Council. Jeff Oslin, business owner, resident of this wonderful community. I'm very concerned that we're, first of all, going out to bid. Going out to bid sometimes is a good thing. I'm not so sure about the alliance. I'm very concerned if we switch to AMR. I will go on that record. I will hold the sword on this one, so to speak. I've dealt with both AMR and St. Louis Ambulance for over 27 years in the special event world, and I can tell you hands down, in my opinion, AMR is not as good. This past May, for the Wildflower Triathlon, Monterey County, AMR charged $600 an hour for standby at the lake where it used to be. San Luis ambulance is around 240 or 260 an hour. Has anybody here checked with our schools? Because they also need ambulance service for football games, et cetera. Special events may go up. San Luis ambulance provides a bike to get around with a stretcher on an ambulance. type of thing, if there's a bike race or a problem with, say, Margarito, even though that's county, it's still our council's problem to deny this. I'm very, very concerned about this. The other things are, San Luis Ambulance has provided community service support at about any event you can think of. National Night Out, the sheriff's deal coming up again in two weeks in Madonna Plaza for the, whatever they call that, the Posse Day. I think this is horrible. Let's go back to an incident in Pacific Grove. Granted, sometimes you have bad employees in any profession, but we had them not respond. It's on record. They lost a major lawsuit for not responding because their AMR staff were drugged up on meth. So be careful on this slippery slope. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Anybody else wishing to speak on this item? OK, seeing no one approach, we'll bring it back to the council for consideration. Do I have any comments or a motion?

I just have one more clarification. You guys spoke, Jim, you spoke about the contract expected to be released somewhere in spring of 2027. But the council agenda said the bid for contract is expected to be released the third quarter of 2026, which ends in less than 30 days. Is that a typo?

That probably means the RFP will be released this quarter. And then we have a couple months to respond because of an in-depth response. So that may be a typo.

Okay, just want to, that's kind of why I've flagged it. I think it's challenging to replace something with our voice of our small business, and I'm not sure city managers understand the challenges and operations of what it takes to be a small business. So I'm at that point where I don't have enough information for me to move forward with support of this. So I move to vote no against support or no on support of this. Okay, so that's a motion. Yes, that is a motion.

I'll see if we have a second of that motion, but we'll discuss it. We'll each have a chance to discuss it in any way. Yeah, you can always do a negative motion. We don't usually do that, but we just want to discuss it further. Okay, let's hold that out there and go ahead and I'll come down the line starting with Council Member Funk.

Sure. I think, you know, we spent quite a bit of time as a council looking at this. We talked about it at strategic planning, if I recall. And one of the key considerations for me is that we're dealing with a system where a private business has had a government guaranteed monopoly for 80 years. That is an exceptional situation. is worth considering whether there's an opportunity to do something better. I mean, nothing would be more awesome than to have an RFP process and have the winner be San Luis Ambulance and have the chance to go through this process. The county does that process, and so we don't get to control what that decision is, but not to put a situation up for a competitive evaluation for more, after 80 years is, I think, bad stewardship for us. I think that we need to allow for this, and the city managers have worked to find a model that can work. I'm also really encouraged that no matter what happens, the great employees that are serving our community with St. Louis Ambulance now would continue to be the great employees serving our community, no matter what way this RFP goes, and what whatever the county decides. So there's a, this is not a change in the staffing of this work. But it is something that I think, I mean, it's always hard, but it is something I think we ought to, we ought to stay on this pathway. And let the county pursue this process.

Thank you. Mayor Portanderez, any comments? Okay. Council Member Peek, any comments?

I'd just like to clarify that I don't, I think the field, the medics and the EMT workers will be offered a job, but the rest of the staff will not if there was a different provider. That might be something to be clarified on.

Mr. City Manager, I don't know if you want to clarify that to the extent you can.

The law mentions that field workers, I actually don't know if that covers the office or not.

I know that the ambulance drivers and the field workers.

I do want to make a point too, this has been driven by not the city managers, it's supported, but this is driven by the fire chiefs and their desire to give better emergency medical service and that cohesion between our paramedics and the ambulance. And so I do want to also be fair and clear that we have an excellent relationship, our firefighters, with San Luis Ambulance employees. And so that there's no issue there. This is all about transparency, accountability, cost and service delivery. And I think this process competition is good. San Luis Ambulance is already making some changes, introducing BLS ambulances and those sorts of things that may be driven because this process is here. So this is all about, yeah, the winner, the winner is having a better ambulance service at the end of the day for our residents. And if that's provided by them, then that's fine. The county board will make that decision. But the competition and the process of refining and making our service better is what this is really about. And so moving forward tonight allows the process to continue so we can refine and have even better ambulance service.

Thank you. So we have a motion to not proceed with the resolution. If I don't see a second, I'm going to.

I'll second.

Okay. So we have a second on that. So we'll have a roll call vote. And keeping in mind, this is a motion to not adopt the draft resolution. So roll call, please.

Council Member Newsom. No.

Or I'm staying with my motion of no, I don't support it.

So that's a yes on the motion. Correct.

Okay. Council Member Peek.

Yes.

Council Member Funk.

no um mayor pro tenders no and mayor robo no motion fails okay motion fails do i have a motion uh you know that we adopt the draft resolution so move i'll second Okay, and we'll go to roll call it would add my comment largely echoing what Councilmember funk said that you know, for me to have a contract out for 80 years without. Rebidding it that does not set well with me, and you know I think we're very open to new information and there's some very valid concerns raised both by. sandless ambulance and members of the public that would be considered or should be considered, but I just I cannot go forward with not considering. going out to bid on on an 80 year old contract, so I think it's wise to go to the next step and we'll see how things shake out from there, so yes.

councilmember funk. Yes, councilmember newsome no.

No.

Mayor Pro Tenderas?

Yes.

And Mayor Provo? Yes. Motion passes 3-2 with Council Member Newsom and Council Member Funk voting no.

for newsom and council member peak voting no thank you all right thank you and thank you all for to all who spoke on this item and we will move on to uh community no i'm sorry we have updates from the city manager mr lewis yes thank you mr mayor mr council i have several uh first of a public works update so the paloma park parking lot improvements the parking lot has been striped and is now open for use so you can see that parking stalls accessible parking spaces and associated parking markings have been completed And the improvements enhance parking organization accessibility and safety for park visitors. There may be some additional work we're going to do out there. We're kind of keeping an eye on it as soccer season starts. But I do want to make sure you saw that and that was ready for soccer. On our public safety facilities, we have a very exciting update. If you have pictures, expect to see grading, foundation, and utility work at Fire Station 1. Construction is framed, so Station 2 you can see is framed, which is exciting. And then you can also see at the police department there, that's more than framed, it's actually getting its weather wrapping now. So the dispatch center's up, station two is out of the ground, and station one will continue to have utility and foundation work. So very exciting, just a great investment in our community safety. For fun, Orange and Gray Fridays are here. So support our Atascadero Greyhounds and our local restaurants with Orange and Gray Fridays. So wear your orange and gray team colors and get 10% off of participating restaurants before and after the home football games. And so also 10% off of food, A-Town Diner, Barley and Boar, Blast and Brew, Cielo, Guest House Grill, Mabel Lounge at the Carlton Street, Side Ale House, Colony Sandwich Company, and Wild Fields. Thank you for participating in Orange and Gray Fridays. And then 10% off beverages at A-Town Chop Shop, Decades Lounge, Kula Hawaiian Kitchen, Mabel Lounge, and Wildfield. So our next home games are September 25th, October 16th, and October 30th. And the Greyhounds are off to a strong start this year, so let's cheer them on. More fun can be had at the zoo. Tickets are on sale now for Brew at the Zoo. This is the 13th year for this, from 5 to 8, on September 12th. This is a great way to raise money for the zoo and support wildlife conservation. We'll have several breweries and wineries, over 25 breweries and wineries, actually. Great bands, great music, and, of course, our star are our beautiful animals. They're the celebrities, and you can get to see them and learn about them. Next, we have a coffee with a planner. Continues to be a hit. This is September 7th at 9 a.m. at Malibu Brew. And this is really your chance to find out what's happening, what's being built. If you have questions about land use, zoning, working on expanding your house, want to open a business, these are all great times to talk to one of our planners in a more relaxed individual environment and get some great information. Our fall sip-in shop is right around the corner as well. Your ticket includes a wine glass, wine tastings from 20-plus businesses, complimentary tours of City Hall. You can go to atascaderochamber.org forward slash events to get your tickets. Again, the September 25th from 530 to 830. And this is always just a great time to come by. Fall is a beautiful time of year here, and we hope you can get out to enjoy and support our downtown merchants. Additionally, fall is going to be busy, as you can see. Sixth annual Tascadero Fall Fest and Colony Days Parade is coming up October 16th through 18th of 2026. So the sixth annual Fall Fest is a three-day free admission event in our Sunken Gardens. It's a family-friendly, full-scale carnival with rides, games, vendors, lots of big music acts. We're going to try again having Colony Days start off the fall festival with the parade and community celebration. This has been moved to October, so we're hoping for a little better weather than the rainy day we had last year. I give my hats off to a couple folks who still walk the parade route in the rain, and our new Colony Days parade will be 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on October 17th, Saturday. So it should be a really nice time to celebrate Atascadero and our heritage. Storm preparedness I wanted to speak about that every year the city dedicates significant time and resources preparing for winter storms I think we've actually heard from several people that have seen our public works crews out there in culverts cleaning storm drain inlets so if you see us doing that. That's a good time for you to do that, too. You really need to make sure you protect your private property. Look for the inlets that drain your property from one side to the other. Clean them out. Make sure they're flowing. You want to be able to... We are stockpiling sand, and so you'll want to make sure you know where to get that, and I'll share that in just a minute. We are making sure streets are swept, especially downtown, and we're trimming up trees and parks and facilities. So we're busy. You should do the same thing. We're also managing our vegetation and large swales to keep runoff flowing. If you have swales across your property, make sure the water flows. And just make sure your storm drains and drainage, your roof gutters, all of that work. Just like wildfire readiness, storm preparedness should be part of your routine. Flooding can happen quickly, and so you want to make sure you protect your home if it happens to you. So here are some specific, one more time, specific steps you can be doing. Cleaning gutters, drainage inlets, pipes, and other private drainage facilities. including culverts under driveways on your property, removing leaves, tree limbs, trash, and other debris that could obstruct drainage, removing potential obstructions from areas of your property that drain toward the road, culvert and drain systems, and clearing and removing any downed trees or limbs located on your property. Ensure that any structures and areas prone to flooding have been permitted by the city and are secured properly to avoid washing into a creek or waterway. So make sure you're taking care of your property. The city's focus in the storm events is on public property and public access. We can make sure our emergency vehicles can get to you, that streets are still flowing and passable as much as possible, and so we can get to people. So that's our priority, and so make sure you take care of your property. Regarding sandbags, sand is available for free at the city's corporate yard at 8005 Garbata Road. You can see our sand pickup area right there. Sand is intended for sandbags only in preparation for a storm. If you want to get that to fill sandbags to have them for your property, you must supply your own sandbags. Our local hardware stores are selling them and bring your own shovel, but we have all the sand you need to be prepared, and that's a smart move. Before I head to my last question slide, I do want to share that while time passed quickly, this is our fire chief's last council meeting as fire chief. So over 32 years of service, Chief Casey Bryson, thank you for your career. Served us so well. We'll be saluting Chief Bryson on his last day next Thursday, the 17th, at an event at 11 a.m. at the current fire station site. So we're going to have lots of applause and memories and certificates and things for the chief. But I did want to point out tonight how grateful we've been to have you for your career, sir, and what a valuable member of the city staff and just the epitome of an excellent fire chief. So thank you for your service. With that, if there's any questions, I can answer them. And of course, for any information, you can always go to visit atascadero.com or atascadero.org. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Lewis. And Chief, I'm sorry I will miss your thing. I will be at a 3CE board meeting in Monterey or driving back from. So certainly wish you the best. I'm sure we'll see you around as you are a native and we'll be staying in town. So Mr. Lewis, I did want to comment on the sand. You said it's at the courtyard. It looks from the picture, it's actually outside the gates. So you don't have to get into the courtyard. So it's available 24 seven, right? Okay, thank you very much. Does any member of the council have any questions for the city manager? Council Member Funk.

Will there be sand also available somewhere in the vicinity of Fire Station 1? I know it can't be there at the back of the area where it used to be, but over back by the Colony Park Community Center or someplace.

No, we haven't. We don't have arrangements for that. There's nowhere around the fire station. I don't think we looked at the community center because it's pretty tight in there. It's pretty active with kids and games and events. And so people back in trucks and loading sand didn't seem consistent.

Okay, could we put a sign up in the area on the construction fencing or somewhere near Fire Station 1 telling people how to find the corporate yard so that they know where to get their stand if they're used to getting it at Fire Station 1?

Let me check with staff, but that seems pretty reasonable. Okay, thank you. For those of you who don't know, sand had previously been available at Fire Station 1, which of course is now torn down and behind a construction fence, so that's not visible, so by itself. Okay, any questions on this side? Okay, seeing none, thank you, Mr. Lewis. We will move on to community forum. Community forum is that portion of the meeting. which is reserved for persons wanting to address the Council on a matter not on the agenda, but over which the Council has jurisdiction. Speakers are limited to three minutes and we ask that you state your name for the record. Comments made during community forum will not be a subject of discussion because the Brown Act prohibits the Council from entering into a discussion on an item not on the agenda. However, we may, at our discretion, ask staff a question or ask staff to get back with a speaker. So with that, we will begin community forum. We ask any of you that wish to speak, please approach the podium. Don't wait until the previous speaker is finished. First speaker, go ahead. Thank you.

Good. My name is Dane Sensor. My brother and I unfurled the largest American flag in the world. in 2020. We're trying to do it this year for the 250th anniversary. However, we were met with great resistance, not only by city councils all over the country, but when we tried to get a sponsor, when we were doing it in Nebraska, the heart of the country, and Lincoln and Omaha, the sponsors told us, we don't want to be political. And I looked at them like, political? For Memorial Day? The veterans who gave their life for this country? I was in shock. It only happened there. We were trying to do it for Veterans Day this year, the 250th celebration. Same kind of response. City councils, we didn't need response. It was like they were afraid of the American flag, okay? Gallup poll since 2021. Republicans have gone for pride in America, and patriotism has gone from 80% to 70% for Republicans. Democrats, since 9-11, have gone from 60% to 14% to this current date. We know there's a big divide in the country. We have to acknowledge the Constitution and take some pride and patriotism in this country. Men and women have fought for this flag. And I went over to ABC today to ask them. I says, listen, we're doing a little candlelight vigil here on Thursday, September 10th, for the tragic murder of someone who wanted to give his freedom of speech, his First Amendment right, We want to honor it. Unite in light. That woman at ABC Church, you know what she told me? We don't honor him. He's too extreme. Charlie Kirk is too extreme for just wanting to express, bring people together, unite them. I was absolutely shocked. Here's a church. Here's a man who is a Christian. That's all he talked about was God. And she's telling me, a church? He's too extreme. We just focus on God. I said... I was in shock. I just couldn't believe it. Here's a church denying a man who was a Christian. That's all he was about, God, preaching, uniting the country. But she shows you how people have a different version of different people. And I thought it was a shame. However, this Thursday, 7 o'clock, I hope people can join us in a peaceful gathering to unite in light, bring a candle, bring a flashlight, and honor this man who was tragically murdered for just giving his First Amendment right. We have to come back to America and unite. What's happening in America is not right. And divided we fall, united we stand. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Josie Hinton, and I'm here tonight to speak about the Joy Playground Splash Pad on behalf of Parents Helping Parents and as a community member. For years, organizations like Parents Helping Parents and Parents for Joy have worked incredibly hard to build Joy Playground into the inclusive space it is today. They have raised money, organized events, brought families together, and continued to advocate for their children and others. We are ready and willing to do it all again to finish the vision for Joy, to build an inclusive splash pad. Joy Playground is SLO County's first inclusive playground, and it was created to give children with and without disabilities a place where they can play together, participate, and simply be kids. For many of our families finding accessible recreational opportunities can be extremely difficult this splash pad would be so much more than an addition. An additional a man amenity it would create another accessible opportunity for children and families to enjoy the park together, especially during our hot summer months. This splash pad isn't only an investment in the lives of our kids and their families, it's an investment into all of Atascadero. Families from our communities and surrounding areas will come here specifically to enjoy Joy Playground and the splash pad. Those families will visit our restaurants, shop at our businesses, buy gas, and spend money in our city. This has the potential to be a tremendous community asset and an economic benefit to Atascadero. I know there has been discussion about changing plans for this space, a space that has been reserved for Joy Playground for years. I have heard ideas and plans that would go against everything that Joy Playground stands for and the inclusivity that our community deserves. As you can see, our community cares about this cause and we are here to be a voice for those who may not have one and to advocate for our families and for our families. The need for inclusivity is growing and so is Atascadero. Our children have waited long enough. Our community has worked too hard and we have a plan and a space that have been set aside for this purpose for years. Our families are showing up and it is time to rally. We are asking that the city of Atascadero recognize the increasing need for this project and come alongside us and work together to find a solution that allows the splash pad to become a reality. Our kiddos deserve this. Our families deserve this. And I believe that the city of Atascadero deserves this incredible investment as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

All right. Hello, Mayor Bobo and council members. My name is Molly Kern. I'm the CEO of the Slow Food Bank and really grateful for a few minutes of your time this evening to talk about Hunger Action Month. So every September, Nationwide Hunger Action Month campaign unites millions of people across the country to raise awareness and provide nutritious food to our neighbors facing hunger. In SLO County, where our Slow Food Make Network is currently providing food to 50,000 neighbors every month, a 58% increase over the past five years, this means inviting you and everyone in Atascadero to join us in raising awareness and recognizing the thousands of local residents who help feed SLO County every single day. Right now, our Hunger Relief Network reaches over 14,000 people each month in North County alone. This tremendous impact is only possible because of a collaborative network of over 70 other non-profit partners who distribute food directly within their own neighborhoods. In Atascadero, this includes the incredible people at ALF Food Pantry, the Boys and Girls Club, ECHO, the Link Family Resource Center, and even your Atascadero Library will be next Wednesday for one of our monthly distributions. Our mission is made possible by the profound generosity of our community with more than 70% of our organization's funding coming directly from local individuals, businesses, and foundations. We are so honored to be this community's food bank and be a true reflection of the generosity that's at the heart of Slope County. Together with the hard work and dedication of over 1,300 active volunteers who generously give their time to nourish their neighbors, we are honored to provide this compassionate, nutritious hunger relief to more than one in six county residents right now. If you're ever interested in learning more, I invite you and anyone who's here tonight to come by for a tour of our warehouse or to consider volunteering at one of our neighborhood food distributions to see firsthand the tremendous difference that a nutritious meal can make. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else wishing to speak? I'll have a few comments about the food bank at the end here. Go ahead, please.

Good evening. My name is Jessica Puccinelli, and I'm here tonight to ask the city of Atascadero to consider adding a fully inclusive splash pad next to Joy Playground. As a mother of two autistic children, a five-year-old daughter, and a non-speaking three-year-old son, our family faces unique barriers to community participation. Because we live rurally, in-home OT and early intervention is not an option for us. Instead, my son's therapies take place in public spaces like Joy Playground. During our extreme North County summers, where temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees, outdoor therapy at 1 PM is impossible, leaving us with a critical gap in our public options. While the county does operate a splash pad at Heilman Park, its design creates clear safety barriers. Both of my children tend to run away or elope, and an unfenced water feature next to a parking lot in a roadway is an immediate safety hazard. Additionally, the water features are intensely overstimulating. True accessibility requires more than a standard ADA ramp. It requires a thoughtfully designed environment where children with different sensory and physical needs can actually participate. Joy Playground is the perfect opportunity to establish a new standard for inclusion, joining other forward-thinking cities like Temecula. Their Margarita Park splash pad utilizes safe, zero-depth water play,

Sorry.

And zero depth zones to accommodate diverse physical and developmental needs. Clinical research shows that water play is uniquely beneficial for autistic children, providing gentle sensory input and natural resistance that significantly improves their motor coordination, emotional regulation, and social communication. Furthermore, an inclusive design serves children with complex medical needs who are entirely shut out from traditional parks. For example, one mother shared with me that her child has a tracheostomy and cannot use typical high velocity splash pads due to respiratory risk. A low flow sensory friendly water feature would finally give this child a safe place to play and belong. Our local community has already demonstrated a massive demand for inclusive accommodations. Recently, colony cinemas began offering sensory friendly screenings, lowering the movie volume and leaving the house lights turned up for people with sensory sensitivities. The overwhelming turnout month after month proves that local families will consistently show up when safe spaces are provided. Financially, the project allows Atascadero to tap into the rapidly growing accessible tourism market. By following the model of Greater Palm Springs, which became a certified autism destination, to capture a major travel sector, we can draw driving distance families who will buy gas, eat at our restaurant, shop downtown, and maybe spend the night at our hotels. Ultimately, though, this is an issue of equity, not economics. I want my children to grow up knowing that their community made space for them. And that's what I'm asking you to consider tonight. Not just building a splash pad, building a place where children like mine are expected, welcomed and included because our kids are already part of this community. I hope we can build something that shows them that they belong here. I'm asking the city council to view this project, not as an optional amenity, but as a necessary investment in the safety inclusion and wellbeing of all of our children.

Thank you. Do you have another speaker?

All right.

Thank you for that last comment, and thank you for your comments. Anybody else wishing to speak, please approach the podium.

Good evening. My name is Tanya Porras. You can bend down if you'd like. Thank you.

Thank you.

Not that low. Good evening. My name is Tanya Porras, and I want to ask you, how many times have you heard your kids saying, Mom, Dad, I'm bored? Not much to do for our kids in our area compared to big cities. At least they have access to parks and the Ravine Water Park. Our children with special needs do not have that many options. Please support a splash pad for our special needs children. A splash pad will help building language skills, motor skills, and social skills. Every child deserves a place in our community to have fun and to feel included. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Good evening, Council. Jeff Oslin, once again, resident of our fine city. I have a fiscal question that I'm going to raise for our council and our city staff now that we're getting notices in the mail from 3CE with a comparison of PG&E. I think it's time to find out if we're saving money by being with 3CE or not. The last two years, I've noticed by the comparisons that most times now, It's actually costing more money to be with 3CE, and I think it's something fair for our residents to really know when they get the postcard and read that, which they probably won't, but I've gotten three of them now, and I can tell you, for me, I'm better off now with PG&E rather than 3CE for whatever reasons. The other one I'd like to discuss is Being that we're looking at a bid, I'm very concerned on the AMR bid. And the reason I'm going to say that is there was two fire trucks in front of City Hall with an AMR ambulance taking photos with our fire department. So it looks like it's a done deal, and it should not be that way. Thank you.

All right, thank you for your comments. Anybody else wishing to speak in community forum? Okay, seeing none, I will close community forum. I would ask that folks really consider supporting the food bank and its partner agencies in Atascadero, like ALF, or formerly Atascadero Loaves and Fishes, and the other partners that she mentioned, because they do a great job and they really deserve our support, whether that's volunteering or financial. And so I thank Molly Kern for coming out tonight and telling us about Hunger Awareness Month. and solicit all of you to help support them. Mr. Lewis, there were multiple speakers tonight regarding the idea of the splash pad. I'd like you to at least to address where we're at in terms of park master plan and the prospect of a splash pad.

Sure, and it's always nice to see articulate parents getting out to speak on behalf of their kids and a young citizen. That's good. So where are we? So yeah, I think that we've known about a splash pad desire. I think one of the first things we do want to do, there are a lot of requests from the community. And so the council last year asked staff to begin the process of a parks and recreation master plan, which looks at all of our facilities. And so we wanted to get through the general plan and zoning code, which you're about to do next month. And then we will have that on the agenda to discuss and kick off, and staff will have some concepts and ideas at the strategic planning meeting of the Council early next year. So what that will look like is identifying areas in the community where we could expand parks, so what properties are available for future park facilities. And then within our parks, how are they programmed? Are they programmed to the best capacity? And are there new facilities we should look at in each of our parks? And then we would put costs by each of those things. So we actually can look 10 years into the future about where all of our priorities are. And as you do have a dollar to invest in parks, where you prioritize it. So we'll start that discussion in February. That will likely go through June, July. And I think that will be a great opportunity for parents and others to bring forward their requests and needs. I think one thing I did want to reiterate that I've learned is when the Joy Playground, which is a terrific facility, was built, much of the plumbing, we did install plumbing for a splash pad there. That was envisioned, that dirt spot next to the Joy Playground years ago to potentially be a splash pad facility. That was largely removed and made dysfunctional. So building a splash pad there would be starting from square one. So then the conversation is also, is that the best place? It very well may be, but that's part of the thing we'll go through as we look at the parks master plan. And we're looking forward to working with the council and the community on that.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Lewis. All right, we will proceed now to the next item, which is item G1, a public hearing regarding community facilities district annexation number 27 for Barrel Creek. I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Dunsmore to present this item.

Thank you, Council, and I'm actually going to hand this over to Eric Gomes, our planner, who's going to tell you about the CFD basics, but I also just wanted to throw in there about this really important project, and the applicants are here tonight. This is one of the very first stages of developing a site with housing and mixed use, and we're really looking forward to the next steps for this very important project on this vacant land that's just off of Del Rio. So take it away, Eric. Let's hear about the CFD.

Thank you phil good evening Council, my name is Eric Gomez i'm the associate planner here at the city of atascadero and tonight i'll be presenting. Republic hearing on the Community facilities district annexation of the barrel creek project that's annex annexation number 27. So let me take you all back to 2023. Great year when you, in your wisdom, approved the Barrow Creek development. The project was overall a mixed use master plan development, which included 20 single family residential lots, 40 apartment units, 120 room hotel, 16 short-term cottage lodging units, and a 53,500 square feet proposal for commercial tenant space over a series of retail buildings, which included some event space and an internal plaza area. The project site is located just west of the intersection of Del Rio Road and Highway 101. and to bring you even further back to 2005 when city council adopted the community facilities district, 2005 one. And so essentially you all requested to promote fiscal neutrality in our city when it came to mixed use and residential projects, in particular towards the residential component, you said we'd like to have projects where we can get returns basically on the services being extended to our growing population. And that's in particular for emergency services and park services. So through that creation of that community facilities district, we began conditioning projects requiring discretionary approval to be fiscally neutral through the annexation to our facility district, which adds a line item to their annual assessment rules where they see an additional fee charged per residential unit on that property. Just this year in June, the council adopted an intent to annex the barrel creek project, so you can see the boundaries of that project on your screen now. Essentially, with that resolution you said hey we are aware of this project, we are aware of what this property is and we will be. Considering this for annexation staff went ahead and took the annexation map from that hearing to the county recorders office and we filed it with their clerk as required by state law. And so now we are here at the public hearing where you are all looking at formally adopting their annexation or approving their annexation. Now we always have this slide up because this hearing process is a little funky or out of the normal. And so just this slide basically just explains how this hearing works. So as you all just did, you will open the public hearing for this item. Once I'm done with this presentation, and I believe after I answer any of your questions, you'll close out the public hearing and consider Resolution A, which is establishing the annexation of the territory described there, the Barrel Creek development. Once the hearing is closed, you will all actually take a short recess. And that recess will allow for our landowner election for annexation into the recess. They do have to vote to annex into the district. Our city clerk, Laura, will be acting as the, as the, you know, She will be announcing how the election goes. And once we have that election or those results, our city council will certify the election, introducing for first draft reading draft ordinance A, authorizing the special taxes for annexation number 27. So with that all said, We have our recommendation on the screen listed in four separate items, the first one is to adopt draft resolution a authorizing the territory of identified in. Your previous city council resolution 20 26055 to be annexed into our Community facilities district and authorizing the levy of a special tax and submitting the levy a special tax to qualify leaders. And after doing so, directing the city clerk to conduct a land owner vote of annexations and collect the ballots, which I believe she already has. And then you will go on with three and four as written on your screen.

Okay, thank you, can you back it up to the process slide just so we can all follow along I think go back one more there we go um Okay, does any member of the account first we're going to see does the Member of Council have any questions for staff, because I have one but go ahead.

Yeah, just in your presentation, you mentioned that this is about the annexation of the property, and I just wanted to clarify that this is property that is already in the city limits, and we are not annexing property to the city. We are annexing it into the community facilities district specifically.

Exactly. That term is a little bit confusing. It's definitely in the city, and we use the term annexation for these community facilities districts just like we would for annexing property from the county to the city, which is not the scenario here. So thanks for asking that question.

Thank you. My question is, could you go back to the map? My question is this. The parcel in the lower right-hand corner is not part of the Barrel Creek project, correct?

That is correct, and that's separately owned.

It's separately owned, but it is part of the CFD annexation based on the map.

I don't think that's sort of not yet the annexation I don't think that would be accurate to say that.

Okay, it looks like it's included here on the map is why i'm asking, and if so i'm assuming that that means at least one additional property owner, if that were the case so is.

That was an error, the boundaries that I highlighted were everything that was included in the entitlement. which included that small at the time, a small cluster, which was your short term rental cluster, the lodging units, but what's being annexed right now is the stuff that's under single ownership, so it excludes that.

All right, thank you for that question. Okay, we're this being a public hearing, we're going to go out to the public and see if any member of the public would like to comment. Okay, I'm sorry, we have a question for Council Member Peek.

Thank you, Eric. So just for clarify to the public that we're annexing this into community facilities district, meaning that we have a developer who's actively pushing forward with this project that's been highly anticipated for years.

That is correct. Yes. And the applicants are here tonight too, if you'd like to ask any questions about their future plans.

Well, I assume the plans have not radically changed from what has been previously approved by Council.

Nothing has changed as of today. There's discussion, but nothing's changed.

Okay, so I don't think we need to spend time doing that. We thank you for coming, though, and following the process. Is there anybody wishing to speak on this item at the public hearing?

Okay, Mr. Osler. Thank you. Just one quick question. After the annex, and I did see it in the presentation, that it will be a separate district, I would say like any of the others that come before this council every year. So that would have their maintenance fees if this project is built out in that special district in addition every year? Thank you.

Okay. Anybody else wishing to speak? Okay. Seeing none, to be clear, this is not for maintenance. This is for the provision of city services that the, so it's not for maintenance. Maintenance, I assume, would be handled by a separate either assessment district or homeowners association or what have you. Correct, Mr. Dunsmore?

That is correct. This is not for maintenance. And so that would be a private property.

issue got okay, thank you all right, seeing no one else i'm going to close public comment, and I guess therefore close the public hearing and we will bring it back to Council go to the last slide showing the last step and i'll bring it back for Council discussion or motion.

I am delighted to see this project moving to its next stage. And unless there's council members looking for discussion, I would move that we adopt graph resolution A as proposed and direct the city clerk to conduct a landowner vote of annexations and collect and count the ballots.

I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Funk, a second by Council Member Newsom. Roll call, please.

Council Member Funk? Yes. Council Member Newsom? Yes. Council Member Peek?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempteris? Yes. Mayor Bravo? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, so we will take a brief recess. Clerk, how long do you estimate it will take you to count those votes?

Can I have 30 seconds?

Okay, well, you can have more than that because we're going to take a five-minute break. And so we will be. It is 723. We will be back. Let's make it 730. Nice even number. Thank you. One minute for those counting. Okay, if we could everybody return to their seats. I said 7.30 and I believe it is 7.30. And if we could go back to the slide showing which step we're on. And we'll go to the clerk and ask, has the clerk counted the votes? I have. And would you tell us the results?

And the results are, it passes. Okay. All in favor.

All in favor. Okay. So in that case, we are ready to move on to adopt draft resolution B, I believe. Correct? Okay. So do we have any discussion or a motion to adopt draft resolution B?

I will move that we adopt draft resolution B and introduce for first reading by title only the draft ordinance as in the staff recommendation.

I second.

All right. We have a motion by Council Member Funk and a second by Council Member Peek. Roll call, please. Council Member Funk.

Yes. Council Member Peek.

Yes.

Council Member Newsom. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Darius. Yes. Mayor Bobo. Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

The key is don't make a motion, then put something in your mouth. Okay. All righty. And let's see, any, no further actions on this item is necessary. So we will move on to item 17. H1 management report, comprehensive zoning code update. And it looks like I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Dunsmore, our community development director, who is probably going to hand it off.

Can we, one second, can we back up? Council Member Funk, was your motion for the draft resolution B and the ordinance? Yes.

Thank you very much. Introduced for first reading by title only. The draft ordinance is specified. Perfect. Just wanted to confirm. Thank you.

okay right mr dunsmore and i see kelly gleason waiting in the wings great spots good evening again council and this is one of the final phases of our general plan and owning and zoning update project uh tonight is our final i'll call it a check-in on the zoning it's our last chance to sort of give comments we can't make a major departure at this point But essentially, what we're going to be looking at is some last-minute policy discussions and asking for some direction from counsel tonight on several topics. We do have our consultant online as well, Genevieve. She's going to chime in and tell you about the process a little bit and where we're going. And then Kelly and I are going to go over some of those specific policy questions we have for you. and um our plan is and i'll tell you about this a little later too is to return uh with a finalized document take it to the planning commission and bring it to city council in october for final action and just a reminder two weeks from now too we'll also be taking hopefully taking final action on the general plan and its environmental impact report so With no further ado, I'd like to introduce Genevieve. I hope she's online. I hope we can get a seamless transition to bring her on.

Good evening. Can you hear me?

There she is. Hi, Genevieve. I can hear you out there.

Hi there.

And Kelly is going to operate the slides. And are you able to see the screen, Genevieve?

I do not see it yet.

You don't see it yet. OK. Well, just in case you don't, we're on the back.

There we go. Now I see it.

Now you see it. Wonderful technology. Love it. Thank you. I'll let you take it away from here and I'll be back speaking in just a moment.

Great. Thanks, Bill. And good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council. Thanks for having me here tonight. When we started the zoning code update last year in 2025, we identified five main goals. The first is to achieve consistency with general plans. both the place types and the policies within the general plan. And this is really the bulk of the substantive changes that are proposed for the zoning code. The zoning code is a direct implementation action of your almost almost their new general plan. So it translates those new general plan place types into zoning districts. We might have multiple zoning districts within each general plan place type. For instance, we've got four mixed use zoning districts, one mixed use place type, But we also were able to simplify some existing zoning districts. So we used to have five commercial zoning districts. The proposed zoning update has just two commercial zoning districts. So the second objective is to really make this as user-friendly as possible. We want transparency and predictability. So the key thing that you'll see is a total reorganization, hopefully into a much more logical order, and the addition of just really clear language, making sure that each item is only in one place. So if you change it later on in one place, you don't have to remember to change it in another. and just using really clear language, adding tables to make things clearer in graphics. Third, we build on the work that you've done over the last few years to streamline processes. So building on the objective design standards and the CEQA thresholds work, this zoning code update includes more process streamlining efforts, including looking at ways that we can get more projects reviewed at the staff level and increase that review speed

and reducing costs for applicants.

Fourth, we are implementing city council direction on some specific items. Phil and Kelly are going to cover some of those tonight. And finally, we are updating certain parts throughout the code scattered to address new and evolving state laws. So we've been working on the zoning code in parallel with the general plan for a while now. Preliminary work was done in 2025, including a general plan open house where we also had some zoning context there where we previewed the place type and zoning code district translation. And throughout the first half of 2026 we reviewed some additional substantive changes through study sessions with the Council and Planning Commission. We discussed, we started out by discussing entitlements and some of the administrative processes with Council back in February. In March, we talked about the new mixed-use zoning districts and what standards and uses would be allowed within those through three study sessions, two with Council and one with Planning Commission. And then in the later part of the spring, we looked at commercial uses and the commercial zoning districts, especially the new commercial innovation zoning district through a study session with Council and Planning Commission. So we took all that feedback and developed the draft that you have in your packet tonight. And we're looking forward to discussing a couple individual topics with you. So the eight key topics that we're highlighting for your review that we haven't dug into in previous study sessions. The first is a discussion about minimum hours for retail businesses. We'd like to discuss some changes to the emergency shelter overlay zoning district. This is just to implement state law requirements. Parking standards, so we have new consolidated land uses, and so now the parking standards to meet those, we had to do some dovetailing to get all those to match. Review authority for design review, looking at streamlining the review through administrative use permit for certain land uses, an update to the native tree ordinance about dead trees, looking at mixed use, sorry, multifamily zoning districts and allowing certain flexible uses to help foster complete neighborhoods there. And finally, removing some restrictions for outdoor amplified sound downtown. So I'll turn it back over to Phil to Dig into some of these.

Thank you, Genevieve. And this one picks up on some council direction we had from some time ago that we should look at, you know, If a retail use has a closed door and is doing mail order or some other type of business, are they considered a retail business or should they be called something else? It's not whether they're allowed or not. It's how they're categorized. And this has been a question that we've kicked around for quite some time. And the discussion here tonight, the recommendation here, is to have a requirement that has a regular amount of minimum hours and we're only talking about the downtown course their option is. This this could be applied elsewhere, but what we're saying is if something is in our downtown and it's classified as a retail land use. Then it should have open hours if it's classified as a mail order or it's classified as an office or classified as something else. So be it fine if it's allowed in that district then that's okay I don't think we're saying it shouldn't be allowed, but what we're saying is. Just for retail and so on the on the bottom there is this proposed definition which says the general retail uses in the downtown commercial zoning district. must maintain regular posted hours and be open to the general public for walk-in patronage during those hours for a minimum average of 20 hours per week. Retail use is operating exclusively by appointment and will not satisfy this requirement. So before I get, keep going with these items, I also just, I probably should have asked the mayor prior to this whether you'd like to talk about each one of these items as we go through them or go through them all and talk about them, come back to the ones you have questions on or take discussion.

Generally, I think it'd be better to just talk about each one because they're substantially different from each other. They are, exactly. I think it'd be good to talk about each one.

Let's go ahead and pause here and then I'll take council questions and

Yeah, the audience is small enough so that if we allow public comments, I don't think that's going to be too disruptive.

Yes, thank you.

If we allow public comment on each one and get repeat comments, that'd be my only concern. So, thanks.

Do you want me to proceed with my question?

You want to, that's all, you're done with the presentation?

For this particular item, this item one out of eight, I'm done with my discussion on this one.

I'll be happy to take some questions. My first question, though, for anybody is I'm going to go to the public works man and ask, is there a way to cool down the temperature in the room here? It's getting pretty hot, and I don't think I'm the only one who's noticing that. Nick? Is there any way to cool the room down?

The air did just turn on, Mayor Burbo. Okay.

Yeah. Got it. Thank you.

usually a bunch of colder go ahead go ahead councilmember newsom i'm sorry that's okay um i have some questions in regard to the dc zoning district do you have um a map of that and while you're looking for a map i'll ask my questions yeah you can try and pull one up from okay just as a I know that we've had several boutique establishments and then a lot of small businesses are ran by one owner. And so what I want to know is how does that apply when they have a sick child and they decide to close for a week or they have a family emergency? How is that going to affect them?

That is completely different. Any business might close to go on a holiday or vacation or an illness. That's not how this is defined here. Just on a general basis throughout the year, does the business generally stay open? Or they permanently have a closed door where there's simply a mail order or storage. And we have several of those businesses downtown now. And they're legal. They're legal nonconforming. But should they be called retail? or should they be called something else? That's really the question here. So not just about someone closing for a week or even two weeks if there's some issue such as construction or illness or vacation.

But what if somebody chooses due to a family medical concern during COVID? We had a lot of that and people went to private appointment only, but they are retail. How does that affect?

And I think for a nationwide pandemic, everything's off the table very different scenario or for some other you know circumstance that's not what we're talking about here i think what we're following up on here is what we heard from council is can we look at a way where in in general outside of a pandemic outside of um a critical issue such as an illness or vacation can we have some uh some standard for normal open hours and maybe it's not a number maybe there's another criteria we could think of And I think tonight we're just looking for your direction on this, and this is not a have to. And this is something, if you wanted to table it for later, we can. And I'll bookend that by saying there are a lot of other amendments that will continue needing to be done to the zoning over the next year or so. We're going to have to come back to you for short-term rentals, for example. We've got other state law things to implement. We're doing a pretty good job by fixing the zoning now, but we're not fixing everything right now. But we do want to kind of catch these last few policy discussion items as we move forward.

Okay. And then the color on the map, which one is the DC zone? Purple?

The nice red. Red or purple? Sorry, is it? It's zoomed so far out. It's a deeper... brick red color we put the cursor on it, so we can okay yeah so it's thank you that area with the two little alleyways you can see our allies between in Toronto and traffic way there.

Okay, any other questions, no, I mean customer music.

That was it. I was just mostly concerned about sole owner retail and then private by appointment only outside of pandemic. I think some people adjusted their business models due to some constraints, both personnel issues and also with choices of quality of life and life balance.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Funk.

Yeah. First of all, Now that Anna has moved her wonderful shop out to the Valley Fresh Market, are there other retailers that are doing the same kind of appointment-only model right now downtown?

not aware of any others that are currently doing that model right now there are some businesses that have very very reduced hours and they work sort of on a hobby basis that's really the question here going forward we're in a transition right now and our downtown is really becoming successful we're seeing a lot of new restaurants new development a lot of it spurred from the downtown enhancement plan so We're thinking as we move forward, how do we want to manage a retail use in the downtown compared to these other types of mail order or office uses?

Yeah, this is something that's been kicking around for quite a while in discussions in the years I've been on the council. Has it... been the subject of any outreach in the last several months to the downtown business owners now in downtown or through the Chamber of Commerce?

We have not done that.

Okay. Is that something that could be accomplished before this moves forward? We have time. Because it's all the difference in the world between supporting downtown business owners in the work they are doing themselves to create an environment where their businesses support each other and us coming in with a heavier-handed minimum that we haven't discussed with them. So I would look to see staff engagement downtown.

I talked with Ms. Kappel today. She has had, obviously, informal conversations, not to the degree you're asking, and there is interest in creating more traffic and more energy. We could certainly do a survey next week, a simple e-survey to the Business Assessment District to see what level of support there was for something like the 20 hours and get that information back to you.

That would meet my concern. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Mayor Portemderos.

Yeah, comment and maybe a question here. When I first read this on the idea of required number of hours that the business would have to be open. I thought that was like, wow, can you really do that? And then I realized that it is a good idea in the downtown. If you're not going to be open for very many hours, you probably should be in a different area of town. That would be fine. And then I'm going to go at a harsher end of this. It's funny because I'm kind of going, that doesn't mean I'm advocating for what I'm about to say, but I thought about 20 hours a week seems reasonable. Typical work week is 40 hours a week, but a business could be open from 8 to 6, 8 AM to 6 PM, and only be required to be open two days a week, if 20 hours. So if we're trying to maximize the activity in downtown for businesses, Is 20 hours enough? Is it reasonable to do that? I mean, I don't know. I mean, this is a new thing to me to consider something like this, but like you had just mentioned, downtown is bustling now. It's getting more and more busy. Businesses are... seeing a lot more activity. But I don't want to, I'd hate to make a decision on a number of hours that might hurt us more than it would help us. So I don't know if 20 hours is necessarily the right thing, but I'd like some feedback from you on that.

It's a great topic. You know, typical hours would be 30 to 40 for a business. We're being feather light. We're being very nice here. We're being very flexible here for a start on this I think that's staff's approach. Can we start moving in this direction? You know, someone could get 20 hours done in two days out of week. You're right. Should we go further? And so this is up to council as to how we would want to move forward with this. And again, it doesn't prohibit other land uses. It's just if you want to be called retail, this is what... That is. It's a retail land use.

I mean, could we can we mix the idea of saying, you know, 20 hours a week or a certain number of days? So, I mean, that might be open three or four hours a day, but five or six days a week. Or if it's 20 hours in two days, then maybe that's acceptable. That could be one or the other. I mean, or. I just think that, you know, if you want the downtown to be bustling, a business being open two days a week or three days a week is not going to get you there. I'm just concerned about that.

Okay.

Thank you. Council Member Beek.

Yeah, just want to comment. Anna & Company is open for browsing now at our new location, so make sure you check it out just for the record there. It's a beautiful store. If the downtown is bustling, people will want to be open longer. I think 30 hours, even with two days off, is six hours for the five days. A clothing store from 11 to 5 is a pretty standard hour. Uh, you know, we do have retail mixed with restaurants and we do see restaurants on Entrada that are closed Monday and Tuesday or just Monday. Um, depending on the place, those are typically those slower days for those smaller businesses. Um, I'm perfectly happy with businesses deciding when they're closed, uh, during what days they're closed. I also don't think it's a hurdle. 20 hours is like a big softball. I don't want to promote people having drop ship companies or, uh, direct mail companies in downtown Atascadero, even if they've changed that way, I mean, obviously they can stay there, they're non-conforming, but in the future, it's great for foot traffic to have businesses that are encouraging foot traffic. And yeah, I'm not, the minimum hours requirement, I don't think is gonna be a big hurdle for most businesses. They want to be open more than 20 hours a week to be viable. Now you're talking about restaurants might be a little different having Mama Taro being open for three hours, serving great ramen, you know, I wouldn't want to make them stay open longer just to satisfy some sort of need. But, you know, I'm not really, I don't think 20 hours is hard to ask of people and I'm open to discussing more but the days requirement I would be absolutely against forcing people to be open on certain days.

Thank you. My question is this. Do other cities do this. That you're aware of.

I don't know, but we wanna be the first.

Well, I mean, I think we agree that the downtown is much more thriving than it has been in the past, which means property values and lease costs are up, I assume, which means businesses inherently have an interest in staying open longer to make the money to pay the rent or the mortgage, right? So, I mean, it's sort of a self-solving problem as the downtown becomes more thriving

businesses will want to stay more stay open more hours and you know there'll be the traffic there to support them would that be a reasonable assumption yes it is reasonable it is reasonable assumption i'm sure other cities do this honestly we haven't done that research this is one that we haven't plagiarized this is one that we

Because, I mean, part of me feels like we shouldn't be telling a business what to do on this, but it is detrimental to neighboring businesses if a business is hardly open, you know, and people have to walk by closed doors in order to get to the one that's open. Um, you know, that doesn't motive thriving downtown. So certainly willing to look at it would kind of agree with Councilmember Peek's comments that 20 is not a very hard thing. I guess my concern is if you don't do this, you could have somebody, you know, setting up something that is just nominally a retail place. But really is, you know, focused on just, you know, both being a fulfillment center for whatever product they carry, because they're just, they meet some very minimal requirement to be called a retail establishment has. And I know we have some establishments like that in downtown that are no retail. like in the old Bank of America building, not the one that's closed, but the old, old, old Bank of America building on Traffic Way, that that is a non-retail business. But someone like that could, in theory, open their doors for a few hours a week and call themselves a retail business, right?

If someone's selling goods to the public, yes, that's the concern.

Okay got it okay and yeah I think it's unusual that someone like and I think based on reputation was able to make it as a by appointment only. Business, but it probably wasn't helpful to the neighboring businesses to you know to to not have people be able to walk down the street and walk in the door so okay all right, thank you, we have we're going to open it to public comment.

So I'm not sure regulating is a good idea. I'm not sure it's not. You have the haunt in the downtown. Is that retail? They're not open, but a few hours here and there. I just kind of look at it that way. But let's go another example. We have about 12 places in the downtown, which we call restaurants right now. What happens if a restaurant or two go out of business and it's vacant and somebody wants to come in with a high-end wedding cake bakery or a cookie bakery that is by appointment only or they ship out? You've just eliminated a spot that has hundreds of thousands of dollars or a couple hundred thousand dollars of commercial space for a restaurant that can easily be converted to a bakery or a commissary and still gives the city tax revenue, but their doors aren't open. And as a personal, the Elmite Bakery in Boston is not open to the public. We only ship all over the country and the world.

Thank you, I would clarify, though, that this we're talking about retail establishments not food establishments not service things like the chop shop or you know you know.

A music place or something like that correct yeah those are the things have separate definition so these, for example, someone who who you know does. has a bakery or a sausage maker that's not open to the public they're going to be called something else, but also those wouldn't be allowed in the downtown on the ground floor anyway so. This is just about downtown and just about the retail category. Obviously, a restaurant category gets people.

Got it. Okay, so bringing it back to council then, it seemed they saw a consensus that 20 hours is not unreasonable. A little concern about telling businesses what to do, but this is a pretty minimal soft touch requirement. Is that a fair summation?

Yeah, I do want to see that the conversation happen with the downtown business owners, and I would not... I do not think we're ripe to take this citywide.

Right, we're talking downtown only. So I think you hear where we're at, but I think it is a good idea that we reach out through the Chamber of Commerce or to the Downtown Business Association and see how they feel about that. Okay, all right, let's move on to the next topic.

All right, this is one we have to do. We have some changes to state law as a result of Senate Bill 340. And essentially what it does in summary that when a shelter has a series of activities all those activities are considered part of the shelter operations. Right now, we have a conditional use permit that was required for a meal program and a shower program at our homeless shelter. We cannot do that anymore, we have to allow those as part of the shelter operations, however. we can still regulate and enforce the management standards through the existing operations and management plan. Now, the guidance for the operations and management plan is in our municipal code, but the actual operations and management plan is a separate document that the council reviewed at one time, and then we see an annual copy of it, but there's not been any changes to it since they did the expansion. Now, What I will mention, what I did find in the code, just for example, there is a limitation on the number of hours that's in our municipal code that the shelter can be open. But the reality is, that section of the code, and I'll show you that. This was a comment that was brought up. I have it at the end here of the presentation. There it is. This is one of the items in our municipal code where it limits those hours from 4 to 9 p.m. 4 p.m. to 9 a.m. However, you notice they're on there otherwise permitted by the approved onsite management plan. So when I actually pulled up the onsite management plan, it does offer the shelter program to be up to 24 hours a day. So this question came up early, I wanted to clarify that. But it also shows you, you know, the management plan does a lot here that we can utilize to regulate the overall land use. without having to have the CEP for these accessory uses, such as the shower and meal program. So what this does, it does trigger us to want to look at the management plan more carefully in the future. But this is something we don't have much control on. This is something that we just have to do in order to implement that new Senate bill. Anyway, happy to answer your questions.

Okay. Thank you. I think we have to do what we got to do, but I have to comment that we certainly appreciate all of the good things that Senator Laird has done for our community, but this legislation initiated by his office without any consultation with us, so much so that we were kind of caught by surprise that it existed, That part is not appreciated. But it means that our CUP is essentially not enforceable. And so we don't appreciate that lack of consultation. By we, I mean the city manager and myself, Council Member Peek. We had a meeting with ECHO Management, and we talked a little bit about some of the neighborhood concerns. And one of the things we've talked about is we'd rather... and people hang out in the median waiting for services that they actually be allowed onto the campus earlier so they're not hanging out in the median or hanging out front, et cetera, with especially although that's on us with stolen shopping carts and that sort of thing. But is that something we can put into the management plan? You kind of talked about hours to where we could change You know, not only allow but encourage them to allow people on campus sooner. So they're not hanging out in front. Is that it.

Can we, where could we put that I believe that could be in the operations management plan.

Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to be for the council member news of other questions.

And the operation management side of that, I think originally we established the certain times at 4 PM because we were trying not to conflict with the school time. How does that, have we done any outreach or communicated with the school district in regards to SB 340 as well as the operational standpoint to see how that impacts that corridor?

We have not yet done that this is brand new and only came up just very recently, as we were doing the final stages of this zoning update so we haven't had time, and so we haven't changed anything. On our end and we haven't had a discussion yet with ECHO in terms of. modifying their operations and management plan yet. So those are all things that need to happen.

This bill was just passed in the session year 2025 to 2026. How did the latest ECHO meeting go with the standards of operation and the CUP discussion?

They had a neighborhood meeting just this past week, but we did not discuss the operations and management plan yet for this year. So we've yet to do that.

So the community and the neighborhood around there thinks it's governed by the CUP, but we're just now finding out it's not governed by CUP, only operations.

Correct. And the operations and management plan is pretty thorough. It does go over all of the site things. It just doesn't cover the meal program and shower program, which, yes, those are the folks that aren't living in the shelter, so...

and that's what the neighborhood has the most complaints about yes likely okay thank you

Yeah, I wanna circle back onto this hours of operations question, because I've continued, I've heard feedback from the neighbors on the concerns about folks congregating in the median area or outside the shelter, waiting for services or having come from services, and that that's a major concern to the neighborhood. And ECHO was saying, well, the city doesn't allow us to be open. for our shelter clients before 4 p.m. What I read in, and you were, I don't know what you were doing, what I'm seeing in page 92 of 470 of the zoning code, of the new code that I looked at this morning, um what or yeah whenever um when i just lost it here is that um in uh es operating standards um the um sorry shelter hours of operation are limited to between 4 p.m and 9 a.m daily Period. Shelter clients and the general public are not permitted on the premises outside these hours unless otherwise permitted by the approval of a conditional use permit. Okay, so that's what's in the language now that's being proposed. Are we looking to make a change in that? Because the council had this discussion years ago when we authorized 24-7 operations for ECHO because we had mothers with toddlers out in 105-degree heat who couldn't put their kids to bed for a nap in the afternoon, and we had clients working to get themselves employed who had job offers on night shifts who needed to, if they were residents, needed to be able to sleep during the day to have their night shift jobs and get their selves together so they could go for housing. So the council approved that 24-7 operation years ago.

So I believe the original language referred to a conditional use permit. This language you see on the screen is actually in the new zoning. So we adapted this already to the Senate bill. to change CUP to onsite management plan. So the onsite management plan can govern your hours. The CUP is now null and void. So I think they're currently operating under their previous CUP and we need to have the discussion now that that isn't valid and that they can create an onsite management plan in conjunction with the city to allow for those folks to go on earlier if that's what we want to do.

Right. There are a number of things here where there's ambiguity about who is a shelter client because the operations and the management plan is clear that you have different categories of clients. You have clients who are residing at the shelter. and who have access to their residence 24-7, and you have clients who are coming and going for meal programs or showers or other meetings, job training, other kinds of services that might be subject to different sets of requirements. Yeah.

To be clear, though, this evening we're just adopting this language regarding we're, you know, acknowledging that the CUP is no longer enforceable. I mean, I think it may be that we have enough questions here that we need to talk about this some more regarding the management plan. I think the key thing, at least for a lot of us, is that they're encouraged. And when we met with them, they seemed certainly open to the idea of allowing people on campus sooner, but that previously that was not allowed. So they seemed open to it. And I'd like to see us kind of head there. for some of the reasons mentioned by council member Funk and myself, but I don't know that we have time to go into all of these particular issues this evening.

This Senate bill really triggers the need for the city to review a new operations and management plan. And that is a whole nother cannon forms, not really cannon forms. It's a whole nother thing to do that we aren't doing right now. That's correct. So tonight we're just looking for your recommendation on how we implement this part of the state law, this narrow little bit, which we have to put in there And then we can if we'd like at the council's pleasure, we can come back to have a broader discussion, but I think, as was alluded to earlier, we haven't done outreach with the schools we haven't talked to ECHO yet this is brand new. We have work to do on that and that's another separate activity that exceeds the scope of the zoning update right now.

As a larger piece of feedback on the zoning code update, I think part of what's really confusing in this work is that you've got a lot of detail in the zoning code around the operations of the shelter. And then you have a management plan that can make exceptions to those things and has more detail going on in contrary things and it creates a lot of confusion of folks about what to expect. So I would encourage staff to think about having the zoning code itself be much more limited and rely more heavily on the management plan and then simultaneously to put a structure in place where the discussion of the management plan is then part of the ask ECHO to do that at the annual meeting. report back to this council on an annual basis that the staff has reviewed that, discussed it with ECHO, received feedback from the neighborhood, and does or does not have any recommendations for this council. That would let people know that somebody's minding the store from the city perspective as we're working to handle the impact of this very important usage on the neighborhood around it and on others who are affected.

I tend to agree with that, that the zoning code is minimal language and the day-to-day be in the management plan. Does that make sense to you as staff?

Sorry, could you repeat the first part?

That the zoning code is more limited in terms of its specificity and that the specifics are more in the management plan.

Yes, it has general terms and then the very finite specifics are in the management plan. And it's done that way purposely because the needs change from year to year through ECHO on how they want to handle things. And they wanted to keep that more fluid rather than have it locked into an ordinance.

Right. And I think that's good for the city too, is it not?

Yes, I hear what you're saying, though, because in my meeting today with the Council of Funk, we did review the full zoning ordinance, and there are a lot of very specific things in there about that I think could probably be put into the management plan. So I think if the direction from the Council is for us to look at that. With only the land use things, remove the CUP, which is the discussion, and put as much into the management plan as possible. I hear you on that. That's what you would take.

I think that would help us keep this a lot cleaner. And then when there's some tweak, we don't have a disconnect between the zoning code and that. And for the zoning code, what I was relying on in this discussion was what was available at the link provided by staff in the staff report on this item.

Thank you i'm going to go back to councilman newsome and go over here to the other side.

I have a question so when the legislation gets put into place like this one was enacted in January 1 to 2026 what is the timeframe for the city to evaluate what's been passed into implement it into the existing activities in the city.

You'll probably notice a wry smile on my face. The legislature expects cities to implement it immediately. Because that's when the legislation goes into effect. Practically speaking, there's a ramp up period of time and cities can take several years, depending on the nature of the legislation. But as you're probably where in the housing arena, they're constantly updating. Every year we get a new series of housing bills, and it's impossible to keep up the pace that Sacramento has been able to keep in some of those bills. So cities, until they get either an inquiry or a lawsuit against them, there's no specific time frame that they're forced to do this by unless there's some funding attached to it at the state level.

so echo came to us i believe in 2026 to extend their programs and this senate bill was already enacted we didn't know about it when we added those additional cup changes because we weren't forced to implement it as a city for up to several years because we're tasked with too many bills not enough coming off and adding new ones on top of the layers for us

Yeah, there's approximately, I think the last legislative session, there's about 4,300 bills that went through the legislature. Obviously not all of them were signed by the governor, but there's a significant volume of legislation coming out. To give you a little bit of contrast, the state of Nevada's legislature, I don't know if it's the same case as now, but they used to meet every other year, and they only met for six weeks. California has a full-time professional legislature, and so that's their business. They are constantly making the bills. And for smaller cities, we try to keep up through League of California Cities. CSAC will provide some references for the cities to follow as well. But it is a significant task to keep up with all the legislation that's coming out of Sacramento.

Okay, thank you. Okay, Mayor Pertemderis, any questions? Okay, Council Member Peek?

Man, I lost my train of thought. In terms of the hours, you know, we did have this ex parte discussion and I'm not going to speak for them, but they seem open to the idea of having people in the courtyard before four o'clock. I would be very much in favor of that. In terms of like, I can't speak on the record how many neighbors know about the elimination of our ability to... um enforce uh cups but there are handfuls of them that are aware of that um councilwoman newsome just so so you're aware that i know that they're aware um and some of them are not too pleased about it um i would be in favor of making it more streamlined in the zoning ordinance than having the management plan be more of the massaged product so and i would also in terms of the wording um i don't know if that precludes people that live there from putting their baby to sleep i mean i'm totally fine with people being in the building all day i mean if they're living there you know but uh i think in terms of people that are coming there for services a couple extra hours you know just uh just to discourage loitering uh and that's kind of what our our topic was one of the topics of the meeting uh was on sidebar meeting okay thank you any public comment

To make this quicker, if you can answer one quick question, then I might be able to sit down. Is this only for ECHO or is this for all shelters?

This is only for, I mean, ECHO is our only shelter.

So emergency shelters are only allowed in the emergency shelter overlay zone, which we only have one emergency shelter overlay zone, which is where ECHO is, if that answers that question.

But if there are other, you know, like overnight shelters opening in the winter at a church, let's say, I don't know if the question pertains to that, but it could pertain.

Those are separate. Those are regulated under emergency warming or, yeah, it's a provision.

They don't operate previously under a CUP or anything like that. They just operate as a right, as a part of their religious mission, if you will.

Exactly.

Got it. All right, thank you, we will then bring it back, I think our primary comment was simply let's minimize the wording and keep the ordinance as simple as possible. And we need to revisit and revise the incorporate all these things into the management plan and work with that go on that Thank you okay all right, thank you let's move on to the next topic.

parking I love parking yeah I often say if if I was king for a day i'd probably just eliminate all the parking standards, I say this to Kelly, all the time, and she cringes. But I think there's cities that have done that. It's kind of an interesting experiment. I don't think we're ready to do that. But it's not what we're recommending here at all. What we basically have is we've refined our definitions in our land use ordinance, our draft land use ordinance, to respond to the new general plan. The new general plan has what's called place types, and the new zoning has place types, or different land uses. In addition, after taking a look at our parking, it has a bunch of outdated stuff. So we've streamlined it. We've gotten rid of the overlapping standards. some antiquated references that were in there um we have come up with some really easier flat ratios for certain things like three spaces per a thousand um some unique ones that for you know you know strange land uses um and then some allowances for changes that are less than 2500 square feet without redoing their parking um and then um We also added some standards for large retail stores. Whenever we get a large retail store, they always want to put in a lot more than they actually need. Walmart was famous for doing that. Hundreds and hundreds of extra spaces. So we're proposing a 10% cap on that, on the excess parking. But just having a look at it, this is our existing code, for example. And there's a section of the proposed code. I'm not putting it all in here because there's a lot, but these are the more common ones and basically what we had before was these turnover rates that were in there and we had sort of some strange regulations we've made it now just very clean one space for 400 one space for 200 one space for four beds for medical services for example just really straight lined it so and that's really about it it's it's again i think this is getting into the streamlining and Really just matching the new land uses I'll end there and be happy to answer your questions.

I'm gonna start on my left this time council member peak any questions.

I like this.

Okay, that's the same. Thank you. I'm here. Pretend there's Okay, council member funk.

yeah what I try to have to interpret is for most commercial uses does this require them to have more parking or less parking than on average than the existing very similar maybe a little less for a couple uses but very similar okay similar and in simpler yes

Council Member Newsom?

No question.

Okay. Just to be clear for me, it says residential parking standards remain unchanged. So you still have to have parking for residential.

That doesn't change. Yeah, that's the critical one. It's based on bedrooms per unit and guests.

This is throughout the city except downtown, correct? Because downtown we don't require parking for commercial properties, correct?

Well, we do for some commercial uses. So downtown we don't require parking for retail or restaurant. We do require parking for office and residential or other land uses that are above the ground floor.

Okay right right that's what I want to make sure understand, but so this comments really pertain primarily to outside the downtown. Yes, area okay wanted to be clear on that Okay, thank you and if well relative to downtown know in terms of businesses needing to find spaces for residential project. If they're a lot is too small and we have many small lots on in downtown if they're a lot is too small literally too small really to park to put any parking on it, this doesn't address that this that is something we could and maybe should address at some point in time in the future.

Yes, there's several ways that can be done. Right now, we already do have an off-site parking allowance with a use permit. They can do that today. They can do that with the new code as well. But other options, if we wanted to be more supportive of economic development, or for that matter, mixed-use development in the downtown, we can look at things such as an in-lieu fee program, or we can look at things such as other off-site parking. A lot of communities utilize those processes, but we don't have that yet. Okay.

Okay, thank you we'll see any public comment on this okay seeing none will bring it back to Council, I think we've indicated we're pretty we're okay with what you've suggested here. Okay, very good let's move on to the next item design review.

One of my favorite hearings to always go to was the design review committee and I say was because we haven't had a design view committee meeting in quite some time and that's because. Partly because of state law, partly because of some of our own changes to streamline development review. But what state law has done is it's required us to adopt things called objective design standards, which basically allows a lot of larger, especially housing projects, by right, as long as they meet a set of objective standards, a list of standards. But in addition to that, our city council has spoken and said, We want the process to be cheaper and easier for development to happen. We trust staff with the basic design elements of a small commercial building. But what I'll also tell you is a lot of larger development projects, a lot of larger commercial projects already have to go through a conditional use permit or come to city council or do a rezoning and do a map. And so that in itself allows for a design review process. So the question was, do we still need a design review committee if we haven't utilized it in about a year? And I think we've heard from the council, and I think that maybe it's time that we take that off and we give that duty to the community development department. Now the DRC, it's been great. It's served a great purpose in its time, and I think... Those council members and others that have staffed it have done an amazing job, and it's been an absolute delight, and it's served its purpose well, and we've seen a lot of great projects that have been improved. And I think originally it was brought forward as a way to streamline projects, really, because I think there was a thought that they were being held up too long on the other end of things, and, hey, let's get this through and make this happen. So... recommendation here is uh to eliminate design review but really just basically passing that duty off to the planning commission or the city council or for really small projects back to the community development department happy to answer your questions on that okay i'm going to start on my left again with council member peak i'm in favor of this okay thank you mayor pro tenderas

yeah i think the simple fact that design review committee hasn't had to meet in a year and a half or so proves that the objective design standards are doing what we hope they would so yeah i'm in favor of simplifying this as much as possible

Okay, thank you. I'm gonna go ahead and ask my questions now before I go down the aisle or down the row. As I understood it, the original purpose of the DRC was to give the project applicant kind of a free look from two planning commissioners, two council members, and a member of the public. And the city does not charge for DRC meetings and or reviews. and which was very nice of us compared to other cities who would have that required step in the process and charge money for those reports and reviews. My only concern here would be essentially we do away with this, which is always a nice step to do away with a body, be more efficient. But if we push it to certain things to the Planning Commission, we do charge applicants for Planning Commission reviews because you've got to write up a staff report, et cetera, et cetera. But overall, I mean, it seems like a good idea to be streamlining. But is it going to push? How many things would be pushed upwards to the Planning Commission versus, in theoretical, no offense, but downwards to the Community Development Directorate?

Let me correct that because we wouldn't be pushing things to the planning commission that wouldn't normally go. So the planning commission, it's only mentioned there because those projects would be going there anyway, whether it's for a map, whether it's for something else, rezoning, plan development, master plan development, those things that would go anyway. Okay, that's where that would take place. So we wouldn't put something there if it didn't have that other process.

Great answer. Thank you. And I would like to thank our public member of the thing, Emily Baranek, who is here this evening. Thank you for your service on that body. Okay, I'll pass it down to Council Member Fong.

Thanks. As current chair of the Design Review Committee, I was going to have this on my list of recommendations for our strategic planning because We have worked ourselves out of a job, basically, in simplifying the processes to the point where that isn't needed. So I would just, to the mayor's point, that was an early process. I can only, in the last three and a half years or so when I've been chair, I can only recall one project that came to DRC specifically for that kind of discussion. It was an applicant that was reluctant to do the extensive amount of curb gutter and sidewalk and undergrounding and things that were required on a particular property and needed some further discussion about how those things might be interpreted. Can you think of any others that, any additional volume that we've had of projects that were just somebody who really wanted to get a read from council members and planning commissioners and a member of the public about how something would go over?

I seem to recall we did quite a process with La Plaza and some of these other earlier large commercial projects around town. I'm trying to think of the other ones that came forward with that, where it really became a good collaborative process.

Yeah. It's had its moment and served us well. I just think we're done with that now. And we could at least plan to eliminate it. And then should we find a need for some kind of guidance, perhaps we could do a less formal process. Because two council members, two planning commissioners, and a volunteer from the public would help. not constitute a Brown Act majority of anybody. So you could just convene a little task force to chat with somebody if someone needed that. You know, would that will that suffice you think to handle any need that developers have to be able to kick it around a little bit before they close escrow on a project or or otherwise.

Yes, I believe our team our Community development team can do a great job doing that and, if need be, we could even bring up you know some really unique proposal to Council if we had to if there was a very big land use proposal very big change. and something happening, we would preliminary review that with council anyway.

Fair enough.

Okay, Council Member Newsom.

Thank you. I appreciated my time on DRC. I think we saw Barrel Creek. We saw a lot of big projects that come through DRC. So I will miss that aspect of it because I felt like you were there from the beginning. But I know that this has been needed for a long time. So I appreciate staff bringing that forward.

Okay, any members of the public wishing to comment? Okay, seeing them, we'll bring it back to council. I think we've made clear we support this thing, and I think it's another example of a task area being streamlined and efficient, and I compare that to another city south of us where they have 14 advisory bodies.

That is a long process. About 70 people. I speak from experience.

Fill out financial disclosure forms and everything else. Okay, let's move on to the next topic.

And now I'm going to introduce Kelly Gleason, our planning manager, and she's going to take you through some of the more difficult items since I just did the easy ones. Here you are.

I think some of mine are pretty easy, actually. We thought you'd get tired of hearing one of our voices, so we'd switch off, but since we're doing it each round, I don't think we're tired of Phil's voice yet, but I'll take over anyways. So this item is another sort of streamlining process item. This was just kind of an overview of some of the direction that we got from Council when we were going through our commercial uses tables. So we had a couple uses that we reduced the level of review from a conditional use permit, which are those items that go all the way through Planning Commission for review and action, to an administrative use permit, and those are discretionary items that go before our administrative hearing officer, which is our community development director. And with this zoning code update, if you recall, we are changing some of that process where it doesn't always require a hearing. It only requires a hearing if somebody requests one, either the applicant or one of the notified neighborhood people that might be affected. So this really is a streamlined process. Some of those uses that were called out during our commercial use discussion were laundromats. They don't have as much of an effect on neighborhoods as they used to in the 60s when our original code sprung forth for our city. Caretakers units for certain types of projects that need that overnight visibility. Horticultural specialties with outdoor sales we reduced to an administrative use permit. where housing and wholesaling we've honed the zones where those are allowed and so administrative use permit was more appropriate for that. And production breweries as well, because again we've honed sort of the zoning districts where those are allowed and no longer need an additional level of review. Again, still a discretionary permit so still has the ability to be reviewed by staff and any conditions placed on it that it needs to function properly or respond to any neighborhood concerns. We also reduced the level of review in the industrial zone for contract construction services. There was some discussion that in the industrial zone outdoor contract construction services would not need a use permit, and that is the zone where those uses are more preferred, and so we did change that to an allowed use. Oh, that we're going to pause for discussion on that item.

Okay, thank you. I'll start me right. Any questions? Comments?

Nope, I'm good. Thank you.

You're good.

Looks good to me. I thought I proposed some of these before. I thought we already discussed them. Yeah, they look familiar. Okay.

Anything? I know we went through this, the list of all these things a while back and I'm good with this. This is good.

Anything?

This I am also happy with.

Yeah, I as well am happy, very happy that we're reducing time and cost to applicants for routine things like this. And we have great confidence in our community development director to make good decisions open to the public.

Any way to maybe add one item like home-based business where you can actually legally have somebody at your house, let's say you're an accountant or a CPA or something, and you can have one employee at your house. We still haven't addressed that. Anywhere, thank you.

Thank you. It's an interesting comment. I don't know if it pertains to this specific recommendation here.

Not necessarily. We do, for our home occupations, we do limit offsite employees coming to the home. As just an allowed as part of your home occupation that's to ensure sort of neighborhood character, we do have an administrative use permit process to allow onsite employees for home occupations.

Okay got it and an AUP is easier than a CUP so it's reasonably efficient in terms of.

Correct it does allow for some neighborhood notification to ensure that we're. maintaining adequate parking and character and nature of business, but it's a simplified process. Got it.

Okay, so I think you're, you're, you see that we're all comfortable with this.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, let's move on to number six regarding changes to the, or updates to the tree ordinance.

I think I have the easy ones because I think you guys have already reviewed all of these in detail. So the next, we did incorporate some changes to the tree ordinance based on council discussion a couple meetings ago. The discussion really focused around the process and fees for trees that had died due to natural causes. We did eliminate the arborist verification for that dead tree. I think we all knew that the tree in front of the senior center was no longer living. And then you did explore some replanting requirements instead of paying fees for those types of trees. So this is where the code was updated. It's a couple different sections of the code, one of them in Chapter 3, which is the bulk of our native tree regulations, where we did have dead tree removals, died from natural causes, or exempt from permit fees, but still subject to mitigation. And then we do clarify in our mitigation section that the mitigation is a planting of one 15-gallon native tree on the site and that the director can determine that the tree has indeed died. Any discussion on this item?

Okay, start on the left.

No discussion on this one. I'm really happy that we're moving forward with adjusting the tree rate ordinance and looking forward to more dialogue next year.

I had a brief discussion with with Mr. Lewis on this one. So if I mean, if somebody might come in and say, hey, I've got a dead tree, and I want it removed and, you know, have it handled in this way. And maybe it's not obvious that it's dead or diseased or dying. There's still a provision that I mean, we can we can require it basically, on discretion, require and say, no, you didn't get an arborist. So that'll end the argument.

Yes, that's correct. So because it's up to the community development director, if there is ambiguity or uncertainty, he can request additional information.

All right. All right. Great. I think it's good.

Okay.

Any comments?

I'm good with it. And if an arborist report is required, that would be the responsibility of the property owner to provide it, right? Correct. Good. Yeah, that's all good.

Okay.

Council Member Newsom. Okay. And I'm glad we've been able to make these changes fairly quickly. And like Council Member Peek said, I look forward to having more in-depth discussion in early next year. Members of the public wishing to speak.

Sorry, this is a great improvement to the tree problem ordinance but which pick on the senior Center for a minute, they have to replace a 15 gallon native tree on site. It may require them to actually now have to bring in a backhoe dig dig up the old one replace soil to put one and I i'm not so sure.

yeah the replacement in general is up to me and placement on the property is up to. property owner, although I don't know if we have a different rule for heritage trees.

I think for the heritage tree, we were looking for a similar street tree location. The senior center has removed that tree and ground the stump out. In previous iterations of our code, we have required a minimum 24 inch box up to a 36 inch box replacement tree for those types of trees. We did do the 15 gallon because you can, in theory, get a whole dug. Yeah. Maybe not in the summer with some of our soils, but you can realistically do that without large equipment. Yeah.

a little digging around, they can find places around the roots to plant that 15 gallon. Got it, thank you. Okay, I think we're good on that. Just go to multifamily.

So our next item is something that we haven't necessarily discussed, although it definitely relates to sort of state requirements for reducing VMT and providing opportunities for neighborhoods to have proximity to some goods and services that maybe don't exist in their particular neighborhood. So our current proposed zoning code does have some added flexibility within our multifamily zones to allow for small scale commercial uses. These are fairly limited. They're limited in size to what they can be certain of them. So these are kind of like a neighborhood store. They do have to be on an arterial or collector road. So these are maybe think like South El Camino or North El Camino. where they're dominated by a residential and multi-family zones you could incorporate a small more commercial space into that development along those streets so we looked at sort of small scale gathering spaces these are things that sometimes religious facilities do in residential neighborhoods anyways and they do those through a use permit this could be a standalone type facility or something where it was shared between a multifamily complex and the general public. Again, small scale restaurants like a cafe or some retail stores. So this is what that looks like in the code, so you can see those eating and drinking establishments, we thought of also fitness facilities that might be a small yoga studio or it might be a fitness facility as part of a multifamily development that would also be open to the public. Personal services, so these are small scale, you know barbershop type uses and general retail that is less than 2000 square feet. Happy to answer any questions.

Okay, Councilmember Newsom, any questions?

I'm gonna opt out of answering, due to a possible conflict. Okay.

This looks good to me.

Okay, anyone on the left? Okay, I guess my only question is, the state pushes you to have more housing and make sure you got everything zoned for enough housing. This would actually allow A small scale business to go into an R you know multifamily zone place and the state's okay with that right.

The state is what the state mostly regulates our sites they're identified in our housing element for housing, so we can't sort of down zone, but we can build other things around them. There is actually a state law for qualifying housing projects that allows the addition of commercial uses, because the state sees that as a potential. viable ad for financing. So this is somewhat aligned with state law in that regard.

Okay. And if you provide services right in a neighborhood, it does reduce vehicle trips. So I'm not sure how much this will be utilized, but I'm encouraged that we're offering flexibility. So thank you. Any members of the public wishing to comment? Okay, seeing none approach, we're going to bring that back. And I think you've got our endorsement on that. Let's go to number eight, downtown outdoor amplified sound.

This is our final item, we do have a number of bands and a number of indoor outdoor spaces as part of our downtown. Our current code actually requires approval of an administrative use permit every time that you have outdoor amplified sound on a regular basis, and so we wanted to allow certain bands and music and activities in our downtown that create a level of vibrancy. outright without requiring that permit. So we are proposing some language that would exempt certain areas in downtown from that administrative use permit requirement for outdoor amplified sound. We did add a qualifier that this does not exempt the discretionary permit for any properties that are abutting or adjacent to a single family or multifamily zoning district. We don't want to create additional incompatibilities. We just want to allow For some of those businesses that are against the freeway or within our core downtown area, the opportunity of having a regular band without going through discretionary permit process.

Okay, thank you. Any comments on the left, on the left, on the right? Okay. Okay, go ahead, Councilmember Peek.

Besides like live music, like little speakers in downtown park or around, you know, ambiance type things, does this concern that? Or is this more like a Garden City band on the creek or the new brewery across the street? Is that more... what we're looking for, or is it like, or if someone has just like a speaker, a Bose speaker outside their dress shop, or they have, the city wants to put fun tinkly music around sunken gardens.

It is technically both. So it's anything that's amplified.

Okay, good question though, in a sense of, I mean, there's some minimal thing is there's not some decibel level threshold, but it's basically using amplified sound falls under this.

I think if it was really low decibel and it matched our noise ordinance, it'd be hard to call it amplified if it's something really, really minor. But in general, anything that uses a speaker amplification.

This is more if you invite a band to play on the back deck of the Momotaro Ramen or wherever like that.

Yeah, or if you had louder outdoor speakers as part of your ambiance for your eating area. Okay, gotcha, gotcha.

Okay, all right, thank you very much, I believe that that's the last item for us discuss any member of the public wishing to comment okay see none approach. I think you've got our guidance on that, and it was just looking for guidance and direction, you will bring back actual ordinance language at another point correct.

And just to summarize and for all those are listening out there. You can see the whole draft code posted online for review at www.tascadero.org forward slash ZCU. So we have the whole draft code on our website right now. We will integrate your direction into the draft code. We do plan to go to Planning Commission October 6th and come back here October 27th, which would put us at a second reading November 10th and being effective December 10th. And all in between that time, two weeks from now, we'll be with you with the general plan and finally EIR as well. And this multi-year project is coming to a close. So I appreciate all of your hard work and your patience as we've struggled through this. But it's been a process. But I think it's been a good process.

All right. Thank you. And those were the soothing sounds of the voice of Mr. Phil Dunsmore. So thank you, Phil. sorry we're going to proceed on to our next item item h2 discussion of council compensation and benefits um and i'm not sure if i'm turning this over to mr lewis or to rachel hunter our human resources director looks like rachel's got the microphone so that's where we're headed okay okay all right so okay i had to kick out chief bryson here for a sec

So during the July 14th council meeting, council asked for an informational report on compensation and benefits for elected officials. So that's what we're going to cover real quick. It wants to move. No. Where am I pointing this? Okay, there we go. So before we can talk about compensation, we do need to establish where a council member falls in our rules and regulations, and if they are an employee. So an employee is, per the FLSA, is someone permitted to work for an employer, and it clearly excludes an individual who holds public office. And then on top of that, our personnel system rules state that an employee is a person who occupies a position within the city service and is appointed by the appointing authority in this case the city manager the city manager appoints all city employees except the city attorney and this was written back when the city attorney was on staff and appointments reserved by the city council so all people considered employees are appointed by the city manager So what does that make a council member? A council member is elected by the citizens of Atascadero and not appointed by the appointing authority, in this case the city manager. Their benefits are included in the city ordinance, not in a negotiated MOU or bargaining agreement, employment agreement. There's our awesome council right there looking to get to work. Okay, so now the exciting part. City Ordinance 591 talks about the wages for our elected officials. These wages were updated in 2017. Prior to 2017, they were updated in 1986. So they were well due for an update in 2017 when they got the update. So each position there is listed in Ordinance 591. Council members also have the option of their retirement plan, a full time employee does not have the option on where if they're enrolled in CalPERS or not they're automatically enrolled. Council member does have an optional plan membership, so they can enroll in CalPERS or in a FICA substitute. And you can see the rates for those there. Excuse me. We have a FICA substitute because the city of Atascadero does not pay into Social Security, so we have to have another option for our part-time employees and our council members. So you can see the big difference is the elected official contribution and then, of course, the city contributions, depending on if the member chooses CalPERS or the FICA substitutes. insurance is optional for council members it is required for all city employees to be covered under our health insurance but it is optional for council members the city covers the cost of medical and life insurance for the member only so if the council member decides to add on spouse or dependents they would need to pay out of pocket for that difference in premium For dental and vision the city covers the official the spouse and dependence or whoever they choose to enroll in each of those plans. Again, if you're a full time employee if you enroll your family in medical they're automatically enrolled in dental vision and life but. The ordinance allows for Council members to pick and choose what they are. Putting their people in and if they choose to pay for that coverage. And last but not least, the city does offer a post-retirement health benefit, which stipends $200 per month to a council member who has retired from CalPERS or a similar retirement plan and has served eight consecutive years on the council or as an elected official. And they have to draw that retirement within six months of separating. This benefit is listed in the resolution for nonrepresented management and confidential employees, the resolution that covers that employee workforce. After doing research for this project, we have identified that this should not be housed in the compensation resolution. It should actually be in an ordinance. I looked back as far as I could, and this is the only mention of council in this resolution all the years back. And it is the only time council is presented in the resolution is this one item. Excuse me, one item. All right, so that's actually all I have. It's a very short presentation. Short presentation.

Okay, thank you. I'm going to start with Council Member Newsom because you had asked for this to be put on the agenda, and so I'd like to start with you.

Appreciate it. Thank you to the staff and all the hard work and the research that needed to be done on it. As you know, council compensation of benefits has not really been addressed but a handful of times over the years. And I think it's important with a vacant seat that's coming forward that the public understand the benefits that are afforded to a council member as well as what has been intended. I know that the 2015 ordinance, when it was originally created, had mentioned that the intent was to make sure that the elected officials received the same benefits as the city employees. I know it's also challenging because city employee and council member are not one and the same. And I've asked this to be put on the agenda one to evaluate the changes that should happen. I think when you come into office, we make decisions on four year and two year intervals, depending on when we're elected to office. And there is a lot of inconsistencies with the ordinance and the benefits that we would receive on the day that we took office. following to the day that we're leaving office. And so a couple of things I wanted to address in here is that the draft or the resolution done in 2025 had stipulated that there would be retiree benefits. It alluded to the insurance, but it did not specify in writing what criteria needed to be met to be listed as a retiree for health insurance benefits. retiree health insurance benefits are afforded to all city employees but technically we're not considered city employees by definition but not defined in an ordinance or a resolution i'm asking for clarification or explanation of that

Sure. So not all retirees are afforded retiree health insurance. There is a criteria that needs to be met, and that is they – very similar to some of the other criteria is – They have to participate immediately upon separation. They can't leave, go somewhere else, and come back to our plan. They cannot, they have to be continuously enrolled in the program. Again, no on and off the retiree. They must be under the age of 65, not eligible for Medicare, and also have no access or not be eligible to any other group health insurance. So, if their spouse or even they go into the private sector and have access to group insurance, they cannot plan to stay on ours. It is not listed anywhere because it's not a guaranteed benefit. When somebody elects retiree health insurance, they sign... A piece of paper that says I understand this is year to year based on our insurance plan and it's up to the insurance committee and our renewal process to understand if. That is something we can keep affording our retirees, so it is not listed anywhere, because we can't guarantee that that's going to be a benefit, we can continue. So it is something that we have had for many years, but again it's not listed anywhere, because it is not a guaranteed benefit.

So I guess my clarifying question is, is that information provided to counsel when they're provided with their insurance benefits upon placement onto that policy?

It is not on a yearly basis because, again, council is a little bit different because you're not required to be on insurance. Council is the only ones that are not required to be on insurance when they're working or here. Automatically, employees get added to health insurance, whether they want to be or not, as part of our plan. Not necessarily. Retiree health insurance is not typically discussed at any new employee orientation. That's not a benefit that we bring to the table from day one. Typically, it doesn't come up in conversation.

But it's written in the resolution of 2025 of what retiree benefits are and that that eight-year mark has to be met.

That is the $200 stipend. Correct.

For a retiree health insurance benefit. Is that not the same?

No, they are completely different things. So the $200, you can use it for any type of insurance. You can use it for a life insurance policy. You can use it for another type of policy. That is a $200 stipend per month that a retiree can get if they – as a reimbursement for a insurance so what needs to happen with that is if they get a private plan they will basically send the city a reimbursement request for that 200 a month it is not retiree health insurance and really doesn't have any correlation with that however when that resolution was done in closed session addressing and tied to other bargaining unit negotiations

and was written into that plan. The intent at that time was a little bit more that intent or clarification and writing was not established. And I know that this city staff has had conflicts with how to approach that question. So I'm asking for it to be, I guess, decided by the council body to make sure that we are all aware of all benefits going forward and to clarify that council does not meet that requirement and that that is not an option available and to be written into the ordinance so there is no differencing for staff that come after so the 200 benefit is for council that it absolutely is the retiree health to stay on our health plan is not eligible for council So we're talking about two separate benefits okay what i'm what i'm asking is is that it be clarified and written into the ordinance, so there is no. What do you call it. miss.

I don't know, but you identified in your report, though, that there was some language that shouldn't be in the resolution, because Council should not really be included with. with the management nonrepresented employees in that resolution. So in terms of clarity, that would be one thing that should be clarified, correct?

Yes. I found copies of the management resolution back to 2005, and it did mention council for this $200 monthly stipend way back in 2005. It did not have any other language in there, so I'm not sure what the intent was in 2015 versus 2005, but it did go way back to then, and it really should go in the ordinance because all council benefits should be under the ordinance.

Mayor, as a result of this, just to be clear, I appreciate that One, I think it's very good to show the community that the Council members do get some level of benefit for your work. I think most of you lose money serving on City Council. You're practically volunteers, and this is just a bit of change to cover your time and your expenses. I think coming out of this, I think it is clear I would like to move that $200 to the ordinance and make it very clear that for purposes of retiree health pool, to be in our retiree health pool, council members are not employees. There is not a city in our area that recognizes a council member who leaves the council as a person who's eligible for the retiree health, nor most of the cities are in PERS. Does PERS allow that if you weren't a full-time employee in city service? And so we certainly can make that clear in 251 and bring that back.

I appreciate it. And the reason I bring it up is because AB 2134 is coming forward. It's another legislation of Family Friendly City Council Act, and it has to do with parental leave. I'm the only council member that has sat on this dais and had a child at six months of age. She was sworn in at the same time, and that city council picture has a sixth council member in it who sits on a dais. And the only thing that I can ask is that as I sit here and talk about benefits for this council and what we have sacrificed what we have given up to make decisions at four year two year and four year intervals is is that we have foregone any paid family leave any lactation service any diaper changing stations that have evolved because of city staff needing them not as a council and finally they're going to put some legislation in I know it's one more that you have to enforce, but a family-friendly city council to understand the challenges of what it's like to be a parent on this dais and to also understand that the sacrifices that we've given to the city is not compensated in a monetary value because of our time served. So I appreciate you taking the time to clarify it. I appreciate you recognizing that your council members are just as important as this City, not because we're employees, because we're council members and we work together as a team without a bargaining unit to make sure that our city functions day in and day out without receiving the same benefits that city employees receive.

Okay, thank you any other member of Council have any questions any questions okay any member of the public wishing to speak on this item okay seeing none i'll bring it back I don't see an action here, other than kind of occurrence that you need to clarify. Language a little bit and and put it in the right place so okay all right, thank you all, and we will proceed on to Council announcements and committee reports and start on my left with Council member peak.

Yeah, City Schools Committee met a couple weeks ago, and it was a productive meeting. It was nice to kick off the school year hearing about what's going great with our school resource officer program and just the very low incidence the first couple weeks of school, which is great. Great to hear versus last year. Other things going on, we're looking forward to getting more school bond spending reports to the public. And that would be a welcome thing as well. And as a result of the committee, we're moving towards that.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Darius.

Thank you. I don't have anything to report.

Okay. Thank you. Council Member Funk.

Yes, the Groundwater Sustainability Agency met on the 2nd of September, and the reporting processes are moving along. No big takeaways, but a thank you to our public works staff who were able to turn around some data real quickly, even though they're in the middle of working on the wastewater plant and all these other stormwater things and all the other objectives. Homeless Services Oversight Council will meet on the 16th, and the

League of California cities that I I'm our delegate for now will be reading immediately following our next council meeting Thank You councilmember newsom thank you we have an RTA meeting on the 2nd of September they've implemented the cash fair and it's been successful so far since April and they've issued over a hundred discount eligibility cards and

Thank you um it's been a quiet summer some of my bodies, my committees did not meet, but tomorrow is our we have an integrated waste management authority meeting. And next week, as mentioned earlier, I will be at this three CES and for coast Community energy annual policy board meeting next week did sign a letter. asking the governor to support is it ab 1761 Mr Lewis, I think. which asks the which. you know, requires that the CPUC, the Public Utilities Commission, to provide more clarity and transparency as to how what's called the PCIA is calculated. It's very frustrating that that charge, which is money our residents pay on their power bill, goes straight to PG&E, and that is the cause of why P3CE is currently a little more money every month. It was substantially less. But that charge just jumps around wildly every year because of, you know, I don't know, because the chicken bones laid out differently or something. It's almost that opaque charge. in terms of how that is calculated in this legislation, we require it to be more transparent and hopefully more consistent for everybody's planning purposes. So that's related to that. And that's about it. So anybody have any individual determinations or announcements? Okay. Seeing none, we will adjourn this meeting. Thank you all. Almost nine o'clock.