City Council - Special Meeting

Do this here. Perhaps I should do should have done public comments first. I don't know. You got a lot of people, but there are none. Just a bunch of listeners though. I'll be dog. can go whenever he wants. Ready? Go ahead.

My goodness, you all are something else. Everybody quiet it down so quickly. I want to thank you all for that. Before we get too far, if you have one of these, uh, you might want to silence that. Mine is Sammy Hagar screaming out, "I can't drive 55." And I don't want to embarrass anybody. Welcome everybody to the TAP City Council special meeting for April the 16, 2026. We're going to begin this evening's meeting or today. No, it's not evening. We're going to begin today's meeting with a pledge of allegiance led by Councilman Shivera followed by an invocation from Greg Mudge. So, if you would all please stand and join us.

So, before we start the pledge, here's a couple things I want us to think about. I want us to think about the brave women and brave uh men serving our country. They're not just not in uh Iran. They're in different parts of the world and they've been there for a while. That's who we need to be thinking about as we pledge our our flag. So salute pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Would you pray with me, please? Father in heaven, we're so thankful that we have this opportunity to come together today for this special meeting to talk about the state of our city here in Taft. And father, we know that it it's the blessing of the people that you've provided for us here in this community. It has nothing to do with circumstance. It's the people and their heart to serve. We're so thankful for those that lead our community here with our city council. And we pray, Father, that you'll continue to grant them their wisdom. Father, we pray that the Holy Spirit will work in our hearts and the love of Jesus will continue to shine through that we can continue to be blessed with this wonderful community with people that care and are eager to serve you. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you very much, Greg. Madame clerk, may we have a roll call, please? Mayor Nord here. Council member Crier here. Council member Waldrop here. Council member Shira here. And Mayor Prom Bryant is absent with notice.

All right. Thank you very much. First item on today's agenda is the state of the city. Obviously, there's a lot of people interested in this subject because we usually don't have a shortage of seats. I am thrilled to see all those smiling faces out there. Greg said it himself, "This community is not made up simply of laws and rules and regulations. This community is made up of people. It is the people themselves who work together to form a unity and a community. That's who we are. So when people ask who is the city of Taft, the city of Taft is each and every one of you. It's the members of your family. It's how you interconnect those of you and I see so many of you out there in the audience today that are almost professional volunteers. When I go to different social events and different things, there's a lot of the same faces that you see. And that is what makes us work. That is the beauty of the community. That's the very best of who we are and what we are. And it will always be as far as governance. You've got four guys up here, one guy somewhere else working, and you got a team. And we have an incredible team of professionals that work and are the nuts and the bolts of this city every day. We are part-time policy makers. That's what we are. We represent the people and we like to listen to what you have to say because after all, it's your community. It's your government. It's the way you want to live. And we try to be accessible. So if any of you ever have an issue and you're having a hard time getting a hold of us, by all means, come city hall. We're not that

far away. As far as all the good things that continue to happen in the city of Taft, I want to thank the city manager and the city staff and all the people that continue to serve this community day in and day out every day. Sometimes without thanks, oftentimes with our thanks because they deserve it. Most certainly. Are things tough to be in an oil community in the state of California? Well, that's not a hard one to answer now, is it? People ask me about Kern County. What's Kern County? What are they about? And I tell them, Kern County is uh cowboys, calluses, and common sense. We're a little island of Americana, a little island of common sense surrounded by an ocean of lunacy. And that ocean is the state of California. So we are tasked every single day with dealing with what they did last night. I cannot tell you how many times we go to bed thinking, man, we made it through that day. We dealt with those issues and the people of the city of Taft are safe and content and they can go to bed. And we wake up the next morning because I go to bed early and the people in Sacramento stay up late. And then I get texts about what they did and what they said and what they're proposing. I just think, my god, I wish those people would sleep. Give us a break. But here again, we might under our breath cuss and spit, kick a little bit of dirt, but then we roll up our sleeves and we go on about dealing with the cards that have been dealt while we slept. We have a wonderful relationship here in the city of Taft with other other government uh representatives, electeds. We have one right there, our

supervisor Chris Parlier, who's been doing a wonderful job for the west side. He has paid attention. He's been accessible. He's been responsive. We talked about this when Chris was running and hoped that he could fill the needs of the people of the west side. Needs that unfortunately ignored for quite some time. I will tell you right now, I endorse Chris and I thank him for applying himself as he has done and will continue to do because even though the city of Taft is a small little chunk, we're surrounded by Kern County. We are the west side and if it hurts the city oft or if it hurts the west side, it hurts all of us. We're all in this thing together. One of the things that's going on right now that's on everybody's mind and gets talked about a great deal is what's going on in the Middle East. I've been asked multiple times because people say and they don't understand. They say, "You know what? Uh you're the mayor of a small oil town in California. And when asked about oil and its future and and the welfare of a community, you always end up talking about global events. You know, why do you have to go that far? Well, we have to go that far because global events come into our community. the commodity. Let's let's not make uh any excuses for who we are and what we do. We're an oil town.

We provide a critical component of modern life, which by the way is not going to disappear for a very long time. When you look back during COVID, the IEA came out, the International Energy Agency came out and said, "You know what? We needn't invest in any more exploration for oil and gas globally. No more. We have renewables. Peak use for petroleum products is behind us." British Petroleum, BP, came out and said, "You know what? We're going to change what BP stands for. It now stands for beyond petroleum." and they embraced the madness. And I mean madness. Well, now things are a little bit different. The IEA now came out with a report that said, "Oh my god, price of oil is going up. It's going to have overwhelming effects on the global economy." The IMF, International Monetary Fund, just said the same thing. Look at the price of oil. We're going to we're headed towards a global recession because we're running out of oil. There's a oil shortage, critical oil shortage globally. Well, the fact of the matter is this is a shortterm supply glitch is what it is. So many globally saw the end of oil and gas. All of it gone. About 20% of what flows globally goes through the straight of whoo. However, only about 10% of oil production has been literally shut in. In the United States of America, guess what? We still produce about 13.4 million barrels a day. We refine about 16.5 million barrels of oil a day. Here again, people say, well, how is it that it impacts the price of gas? And

that's hurting all of us. The cost of energy impacts every aspect of life. And the very unfortunate reality is today everybody is learning of that. All the people that wanted to ignore that reality is it's on the forefront. You can't help but see it. When you're looking at gas prices in the state of California that are 78 a gallon, I was just reading a report about a small city on the coast. uh and I forget it, but basically they're they're selling premium unled for $9.99 a gallon because it's hard to get to them and they actually have to use generators to run their infrastructure. So they're burning fossil fuels, hydrocarbons. But here again, all those that said we don't need it anymore. So many of them, we want to see the end of it. We want to see it gone. It's not gone. And yet they're the ones who are crying the loudest. So let me help people understand just a little bit of history here. So I want to go back. Let's digress. And uh back in 2008, state of California set a record up until then for the retail cost of gasoline. Average retail cost of gasoline. It was $453 a gallon. That record was set in 2008. And the month that had set that record, the price of oil globally averaged $131 a barrel. $131 a barrel. During that month, the price of a gallon of oil, the raw product, represented 69% of the cost of the refined gallon of gasoline. The next time we hit that $453 mark was in 2012.

But in 2012, oil didn't cost $131 a barrel. It had averaged $103 a barrel. So the raw product then represented about 58% of the cost of a gallon of gas. Then the next time we broke that record was in 2021, and it wasn't when we invaded or when Putin invaded Ukraine. It was three months prior to that. The price of oil during that month averaged $82 a barrel and yet gasoline was $4.60 a gallon. Price of oil that month was 44% I believe of the cost of gallon of gas. Fast forward to today. Last month, the price of the crude oil that it takes to make a gallon of gas only represented 38% of that gallon of gas. You see a trend here? 69% when it was 131 bucks a barrel. Then it's down to 58% 44%. Now it's 38%. And yet it's not $4.60 now, is it? Try finding $4.60. So why is it that there's that inversion? Why is it that the percentage of the cost of a gallon of gas continues to shrink when in point of fact the cost of a gallon of gas goes up? Anybody want to help me with that? Why is that? That is the cost of government.

That is the cost of regulatory compliance. That is the cost of capp and trade, underground fuel storage, vapor collection, labor laws. I could say environmental compliance insurance whether it's general liability surplus lines workers comp that is the Sacramento sir charge that is the cost of California. So when you go there and you go to the pump and you buy that gallon of gas or that gallon of diesel and you think, "Why do I keep paying more and more for a barrel of oil when we're producing more in the United States of America than anybody any other country on the face of the planet?" You're not. You're paying for government. abusive, suppressive, overbearing, shortsighted, job destroying, industrykilling government. That's what you're paying for. California has created the perfect model for destroying the private sector. And I'm sorry, we're doing everything we can to fight that. I will tell you, I've been doing that for 20 years. Some people say, "I'm good at it." If I was good at it, we wouldn't still be fighting it, now would we?

But we'll continue. We in the city of Taft, we're strong group of people. Strong. We roll our shoulders back. We stick our chests out and we keep on keeping on. And we will continue in spite of what's going on globally. This, like I say, is going to be a hiccup. Unfortunately, the lessons of what so many people are learning right now will be forgotten. And once again, that same group of anti is going to say, "We don't need it anymore." And they'll get complacent and they'll try to wish away something that they haven't found an alternative for, but we know we still need it. Why do we need heavy oil? Okay, Kern County, California, Midway Sunset crude, heavy oil is a wonderful thing when we're making so much tight oil in a Peran basin. That's where the bulk of the oil is coming from the United States of America right now. Why the global trade issue? I'm going to help you with that. Way back about 1980, between 1980 and 2000, globally, light oil, sweet oil production was dropping. I'm talking about globally. The refiners in the United States of America knew that, hey, in order to ensure a supply in the United States of refined product, which drives the economy, we're going to have to make an investment, a huge investment. So, what they did in the Gulf Coast refining specifically, because they're the largest in the nation, they invested in Cokers, desulverization processes, so that they could take in discounted heavy oil. That oil is coming from Canada, from the tar sands. It's coming from Mexico. It's coming from Venezuela. What do we make here? We make heavy oil. They knew that they had to make multi-billion dollar investments to be able to refine heavy oil to provide what

we needed for our economy to keep going. They made those investments and that was working just great. Well, then along comes tide oil and we learn about fracking and we've done it successfully here in the state of California and other places specifically in the Peran Basin, in the Balkans, in the Eagle Forge shale, Texas, New Mexico especially. Well, all of a sudden we have all this tide oil and people think, well, you just refine tide oil in that same refinery, it'll work great. Well, that's not quite true. The formulization of that is a little bit different. the molecules are different. So if you take a refinery customuilt to refine heavy oil and provide what we need and you put nothing but light oil, low sulfur uh oil through it, it's not nearly as efficient. The fact of the matter is it would back up the enduse product through the refining process to a point where you would actually have to shut the refinery down. It would be not nearly as efficient. Much like to help you understand, if you have an automobile with a high performance engine, they tell you to use uh premium gasoline. Well, if you put lowgrade gasoline in there, regular, will it still run? Well, it'll run, but it won't run nearly as efficiently, nearly as well. You'll have bottlenecks and you'll have problems. That's what's going on in the Gulf Coast. So, they reconfigured the refineries up to the year 2000. Now all of a sudden we don't need all the oil we're making in the United States, but we can't refine it all because it doesn't make economical sense. So we actually as a nation are exporting unrefined sweet oil to refineries elsewhere on the globe that can use that and need that. We're taking in heavy oil from Canada, from Mexico, from Venezuela, and mixing it with what we make and refining it. Why? to make sure

we can do it efficiently, coste effectively, and safeguard the environment utilizing the equipment that we have on hand. I know that's a lot to think about, but the fact of the matter is we are as a nation producing about 13.4 million barrels a day. We as a state could, should, and will produce more of what we have right here in Kern County. Uh, we went through a 10-year long saga getting our countywide EIR and the EIR is working. I think about 400 new well, new drill permits have been issued thus far. When one thinks about it, began in January. We're just halfway through April. It's going to take a while for the infrastructure that it takes to actually drill and complete and bring it to market to come back. Whether it's drilling crews or it's drilling rigs or it's slotted liner companies or it's wellheads or any of the above. We had to tell people in Sacramento those that continue to push and keep us from doing what we know how to do and should do. You can't turn this on and off like that light switch right there. California is a legislative body who's done a horrible job at safeguarding the welfare of the people of California. things that are critical to everyday life, oil and gas being one of them. Utilities being another, your lights, and water. When you think about what does modern civilization, modern man need to continue to exist and move forward, water, utilities, transportation fuels. California has done a horrible job of seeing to it that they've safeguarded the supplies of all three of those

critical aspects of modern life. All three of them. They've blown it wholesale. We are that shining example of how to do things wrong. And we're trying to write that ship for all of those things. You have all felt the ill effects of those bad policies. And unfortunately, we're going to feel it for a while. But we will continue to try to fight to turn those things around. Why? Because we have to. I'm an old guy. He's an old guy. He's a young guy. So many of you are. I have children and I have grandchildren. And I want to do everything I can in my power to make things better. I want them to live a better life and have more opportunity than I did and I hope we can make that happen. I've been in this fight for a while and uh there's been times when I have to miss out on family affairs and family gatherings, several golf matches as well as vacations. And my son, one of the critics would say, "Dad, when are you finally do it? When are you going to retire full-time? Go do all those things that you should be able to do. you've been doing this a long time. I said, "Well, I'm not doing it for me."

And I I tried to help him understand that. And then finally, one time, and I don't know what it was, made it click because I came to work and there was a sticky note on my computer screen. The sticky note was in his handwriting and it said simply, "Young men work to make a living. Old men work to make a difference." He got it. Okay, I get it. So, I appreciate everybody coming here and being a part of this. It's your community. It's your government. It's your opportunities. And you all make us who and what we are. Thank you very much. Now then, second item on the agenda is public comments.

And we have none. Well, then uh at this time, I accept a motion to adjourn this meeting. Motion second. All in favor? This meeting is adjourned.