City Council - Regular Meeting

Go ahead and get started and welcome everyone to the June 30th, 2026 City Council meeting. We will call this meeting to order and Patty, I will turn it over to you.

This meeting is available in Spanish for members of the public in attendance and on Zoom, translation devices can be obtained in the foyer. This meeting is available in Spanish for the public and on Zoom, the translation units can be obtained at the entrance of the round table.

All right, this meeting will include teleconference participation by council member Andrew Sandoval pursuant to California government code section 54953. And Zoom webinar participation is available for members of the public. The Zoom webinar ID and link are available on the posted agenda on the city website. And with that, will everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you everyone. And Patty, why don't you call the roll?

Council member, but I have Council member, but here Council member, there we go. Present Council member Dela Rosa here. Council member Salazar here. Council member Sandoval. Mayor Donahue I am here.

Thank you. And just before we do new employee, speaking of welcomes, can everyone join me in welcoming back Council member bras. Glad you're back.

Okay.

All right. With that, if we have any new employees, department directors, have at it.

Yes, we do. Thank you, Mayor. Hello, members of the City Council. Lisa Brinton, Community Development Director. We have two new hires, one returning. Josefina Aguilar is joining our Housing and Community Development Division as a Senior Community Development Analyst, and she has been an urban planner over 20 years and has experience in the production and preservation of affordable housing, both in the private and public sectors. So we are glad to welcome her to our team. And Gabby Jorge is joining the Street Outreach and Response Team as an administrative analyst one. She previously worked for us as a temporary community outreach assistant. So we welcome Gabby back to our department. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Any other departments, new hires? David.

Good evening. Public Works has three promotions within the department. We have Jonathan Alonzo, who has been promoted to the emergency vehicle uplifter. We have Sergio Gonzalez, who's being promoted to an engineering aide. And then we got Pete Perez, who's being promoted to the environmental compliance inspector.

Very good. Thank you. All right. Anyone else?

Good afternoon, everyone. Luis Bravo, Assistant Chief of Police. I want to recognize two employees today. First one is Rosemarie DeRee. She is our new Public Safety Information Officer. She has experience, comes from the San Benito County where she was a PIO over there. So she brings a vast experience and knowledge to our team, so we're glad to have her. Second is Roberto Zarate. He was recently graduated from the police academy last Friday. He is a homegrown kid, grew up here in Salinas, so he has been promoted from police recruit to police officer. So he'll be patrolling the same community he grew up in. So that's it for the police department. Thank you.

I think I'll represent fire, if I may. I don't see fire in the house. So there are several promotions in the fire department. Dominique Alamayo, these are all to fire engineer. Austin Bennett, Abraham My apologies, pronunciation, Joshua Lloyd, Alejandro Quiroz Arcega. So we welcome them as fire engineer promotees.

OK, that looks like it.

Thank you. All right. We are going to do a little proclaiming. We have two proclamations this month or this this meeting, though it will end up being this month. So tomorrow marks the beginning of Parks and Recreation Month in twenty twenty six. And I think you'll notice there are a lot of shirts in the house with the tagline, Parks Make Life Better Month, or Parks Make Life Better. And so we'd like to acknowledge that month. And let me give you a few whereases. Whereas parks and recreation are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including the city of Salinas. And whereas parks and recreation promote physical, emotional, and mental health and wellness, through both organized programs and self-directed fitness, play, and leisure activities, and whereas parks and recreation support human development and endless learning opportunities that foster social, intellectual, physical, and emotional growth in people of all ages and abilities, and whereas thousands of Salinas children, adults, and seniors benefit each year from our parks and recreation centers, creating memorable experiences through kindergarten readiness, after school programs, teen and senior services, youth sports, and free community events. And whereas parks and recreation enhance community identity by offering facilities and services that reflect and celebrate Salinas' unique character, cultural heritage, and natural landscape. And then I'll skip to, whereas parks and recreation increase a community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, attraction and retention of businesses and contributions to crime reduction. Now, therefore, I, Mayor Dennis Donahue, on behalf of the Salinas City Council, do hereby proclaim the month of July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month in the city of Salinas and encourage all residents to take advantage of all that our parks and recreations system has to offer, and that is dated this 30th day of June 2026. So I'm going to guess out of all this crowd for Parks and Recreation, somebody's going to come to the podium. And there she is. There you are. I was so distracted by this group, though.

They're the ones that you should pay attention to.

I know they'll be part of the photo op.

Yeah, for sure.

There you are.

Thank you, Mayor and members of the Council. Kristen Lundquist, Library and Community Services Director. It's my pleasure to be here tonight and recognize July as Parks Make Life Better Month. All throughout this year, our Parks and Recreation staff, some of which are here with you today, worked diligently to maintain clean and safe facilities, coordinate a variety of programs and services that promote learning, engage our youth, family, and seniors. In addition to all the wonderful things included in the proclamation, I would like to just call out we are doing a number of additional activities for July in addition to our regular summer rec program and our sports clinics and camps. We're gonna offer a mobile recreation program. It's called Rec Fun in the Park, something that we've done for a number of different years at Northgate and Natividad Creek Park on Tuesdays and Saturdays. And this is really to get out into the community, into parks where we don't currently have recreation centers to provide services. We'll be having pickleball at Central Park on Mondays, Zumba in the park at El Dorado Park on July 8th, 11th and 18th. We're gonna do treat Fridays at each of our recreation centers. So ice cream, nachos, all kinds of fun, exciting things on Fridays. And then finally, we'll be doing story time in the park. And this is a great collaboration between the rec team and our library staff. And it's been going on for the last month, but our last two dates tomorrow, July 1st and July 8th, we'll be doing stories in the park as well. We encourage everyone to stop by one of your neighborhood recreation centers or use one of the parks in your neighborhoods really and help us celebrate and promote all the wonderful things that this department does to promote quality of life here in Salinas.

Thank you. We'll bring everyone up for a photo in just a sec. We'll go to the second proclamation and then bring everyone up. OK. Next up, the California Rodeo. This is the 116th anniversary of the Rodeo. And we know this is a busy month. So whereas in 1872, the Monterey County Agricultural Association built a racetrack, grandstand, stables, bar, and restaurant on a parcel of property donated to the city of Salinas under the terms that a fair horse race would be held every two years, and that whereas a group of cattlemen known as the Salinas Coyotes helped revive interests, and on August 1, 1911, the first rodeo advertised as the Wild West Show at the Sherwood Racetrack started, and whereas the California Salinas Rodeo has been a large part of the Salinas community for over 100 years and have a mission to preserve and promote traditions of the California Rodeo, Salinas, and the West. And whereas the California Rodeo, California Rodeo Salinas gives back to the community donating over $700,000 each year to local nonprofit organizations. And whereas the California Rodeo Salinas is one of the top 10 professional rodeos in the United States. and the largest in California with nearly 1,000 contestants, 90,000 spectators annually. And whereas the California Rodeo Salinas supports education and youth in our community and has awarded over $47,000 in scholarships to students in the Salinas Valley who are pursuing higher education. Now, therefore, I, Mayor Dennis Donahue, on behalf of the Salinas City Council, hereby commend and congratulate the California Rodeo, or California Rodeo Salinas as they celebrate their 116th anniversary during the week of July 16th through 19th, 2026. Congratulations dated this 30th day of June 2026. And I'm happy to sign that on behalf of the council. So thank you very much. There appears to be a...

A cowboy in the house, so yeah, Mr Mayor, members of the Council. Good afternoon. I'm Bob Eggers, president of the California Rodeo for this 116th edition. It's my honor to accept the certificate recognizing our 116th California Rodeo Salinas. You know, you mentioned that the rodeo is recognized as one of the nation's premier rodeos, but more importantly, it's a treasured local tradition that's been around for over 100 years. I don't think any organization's been around longer in Salinas, so it's definitely part of the fabric of our community. And what it does is it brings our community together and has become a cornerstone of what Salinas is. And this is made possible by the 1,400 volunteers that help put on our rodeo by giving of their time, their talent, their energy, and the ability to create something truly special each year. And these volunteers are your neighbors and mine. And that's the amazing thing about our organization. I'm proud to share the tremendous impact that the California Rodeo Salinas continues to have on the community. In 2025, the California Rodeo and the Salinas Sports Complex generated nearly $22 million in economic output for Monterey County. We supported 93 local jobs and we contributed a little more than $2.4 million in tax revenue. Those numbers tell an important story. but what makes the California Rodeo truly special is the people. We bring our community together, celebrate and preserve our Western heritage and reinvest in the place we're so proud to call home. We hope everyone here will join us July 16th through the 19th as we celebrate this 116th edition of the California Rodeo Salinas. And I'd like to thank you again for this recognition and your continued support. Thank you.

Bob, why don't we, we'll go in reverse order. Why don't you have your group come up, we'll present the plaque, the photo, and then we'll do the parts. Yeah, yeah. I know there's a few cowboy hats in the audience.

That's a great banner. That was good. Which one of you wants to hold the sign?

All right, we don't see any more.

She's a little tighter right there.

One, two, and three. One, two, and three. Very nice. All right. Let's see. Thank you. Thank you for all your time. Thank you. Thank you. I want to tell you this.

All right, we are now open for public comment on items that are not on the agenda and that are in the City of Salinas' subject matter jurisdiction. Comments on consideration, public hearing items, and the consent agenda should be held until the items are reached. Public comment will be limited to two minutes per speaker. Each person who addresses the City Council during public comment shall do so in an orderly manner and shall not make any personal, slanderous, or profane remarks to any member of the City Council. City staff or the general public, any person who makes such remarks or uses threatening personal or abusive language or engages in any other disorderly contact which disrupts or disturbs the meeting may be asked to leave the city council chambers. And with that, we are open for business.

Great. Jose Garamondi, community. Let's go, Mexico. Let's win today. It'll be a good thing to do. Welcome back, Mr. Barajas. Good to see you, everybody. Mr. Arrigo, thanks for having coffee with me. Mr. Mayor, I got to call you out on some things, and I'm going to be real upfront about it. You're talking about that you want to engage with the community, this and that. I saw your video the other day, and it made me laugh because it's not true. You don't engage with the community. You engage with people you want to. I'm sorry. I just have to be upfront and tell you, you don't. We've asked you many times to come and fix the things that you promised in Montevideo. You never did anything. You're going on two years now. You haven't done a thing. And we regret voting for you. At least I do. Personally, I regret voting for you. You will not get my vote next time you come around. I'll vote for anybody else but you. Whoever they pencil in or they want to put in there, I'll vote for. And then Mr. Mendezian here, I wish he was. Be great. He's missing now twice. Hopefully he's on vacation. I hope he's okay. Him too. He doesn't engage. He doesn't answer my calls, emails, nothing. He sounds like the gentleman from Public Works. And he can't do anything because Mr. Mendez won't let him. Code enforcement couldn't do anything coming to one of my coffee meetings because Mr. Mendez wouldn't let him. That is just sad. You want to say you want to measure G to pass? You want to be very transparent? You're not transparent. I'm sorry. You're not, Mayor. You're not fit for the job. It's time for you to be replaced. It's time. Maybe Mr. Mendez needs to go, too, I think. And a couple of you up there, I mean, if you don't want to do your job, I think it's time for you to go, too. You know, you're here to serve the public. Do your job. Serve the public. Not just the people you want to hang out with. Serve the public. When they have an issue, go see them. But what else can I say? God bless you guys, and I want you guys to be put on that journey where you're going to actually do your job and serve the public.

Thank you.

God bless you.

This is the day that the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it good after-eve everyone My name is Kimberly Bryant and I'm here to pray for our city We're getting ready to celebrate our 250th anniversary Celebrate the birth of our nation and I want to pray protection over our city right now that there would be protection there would be law and order that we would have safety and sanity in our fireworks in the 4th of July and i also want to invite everyone out to the compass fourth of july fireworks extravaganza at the rodeo grounds this saturday and i i want to pray that the lord be exalted the compass event and uh and just ask for blessings upon compass church for lifting the banner of Christ over our city. And I pray that many will come to Christ that night. I also want to bless Compass for providing free family fun for the entire family and just providing this as a service to our community because it is a great event. And I just wish all of you would come out. Thank you.

Thank you. No, no, no, no, no, no clapping. Thank you.

all right good afternoon mayor council members staff my name is carrie swenson i want to speak briefly about the infrastructure held on june 5th at 1 main street i'll be honest i wasn't quite sure i wanted to attend because i didn't want to waste a full day on something that might not lead to real action but i'm glad i went it was informative well-organized, full of strong ideas that could generally help address our crumbling infrastructure and strengthen our community. One of the most striking points shared with us is that Salinas has roughly 7 billion in combined private and foundation assets. If we leverage 1 percent, that's $7 billion that could support long-term planning and help build a city we all can thrive in and be proud of. That kind of vision matters. But here's my concern. I can only find the agenda. There's no public report, no summary, no clear next steps. Taxpayers fund this event and residents deserve transparency about what came of it. Also some of my questions. When will the public report from the infrastructure summit be released? What is a timeline for implementing the ideas that were presented? There were some great ideas by women, actually. two of my cities, Seattle and Colorado, or states, and who will be responsible for moving them forward. The summit had real potential. I just want to make sure it becomes more than a one-day conversation. Our communities follow through, not just events. And I can tell you these ideas are great because taxpayers were not going to vote for any more new taxes. We're tired of being your piggy bank. We need to find some other ways to make our city perfect. And the thing is, I'm a Steinbeck Rotarian. We'd be glad to pitch in. We have money. So let's see some action happening with that. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Donahue and Council. My name is Simi Georgalis and I'm a member of the YMCA and a daily user of the city of Salinas Aquatic Center. This beautiful facility built in 2008 has been an important part of our community and a place where many of us come for exercise, health and wellness. Over the past eight years, I have watched the condition of the aquatic center steadily decline due to the lack of proper maintenance. The city of Salinas owns this facility, yet the YMCA has been responsible for maintaining it. The city is paying approximately $165,000 for that maintenance. But unfortunately, the upkeep is not being done to the standard of this community deserves. The pool and surrounding areas need professional cleaning, regular maintenance and replacement of worn and damaged items. Many areas have become filthy and neglected and it is heartbreaking to see such a valuable community asset deteriorating. This pool is only about 15 years old and many people in our community donated money and worked hard to help. make this facility possible. It was built as something our community could be proud of and I believe it deserves proper care and attention before the condition worsens further. I have received responses regarding the letter I sent to Mayor Donahue, Councilwoman Gloria De La Rosa, District 4, Renee Mendez from the City of Salinas, and George Hernandez from the YMCA. I heard back from Mayor Donahue, Whitney Wilson from the City of Salinas, and George Hernandez from the YMCA.

Okay, thank you for coming.

Good afternoon, Mayor, City Councilmembers of Salinas, California. My name is Will Freeman, a longtime resident of North Salinas. Each and every day, I see more and more hungry and homeless people in the city of Salinas. From the federal government to local governments, we have failed the people at the bottom of our society because most of the people that are elected want to do what's good for the top 1%, not what's good for the rest of the people in our society. and I'm tired of seeing homeless people, especially veterans, that are sleeping under our bridges, under our roads, and on our streets each and every night. Here's what I propose the C.S. Leans do. Buy some land, build some tiny homes, and have a center where people can take a shower and get clean every day, have two meals a day, and there have to be rules. But that's what I'd like to see. I don't want to see any more homeless people on the streets of my hometown by December 1st. The problem is solvable. It is solvable, and that's what I believe we should do. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mayor, city council members. Antonio Ravago from Montebella Development Community. Three years have gone by and we've been requesting three things to get fixed. And three years have gone by and the poll and the roundabout on Barden, still waiting for your help. The street of freedom is full of sand and mud and beautiful sweeping machine that the city or contracts is not capable of racing or picking up all that dust. And it just keeps piling up, piling up, piling up. And then the third thing we've been asking for the third year again, The speed bumps at Montebello, Mr. Barrera, our district recently told us that speed bumps are not gonna be done because it interferes with the emergency vehicles. Well, when we did the feasibility study, the vehicles that travel that is not impaired by any chance. But all of a sudden, things changed. So I know you guys are going on vacation, but I just want to remind you that elections are coming, and I hope you take something into consideration for our needs. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi there, my name is Jason Gray, and I want to mimic the guy that was right before him about the homeless people, because I've been homeless for three years. I've brought it up to you guys before, but now I'm having a different situation with Mid-Penn Housing, and for some reason they're not acting like they're supposed to be acting. I actually want to say that I am in Hartnell trying to do like some documentaries about the homeless people. And I actually think that, well, I agree with him that this could be solved because I also volunteer at another place and look at the situation. But if you guys are willing to talk with me and I could talk with you guys, I'm pretty sure this problem could be solved because there's really not that many homeless people. It's just everybody keeps on getting denial of service letters like for no apparent reason. I want to get down to the bottom of it. I just want to introduce myself again. My name is Jason Gray. I'll drop off my application because I just made one today, my resume. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon. My name is Eric Peterson. Welcome back, Mr. Rojas. Congratulations on your miraculous recovery. There's somebody you need to meet. And I don't know if this guy is homeless or not, so I'm not bashing you for your horrific attitude towards homeless. But this guy is around our community. He recycles, and he works really hard. And just be a good person for you to meet, meeting somebody who's kind of down on his luck, who isn't letting anything slow him down. Let me know if you want to meet him. Thank you.

Thank you, Eric.

How's it going, Council? Daniel Munoz, East Salinas resident. I went to the Rodeo Committee meeting recently, and there was a lot of questions that were asked with no answers. I would like maybe if you guys considered maybe having a meeting instead of waiting till next year, maybe having it after the Rodeo. so we could uh you know ask them some more questions maybe get some answers this time um i know that there's a lot of ways that they can um that they could make money and not report a lot of cash stuff people have been reaching out to me get a lot of messages about a lot of shady stuff that's been going on so it would be nice if we had some kind of oversight you know like some kind of going over the numbers seeing how much beer they sold how much BEER TOKENS, THEY REPORT STUFF LIKE THAT. THAT'S PRETTY MUCH IT FOR NOW. PLEASE CONSIDER IT. YOU'RE THE HEAD OF THE RODEO COMMITTEE OR SOMETHING, RIGHT, MR. BURRERA? ACTUALLY, DENNIS IS THE REAL LEADER OF THE COMMITTEE. MAYBE WE CAN DO THAT, SOME OVERSIGHT. THANK YOU.

Peter Zelai. The Rodeo is a good thing for Salinas, so is transparency. The city committed an unforced error by abruptly scheduling, canceling, then rescheduling the first ever public meeting of the Rodeo Oversight Committee. Then the mayor, substitute for an excused member, didn't show up, leaving council members Barrera and De La Rosa to conduct the closely watched meeting by themselves. The lease calls for two oversight meetings each year. Instead, this year's second meeting has been combined with next year's first meeting and pushed to January. This makes no sense. Why not hold one meeting in the spring and one in the fall? By September, the Rodeo should have reliable figures on ticket revenue owed to the city. Predictability builds trust. City Attorney Callahan also said concerns raised about lease compliance are now being addressed. Addressing these concerns openly builds trust as well. So does protecting taxpayer dollars. The lease requires the Rodeo to provide its own security while the city supplies additional police at no charge. That's reasonable. But the city's commitment should be planned in advance, not based on however many officers volunteer for overtime. In 2023, this approach resulted in more officers on lower attendance days and fewer on higher attendance days. Last year, the city's share of Rodeo ticket revenue was about $80,000, while police overtime cost roughly $159,000. I'm not opposed to the city helping cover big week security. It's in the lease. But I am opposed to an ad hoc approach during a period of structural budget deficits. There should be a coordinated and defined security plan based on attendance and actual need, not on who happens to volunteer. Good governance regains trust. Every decision you make during this season of skeptical voters will influence how people will vote in November on Measure G. Thank you.

Hello, Wes Weiss, Williams-Monterey County Homeless Union co-president. I was really grateful for what a Hartnell trustee, former Bill Freeman, had to say about people living outside. They are leaseless. They are paperless. It's just like, show me your papers. They don't have a lease. So therefore, they lease everything. That's the gamble. There are solutions out there. I'll tell you one thing. As an educator, you got 40, 50 anonymous kids, and you know what really helped was the seating chart. You know, we have register to vote. You can give a mailing address, but your residency is a description of where you're at. Well, by the time, you know, they're going to vote, they're not living there. In fact, they probably moved at least a dozen times. from this point to election day, at least. And they've lost all their belongings during that time. So what kind of civil rights do we have for anybody? If we gave people an address, let them have one wherever it's at, and they maintain minimal health and safety standards, then you pass them over. You leave them alone. Do the Christian thing. Be the light of Jesus. Where are we at here with this? When are we going to pass people over and let them keep their personal belongings? and let them be somewhere, anywhere. And if you don't like where they're at, open up a spot. Showers, electricity, running water. You close down the navigation center on purpose. You all voted to do that. So it's not just one person. But it's the viciousness of what's happening because money, money, money, who even counts as a shareholder? Well, my corporate friends. They are my donor owners. That's who I answer to. And that's who I'm going to fight like a rabid animal for. But yet, when it comes to just people in general, You're going to trample over them like there's some kind of red carpet. That's how the carpet gets so red is all the bloody bodies underneath it. And you just do this on a daily basis, and we need to stop the sweeps, give people an address, and that way they can prove where they lay their head, residency, and then we can treat them like neighbors rather than the anonymous other that we need to get rid of, which is just so cloudy in our judgment. If we consider ourselves a Christian, stop the sweeps.

Thank you. All right, let's see who's on Zoom. Sophia.

Good evening. I want to first start off by saying there's a woman there who always says the Our Father prayer. But what this council really needs is a spirit of conviction for everything they say and do, both in public and behind closed doors. No, each of you will stand accountable to God for that. That's a fact. Second, let's talk about the Rodeo Committee. I want to remind you all, Al Capone didn't go to prison for his crimes, but for the way he handled money and avoided accountability. So let's get into that. The Rodeo board is not only the good old boys organization, but it's a clear indication of segregation in the year 2026 against the residents of Salinas. As all of you sit there, look at the mayor and be remembered, he's the one who allows this to continue. The Mexican community is the majority here and the ad companies make billions off their back. Number three, after reviewing the Rodeo lease and the 2024 tax returns, I found serious concerns. Section 10-1, failure to perform, has never been enforced since 2010. At that time, Donahue was the mayor and De La Rosa was on council. They both were on the oversight committee, but no action was ever taken when the Rodeo failed to properly report and pay as required under the lease, making the Rodeo in breach. I'm asking Selena's manager to amend the lease and request late payment fees and interest dated back to 2010 for ticket sales. The Selena's Rodeo is not your typical nonprofit. This is a revenue-generated enterprise operating on public land. This organization is like the bad gift that keeps on giving. I formally request Donahue and De La Rosa to step down due to their neglect to their positions, which they have demonstrated since 2010 in hiding with the Rodeo should have been doing enforced section 10 one failure to perform and a full public forensic audit, not by anyone in this county. The people of Salinas have the right to know we're tired of all of your guys's lies.

Thank you. Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment. And we will proceed to public hearing on, and we're looking, Robert, you are here, on the 30 month time extension.

Good afternoon, Council. I'm here to present a time extension for a tentative map, 2022-001, and it's located at the southeast corner of John and Abbott Street in the Commercial Office and Industrial General Zoning District. The time extension is for a tenant map that was previously approved by council in June of 2024 to reconfigure 14 lots into nine lots. The tenant map is part of a broader development that included a planned unit development permit and a conditional use permit. The construction included...

Hold on just a sec. Margaret needs to recuse herself for this item. Oh, I apologize.

Actually, member, you need to state the reason why, please, before you step out.

I'm not sure of the timing of that. So I'm going to recuse myself because I am a shareholder at the Regal Brothers Company, who is a large percentage owner of the Unicole Partnership, and that is tied to this project. So I'm going to recuse myself for the vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Margaret. All right, go ahead.

As mentioned before, the tenant map is associated with a larger development consisting of a plan unit development permit and a conditional use permit in multiple phases, including a hotel with 111 guest rooms and about 108,000 square feet of commercial, about 31,000 square feet of office and 197 dwelling units, and also included alternative development standards. The applicant and property owner is the Unicole Partners. As mentioned before, it's on the southeast corner of John and Abbott Street and located in the CO zoning district. A majority of the property is kind of the focus growth overlay. The time extension is for the maximum 36 months. It has to be approved by council prior to the expiration date. Well, final map will subsequently be approved by council prior to the expiration date of this tentative map. And final maps have to be recorded and approved by council prior to issuance of any building permits or associated permits with the development. The rationale for the time extension is the developer has been diligently pursuing. They have active encroachment permits for the phase one on- and off-site improvements, and they actually have their building permits submitted for the phase one portion of the hotel development. So with that, it is recommended approval of a one-time 36-month time extension to tenant map 2022-001. Okay, thank you.

All right.

Any questions at council?

Okay, thank you. I'll start to my right. Jose, we'll put you right back in the game. Any questions? We'll start in your direction.

Just realized my mic wasn't on. Just one question for the alternative development standards. Are those already taken into account with the general plan update or will we have to go back and make adjustments to that as well?

The alternative development centers are part of, they're observing the mixed-use development incentives for off-street parking, usable open space, siting. They're supposed to site buildings along street frontages, so you can't do that for all the buildings, so some are centrally located.

Okay, thank you for that clarification. That's all my questions. Thank you. Tony?

Mr. Latino, good to see you. Can you give me that slide on the applicant that you, I think it's the second to the last one, regarding the applicant. Yeah, that one. The other one. One more? After this. Oh, where's his applicant? I think it's, there you go. Thank you, discussion. Mr. Latino, the applicant has been diligently pursuing development. So what's the real issue here? If the developer is pursuing this diligently, so... I was reading your report, but I'm really trying to understand. What's what's really happening here?

There's an expiration date under the our subdivision ordinance. It's chapter 31 in municipal code. So you have attended map expires after 2 years. And. This development got recorded in October of 2024, and they're just getting their construction drawings together. They're trying to satisfy mitigation measures that are under the initial study. There's a lot of moving parts.

Yeah, and I can understand your moving parts, but would you say the city has also been diligent in making sure that everything is getting done? Or are we in a position where we kind of slow the process down for whatever reason? Are we working diligently with the developer? That's what I want to know.

Yes, we have been working diligently with the developer in addition to undertaking site study for remediation and to be in compliance with the mitigation measures. We've also been in multiple conversations regarding potential changes to the phasing of the project. And so we have been very responsive in responding as to what the path forward would be for them to process those changes. So I think there are a lot of moving parts at this point. And the subdivision map app does allow for a total of five years. So an extension is not unusual because there can always be market conditions, unforeseen constraints that delay the development from getting the final map.

Ms. Brinton, and with this 36-month extension, you see it happening by then?

Yes, they will have no, it will expire. So this is the one and only extension. In some cases, it can be extended a year at a time. At this point, they're asking for the three-year extension and we do see the movement in terms that they have submitted applications and have been in communication with the city as to how they can move forward with proposed development.

Great, thank you.

Andrew?

No question.

Okay, to my left, any questions?

No, my questions were answered. I had some more questions regarding the amount of time that they actually needed. I heard up to five, but their request is for three. Thank you.

Okay, out to the public.

Get out to say that I want to be a community I understand why we're given extensions what why developers are and I want to develop here we do is something wrong we not in all the proper paperwork done or was a developer backing out. Why why are we asking those questions. Why why do we 3 years 3 years a long time mayor. that'll be beyond your term and the following. So I don't see how nobody asked those questions, why? Thank you, that's it, have a good day.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, name is Eric Peterson and I'm not gonna comment on the plans because they apparently don't exist. But this brings back memories of Gary Kehoe, who had extensions and blowing deadlines and all sorts of stuff for years and may still be blowing deadlines. I don't know. But is this going to be just the beginning of more Kehoeism? And should we start poking around in the stuff that we can find, like Keough had a foreclosure in Key West that nobody seemed to care about. Should we start looking for things like that? Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, anyone on Zoom? Okay, back to Council looking for a motion.

Motion to recommend approve the resolution.

A second, okay. All right, let's go ahead and call for the question.

Council Member Barajas? Yes. Council Member Barrera? Yes. Council Member DeRigo? I'm sorry, Council Member De La Rosa? Yes. Council Member Salazar? Yes. Council Member Sandoval?

Yes.

Mayor Donahue?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Okay, thank you. All right, now we will look for Christina, and there she is, and we're gonna talk about an annual levy of assessments for landscape and maintenance districts. And we will go fetch Margaret. Big week, gotta use words like that. That's right, getting ready for the rodeo.

Christine.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. This item is the annual levy assessment for the six landscape and maintenance districts. This is a public hearing to consider the approval of the annual engineer's report, which describe the improvements and maintenance to be funded, the associated cost, and the proposed assessments for each district. Following is a brief presentation by consultant Chris Thomas on this item.

Hi, Council and Mayor. I'd like to introduce myself. Chris Thomas with Harrison Associates. I assist with some of the levy calculations and all these wonderful numbers that we crunch for you. So we'll try and do a short presentation for you. So basically, this is the process where the City Council approves the assessment on your lighting and landscaping districts for fiscal year 26-27. And upon your approval, these assessments are placed on the tax roll, and they'll fund all the different assessments there. So these were all established under the Salinas Municipal Code and something called the Landscape and Lighting Act of 1972. And that act tells us how those assessments have to be calculated, how much each property owner benefit they receive, and how we allocate the assessments. I'm sure you're very aware of each of your different districts here and the different services that they provide. Each district, specifically when it's set up, has a certain set of services that they'll provide. And once they're set up, they can't deviate from that. So if they're set up for stormwater detention basin and Landscaping and such those are the items that they can service and only those items So as you can see the assessments from last year and this year and the recommendations for each Basically most of them are at what is called the maximum assessment there there's a cap on these assessments that they can be assessed at and they are calculated each year and And these are the recommended amounts for each of those. Several of them have not increased. They've stayed stable. And the Northeast, as you can see, has increased by roughly CPI. So it's recommended that the council approves the engineer's report. Each of those engineers report defines how each calculation is done. It's called the methodology. It also explains the costs that are being covered by these assessment districts. and how each property owner is spread amongst each property owner. So the council were recommending take action to approve the engineer's report and approve the levy and collection of the assessments as well as approve the general fund contribution to the covered parks and open space. There are certain portions of these costs that cannot be covered by the assessments. It's something called general benefit and those are funded by the city's general fund. And I think, there you go. Does the council have any questions for me as far as the methodology of the assessments?

Well, we will find out. OK. Margaret, I'll start with you.

I thank you for the presentation. Can you go back one slide? I wanted to make sure I get the terminology right. I'm curious about the cost of the, hold on, it's coming up, I think. the general fund contribution. Yeah, what that looks like. Do you know what that number is?

If you go, is it in the slide up above or no? It's not on there.

I didn't see it.

If you look at your engineer's report, there is a summary table for each district and it'll show revenues, expenses, and in the revenue section, it'll say levy assessment and then it'll say general fund contribution. Okay, not all the districts have a general fund contribution. Okay. Only a few do, yeah. So look on that line item, it'll tell you exactly how much the general fund is applying. Thank you.

I have no further questions, thank you.

Okay, Gloria.

I have a question on Vista Nueva.

Okay.

Those are the manufactured homes?

I'll let.

Be said well, right? I believe so. They're over there by by Car Lake in that area.

OK. I can't say to the specifics of these homes. I'm not from here, but maybe the director can. They're in District one.

Gloria, at the moment, I don't have that answer, but we can definitely touch base with our staff to provide you the appropriate information based on what your question will be.

So my question is, why is this assessment so high for that area?

So it is calculated based on... Okay.

So when these districts are set up, the facilities they're gonna maintain, meaning the landscaping or the streetlight, whatever it is. In fact, in that district, you're maintaining a sewer pump, street light, various sewer facilities and pumps, street lighting, a fence. When that district is set up, they define what's going to be maintained, and then they do an estimate of the cost. So say the cost is $10,000 a year. I'm just making a number up. Then they figure out how much, assess everyone to cover that. Now, this district was set up in 2000, let's see, I think, So we capped since 2011. Sometimes the costs that were expected are actually higher than expected. So over the years, the costs do go up. But the assessment is based on the initial expectation of the cost to maintain those items. So if you look on your engineer's report, it'll have the cost there. It'll show what it's maintaining and what it costs to maintain those sewer pumps and street lighting, and that's driving the assessment. So it just depends on what you're maintaining drives what they're assessing.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, just in general, as I'm looking at this, when these were initially created, how is it determined like which districts would be receiving like the landscape and water, the walkways and crosswalks, the stormwater detention? I'm looking at your slide recording in the background.

So you're asking who determines what's going to be changed? Yeah, just in general. So it's usually a development agreement. So when, for example, a development, we'll say Montebello goes in, when the developer comes in and says, I want to build homes, he comes to the city, he presents plans, and that would include... infrastructure would include parks, whatever it is. And then the cities negotiate who's going to maintain what. Generally speaking, the assessment districts are maintaining what's in what's called the city right away. So that's usually from curb to about 20 foot in is the city's legal right away. And then any other items the city has agreed to maintain in that development agreement. So the short answer is the city agrees to what the city will maintain and what the developer maintains. That's all done when they set it up.

Thank you.

Is the assessment amount in services provided in supplement to the maintenance the city would traditionally provide for that area should there not be an assessment district?

The general rule is if the city owns it, they have to maintain it. So, for example, if there's landscaping along the street and it's in the city legal right away, so let's say you build a development and there's 100 homes. You own the property in front of your home, right? You maintain it. But there's the streets around it. The city usually legally owns that right away, so the city has to maintain it. The city usually owns the streetlights, so they have to maintain it. So that kind of defines who maintains what. Is that your question of who maintains what? Yeah.

And then as for engagement with the actual homeowners themselves, aside from the engineer's reports and the methodology and calculations provided, do we engage with these homeowners in any shape or form, like a survey or some kind of community meeting, just letting them know, hey, your assessment's going up or it's not going up, how are the services provided over the last year?

So this meeting actually functions as that. When you have a public hearing, which we're having, it has to be publicly noticed. It's put in the paper, and the property owners, that's their chance to come voice their opinion on this. As far as doing an annual survey, legally, once these are set up, they're ongoing. You can't really change them unless you put it to a vote of the property owner. So say the property owners don't want to pay it anymore. Then the council will have to come up with some alternative funding for that. or if the maintenance is not sufficient, say the lawns aren't being watered enough or the street lights are going out, the city can approach the property owners and say we need an increase in assessment if you want to fix these things. So it can go either way. But as far as public engagement, this is the legal notice for that. It's publicly put in the newspaper and this is their opportunity to voice their opposition or support of it. Go ahead.

Hi, so aside from doing the public notice through the newspaper, we also have our website for residents to view our current expenditures and the engineer's report. They can also visit any of our city facilities and the city libraries, our recreation center, city hall and the permit center and request these documents. We do invite residents to contact Public Works if there is a deficiency in their maintenance district in case we're not aware to address that concern.

Okay and are these notices provided in both English and Spanish?

So the notices are in the newspaper are just English only but on our website we do have it in English and Spanish.

Okay, and then when notice, do notices go out to, like, in the mail to the homeowners themselves, like, directly? No. They do not?

No, they do not. I did want to also mention we are looking at a possibility of doing some sort of committee for each district in order to get residents feedback and be able to create projects that will go within the next future, one to two years.

Okay. Looking forward to hearing more about that.

Thank you. And then just getting back to you, Gloria, you mentioned Kern Street. So I did want to let you know that Kern Street is not part of our maintenance districts. So that wouldn't apply.

I didn't mention. I didn't say Kern Street. I asked about Vista Nueva. Aren't they near Carr Lake? I mean, you know, Carr Lake. on that side where the shelter's at and all that. Vista Nueva, I think, is those manufactured homes.

It is, Councilmember. It is. That's exactly the area you're talking about.

Yeah, it's manufactured homes in the area where Holly Street and all that, you go down. You go down where you can see Acosta Plaza. They're kind of in the back.

Yes. So yeah, those are part of the Vista Nueva maintenance district, correct?

Yes. So there's specific boundaries of the assessment districts and some of that area of Vista Nueva is part of an assessment district, but some of it is actually a private subdivision. So that's outside the assessment districts. So we'd have to actually get out the maps and actually look at where you're concerned about and see if it's actually an assessment district or if it's in a private subdivision because there's some streets in that area that actually are private subdivisions okay thank you tony thank you

My question is gonna be for our city manager. Mr. Mendez, you and I have spoken a considerable amount of time. This is gonna be a critical question, but what I wanna say at the beginning, if there's anybody responsible, whether we're doing a good job or a bad job, that falls on me as a council member. It doesn't fall on you. It's my responsibility to find out why it gets done or it doesn't get done. I understand everything goes up every year. I understand that. One of the things that I'm gonna focus is what is our quality of service? It's easy for us up here to say, okay, it's going up because the costs are going up. But Mr. Mendez, can we honestly say, and it's good that some of the maintenance districts are staying the same and there's a couple that are going up a little bit. but is our quality of service up to speed with what's being charged here? And I understand it's an assessment district. What is our quality of service? Is there checks and balances? When I go cut the grass out there, do I go check to see if it was done right? I'm more interested in that.

So let me answer it a few ways, council members. So number one, not all the assessment districts are equal. Some have more funding available than others. So that's number one. So for example, Montebello, I'm looking at right here, their district is actually fairly healthy. Not all districts, they're districts financially fairly healthy. Not all other districts are, and we're not hiding anything. So not all districts are in the same boat. And I think it's important to understand that these districts are set up when a development comes in place. So typically you're done with the developer before any houses are built. And we've spent a lot of time over the last year and a half getting beat up about housing. SO, AND WHO'S GOING TO COVER THE COST? SO WHEN DEVELOPERS COME ON BOARD, THE CITY HAS TO DO AN ASSESSMENT. YOU LOOK AT PROPERTY TAX, AND I DON'T WANT TO GET TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, BUT I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT AS A BACKDROP. CITY DOES A FISCAL ANALYSIS ON PROPERTY TAX, HOW MUCH IS GOING TO BE GENERATED, SALES TAX, WHAT ARE THE MULTIPLIERS? SO WHAT'S THE DELTA WHEN IT COMES TO PUBLIC SERVICES AT THAT POINT THE DEVELOPER ALSO COMES FORWARD AND SAYS HERE'S HOW WE'RE GOING TO MAKE THIS FISCALLY NEUTRAL FOR THE CITY BASED ON ALL THESE REVENUES AND SO THEN THE CITY ENTERS IN A DISCUSSION WITH DEVELOPER ABOUT HOW WE'RE GOING TO COVER THESE COSTS BECAUSE EVERY TUESDAY HERE WE'RE GETTING BEAT UP ABOUT EVERYBODY'S COVERING UP DEVELOPERS COSTS THESE DISTRICTS WERE SET UP IN MONTABELLA BEFORE HOUSE WAS BUILT And when a property owner buys a home, that's part of what they're buying into if they read all their documents. Again, not everybody reads all those documents. But assuming everybody reads all those documents, then we understand kind of what my tax bill will be. And like our consultant explained, when it's said, it establishes how much can be increased. Some districts, there are no increase built into them. And so over time, as costs go up, the assessment stays the same. In order for us to increase the assessment, we have to go back to the voters. At this point, now we have many homeowners that are voters, as opposed to the initial, when it was set up, the property or developer is who owned it. So that's why these are set up in the beginning. They're very difficult to change and adjust after the fact. So that's number one. As far as the quality of our services, We try to do it with staffing. We try to do it with contracts. For example, we have a landscaping contract that helps us. We try to do it with staff, not only for the parks and everybody. We are constantly looking to improve it. And so I'm not going to tell you and say we're perfect and we actually get it done exactly. But I will tell you that our staff works really hard to get there. So when I come to the council for budgeting and so forth, I'm like, okay, should I ask for more staff for this district? Can we pay for it? And how do we make it equitable throughout the city? Because a resident in North Salinas that doesn't have a district, as opposed to a resident that has a district, there could be a sort of a tilting, right? So we're constantly looking at that. So my answer to you is, I'm not gonna give you like a definitive answer, but we're trying the best we can and we're constantly looking at how do we improve. So one of the things that Christina said about setting up these committees, we're finally at the point where we're gonna address with the residents and have that quality of life conversation with hopefully, I mean, we have very active community members in Montebello that I'm sure they'll welcome that participation and we'll sit down and go over the level of services and what we're doing and what we're not doing. And so we'll do that for every district. And hopefully, like Christina said, over the next year or two years, we now can put forward a plan where we actually do that and you see that visible result.

Well, thank you for that. Mr. Jacobs, let me ask you something. Being that you're the head of public works in these assessment districts, I appreciate what the city manager just said, where Do these assessment districts, do they deserve that extra attention that some people that live in these districts, they believe they should have that extra attention?

Yes, they deserve, they actually are paying for a service and they should expect a service to be done. That being said, some of the assessment districts are underfunded. So we actually have to cut back the amount of service that we do in that area so that it stays within the budget. For example, Hardin Ranch. We have to keep cutting down, backing off the service And Hardin Ranch because we don't collect enough money to provide the service that was expected when that district was formed and so we have tried to increase the fees in that district on a number of occasions and One time it came to a vote and it failed. Right before COVID, we were starting to do outreach on terms of what folks would really wanna see in Hardin Ranch and COVID hit and that sort of fell to the bottom of our list of things to do. But as we move forward with these committees, folks in those districts will come forward and say, yeah, we need to do more in our district, or we need to do less in our district and possibly reduce the amount of work we're paying. But we can't reduce it below what the original formation was done. So take Montebello, it includes road maintenance. So we can't just take out road maintenance to reduce their cost. their assessment. So they actually have to continue paying the assessment that we have in the engineer's report. So we could look at different levels of service on the things that are there, but we need to make sure that's okay with the whole district and not just a few people that come out and talk about it.

Yeah, and Mr. Jacobs, I appreciate what you're saying. And let me finish with this thought. because somebody in your staff, okay, after a job gets done, let's just say the pruning of the trees, the cutting of the grass, whatever it is, because yeah, we get challenged every other week here, but when I hear things, I go and check myself. I've been out there at night because I wanna find out if it's really happening. So if there's a light out in one of these assessment districts, just one light, a street light, Does somebody in your staff go and check, you know, instead of that light being out for a month, does somebody else say, hey, we got to check it?

We do. We do. We get we get a street light out. We do go check it. If a street light is knocked down and we know about it, we go out and check it. The problem with street lights is that if they're a decorative model. we actually have to order that. And that's sometimes a year, year and a half out to get the actual model that needs to be put in that location. So that's a bigger problem when we have decorative lights, they're special order, they're not on hand any place, so they have to re-manufacture those.

And see, Mr. Mendez, where, and I'm not being critical to you folks, I'm bringing it to me to find out what service I'm giving. There's threats about elections and all that. That doesn't bother me. I just wanna make sure I'm doing a good job as a public servant. If I'm gonna order a decorative light, I would just think, hey, I'm gonna order two or three more just in case. But to wait, we went through that in Clouster Park. What do you think we could do different there, Mr. Mendez or Mr. Jacobs? To be honest with you.

No, I understand your question. Two problems that come up is where do we store the extra light? I mean, we are running low in terms of space at the yard, just to let you know. we actually have to accommodate that within the engineer's report. We wanna keep X amount of street poles on hand, so we have to work that into the engineer's report to show that there is an expense that might have to increase their assessment to be able to afford.

Thank you.

ANDREW ANYTHING NO QUESTIONS ARE RESERVED FOR COMMENT OKAY THANK YOU ALL RIGHT WE'LL GO AHEAD AND GO OUT TO THE GO OUT TO THE PUBLIC GOOD AFTERNOON THIS IS RIDICULOUS MY GOD WE'VE BEEN TELLING YOU GUYS FOR THREE OR FOUR YEARS TONY WE STARTED WITH YOU TONY THEN YOU SHOVE THIS OFF TO MR. MENDES Mr. Jacobs, he sent us somewhere else that we went to. Mr. Mendez, he didn't do anything. It's a circle jerk. You guys are not doing anything. You're charging a lot of money for nothing. You can shake your head, Mr. Mendez. You don't live in these Salinas. Where do you live, actually? I'd like to know. It'd be nice to know. Maybe you don't have those problems in your area because they fix everything there. Right? Why should we have to pay for everybody else's mishaps? Because your city cannot do something diligently when they build homes the right way, when they did whatever that place is, Hardin Ranch, whatever. No one there thought about, hey, you know, we might have to build some stuff here. We might need road repair. Really, guys? You guys are disgusting, man. Que vergüenza. Seriously, the Lord even laughed at you. The Lord was laughing when Jacob answered that. We have nowhere to put it. Are you kidding me? That light is still good. You guys picked it up. It's still good. Weld it. Put a damn thing on it and weld it. Excuse my language. Please, weld it. You can do that. You don't have any welders there? I'm sure you got about 30 of them. The city of Salinas, minimum. Man, seriously guys. Why are we paying for everybody else's mishaps? Because the city won't go to their friends and say, hey, we've got to raise your property tax, your assessment tax. Come on, guys. Ridiculous. Nobody up here has any answers. You've got four people up here that don't even have the right answers. They dance around all the questions. They don't answer them. Mr. Mendez, you don't live in East Salinas. Please come by and take a look. Come by and look at the area that's been run down because you do not do maintenance properly. Look at Freedom Parkway. It's dirty as heck. It wasn't for Benji. God bless him. He went on his day today, free day. He did it and he cleaned it for us. Because you can't talk to Mr. Bengard to clean up after himself. You're disgusting. Wednesday.

Hi, Council. Daniel Munoz, East Salinas resident. Once again, we have more consultants helping somebody else do their job that we, it doesn't make any sense to me. Just like when we had the strategic plan, Renee, and you had that person, other consultant come and do the whole thing. That should be your job. That should be your job. And Mr. Jacobs, these consultants, that should be your job too. I hate to be the one to point the finger, but it is what it is. We're just wasting money on stuff like this. A year and a half to fix a light bulb, yeah, that's wild. Three years for a light bulb. Three years for a light, yeah, it shouldn't be taken. And then there's nowhere to store it. I mean, you guys got more excuses than my cousin going to jail, you know? You guys, it's a lot of excuses, right? We need people to fix stuff. We don't need people to hire consultants to just make excuses and then not have answers for the questions. I mean, how much did this cost? We got two people here, they're probably not even from Salinas. How much did they cost? How much did that strategic plan consulting cost, Renee? That's a lot of money. We could do a lot with that. We could do a lot with that, but spend, spend, spend, worry about it later. Thank you.

My name is Eric Peterson, and if the city manager doesn't mind, I'd like to flesh out a little bit about one of the things he said. When you buy a place, you're getting that much paper, and most people aren't going to even consider eating it. As some of you know, I used to have a job that dealt with money, and I dealt with people who had basically been gullible. They hadn't read or fact-checked everything, and they got themselves in some very expensive trouble. We've had some developers in Monterey County who are simply ruthless. They'd lie, they'd cheat, they'd build thin walls, and a lot of this stuff people aren't gonna catch up with it until it's too late, and by that point, it is too late. So a lot of people do not realize they've got fees for that assessment district until too late, and even then, they don't necessarily look at their property tax bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Antonio Ravago with Montevideo. FYI, for those who are new to the council, mayor, city manager, I bought my home in 2009. And I've been paying since then. The taxes keep going sky roof. Insurance went triple because I live in Salinas. High crime. The bad thing about all this, when we had COVID, we were still paying over $800 for maintenance for the park. You know how many times they went to the park during COVID? Zero. We kept paying 800 and some dollars. And when we asked for something, It takes whatever determination of time you want to take because Mr. Jacob was nowhere to be found. It was other people. Mr. Barrera was there. I'm here. Nothing's changed. The light bulb by the bathroom, they stole the plaque on the back. You know what the city did? The paying people from the city, they took the gray tape and patched it up. You can go see it right now. It's still there. That's the kind of service we get at Montebello. We need help because we continue to pay. We have no say so. You just send us a bill and we got to pay it. If we don't pay it, late charges. We should be sending late charges to you guys too. That's what I think. I hope you understand. Thank you.

I'm glad I did come, because this is one of my big complaints.

And Mr. Mendez, way before you ever came here, and before some of the other ones were even born, our lights on Williams Road have been out. Started out with about four of them, different intersections. Now, I think I told you, I think last time, 17. Alice Al is another 12. Those were a laugh when they first came out. As you know, the wires were backwards. Components weren't in. Took over two years to get that done. The same thing on Veronda. Wasn't your fault. It was other people's fault that didn't even notice, and our former city managers and councilmen that walked and drove through there and never reported it. It took me a long time to get it done, but I got it done. But anyway, our landscaping in this city is horrible, horrible. If a plant dies, You just pull it. You don't replace it. You don't cut it evenly if they're bushes. Independent was very pretty at one time. It's not so bad now, but still bad enough. Constitution, forget it. That was a beautiful, beautiful area to drive through. And in the springtime, when all the blossoms were out, it was just really relaxing to drive through there and walk through there. Not anymore. You go to South Salinas on Davis, I guess. Well, it's not even Davis. It's Blanco. that area is horrible we have people coming from all over the world from 101 to go to monterey and they see weeds all we grow here is weeds okay if a plant or a tree dies it's weeds thank you marianne it's disgusting marianne thank you all right anyone on zoom thank you thank you all right one iphone

Okay, who's ever on the iPhone? Anyone there? You're on mute. All right, we'll go ahead and close. public comment, and this is an action item. Is there any motion on this item?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to, can I say something before the motion?

Sure, yeah, sure.

Yeah, I wanna thank Mr. Mendez that we are, I guess they're gonna be working on some committees where improvement will be made on our service, quality of service, I do wanna say, Mr. Mendez has often asked this council to trust his staff, and I trust his staff. And at the same time, as we work together, because we are a team here, we are a team. And I think as we work together, There will always be criticism, but the most important for me is that I did a. Job when I was asked to that's the most whether people agree with me disagree. As long as I know I did the job. Because we'll always get criticized no matter what we do. The other thing is these assessments. They're pretty expensive, no matter how you look at them, but that's what happens between the person, the buyer, and whoever signs the contract. As any homeowner, we need to read these contracts. And I wanna thank Ms. Cristina Gonzalez for your report. I think it was great, and I'm gonna make a motion to approve this, Mayor.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any final comments before we call for the question?

YES, I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A COMMENT AND MY COMMENT IS, AGAIN, WE NEED TO, WE HEARD FROM THE COMMUNITY, WE NEED TO DO, I FEEL, A BETTER JOB IN WORKING WITH THE ASSESSMENT DISTRICTS THAT ARE IMPACTED BY THESE ASSESSMENTS. And I know that we send out and we post that we're going to look at this every year in the assessments. But I want us to do a better outreach because how many, I'd like to ask, how many people are here from the other assessment districts? Can you raise your hand? from Hardin, from Montevideo. Yeah, I know you're here, but from other assessment districts. No one's here? Okay, but you know, it was posted. People have the opportunity to protest. Did we get any protest letters? I don't think so. Those are just my concerns of working with them. They have neighborhood watches, I'm sure, and I think we need to reach out to them. We need to have a better communication, I think. Thank you.

Thank you, Gloria.

Maria, did you have something?

I JUST WANT TO LIFT UP SOMETHING THAT I HEARD DURING THIS AGENDA ITEM IN TERMS OF THE DECORATIVE LIGHTS AND POSSIBLY AT A FUTURE MEETING. I WOULD DEFINITELY WANT TO KNOW HOW MANY OF THESE DECORATIVE LIGHTS DO WE HAVE. Really wanna know why is it taking like up to a year to get these like ordered and in. And if there's that possibility to transition to over to other lights that can be received in a timely matter. I know that this is an issue that residents bring up regarding our lighting, but hearing that this evening does bring up this conversation. I'm not asking for that information right now at this meeting, but I would like to see that information at a future time. Thank you. Yeah, thank you everyone.

All right, there was motion in the 2nd, but I have a comment. Oh, I'm sorry, Andrew. I didn't see there. I'm sorry. Go ahead. It's okay.

No worries yet. My, my frustration continues to be 1 that we are not. We're doing whatever is within the legal limits. That's what we're always telling people, but. Just like in sewer rates or other issues. We have the capability and to make it a standard to actually mail out notices. To those that are going to be impacted by the increases and doesn't sound like we did that in this case. So I know that we had been pushing for an update to our communication strategy, which we did, but. I think 1 thing you'll hear from the council over and over is. We don't want to do what the legal limit is we want to do beyond that. So. Those are all my comments. Okay, thank you Andrew.

All right. Patty, go ahead and call for the question.

Motion made by Council Member Barrera. Second by Council Member Barajas. Council Member Barajas. Yes. Council Member Barrera. Council Member DeRigo. Yes. Council Member De La Rosa. Yes. Council Member Salazar. Yes. Council Member Sandoval.

No.

Mayor Donahue. Yes. Motion passes.

Thank you. All right. Let's see. We are going to look for Ernesto and have a discussion. Conversation about an urgency interim ordinance prohibiting the issue of tobacco retailers licenses.

Hi, good afternoon, Council, Mayor. Ernesto Lizaola, assistant to the city manager. Today, on behalf of administration, office of the city attorney, and community development, I'd like to introduce for your consideration an urgency interim ordinance to prohibit the issuance of tobacco retailers licenses. And Salinas? This proposed ordinance would place a temporary moratorium on the issuance of additional tobacco retail licenses citywide. If approved today, it would be effective immediately for a duration of 45 days to provide city staff an opportunity to review our current licensing requirements, explore best practices, and present our findings and recommendations. This proposed ordinance would not affect any existing or renewing licenses that are present at this time. As background, in California, anyone under the age of 21 is prohibited from purchasing or using tobacco products. This age limit was increased from 18 to 21 back in 2016. Some of that having to do with well-documented research that shows that smoking is a leading cause of preventable diseases worldwide. As of late, vaping has been the most common tobacco product used by high school students. In 2015, the city of Salinas adopted an ordinance requiring all tobacco retailers to obtain a tobacco retail license in order to operate within city limits. This license is provided by the Monterey County Health Department and is in coordination with the police department and the city attorney's office share the oversight and enforcement of these. That ordinance did not include any limits on the number of licenses that could be issued. As of March 2026, there are 124 active tobacco retail licenses within the city of Salinas. Currently, there are no restrictions on the number or the proximity of retail licenses that could be issued around schools, parks, recreation centers, or other youth sensitive areas. In the past few years, there have been an increase in the number of standalone retail establishments such as smoke shops and vape shops. These tend to have the highest violation rate of tobacco sales to minors. Here you find a map. that shows the retailers, the tobacco retailers throughout the city of Salinas. As you can see, there are various pockets in our community with higher concentrations of these retailers. This proposed ordinance would have no impact on the general fund, measure E or measure G. It is our recommendation that you adopt the proposed ordinance the interim ordinance prohibiting the issuance of tobacco retail licenses citywide. And we would require four-fifths vote in order for this to pass. If this were to pass, it would be effective immediately for a duration of 45 days. And if staff need additional time to consider best practices, come back with recommendations, there are options to renew this for two additional times, one for 10 months and 15 days, and additional renewal for one year. and be happy to take any questions you may have.

Okay, thank you. All right, Andrew, I'll start with you. Any questions?

Yes, thank you. As we develop this ordinance in the future, is there any additional restrictions that could be placed on signage for these types of businesses, or is that just the standard signage ordinance that we have already in place?

So Councilmember, it's a good question and it's something I think that we can explore over the next period of time before we bring this back to Council in August 4th. We're required to do some more study and analysis and that's one of the questions that we'll include in that study and analysis and have an answer for you specifically on that question when we bring this back to Council. But I think there is an opportunity for the Council to further regulate signage as it relates to tobacco retailers.

Okay, and then the next question is we in this new ordinance will also be able to establish sensitivity zones similar to alcohol. Is that something that we're looking at?

So again, we would take this time to look at best practices. There are over 100 other municipalities throughout California that have certain restrictions on where retail licenses can be issued and parameters around that. So that's what we're going to save our time to explore.

Okay. All right. Those are all my questions. These are for comment. Thank you. Thank you, Tony.

Yes, thank you. Thank you. You know, I know that the. These types of businesses is there's not as much restriction right now as there is with alcohol. But is there anybody, like going to these, you know, like steps, these young people? Yes. What would you call that when you go and check to see if they'll sell to minors or anything?

Yes, so the Monterey County Health does regular assessments and they look for violations of retailer selling to minors or individuals who are not supposed to be purchasing.

Yeah, so do you know at this time if we do that with these types of businesses?

so they all require compliance so there are there is an annual review done by the county health department in addition to uh you know surveys and and visits where they see if they sell to minors but in the cover individuals yeah

You know about and I'm glad this is happening, but about 2 or 3 months ago, people were reporting and Mr Callahan. Maybe you can help us with this. I don't know. It's. The signage issue, but across the street from Dr Martin Luther King Academy, and Jesse G Sanchez elementary school. There's a small store. The sign is bigger than the store. Uh, and it says smoke shopping and that's been reported several times. So I don't know. If we're doing something about about that specific. Shop there that we know.

Yeah. Council member, you raise that to our attention a few council meetings ago, and we are working through code enforcement on that property as well as other another one that you mentioned actually.

YOU KNOW, IN THE OTHER ONE, AND THIS WILL BE MY LAST QUESTION, I NOTICE NOW THEY'RE STARTING TO LOOK FOR PROPERTIES CLOSER TO SCHOOLS, PARKS, AND EVEN IN THE OTHER SIDE, YOU KNOW, WHERE THERE'S A LOT OF APARTMENTS. SO I'M GLAD WE'RE GOING WITH THIS. THANK YOU.

NO QUESTIONS. I'LL RESERVE FOR COMMENT.

OKAY.

THANK YOU.

So, you know, I definitely in support of the interim ordinance. When this comes back to us, LATER ON, I WAS WONDERING IF IT MIGHT BE POSSIBLE TO ALSO GET AN OVERVIEW OF CALIFORNIA'S EXISTING TAX LAWS. I THINK THERE WAS A RECENT AMENDMENT. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO SEE, YOU KNOW, AGAIN, THE SIGNAGE. I THINK WHAT WE HEARD FROM RESIDENTS IS THAT THERE'S JUST STRONG OPPOSITION. ideally like to see that we don't have or I would like to see us start to reduce the number of retailers that we have so if it's a little bit over 120 like ideally I think the message that we want to send is you know we don't want young people or anyone in general smoking because it's detrimental to a person's health in terms of some of the issues going on right now you know I would just encourage residents if they see something that they don't like WITH A PARTICULAR BUSINESS, THEY ARE FREE TO CALL THAT BUSINESS AND COMPLAIN ABOUT A SIGN OR SIGNAGE. BUT ON OUR END AS KIND OF LOCAL CITY POLICYMAKERS, JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO REGULATE THIS BECAUSE I KNOW THAT ONE CONCERN THAT ALSO CAME UP WAS JUST INSON PARK. HERE. A LOT OF TIME AND EFFORT, YEARS OF WORK GOING INTO THAT AND TO SEE THAT EXISTING RETAILER GO UP AND TO HAVE SUCH PROMINENT SIGNS OUT THERE IS CONCERNING AND AS CITY LEADERS I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT THAT WE CREATE THESE ENVIRONMENTS THAT PEOPLE FEEL SAFE. I WOULD SAY THAT THE TRAFFIC THAT I SEE AT THAT PARTICULAR RETAILER IS INTERESTING IN TERMS OF HOW MUCH IS ACTUALLY THERE. SO I'M AVAILABLE TO SPEAK WITH STAFF OFFLINE AND JUST SHARE WITH OUR CONCERNS AS WELL AS ENCOURAGE MY OTHER COUNCIL MEMBERS TO BRING THINGS UP AND LET YOU GUYS FIGURE OUT SOME RECOMMENDATIONS FOR US IN TERMS OF WHAT ACTION WE CAN TAKE.

THANK YOU. GLORIA?

MY QUESTION IS MORE FOR LEGAL. Yes, Mr. Callahan, as we move, depending how we go right now, if we move forward, will you be getting input from the Monterey County Tobacco Coalition? I see Gonzalo here this evening, Gonzalo Coronado from the Tobacco Coalition. that can probably be very knowledgeable. So will you be reaching out to them to collaborate?

Yes, of course, Councilmember, and we have been. I will say, you know, Ernesto has done a tremendous job taking the lead on this project, so he should be commended for the work that he's done so far. Lisa Brinton and I have been sort of the backup singers to his lead, so we want to make sure that we acknowledge him in public. He has been in communication with the county and will continue to do so as we work towards responding to the Council's questions and direction.

And, of course, with STEP, you know, Sun Street Center, the STEP program, the youth, you know, group. Okay. Thank you. Those are my only questions.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Ernesto, for taking the lead on this. I think you heard from the council that we said pretty loudly and clearly that we wanted to have a moratorium on this kind of activity. My question is, who's ultimately responsible for the enforcement of it if there were to be a permanent or temporary moratorium? As far as people selling to minors, who's the enforcement agency for that?

So it's a combination, council member. It's the city through both code enforcement in terms of signage, the police department in terms of violations of our code, but also we rely heavily on the county for enforcement and their partners. They do decoy operations and that results in, it has some really good results when they do that. So it's a combination of those different agencies and divisions.

Thank you. Thank you for that. And then I'm curious about the timeline. Are we confident that in 45 days we can make some significant progress if we so choose to vote towards a temporary and then a permanent moratorium?

So let me help answer that a little bit. We're going to try our best. We have to bring this back within the 45 days. At that point, we'll update you on kind of what we're at. with our county partners and stuff, there's a lot of knowledge and information, a lot of best practices. Ernesto's been doing a great job of getting all that. We'll bring that to you. But if we're not yet ready, as Ernesto said, we have the possibility of making another recommendation to extend this another 10 months or give us a little more time. And so in the meantime, you asked the other question as far as how do we make sure this is done. Typically, they come forward and they'll get a business license or whatever. The moratorium will say we will not issue any of that. So if something pops up that nobody shouldn't have popped up, we will then address it because we have a moratorium.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Mendez. And I think you kind of tapped on this, but I wanted you to, because you and I have had the conversation, I don't remember exactly how you worded it, but that, because our first question was how did we let this happen, right? How are we allowing all these shops to pop up next to schools and parks and such? And you had commented that they don't have to really say exactly what they're applying for at the time, right?

No, they'll come in and apply. We don't have an ordinance that restricts, like Ernesto said. So when we look at our code, it's one of the things that is just not in our ordinance. Okay. So there is, well, staff will look at it. There's nothing that says, oh, we should ask, we should say no to this because we just don't have it.

I just want to make sure that was clear for everyone that this wasn't just like half as it is. We need to make some adjustments going forward so that we can prevent it. And then can I say one comment and then I'll pass it on? I think the one thing that really hit me hard was smoke shops and vape shops have the highest statewide violation rates of tobacco sales to minors. I think that's number one reason to get this thing put to bed because that is not the population that we want to be providing tobacco to. So we're just setting a really poor health precedent by making it so readily available. So thank you for your hard work.

Thanks, Mark. All right, we'll go ahead and go out to the public.

I'll say that I'm with the community. I think it's a good start, but I don't think we have the resources to actually enforce it. I mean, you guys want to implement policies, but you don't even implement basic policies. This is very important, guys. This is children. And who checks the IDs? Are you sure that the person that's selling the tobacco is verifying age, legal age of purchase? We don't know that. It's not like it's beer. It's different. Tobacco is a whole different field. So you guys need to implement that. When people come and get a permit, let them know that. Ask them what it's for. You need to ask those questions. You should have guidelines already for something like this. Why are we doing it now after we have 15 of these places already up and running? And most of them on the east side. On the east side, of course. You guys need to ask these questions ahead of time. And this gentleman is trying his best to do it. God bless him. But he can't do it alone. You guys need to help him. Go to your communities and talk to your people and let them know, hey, there might be a tobacco shop here. You need to come to the meeting and tell them we don't want it there or move it somewhere else. Why don't you put them downtown? I don't see any tobacco shops downtown except the one back here. What is it? Is it Pajaro? I believe it is. Monterey Street, excuse me. That's the only one I see downtown. Put them downtown. Why haven't we done that? I haven't seen one downtown. Those are all my comments, but guys, take care of our children, please. Some of you guys don't care. I do. Please take care of the kids out here. God bless you guys.

Daniel Munoz, East Salinas resident. I just want to state that kids that want tobacco products, they're going to find a way to get them. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think we could all remember when we were teenagers, if we wanted something, we would go and get it. I just want you guys to keep that in mind. And I also wish that everybody here had this much concern for the safety of our children that are getting poisoned, the ones that are out in the fields, the glyphosate that the city is running around town spraying, Renee. I wish you guys had as much concern for the children over tobacco, because they're both equally toxic to our children. So we need to protect our children at all levels. And I hope everybody would have this many questions in regards to the poison that we're having them breathe. I mean, we have a gentleman here that's hired to help with the tobacco issue, right? Well, we don't have anybody for the poisons that we're spraying. And with the tobacco, we can't really control You know, the stores, I guess, well, I guess we could control the permits for that that has tobacco. But more importantly, like I said, we don't need to be using glyphosates. There's no reason why we have to be using those. Those can be stopped tomorrow if Renee Mendez decides to pick up the phone and do so. And please, Renee, I'm asking you, do that, please. You could do it real easy, it's not hard. So yeah, let's worry about poison as much as we worry about tobacco. That's all I have to say about that, thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, name is Eric Peterson. And my adoptive father was a smoker and died before he was 60. While I never met them, my biological parents, I understand, were heavy smokers. They died before they were 60. I'm more than 20% ahead of any of them, and I'm not slowing down. We need to do everything we can to keep not just kids from smoking. Let's encourage adults to quit if they're smoking. And we got a county health department that I'm sure is working on that, but there's nothing that says the city council can't support the health department. And the city attorney says we should appreciate what you're doing. Thank you for doing it. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Private Citizen Greg Hammer. I'd just like to make a comment. First of all, I'm a non-smoker. I think that anybody who's smoking currently making some very, very bad life choices. We all know the problems of smoking. That said, I don't necessarily think that this is in the wheelhouse of the city to manage and control. It is a legal business in the state of California. There is already all these guidelines in place. It adds another layer of responsibility and burden on the permitting department that's already burdened with all the other regulations that we keep piling on and piling on. If we're really serious about stopping smoking for kids or all the adults, let's dump some money into cessation programs. Let's step up the enforcement. But if it's a legal business and they can eke out a living doing this, there's an obvious demand, which is a fault in our society by itself. But if there's a demand, people are going to get it. And I don't think that a monitorium Great work. I mean, you have to do the research. I get it. But it's I don't know if this is within the city's wheelhouse to control a already legal business that we can blunt in other ways. I think money and time can be spent doing other things better. Thank you.

Thanks.

Okay. So, um, good afternoon or evening, whatever, um, Eloise Jim. Well, I agree with this moratorium and I do hope that it's expanded to be permanent for, uh, and also that those 120 or whatever, 100 to 200 places in Salinas were able to get them to stop selling, uh, tobacco because There's a lot of people, there's a health problem with people that smoke and their descendants will just carry it on. A lot of people die from cancer and primary hand smoke and secondary hand smoke and it's just a health problem overall and a lot of money goes into health So you should start the prevention by not selling it. You have the people with the blue zones in the hospitals trying to get people to be healthy. Well, if you don't make the tobacco so available, then that will increase the health of people. So I agree with this.

Thank you.

All right, we'll go to Zoom. Anyone on Zoom? Okay, Ann.

Thank you. I'm Ann Wheelis, a member of the American Heart Association California Advocacy Committee. And a long time volunteer for the Monterey County tobacco control program. I encourage you to adopt this urgency interim ordinance. And I think city staff for recognizing the need for this action. As noted by your staff, reducing the number of local outlets is a key policy to decrease the uptake of tobacco use by youth. Data from the California Healthy Kids Survey conducted in the Salinas High School District between 2018-19 and 2024-25 school years, or six years, shows that about a third or more of students in the 9th and 11th grade believe that it is easy to obtain cigarettes or vape products. That's a third or more of those students. A key observation is that students perceive that it is easier to obtain vaping products Data from the survey conducted in the 2425 school year shows that 48% of 9th grade students perceive that it is easy to obtain vape products. That's down from 57% in 2018-2019. But 53% of 11th grade students in the 2425 school year thought that it was easy to obtain vape products down only one percentage point from 2018-2019. So I agree that adopting this urgency ordinance will give city staff, council members, youth serving organizations, and community members the time to evaluate city policy as it supports the health of youth and those others who are trying to reduce tobacco use. I urge you to adopt this ordinance. And I also want to remember, and I'm dating myself here, but I'm remembering the process early on years ago with Sun Street Centers and their efforts and work with city to require conditional use permits for new alcohol outlets. And that was a way of really working toward limiting the number of new outlets.

Thank you.

All right, we'll go ahead and close public comment, and we will bring, this is an action item, so I'll look for a motion.

So moved.

So Gloria's the first and Aurelia's the second.

Yes, can we make a comment?

Yeah, any final comments before we call for the question?

Okay, I'd like to make a comment, and mine is these smoke shops, to me, They do not belong in proximity to youth populated areas like schools, parks and recreation and centers. So that's one. The second thing is they have the highest violation. VAPE SHOPS. SO THAT'S WHY WE BROUGHT THIS FORWARD BECAUSE THERE HAPPENS TO BE VAPE SHOPS IN DISTRICT 4 AND I WAS VERY, VERY CONCERNED. SO THOSE ARE MY COMMENTS AND I LOOK FORWARD TO COMING BACK AFTER OUR LEGAL LOOKS AT and works with the Monterey County Coalition and looks at the proposed new ordinance or changes.

So those are my comments. I do appreciate the comment about over-regulation. I don't think we're in the business to tell a business how to run, what not to do, but I think one thing that sparked an issue with me is There are children, whether it's pesticides, whether it's tobacco. I'll be honest with you. I'm a weekend cigar smoker. I enjoy it. My wife tells me not to smoke, but I enjoy it. But at the same time, I have to do it out in my backyard because I'm told where to smoke. But the thing is, somebody can come in, hey, that's bad for your health. but a child, children, especially, I notice these types of businesses going to the most vulnerable areas. If you look at some of these places, they go to where there's a lot of apartments, around parks, around schools. So I think it's a serious issue. And Ernesto, I wanna concur with the city attorney. Thank you for your work. I know it's not easy, but I think this is the kind of business that we do have to look into to make sure that people under age are not being put in a vulnerable position. Thank you.

All right, Patty, go ahead and call for the question.

Council Member Barajas? Yes. Council Member Barrera? Yes. Council Member DeRigo? Yes. Council Member De La Rosa? Yes. Council Member Salazar? Yes. Council Member Sandoval?

Yes.

Mayor Donahue? Yes. Motion passes.

Okay, thank you. Okay, looking for David Jacobs, and now we're going to consider stuff. All right, Mr. Jacobs.

Good evening, Council. We're here to do a consideration item for the One Water Roadmap. the roadmap is the first step in a one water plan to improve water reliability for the city of salinas and with that i'm going to turn it over to lydia holmes who do a presentation thank you

Good evening, I'm here to talk to you about the one water roadmap that we've been working on for the city. So let me start with a definition of one water, it is a collaborative planning and implementation approach and the point is to foster integration and equitable management of water resources aiming for. long-term resilience and reliability to meet the community and ecosystem needs. This is a definition that was come up by a whole host of folks as shown here in a research study. So not our definition, but a universally accepted definition. Okay, so the goal of the One Water Roadmap is to really identify how the city of Salinas can best collaborate with other partners in the region to invest time, energy, and money into more sustainable water solutions. And really, that's to prepare for changing future. We've been at it for about a year. We started off, I'm going to talk about a little bit of this in some of the subsequent slides, but we started off with stakeholder interviews, did a gaps and needs summary resulting from those interviews, held a stakeholder workshop, came up with this draft plan, had another stakeholder workshop for people to be able to talk through the draft plan and then finalize that plan. All right, so we started with a data and document review where we looked at over 30 documents that were either authored by the city or some of the other local water related agencies. The purpose of this was to develop an understanding of the previous and ongoing water related studies, plans, policies, and goals in the city and in the valley. And then, as I mentioned, we did a series of stakeholder interviews. They were conducted with eight regional stakeholders that are responsible for different aspects of water management in the valley. The purpose was to gain an understanding of the challenges and opportunities related to water management. There's a list of the interview participants on the side there. I won't read those. So some of the issues that were identified through the stakeholder interview process, regional storage and conveyance, difficulty in delivering adequate water to the right locations at the right time. We also had water quality came up as an issue, maintaining water quality amidst ongoing contaminant concerns. One of those being seawater intrusion, groundwater contamination risks in the key basins near the coast, of course, but it stretches pretty far inland. Lack of infrastructure investment. This is a historical underinvestment in water infrastructure. And then financial concerns and costs related to high costs for maintaining the existing infrastructure and, of course, investing in any future projects. And then finally, again, these are the issues that were identified through the stakeholders process, was siloed perspectives, that there was a feeling of that lack of trust and that many of the different agencies were operating in silos. And that siloed perspective really limits the ability to have regional collaboration on important topics like water. Sorry, jumped ahead a few slides there. All right, so another thing we did was look at the connections based on the stakeholder interviews. Just this diagram really shows how all of these different entities are tied together. And it's to start looking at that web of how could you develop better relationships with each other. And so as you can see, there's a lot of interconnectedness where board positions are held by different members. So there is the framework to start working together in a more collaborative way. So the ideas that came out of both the data review and the stakeholder interviews were categorized into three areas. in the lower boxes. So internal city projects and programs, institutional programs and initiatives, and then studies and capital projects. And I'll walk you through some of the projects in each of these categories. At that first stakeholder workshop, we solicited ideas from the attendees and discussed those and categorized them, and then also came up with timelines for when should we implement these different ideas. Should they be near-term, which we defined as between now and the next five years, mid-term, five to 10 years, or long-term, a 10-year or longer window. And then at stakeholder workshop two, we further delved into the different projects and ideas to better define them and think more thoroughly about how long would it take to implement and when's the appropriate time to implement them. So where we landed was the One Water Roadmap has 15 recommended projects or efforts. All the near-term projects could be started early, but we tried to spread them out a little bit in the year one to five to be able to spread out the workload. And I'm gonna talk about these here so you didn't have to look at that one graphic. So let's start with immediate efforts. the first nine projects are listed as immediate year one efforts they include establishing a city vision creating and hiring a water professional or professionals at the city establish a one water leaders group which is really aimed at that regional collaboration so you're bringing in people from throughout the valley hold record recurring meetings of that one water leader group Strengthen relationships. This is really back to that web I talked about of being strategic about thinking about how people are serving on board members and creating those relationships between agencies. Investigate grant opportunities. Conduct a financial capability analysis, recognizing that any water project is expensive. And then coordinate on some of the ongoing GSA studies. which have significant implications for everyone in the valley. Moving on to the near term efforts. So projects number 10 and 11 were in years two and three of the near term. They were to look at industrial wastewater reuse opportunities and implement anything that comes out of that financial capacity analysis. And then in years four and five, we take on projects 12 and 13, and it's to look at doing a gray water policy study, where if you're not familiar with gray water, it's like showers and sinks and not toilets, but more cleaner water. So that's why it's called gray water and being able to use that for things like outdoor irrigation. And then conducting additional water studies not covered by the previous efforts. And then moving into the midterm and long-term efforts, these ended up being just the last two projects and really were recognizing that all that work done in the first five years is going to result in projects that could be implemented and you're not going to be able to implement those for a while. So they come in this five to 10 or 10 plus year range. So those would be large scale conveyance projects and then increasing local water USE FOR AG AND TO DEAL WITH GROWTH. SO THAT WOULD BE LIKE IMPLEMENTING WATER REUSE PRACTICES IN OUTER AREAS OR UTILIZING THE CITY'S EXISTING INDUSTRIAL PONDS FOR REUSE. OKAY. AND THAT IS, SORRY, I JUMPED OUT. THAT'S ALL I HAVE THAT SUMMARIZES THE ONE WATER PLAN BUT HAPPY TO TAKE ANY QUESTIONS.

ANDREA, WE'LL START WITH YOU.

Thank you. I know we're in the beginning stages of this, but what does the agricultural industry currently do to help facilitate water storage?

I don't know if I quite heard that. What are they doing to facilitate water storage? Is that what you said? Correct. Yeah, I don't know if I have an answer for that. Sorry.

Okay, maybe we can get a follow up answer to that.

Sorry, so Council Member Sandoval, this is a kind of a high. look at water right now and going into storage and stuff, that's gonna be part of the project going forward. But right now we're just kind of getting our feet wet per se in this whole water projects issue. So that would be one of the items that we discuss in the leadership group and moving forward how we store water or reuse water that we currently have.

Right well, that leads right into my next question Mr. Mr. Jacobs. Because my next question is, how will the leaders be chosen? Because as we know, the ag industry is our biggest user of water. But the, the priorities and what the city of Salinas residents would like to see may not necessarily be aligned. with the ag industry's priorities. As you see, as I read number 15, I don't know if we can go back to the slide, but it said increase the, can we go back to that? I'd like to cite it correctly, but it was something along increase the capacity of.

So let me just correct that that last item is about increasing use of local water. increasing the reuse of local water. So it could be either for ag use or it could be for offsetting landscape irrigation. It's not defined at this point as Mr. Jacobs said that this is a high level concept at this point. There's not been specifics defined for this item yet.

Yeah, because the way it reads to me, it says evaluate options for the city to increase local water for agriculture use and growth. And that's why my question is around how the leadership group will be formed. So what process and I know this is just the beginning stages. I'm excited. This is great. Uh, you know, 1st, time the city of salinas is actually strategically thinking about water, but how that leadership group is going to come be made up is important to me. So do we have. best practices or how we'll develop that leadership group around water?

Yeah, so if I can take a stab at that, Councilmember, great question. So if you saw the stakeholders, it was all the water, a lot of the water purveyors, so Cal Water, Alco, Sigma, they were represented, Monterey County Water Agency, MONTEREY ONE WATER SO COUNTY CITY OF CITY OF SALINAS SINCE WE ACTUALLY DO THIS BOTH THE MOST WATER OF ANY CITY IN THE CENTRAL COAST IN THIS PART OF THE STATE SO WE ARE SO THAT'S HOW WE'RE STARTING FROM A STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVE CLEARLY THE COW WATER AND ALCOHOL THEY PROVIDE THEY SERVICE THE URBAN CUSTOMER OUR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT AS WELL AS THE PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT AS WE'RE LOOKING AT GROWTH AREAS. WE'RE WORKING WITH CAL WATER AND ALCOHOL AND HOW THEY'RE GOING TO SERVICE THE WATER. SO THAT'S ALL PART OF THE LEADERSHIP GROUP AS THIS DEVELOPS. WE'RE STARTING WITH THE MAJOR STAKEHOLDERS THAT ARE IN THIS SPACE. So that's the idea there. And so we got urban users, clearly we have ag users, and we have agencies that provide and attempt to regulate water use. And so that's where we're starting with the leadership group. We're not reinventing the wheel, we're connecting what already exists.

Yeah, I don't want to reinvent the wheel, but definitely there's always room to increase the participation since, you know, the average Salinas resident may not be a part of those groups. Although I know some of those are representative. I mean, is there something preventing us from adding, you know, water conservation groups or advocacy groups around water to be part of that discussion? Or is that something that we give the direction for this conversation?

I think as we evolve, THIS IS A STARTING PLACE, LIKE YOU POINTED OUT. CERTAINLY YOU CAN, THIS IS PART OF BRINGING THIS TO THE COUNCIL TO GET YOUR THOUGHTS AND IDEAS, AND THIS WILL BE INVOLVED. SO AS WE DEAL WITH, FOR EXAMPLE, SIGMA HAS A HUGE WATER DEMAND MANAGEMENT COMPONENT TO IT AND SO FORTH. SO SIGMA, FOR EXAMPLE, HAS A LOT OF THOSE DIFFERENT USERS ALREADY REPRESENTED. SO PART OF WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO IS HOW CAN WE BE STRATEGIC, HOW CAN WE NOT JUST CREATE OTHER EFFORTS THAT JUST ADD MORE TO MORE MEETINGS AND SO FORTH. SO WE'RE TRYING TO LEVERAGE WHAT WE HAVE. BUT YES, THIS IS A STARTING POINT. SO AS THIS DEVELOPS WE'LL BRING REPORTS TO THE COUNCIL AND CERTAINLY ALL THAT'S OPEN FOR DISCUSSION WITH THE COUNCIL AS WE DEVELOP THIS MORE. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF THIS AND WE WILL BRING THIS BACK AS WE GET MORE SORT OF, WE GET MORE GROUNDED AND THIS KIND OF MOVES FORWARD.

Yeah, well, that leads into my next question is, is how are we going to make sure that we're not duplicating efforts, you know, amongst the other agencies or obviously we know as a city of Salinas, we want to advocate for water policies that benefit our residents first and foremost. But how are we going to ensure that we're not duplicating some kind of strategic effort or planning?

Well, the whole point of the leadership group of putting this together is to try to figure that out. I think one of the most telling diagrams in the One Water is the mapping of everybody that's working in this space and how we're still struggling to connect. So I think that speaks to your point, but part of the One Leadership model is to bring all these efforts together to see whether we can leverage, how can we all work together on pursuing funding and all those sorts of things as opposed to individual efforts. So I think that'll be developed. The stakeholders will tell us, for example, Water will tell us if they're already working on something. So that's something we don't have to duplicate. But can we be more intentional about taking advantage of what's already happening? I don't think we've done that great up to this point, and this is sort of the start of that effort.

Yeah, thank you for that. And as we move forward with this group, will these meetings be public and will the public be able to participate and give their input as well? I know these are working groups, so it could be the same format as a council meeting or an advisory group, but what access will the public have?

I think that's all gonna be developed as we'll get your feedback on, all the council's feedback on this. There are some highly technical stuff. There are, Sigma, for example, has technical committees that meet. Others have sort of working committees and so forth. So all that'll be developed as we move forward.

Thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Tony? You know, can you just show us a slide where all the partners are and the leaders, please? I was interested in what you said, working on a framework to work together in a collaborative effort. Yes, right there, please. How do you see what these stakeholders Because as we're looking at this water issue, it's our livelihood. But I hear so much confrontation from each group. When do we say, you know what, let's figure out a way to work together where we can all win at this? How do you see, because you know what, sometimes I've even asked the Mayor from time to time, sometimes we've got a small group of, whether it's a committee, a commission or whatever, and we don't seem to agree on a lot of things. And I see a small group, can't we just resolve this? So I see this group of professionals, but I know we all have our interests. But what do you see as, going back to your, Would you set the framework to work together? Do you see that it's happening?

So that is really the goal of this whole thing is to collaborate more, right? Have a more collaborative process, set up a framework where you can have that space to collaborate on a regular basis. So with the whole idea of the One Water Leaders Group is the space where the different entities can come and report out what they're working on and I think Renee mentioned there's opportunities for grant funding. If you wanna go after grant funds, a regional approach is always more attractive to the funders, so it gives you a space to talk about, oh, okay, yeah, we can work together on this. So I think that's the whole point, is to try to improve communication and collaboration.

And I like that, but when I hear more, hey, well, we need to put some committees in place and all that, I think sometimes when you start bringing even more people, the thing starts getting even more complicated until everybody says, let's put everything on the table. How can we all win at this? So I guess that's my objective as a council member is, how can we get to the point where everybody gets a slice, as Council Member Barajas says, the slice of the pie, And we all win. Hopefully that's what we're after, man.

You know, that is the goal. But let's just, let me try to put it in perspective from sort of how my thought process is, is regardless of all these agencies, Salinas is 160,000 plus people. We provide the largest revenue source among water because we have the most people, so we're paying. We have our own wastewater system, we have our own industrial wastewater system at four million gallons per day capacity. I think we disposed domestic water went from 12 to 14 million gallons per day. So when you add that up, it's 16 plus up to 20 depending on the season of water. We gotta figure out what to do with our water. So even if we can't connect with all of them, we still have to figure out a vision for the city of Salinas. Now, the One Water Road Mass, I understand it, because they've done it, it's been done in Colorado and other states and other areas, is bringing stakeholders together. Can we begin to have those conversations? SGMA's an effort to do that in a very sort of focused way from a groundwater perspective. And they're trying to balance a lot of stuff. We are part of that. We're also part of Monterey One Water. We also have... four Board of Supervisors representing the city of Salinas, and we got the County Water Agency. So what's our place in all these places? And so we gotta start somewhere. And this is the reason why the One Water I think is so, the potential is so vast that it begins to sort of bring everybody together to have those conversations. And they've happened, but they've happened in different sort of focus. We're looking at it from what's the best for our residents, what's the best for economic development, what's our place in this region, AND WHAT DO WE BRING TO THE TABLE? WE HAVE 160,000-PLUS RESIDENTS. WE USE A LOT OF WATER. WE HAVE THE LARGEST COMMERCE INDUSTRY IN THE CENTRAL COAST THAT USES A LOT OF WATER. WE'RE SURROUNDED BY AD THAT RELIES ON AND USES A LOT OF WATER. SO FROM A SALINAS PERSPECTIVE, I THINK WE CAN BE SORT OF THE CONVENER OF THIS, STILL RECOGNIZING THAT WE HAVE TO HAVE A VISION FOR OUR COMMUNITY, FOR THIS COMMUNITY IN WATER. We care you that is sort of your question goes to the core of the one water plant is how do we get folks together to really have these conversations that need to occur and take action. We have to figure this out. Whether we have half of them working with us or none of them working with us or all of them working with us. We need to be a part of that.

Yeah. Thank you. Okay.

No questions, but to further add to another analogy of like a carrot and a stick with Sigma compliance, we do have Sigma compliance coming up by 2040. And we also have Salinas aside from kind of being the county seat and having that leverage. We also have Speaker Rivas representing the city of Salinas. We also have Senator Laird, there's a budget committee at the state level. So we have a lot going for Salinas that we can leverage in the coming years to get projects online and really make things happen out here. Thank you.

All right, anything?

get comfortable in my seat first before making my comments. I wanted to go back to, again, stakeholders. So I'm looking at the Salinas One Water Roadmap, and I believe it was also in one of your slides in the PowerPoint presentation. So in terms of the stakeholders, I also want to make sure that that there's some effort made to reach out to the hospitality. Having lived and worked in this county almost all my life, we know that this county, the two major industries is agriculture and hospitality. And when it comes to water, they have their own set of respective politics as it relates to water and water politics. AGAIN, WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE SURE THAT EVERYONE IS AT THE TABLE WHEN IT COMES TO AN ISSUE THAT CAN BECOME VERY, VERY CONTENTIOUS. I WAS LOOKING AT THE LIST AND HAVING FOLLOWED OUR OWN POLITICS OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF 20 YEARS, I DO SEE SOME OF THE USUAL SUSPECTS. And so having seen some of those usual suspects, there are organizations that they're also involved in, and those organizations have their respective political agendas, including political agendas regarding water. So I can almost hear some of the issues that they will be bringing up as we're trying to move this THIS FORWARD. ALL WE CAN DO IS ASK THAT EVERYBODY PUT THEIR BEST FOOT FORWARD AND WE CONTINUE TO TRY TO IDENTIFY ISSUES AND BE OPEN TO SOLUTIONS THAT EVERYONE HAS TO PRESENT. THE SECOND THING I WANT TO BRING UP AS I TAKE A LOOK AT THE STAKEHOLDER AND THE STAKEHOLDER CONNECTIONS, AGAIN, I'M REFERRING TO PAGE 10 IN THE SALINAS 1 WATER ROAD MAP. WITH ANY ORGANIZATION WHEN IT COMES TO AN ISSUE LIKE WATER, I ALWAYS LIKE TO ASK AND ADVOCATE FOR GEOGRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION, RIGHT? BECAUSE WATER, WATER ISSUES, WATER POLITICS IN NORTH COUNTY, IT'S GOING TO BE VERY DIFFERENT THAN WATER IN SALINA, SOUTH COUNTY, AND THE PENINSULA. AS WE LOOK AT OUR REGIONAL LEADERS, WHETHER THEY'RE AN ELECTED AND OFFICIAL OR APPOINTED OR JUST SEEN AS A COMMUNITY LEADER, Again, when I think about areas like Castroville, right, that doesn't have a real formal form of government, right? They don't have a city council, they don't have a mayor, they're relying upon their respective county supervisor. And so as you look at South County, you know, South County too being so geographically large and distant from one another, I wanna make sure that there's that representation. and then equally with Salinas and the peninsula. So again, when I think about water and people trying to address our larger water issues. When I think about our county and when I think about Salinas, North County, South County and the peninsula, I'd also like to make sure that even some of our grassroots organizations also have a seat at the table, preferably at least one from each one of those kind of geographical areas. might be a big lift, might push for a larger size group, and the larger size group that you have, the more different opinions that you have, but those opinions should be and need to be at the table. The other sector that I think also probably needs to be KEPT INFORMED AND IN THE LOOP IS OUR MEDIA, OUR LOCAL MEDIA, RADIO AND TELEVISION AND NEWSPAPER. BUT THEN AGAIN, AS I LOOK BACK AT SALINA'S AND SALINA'S WATER, some of those water issues, even some of our media have their own political agendas when it relates to water. At the same time, that is our venue to get whatever conversations are happening at the table back to the community so that the community can at least be involved. And I would just hope that our local media, whether it's Spanish or English media, that they're continuing to follow this work and report that out on our local television stations. And so again, this issue, when it comes to stakeholders, just want to make sure that we have the right group, the right working group, and the commitment to work together.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rayla.

Laura?

Some of my questions have been answered. So I don't have any other questions right now. I have comments at the end.

So I guess my big question, I'm trying to wrap my head around this, is this is water available to the entire region from throughout the county, the peninsula, et cetera, right? Water availability and usage? Or no?

No.

Okay, thank you.

So our starting point is the city of Salinas. Okay. And our starting point is how do we develop a vision and we recognize we have partners. Some of the folks that have been mentioned today are frankly not necessarily our partners. And it was never envisioned, unless this is what the council wants us to focus on, to really go broad. We don't want to replicate efforts that are already underway. We don't want to replicate the SGMA effort, which has a variety of stakeholders. that represents a variety of groups that is geographical based on the aquifers and so forth. So that's not what we're saying here. But SGMA is a partner because what's happening there impacts Salinas and we also have to participate. So that's why they're a partner. Another example is Monterey One Water. We provide PROBABLY 14 MILLION GALLONS PER DAY TO THEM, SO THEY'RE OUR MAJOR PARTNER WHEN IT COMES TO WATER. WE HAVE TWO WATER AGENCIES THAT PROVIDE WATER FOR THE CITY OF SALINAS, ALCOHOL, SMALL, AND THEN CAL WATER. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE CONSIDERED A CRITICAL PARTNER. MONTEREY COUNTY WATER AGENCY, TO THE MONTEREY COUNTY AND THE BOARD AND SO FORTH, THEY ALSO ARE A SIGNIFICANT PLAYER BECAUSE WE HAVE RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEM THROUGH OUR INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER AND HOW WE DISPOSE SOME OF OUR WATER. SO THAT WAS THE START. Certainly as this evolves and we need other partners at the table, we will definitely have other partners, but we're hoping, we don't want to replicate and duplicate efforts that are already underway, because then it becomes really unwieldy. We trust that these other efforts that have various stakeholders, they're being represented by them participating with us. We also, for example, TRUST THAT YOU KNOW OUR PROFESSIONAL DEPARTMENT COMMUNITY AND OUR COUNCIL AND EVERYTHING AS WE BRING THINGS FORWARD CERTAINLY WE'RE REPRESENTING THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CITY OF SALINAS SO IT'S SORT OF A BALANCING ACT SO THE STARTING POINT IN CITY OF SALINAS AND WE'RE TRYING TO BRING THIS SORT OF STATE INVITE THE STAKEHOLDERS TO PARTICIPATE WITH US.

OK, that's helpful. That helps me frame it a little bit better. I mean, I noticed that the city of Salinas was the only one mentioned as a city. And then Monterey County Board of Supervisors, obviously, they represent the county. So I'm just trying to figure out how this all works. I guess my number one question is, and I applaud you for doing this, because I think we need to take care of ourselves in the long run. But because there's been such a lack of trust with water and everyone having such competing interests and priorities, what is the number one thing that you think we can do to help rebuild that trust and get the collaboration?

Well, and so maybe to go back to your first question, the second slide that I showed was the goal of the project. And it is centered around the city, because the city can only control what the city is doing, right? But to be successful in the water space, we have to recognize that this is a resource that is used broadly by people not just in the city, but in the whole region. Building trust, of course, takes time. I think it goes back to this idea that we have of trying to start facilitating regular meetings where people can talk about what they're working on so that there's an even exchange of information and open and honest. Hopefully, over time, some of that trust will come back.

Thank you for that. And then I guess I'd like you guys to consider maybe moving water storage up on the timeline. To me, a tenure project seems so long, and I think this is so urgent. And water is going to become more and more urgent as we grow our population even further. and the demand for water and affordable water and clean water and safe water, as someone else mentioned. So I think storage is a really big piece of that because we do have water coming in there that we're not able to keep here for usage. So that's a huge concern of mine. So I'm hoping that as time goes on, we can move that up on the timeline, if you would at least consider that, looking at ways to start having those conversations sooner rather than later.

Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. We'll go ahead and go out to the public.

Daniel Munoz, East Salinas resident. I'm glad that we're concerned about our water, but in the grand scheme of things, ag is poisoning all the water surrounding us. So what's the point? We're just gonna give them as much water as they want. Eventually we're gonna run out of water here and we're gonna have to make a decision whether it's us or agriculture. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is the reality that we're facing. So we could keep putting lipstick on a pig all we want, but it's still a pig. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, anyone else? All right, we'll go to Zoom. Jose?

Good afternoon, Jose Garamonte community. I think it's a great project to start. The problem I'm having with is this. Anytime that you have stakeholders involved in this, it's touchy. The reason why is this. They have their own agenda. They're going to give you limited information and they do this all the time. I've seen it at council meetings. Me personally, why don't we build a water treatment system? Let's quit worrying about where to throw the water away. Let's recycle it. I know Ag has their own water treatment system. Why can't Salinas do that? And we can prevent, like Mr. Munoz said, our water being poisoned through Ag. Also, I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Something tells me here that these stakeholders might be planning in the future years to put an AI center there. That's why they want to take control of the water. This is a problem I have with that. A lot of AI centers are coming up and people are not being told the truth. This looks like a stepping stone towards that. I would be very cautious as a citizen. I would pay very close attention to this thing going on now. Thank you all for all my comments. God bless you guys. Have a good night.

Thank you. All right. Anyone else? Alright, we will come back this. This is an action item. Are there final final comments and before and then look for motion and I'll have comments after if there's a motion. We're looking for well, Gloria.

I'd like to make a motion to approve, but my comments are water is precious to everyone. Water is gold. I remember attending some of those meetings and let me tell you, yes, everyone wants water, needs water. So again, I like the stakeholders that are involved, but again, you said something very important. We know you have to build that trust amongst each other, the stakeholders, and the key word is collaboration. and respect for one another's, you know, as a group, we have to respect each other. So those are my comments. Thank you very much for the report.

Okay, I'll go ahead and second the motion and then if there are any final comments.

Well, my, my comments are that I'm requesting that the meetings be held publicly and that we expand. Because all of those are all various stakeholders amongst government agencies. The need for community community advisory or. Conservation advocates, I think those, those folks need to be at the table. And so that's my request as we approve this, that the meetings are public and that we include advocacy groups as part of this conversation. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, would part of the motion be that, that it be in public, or is that possible? Uh-huh.

It's possible council member, but I just want to go back to what was said at the beginning. This is just the start of a very long. An intense conversation there, I think will be opportunities for the public to participate. The question is. at what level and at what stage. So I would request that the council reserve that as we come back to the council with further updates on our progress, and then we can certainly have that conversation as to where and how the public gets plugged into these ongoing conversations, which are gonna be over years.

If I may also add, there also are conservation seats on several of these agencies and public member seats on several of these agencies. So they are already represented. This would just be an additional body that they would have representation on.

Yeah. And thank you, Jose.

I'd like to pick up on that. The chart with all the different agencies, to Jose's point, the city manager has made it. And then Jose, Gloria, and I have sat on these boards. public bodies, highly visible, good representation. For instance, MW1 certainly picks up the cities and districts. And then as Jose said, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Group, that's a JPA. And I think to Chris's point, What I see going on is if we look back, I think what this report surfaces, it's a snapshot of water as we understand it today, but once you throw in Salinas' anticipated growth, some of the projects that are being discussed in other agencies without financial vehicles to get them built, knowing we're living in a changing funding environment, state and federal, that a couple of things strike me. One, there becomes a need to take an integrated look of what's on You know, whatever what everybody's looking at and then and and so doing so, does that create opportunities? You know, for instance, we heard mention of the infrastructure summit and, you know, are there different ways to explore different financial tools? So, working closely with agriculture, does that become an opportunity? to finance, possibly spread costs, possibly lower costs because all of us are under, you know, raising, you know, nobody wants to raise taxes. So in the end, is there an opportunity? But the big thing is I look at it, if you look at it, if you view it as kind of scales, The scale and I don't say this in any negative way, but the scales of all the agencies there's been there's been a real peninsula focus and that's fine. They've had they've had they've had serious issues. And obviously there's been a shift from Sacramento. Hey, build housing, but now you have to meet that objective. So once you kind of look at the scale and you look at our population and you look at some of the nature of these projects across the board, you basically get kind of a saliness rising effect that all the other agencies were sitting there, but the emergence of our anticipated growth the need to comply, and to Jose's point, the SGMA has to be in a decision loop now in terms of projects to send forward in anticipation of 2040. So that time is now for, as things kind of converge around where Salinas is going, as opposed to where we are, we need to think ahead. Because one thing we've learned is when you punt on big projects, they cost a heck of a lot more 10 years down the road. And then to Margaret's point, this integrated look, if we sometimes, You know, well, this is all I can get away with as opposed to we're an important we're an important area in terms of in terms of fresh supply, you know, the supply chain. And so we do need to look at everything in total, because with to Jose's point. With some positioning in Sacramento, we may be able to make the case, hey, this is an important area, so let's look at the whole thing. So that's really the process that in my mind is really underway here. And I can envision no scenario where folks can work on water privately. But we need to set up shop because we're also going to be engaging these other agencies. Because I can tell you there's some concern when, well, now Salinas is kind of asserting themselves a bit more. And we want to do it collaboratively, but we also have to assert ourselves because I think we have a pretty clear understanding of where we're going. Yeah. So that's why all this is occurring, and I think Corallo has done a great job setting the framework to help us to begin to think through this process and get us ready for the future.

And you know what, to your point, thank you for that, but I'm hearing about here with these professionals, how do we develop trust? The public is telling us, how do they develop trust with us? It seems like nobody trusts nobody here. So that's, and I think what I have learned, and again, whatever's in front of the public, they can interpret it how they want, but at least we did our due diligence. You understand what I'm saying?

Well, the 1 thing I can tell you is a lot of people trust corral. So we've got the right right folks on the job as a technical advisor. So that, you know, I mean, well, regarded well, respected used by multiple. Agencies, so so I think that's a good place to start. Let's do it. All right then. Let's do it.

Well, my comments, my comments are this, uh. As we develop this. I'm trying to understand why the logic would be that we, in the future. Make a decision about whether or not these meetings are public. As far as the community trusting the consultant, that's great. I mean, these many people trusting them, but I think. If you were to pull the residents of Salinas, they would not know who they are. So I also don't see the opposition to. An advisor, a community advisory board, or some kind of public facing resident board to give input along the process. So, if we don't establish a baseline for. This being public at what point are we going to come back and say, well, we may have had a couple of meetings of those stakeholders. Okay, let's include the public. Why don't we just proactively include the public? I don't understand what the opposition would be.

All right. Thank you, council member. All right. We have a motion and a second call for the question.

Well, then I'd like to make a substitute motion that we make these stakeholder meetings public and that we incorporate a community advisory board.

Mr. Callahan, I'm listening to what Council Member Sandoval is, and I agree with the content of his words, but I would like you to, as far as this process, where do you see that happening? Because I also believe if there's nothing to hide, let's put it in front of the public, but what do you say about this?

I don't disagree that the public needs to be a part of this process and needs to see what's going on. The point that I was making and I think the point that the city manager made is we don't know yet when those meetings will occur. We don't know what types of meetings will occur. We don't know when it would be the most appropriate time to engage the public in information that would be beneficial to them. That was my comment and that was the point of We're going to come back to the council. We're going to continue to flush this out, give us an opportunity to better define when that public engagement occurs. We're not saying the public is not going to be engaged or a part of this process. We're saying the exact opposite. The public necessarily has to be a part of this process. It's just defining the best point at which that public is engaged.

Thank you.

To add to it, just like similar to the point on the landscape and maintenance districts, the previous consultant also mentioned having a public, you know, community meetings, but there was no opposition to that, right? So really what's the difference with this? At some point in the future, they're gonna be coming back to the community and having those meetings in some way, shape or form. But again, they're waiting to have

something to package that they can't present to the community and we're clearly not in a stage now to present something to the community so that that was a motion okay motion dies for lack of a second go ahead and call for the question council member barajas yes council member barrera yes council member de rigo yes council member de la rosa yes council member salazar hi council member sandoval no Mayor Donahue?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Okay, thank you. All right, we are going to talk about disrupting technology and then following that we will take a break.

Good afternoon, Council. My name is Alexis Mejia, and I am the Assistant City Clerk presenting the Technology Disruption Policy today. We're asking Council to approve a resolution adopting such policy in accordance with SB 707. SB 707 was enacted in 2025 and provided many updates to the Brown Act, one of those being requiring local legislative bodies to provide two-way remote public access to meetings so that members of the public are able to join in or provide public comment virtually. We currently have Zoom webinar and we have been using such platforms since 2020 to allow remote participation. The other component of SB707 is to adopt a policy that addresses disruptions of such platform during meetings. The proposed policy highlights that if this were the case, Council would recess for up to an hour to allow time to restore service. If we are able to get Zoom up and running within the hour, then the meeting would proceed as is. If we are unsuccessful after the hour has passed, then we would At that point, have two options for the council. One would be to continue the meeting as is, as the public interest of continuing the meeting outweighs the public interest in remote access. Or two, we would just adjourn the meeting and the meeting minutes would reflect that it was due to the technology disruption of Zoom going down. The full policy is in your agenda packet and I am happy to answer any questions.

Any questions, comments? No disruptions here.

Okay.

All right. Andrew, anything?

No. Okay. This is an action item. Is there, or go out to the public. Okay. Anyone on Zoom?

Okay.

Okay. Jose?

Good afternoon, Nosegada Montevideo community. Alexis, that is a great, great presentation. Awesome. I believe this is a good way of representing that you are going to be working with the public, which is good. I appreciate that. I agree with it. Hopefully it goes through, and God bless you guys. Have a good night.

All right, this requires a motion.

So moved. Second.

Alexis? Why don't we go ahead and call for the question?

Councilmember Barajas? Yes. Councilmember Barrera? Yes. Councilmember DeRigo? Yes. Councilmember De La Rosa? Yes. Councilmember Salazar?

Aye.

Councilmember Sandoval?

Yes.

Mayor Donahue?

Yes. Motion passes. All right, we will take a 20 minute break.

Thank you.

Mr. Leonard, we're looking for you to talk about the Alisal Vibrancy Plan and the Alisal Marketplace Update.

Yes, good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Grant Leonard, Planning Manager for Advanced Planning Project Implementation in your Community Development Department. And I'll be presenting tonight the first half of this presentation, which is an update, a global update about our progress on the Alisal Vibrancy Plan implementation. And then I'll hand it off to the deputy director of economic development to give a more focused conversation about economic development opportunities and the Alice Hall marketplace. So here it is outlined some of those more detailed agenda for what we'll cover on those topics. And as a refresher, the ALSAL vibrancy plan was completed in 2019 after several years of robust community engagement. It really is a plan that came from the community, and it was meant to be action-oriented and comprehensive. and a key strategy to help revitalize and reinvest in the east side of Salinas in the Alisal neighborhood. And it focused on five key priority areas, including appearance, cleanliness, safety and infrastructure, parks and open space, and of course economic development. And focused on being action-oriented, the last chapter of the plan, Chapter 10, is a detailed, implementation strategy and included as a attachment to your staff report is an equally detailed line-by-line progress update for that chapter. We'll cover the highlights though today. So for those not familiar, this is the Alisal Vigilancy Plan area. It includes areas east of US 101 in the federally designated redevelopment area, as well as the location to the west of US 101 adjacent to the railroad tracks, which is the Alisal Marketplace bounded by both Alisal Street and Market Street. SO THE ALISAL VITAMIN C PLAN WAS IN SOME SENSE A LITTLE HIGH LEVEL IN SOME REGARDS. AND SO TAKING IT FROM THAT 30,000 FOOT ELEVATION DOWN TO THE 10,000 FOOT ELEVATION WAS THE ALISAL DISTRICT IDENTITY MASTER PLAN. AND THIS WAS INITIATED IN 2023 AND COMPLETED IN 2024. AND IT FOCUSED ON A NUMBER OF IMPORTANT ASPECTS INCLUDING NEIGHBORHOOD BRANDING, INCREASING NEIGHBORHOOD ARTWORK, NEAR-TERM PRIORITIES FOR IMPROVING THE STREET SCAPE SO AS YOU DRIVE THROUGH OR WALK THROUGH, HOW THE NEIGHBORHOOD CAN BE MORE VIBRANT AND INVITING. AND THIS ALSO RECEIVED A NORTHERN CALIFORNIA PLANNING AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN URBAN DESIGN. 2022 the city received a clean California local grant program grant of over two million dollars to fund infrastructure and beautification improvements in the LSL This focused on things like planting new trees installing or refurbishing existing benches installing new trash corrals to help with litter abatement and completing a reconstruction of the bread box patio on North Sanborn and And that was completed last year, the infrastructure portion. And being completed this year are a number of public art projects. And there's a detailed report on the Clean California art projects on the consent agenda. But some highlights seen here on the screen are new banners that have been installed along East Alice House Street that include artwork from local artists and photography from local photographers. The city partnered with Ecology Action and the Transportation Agency for Monterey County to work with school districts and local students to design and install sidewalk art on the safe routes to schools throughout the Alicelle neighborhood featured there. IN FRONT OF THE LIBRARY AND IN FRONT OF ONE OF THE PARKS. AND THEN ON THE BOTTOM LEFT SIDE OF THE SCREEN IS A NEW MONUMENT THAT HAS BEEN DESIGNATED FOR THE SKYWAY ALISAL STREET ROUNDABOUT AND THAT'S ALSO ON YOUR CONSENT AGENDA. IT'S A BEAUTIFULLY COLORED MOSAIC NATURE THEMED MONUMENT AND THAT'S CONSISTENT WITH THE ALISAL VIBRANCY PLAN WHICH CALLED FOR MORE GATEWAY ELEMENTS THROUGHOUT THE NEIGHBORHOOD. Also, you'll see new artwork along the freshly installed trash corrals on East Alicelle. They came to us as a plain gray metal, and we worked with local artists and local photographers to design and install decorative wraps, which are featured there in the bottom center of the screen. And finally, on the bottom right-hand of the screen, you'll see a new mural, which has been designed and is soon to be installed on the boxing club at Closter Park. And it also is equally colorful and it features scenes of the activities that you'll see at Closter Park like baseball and boxing and basketball practice all included in the mural. So for all these projects and for all the projects related to the Alice Hall Vibrancy Plan, community outreach is key, continuing to keep the neighbors and the community members engaged as we implement these projects. So this is an example of the work that was done for that mural at the boxing club. The neighborhood immediately adjacent to Closter Park was canvassed with door hangers and staff engaged with community members to talk about the murals with them. We had a online community survey that people could vote for the four finalists, which was their top pick. And then we did direct outreach. You'll see the photograph there of city staff doing a pop-up with the actual kids at the boxing club so we could get their input on what kind of art they wanted on their building. So that mural was intended to be completed earlier than this year. However, it coincided with the reconstruction of Closter Park. And painting a mural on a building is not a good idea when there's heavy equipment and dust and all sorts of things going around. So we took a pause on it. But as Closter Park is nearing completion of its reconstruction, we'll be moving forward with the installation of the mural this summer. AND WE'LL BE LOOKING FORWARD WITH LIBRARY COMMUNITY SERVICES TO REOPENING CLOSTER PARK LATER THIS YEAR AS WELL. ALSO IN TERMS OF REHABILITATING CITY PARKS IN THE EAST SIDE, THE ELGABLON PARK IMPROVEMENT IS MOVING FORWARD. CURRENTLY IT IS A BASIC FACILITY WITH AN ASPHALT PAVED AREA FOR ALL ACTIVITIES IN A SMALL PLACE STRUCTURE. And through a $1.2 million project, it'll be fully rehabilitated with a multi-use court. And that is fully funded through the city's Alisal Vibrancy Plan, a capital improvement program, whereas other park improvement projects like Kloster or Cesar Chavez have been primarily funded through state grants with a local match. A good example of that is the Hebron Family Center, which was completely reconstructed using state and federal funds with a small local match. And was reopened this spring and is just chock full of activities and is a wonderful community asset now. And that too was a top priority of the Alice Hall Vigilancy Plan was to reconstruct that family center. And then in terms of economic development activities, key to a vibrant community is a vibrant economy. So this is an example of one of our programs we're partnering with economic development on, which is the Alicelle Commercial Facade Pilot Program, improvement program. And this is $600,000 program funded through the Capital Improvement Program, the Alisal Vibrancy Plan, CIP. And it allows local businesses in the Alisal neighborhood to apply for either a $7,500 grant to improve their storefront or a $20,000 forgivable loan. To improve things is sort of called out there in the infographic here. your awning, your signage, your painting, so that your business is more attractive from the street and the sidewalk level and more inviting for community members. And we currently have 11 applicants, over $120,000 in funds requested, and those are moving through the permitting process now, and we look to have them start to be installed and completed over the summer. And then also on the theme of keeping our business corridors clean, the city contracts with two local service providers, one currently but two in the past, to provide supplemental cleanup services along the major commercial corridors in the LSL. THE PREVIOUS PROVIDER WAS DOWNTOWN STREETS TEAM BUT THEY WENT OUT OF BUSINESS. AND THE OTHER PROVIDER IS HOPE SERVICES. THEY ARE STILL VERY MUCH COMMITTED TO THE COMMUNITY AND THE CITY IS CONTRACTED WITH THEM FOR THREE YEARS NOW AND WE'RE ENTERING OUR FOURTH YEAR OF SERVICE WITH THEM. AND WHAT THAT DOES IS IT'S A UNIQUE PROGRAM WHERE DISABLED INDIVIDUALS RECEIVE EMPLOYMENT AND JOB TRAINING. And in our case, they walk the commercial corridors and they clean up extra litter and put it into the new trash barrels that have been installed along the aisle cell. Keep it looking nice. So in total in terms of the budget allocation for the LSL vibrancy plan The City Council has allocated almost five and a half million dollars over three fiscal years that went into the capital improvement program and that's been nice and that As projects or programs come up, the funding is readily available. It's dedicated to implementing the All-Sale Vibrancy Plan, which has allowed us to leverage that considerably to receive state and federal grants for Hebron Family Center, Closter Park, the Williams Road Safe Streets for All project. And there the pie chart illustrates the different categories where the funding has been dedicated from economic development to parks and recreation being the largest, safety, cleanliness, et cetera. So approximately 50% of the CIP funds have been expended, and almost all of the remaining have been allocated to the current projects we're working on. The largest is featured here in blue. It's the El Gabilan Park, which I mentioned is fully funded CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM, BUT ALSO THE $600,000 FACADE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM, SOME BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY, SMALL BUSINESS GRANTS, MAINTENANCE FOR THE CLEAN CALIFORNIA INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS THAT WE'VE RECEIVED. WE HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO THE STATE TO MAINTAIN THOSE IMPROVEMENTS. and then continued commercial corridor cleanups so a number of these projects are scheduled to be completed this year including the mural installations and even el gabalon park we have a signed agreement for a contractor so we'll be starting construction this year so a lot of these funds will be expended in this coming fiscal year starting tomorrow And the remaining portion will be continued for those ongoing programs like the facade improvement or the commercial corridors. So with that, that's the brief update on several years of work and accomplishments related to the AVP. I'll be happy to take questions at the end of the presentation, but for now, we'll hand it over to Nathan to give an update on the LSL marketplace and economic development opportunities.

evening council my name is nathan cute your deputy director for economic development i want to thank you grant uh what you just heard covers the strong foundations that the city has built through the alisal vibrancy plan the murals the parks the cleanliness the programs the district master plan so that work really matters it's progressing but my section kind of picks off where that leaves off toward the forward future looking the opportunities from economic development So before I do that, just want to get us kind of all situated in the same area, geography. So the Alice Hill Marketplace lives in between the Alice Hill Vibrancy Plant on the neighborhoods on the right and the city center. So looking at that, traditionally there has been a challenge with the transfer station, which has been a major obstacle to some of the redevelopment. But through recent development, it's been a new catalyst for new opportunities coming down the line. So we partnered with one of our consultants, Cosmon, and they've identified opportunity sites in the adjacent to the marketplace. And I wanted to focus, Council, on three of them, in particular with the sites that are either in active development, ones that we're pursuing, or sites that we already own. We're not trying to choose every single one and boil the ocean. It's more like we're choosing one or two and really focusing our efforts there. That way we have the highest return on investment for the community. So site one is the MST former transfer station on Commission Street. Things are already moving there. This is our most advanced opportunity where we can potentially have our highest return on investment. Site two is the Unicole project on John and Abbott. LARGEST SINGLE OPPORTUNITY IN THE MARKETPLACE IS 22 ACRES, AND WE ARE CURRENTLY PURSUING THAT AT THE MOMENT. AND THEN SITE THREE IS OUR OWN CITY-OWNED PROPERTY, THE CORP YARD ON WORK STREET AND THE CAR WASH ON EAST ALISAL. THESE ARE PARCELS THAT WE DIRECTLY CONTROL, AND THEN WE HAVE POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES TO DEVELOP IN THE FUTURE. CIRCLING BACK TO WHAT I WAS SAYING WITH SITE ONE, SO THIS IS THE MST, THE FORMER TRANSFER STATION. THIS IS OUR MOST ADVANCED OPPORTUNITY WE HAVE IN THE MARKETPLACE RIGHT NOW. We didn't have to ask MSC to come. They came on their own accord for that, and they're really kind of developing out the area. What they're proposing is a bus maintenance facility with parking, which brings permanent stable jobs in the district, a community hub, an office space, technology training for zero-emission transit careers, and a public plaza with arts and facades. ON THE COMMISSION STREET IS FRONTAGE. AND THE LOCATION IN ITSELF IS AN ASSET. SO THIS IS REALLY WHAT THE ALLISON LIBERNACY PLAN WAS ASKING FOR. IT WORKS IN TANDEM WITH IT. IT BRINGS JOBS, TRAINING, COMMUNITY SPACE AND ACTIVATION OF LOCAL BUSINESSES. SO OUR ROLE REALLY IS TO STAY IN CLOSE COORDINATION WITH MST. THEY RECENTLY ACQUIRED IT LAST MONTH. SO THIS IS AN ONGOING PROJECT THAT WE'RE WORKING FORWARD. Our next available opportunity is the Unicole site. So the Unicole site is on John and Abbott. It's the largest single opportunity in the marketplace. So it's 22.74 acres. It's entitled and has a seven phase mixed use development hotel, mixed use project in the future. This is really a great opportunity to look at the surrounding areas, the soccer complex, you know, flagging and potential hotel in that location, bringing future TOT into the area. And from there, we've also commissioned in the future a hotel study to take advantage of that moving forward and potentially an enhanced infrastructure financing district. And finally, I'll talk about our city-owned property. So the Corp Yard at 410 Work Street is about 5.2 acres. It's currently in active use by Public Works. So before any redevelopment happens there, that's a conversation that we have to have. what Public Works does and where the operations goes from there. And then we have the car wash at 282 East Alice Hall. It's smaller, it's about under half an acre, but it has potential in early stage opportunities. And so those are the sites that we control. So circling back to close, five things we're tracking. MST, that we stay close with the acquisition on the process right there and as they progress. The Unicol site, just engage with the developers, explore the feasibility of the hotels and the EIFDs and P3s. And then our own city-owned properties, what we do with Public Works as space is needed and demanded right there and evaluate the car wash on near-term independent opportunities. And then again, follow up that hotel study and the EFID for future infrastructure. And that is my presentation. Happy to take questions.

Thank you, Nathan. On the car wash that's operating currently, are you proposing to get rid of that and redevelop into something different? That's the one by the police station, correct? That's correct. Okay. Do you have any idea what that would look like? I'm sorry? Do you guys have a plan for that or what you might do with that property?

That is an ongoing conversation. We're exploring all opportunities.

Okay. And what was my other question? Oh, the Unicool, John and Abbott Street property. Is there also some talk about medical offices going in there as well, collaboration with the medical community? Okay, because I know they're running out of space as well, so they're probably looking to expand down Abbott.

Yeah, that's a great question. We are currently still pursuing coordination, communicating with developers right there. At the moment, it's kind of like falling off, but that's something we're still kind of pursuing. So when that time comes across, we're happy to have a conversation.

So earlier, well you were not with us, Council Member Rodrigo. I mentioned that there is activity moving forward on the development of the site, which includes exploring adjusting phasing. And part of that includes the incorporation of larger medical office space. It already did allow for that use, but in increased capacity and development opportunity there.

Okay, thank you. And then my final question is on the MST former transfer station. I'm trying to figure out exactly how that's situated. I see the railroad, but the rest of it, I can't really see where like Market Street is on that map that you showed us.

I'm sorry, your question?

Yeah, I'm just curious, like, where that's located on that big piece of property, which is, you know, obviously there's the railroad and the mayor's, first mayor's house, et cetera. So where is this development in proximity to all of those other things?

Yeah, it's off of, I believe, Sun Street and Constitution right there. And Commission, sorry.

Okay, okay, thank you. I was just trying to figure out how the map was situated. Okay, thank you. I'll reserve for comments.

Gloria?

Thank you, great presentation. I don't have any questions, I have comments.

No comments or questions at this time, but thank you for your presentation.

Okay. A few questions. On the commercial facade improvement plan, particularly on the CVS, which I know Councilmember De La Rosa has brought this issue up several times over the past couple months. Is there any update on any progress being made on the former CVS on east of North Sanborn, like abated property?

CVS on North Sanborn or the Walgreens on North Sanborn Walgreens, okay you know I'm not sure if there's a current progress on that or if it's still in the hands of Walgreens as they decide how to move forward with redeveloping it had been damaged in a storm several years ago and subsequently closed and property owners not yet move forward with reopening I

Is there something that we plan on doing? I know for a fact it's not included in the work plan or the matrix for this particular report, but that you all are aware of, is there something in the works in the next few years, couple of months? Or how do we engage in discussions with whoever owns this property? Because I know it's kind of an eyesore to where they're on Madeira and San Juan.

Yeah, I don't have an answer for you, but Lisa. I have an answer.

So I think this is a good example of an opportunity, a partnership with economic development and community development to identify these opportunity sites and work collaboratively to do proactive outreach to the property owners to engage them in that conversation. At this point, the focus has been more on securing the property and I'm not aware of any direct engagement with the property owner beyond the securing of the property. So this is an opportunity where economic development, community development can definitely partner to identify potential uses and redevelop the property.

Awesome. And along those same lines, the property immediately, I would say, I guess south to it, there's a large parcel of land that's empty all the way to like a car wash right there on North Sanborn between the former Walgreens and a car wash. Again, are there any plans or are we engaging discussions with whoever those property owners are for development or redevelopment?

that similar situation, no specific plans at this time, but appreciate the identification of potential opportunity sites that we can investigate.

Okay, and then as for the hotel feasibility study, is that feasibility study solely limited to the property identified for the unique cool site, or is that citywide? This will be a comprehensive citywide. Comprehensive citywide, and then will that be presented to the council at a later date once it's completed?

Happy to.

Okay, and then just one quick comment. This is not related to the Alisal vibrancy plan, rather to the Alisal marketplace. When I was first appointed to the Solid Waste Authority Board of Directors, one thing that was very interesting to me from all of our colleagues from the rest of the Valley is that they didn't understand why Salinas wanted a transit center out of the middle of Salinas. They're like, why wouldn't you want it? And so it's just interesting to see how that's really come about in them now selling that property and over to MST and really seeing that vision. Now they understand it. Just wanted to share that with you all.

Thank you. Yeah, Mr. Grant, on that small park, when do you think, are you working on it already?

Yes, there is a agreement for a general contractor that was, I believe, adopted in April. And so we're working on issuing a notice to proceed and organizing a groundbreaking in the near future.

And Mr. Grant, can you just share with the public some of these properties within the marketplace as well was bought from MST. The city didn't put a dime yet on that property, am I right? Because sometimes we're told that we're starting to do something new, but we haven't finished what we have in front of us. So can you just share a little bit as far as the financials? with this piece of property, the MST property.

Sure.

Thank you.

So the city did not come out of the funds. This is a purely MST funded project.

Yes. So as far as the, and you know, that really lines up really good with the marketplace vision. Am I right, Mr. Mendez?

it does and i think it's important to point out a few things so it lines up really well it really positions that entire area for more housing opportunities which while the the car wash is a small lot but it's got those kind of potentials as you kind of start moving up the marketplace i think and so and the city did we did not provide any funding BUT IF YOU RECALL, WHEN THE WAGE AUTHORITY WENT OUT ON THE SURPLUS LAND ACT PROCESS, EVERY PUBLIC AGENCY THAT WANTS TO DISPOSAL PROPERTY IS REQUIRED TO DO. THE CITY DID SEND A LETTER TO POSITION OURSELVES, AND THE IDEA WAS TO TRY TO PRESERVE IT FOR OTHER USE. AND MST WAS THE PERFECT SORT OF PARTNER. SO THEY, YOU KNOW, YOU'RE ON THE MST BOARD, SO YOU LOOKED AT IT AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO REALLY TORT A COALITION. SO WHILE THE CITY IS NOT INVESTING ANY MONEY, We did invest, we have representatives of both boards, Salinas-Alabasas Authority and MST, which is why it's important to be on those boards and undo. And the city did put forward a opportunity to reserve the space because we were really looking to sort of try to incentivize the right use of that property. And so the right use in this case turned out to be MST, which is gonna be a great partner.

And, you know, speaking on the cleanliness on that, Mr. Grant, did you say it's the HOPE? HOPE is the one that contracted with that?

That's correct. HOPE Services is our ongoing provider.

Yeah. You know, there's been a couple of times when, and I shared this with the city manager, when these beautiful receptacles cash cans get, There was this one gentleman, he got really angry and he lit it up on fire. So the whole thing was damaged. Are you able to either reconstruct that or bring a new one with the same art? Because vandalism does happen quite frequently out there.

Yes, that's been an unfortunate challenge with that design of trash enclosures, that they're susceptible to fires, very intense fires, which then damage the artwork and the whole corral. At that point, they're not salvageable. They need to be replaced. But what's unique about the artwork that we did on those is that we partnered with the community to submit their artwork to us or their photography to us as just a digital image. They emailed it in. So those can be reprinted and put onto the replacement trash crows. So the art is not lost. It's not like an original piece of art that was actually painted on there. If it's damaged, it can be replaced.

Yeah. So, you know, the sidewalk is the pedestrians are walking. Is that the city property or is that belongs to the merchants in front?

Is that the city sidewalk is the public right away to say property.

So being on maintenance. often would you say the city goes out there and gets the spray washer and because there are places that It gets pretty dirty to the point where it gets it gets stained where you need some pressure washing Any idea who's in charge of that?

you know, I don't know the sidewalk washing schedule, but Republic services is the trash provider who? Services the receptacles at least weekly and then hope services does a supplemental litter abatement three to four days a week Mr. Mayor are we doing comments as well or just questions questions and comments?

Well, I want to thank you for your work You know, I think this is an awesome project The marketplace is a long time coming I think it's starting to put itself in motion the parks are beautiful and Things are happening. I mean, to see the children at the beginning of this meeting. You know, those children are going to be productive individuals. In our community, because they got the staff to work with them. And I really see some good things happening and when we provide green space, especially when we maintain it. Families are going to be, you know, what's the big biggest safety component of cluster park when you open it. is when families feel safe there. When they come, the negative element starts disappearing. So we have to make it nice for them, clean bathrooms, the grass manicured, that way mom and the children wanna come to the park. So thank you.

Thank you, Tony.

Andrew?

Mayor Mrakas, yeah Thank you, but I know, one of the concerns the Council had when we dissolved suba was actively supporting the small businesses, and I know we have some grand opportunities for them, but what are we doing on the ground level to support those small businesses or provide them opportunities.

That's a great question, Councilmember. Thank you. So currently on our staff of community development, economic development, we have a business services navigator. So when they are initially getting set up, helps them be the ombudsman, just kind of navigate the city services and processes. And we're talking about programming, doing outreach to be in the communities, to be able to be a touch point, to be able to explain if there's any issues that we can help resolve on there. And we also have grant programs and support services in that sense, too.

Thank you.

Okay, this is, or let's go out to the public.

Daniel Munoz, East Salinas resident. I hear a lot of talk about trash cans being painted, sidewalks being painted. You know, I grew up on the east side and I didn't really see too many homeless people on the east side growing up. Maybe they were there, but I didn't see them. Now I see them all over the place. And we're talking about painting sidewalks. $5 million for painted trash cans and for this whole entourage of people to get paid to plan the painting of these sidewalks. And do you guys realize how ridiculous we look right now? We look stupid. We got homeless people all over Salinas and we're painting sidewalks. It's a waste of money. It's a waste of money. I don't know why I have to be the one to say it, but it's a waste of money. We need to help our residents. Alisal Vibrancy Plan, by painting a trash can, by putting a mural on the boxing gym that they didn't even fix. You guys didn't fix the boxing gym. You guys did a cluster park, the whole park, but skipped the gym. They did no work to the gym. They just painted the wall. That's the vibrancy plan, huh? That's what we got in our playbook? That's all we got? Paint the sidewalks? Like I said, I'll say it again. You could put lipstick on the pig, but it's still a pig. Fix our streets. Fix our potholes. Put speed bumps. People drive down the street that I live on going 60 miles an hour. It'd be nice if we had a speed bump. But you guys are worried about painting sidewalks. Help the residents, not the painting sidewalk.

Mr. Mayor, I think it's fair right now because that's a serious, I would like Ms. Lundquist to tell us there's been a lot of work inside that recreation. I would like the public to know that.

We'll make sure we do that. Okay, yeah, we'll make that part of the close. Okay, Marianne.

I'm Marianne Worden. You know, I've heard about this vibrant plan. This is the first time I've really seen it. I have never, ever, and I don't know of anybody out in the that was invited or told to come to any of these meetings. We were never invited to our opinion of what should be painted out there. Now, one thing that should not be out there is a big box in the middle of a roundabout. That roundabout is so dangerous. The trucks are always going over it. How long is that going to last? The plants that we planted, what, about six years ago, seven years ago? They're now starting to have to plant them again because they're all dead. We should be painting murals of what that Alisal was all about. Like all these other little towns that I've gone to that are reviving them, I'm not against anything Hispanic or anything like that, because they were part of us. But they're not the only thing that was part of Alisal. We should be telling this, if you're going to paint pictures, paint the story of what Alisal was and what it has become. So our children know the history of this. All they know is one history. They don't know what it took to build those wonderful stores and businesses that when I first came here and the homes and the apartments that I was here and the beautiful parks were. Now that little park, It was Optimist Park, ran by the Optimist Men, and they had their little organization there with boys in there. I lived out in that neighborhood. Al Gatlin is connected to North Salinas with the school and the library. Now, if you want to name it, name it Santa Lucia Park, like of our mountains and the library.

Thank you, Marianne.

Thank you.

OK, thank you. All right. Is there anyone on zoom? OK, Jose.

Good afternoon, also got a multi community to zero Mexico so far 40 minutes 42 seconds not to change the subject. Gentlemen, ladies, I didn't was invited to one of these meetings, the one where they're going to put the bird right there on Skyline Roundabout, that's the only meeting that gentleman, he didn't invite us, someone else did. Says he invited people, they put door tags, door hangers. No, they didn't. That's the only meeting I went to. And when I asked the question, a gentleman there got upset because I told him roundabouts don't work. But anyways, I let him know and I let also the young lady from the traffic commission know that ariana that we need to clean those roundabouts they're dirty they're filthy and i let benji know today actually yesterday excuse me on monday monday or tuesday yeah yesterday i'm sorry monday that if he could do that he said don't try to do that next week we need to clean what we have we need to finish the projects we have we don't need to fix every park all in one shot i'm sorry we've got a lot of parks they're not tended to 100 percent I'm not agreeing with what they say with Ms. Lindquist and Tony Barrera saying, oh, they're all beautiful. They're not all beautiful, Tony. They're all ran down. They all need to be watered. They're all dried up. They're not picking up the garbage in some areas. People are playing soccer they're not supposed to and ruining the grass. Tony don't know that because he don't come over here to Montevideo. He stays in his little area looking at his new park being built. Brand-new, beautiful park, and guess what? Your streets are awful. Fix the streets. Try to get grant money to fix our streets and potholes and sidewalks. You had a couple of sidewalks over here I believe on East Alice South. You did one right there off of Sherwood. Sherwood School. Wood Street. That's it. Why don't you do one lane of the street. You only did the sidewalk. You close the half of the street down. You could have did the sidewalk.

Thank you. All right. close public comment. This is not an action item, but if there are any final comments, and then Tony, you had a request.

Yes, I think sometimes the public hears certain things that are not necessarily all true. And I would like, if it's okay for Ms. Lundquist, there was a lot of work done inside the Colossal Park Recreation and also in other areas in the LSO.

Sure, thank you for the question. Kristen Lundquist, Library and Community Services Director. We just did a full restroom renovation, ADA upgrade to the restrooms in the Kloster Park Recreation Center. So they are state of the art, very well, DESIGNED AND LOOK FANTASTIC FOR THAT SPACE. BUT IN ADDITION TO THAT, AS GRANT, MY COLLEAGUE, WAS TALKING ABOUT THE MURAL, WE AREN'T JUST PAINTING A MURAL ON THAT WALL. WE ARE REFURBISHING AND DOING SOME OF THE STUCCO TO REPAIR THE EXTERIOR AND THEN WE'RE GOING TO PAINT THE ENTIRE BUILDING. SO WHILE WE DIDN'T HAVE THE FUNDING TO COMPLETELY RENOVATE THE RECREATION CENTER, We're addressing accessibility for the boxing club and nice restrooms, but then we're also making sure that the exterior fits in better with a renovated park.

Ms. Lundquist, just real quick, to the murals, you've had a lot of community meetings, I know, because I've been to not all of them, but some of them. Who picked the murals? The murals that you're putting up,

one that's at cluster the ones at cluster park cluster park or anywhere so generally speaking when we do mural projects there's a call for artists we'll bring those you know get get submissions submitted but then it's always important that we involve community and so my colleague grant spoke a lot about the outreach that was done for specifically for the cluster park mural and that's our approach really with any of the murals because it's important that we want residents to weigh in and help select the types of art we also do our best to try to get them engaged with what would they like to see as part of that design so that that's really our approach to murals across the city thank you

Okay, thank you. All right, Margaret.

Just one final comment on the commercial facade improvement pilot program. I would love to hear the report out on that when the pilot is complete, because it may be something you might want to consider in other areas of the city as well. I know you said the request for 120,000. I'm sure that that would be a lot bigger number, but I would love to hear how it goes and whether it's something you would recommend for other parts of Salinas as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Right, all right, with that, we. Excuse me, I have. Oh, Gloria, I'm sorry, I didn't see your hand.

I'm going to echo what Marianne Warden said. I think we really need to consider what she said on future murals in the Alicelle area. We should have conversations with the Art Council, so forth, and Parks and Rec Committee that we should consider the history. We're forgetting the history of the Alicelle. We need to be inclusive. Yes, all of us have given to the LSL. We continue to give. But really, if you really study the LSL history, people from Oklahoma came, people from Arkansas came. And I'm talking about they were there. during the dust bowl leaking. So I think we really need to consider that to include everyone in murals. And yeah, it's part of our history of the Alisal area. So that's a thought. And then all parks, all parks are important. Yes, we're doing a good job with the parks we're doing, but we just approved a budget, you know, and I think for the next budget, the next time we come around, we really have to work with the assessment of parks and really consider to look at our parks that exist right now. There are some major needs that are coming up. And I'm talking about tables and benches. And community members are coming and saying, look, Don't forget about our parks. So again, good job, good report, but we need to just send out the message to the community that we care about all parks.

Motion to approve.

Well, there's no action. Okay, good. But noted for future consideration. All right.

Sure. Consent for consent.

If you need a second so it doesn't die. All right. All right. We're going to go ahead and proceed to the consent agenda. And matters listed under the consent agenda may be enacted by one motion unless a member of the council requests a separate vote. For discussion, members of the public may comment on the consent agenda items collectively during their public comment. Would any council member like a separate vote or discussion on any of the consent items?

I need you guys to help me on the airport. Two items on the airport.

Okay. Okay, so 266 and 268. Thank you, sir. Okay.

289, 336, and 274.

Okay, Andrew, so 289. Could you repeat that again for me? I'm sorry.

289, 336, and 274.

336 and 274. Okay. All right. Anyone else, Margaret?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just have a brief comment on 300, please. Thank you.

Okay, anyone else?

292. 292.

266. Jose, I'm sorry, which one, 266? Okay. Okay, anyone else?

Mine will be on the airport. Where is it?

Okay, do you want both of them or 266?

On the, yeah. Archer? Yeah, on the Archer. 266, comment. OK.

Anything else?

All right, I'll comment on 336. And with that, we will go ahead and go out to public comment on any member who wishes to make a public comment may do so on the entire agenda. With that.

Daniel Munoz, East Salinas resident. I wanna talk about the Abbott Street 26173. I mean, how do we know that none of you guys told Don Chapin the lowest bid? How do we know that? We don't know that. We will never know that. You know, Dennis, you just had a fundraiser recently. Pretty sure you donated money to your campaign at his buddy's house, you remember, over there on the outskirts of Salinas, big horse in front of the house. Did he give you any money? Don Chapin, did he give you any money? What about Mr. Callahan? Can we make him the Levine Act? Does that account to the first year that they donated or does that now? Because I'm pretty sure he has a current campaign contributions from Don Chapin, the same person that's getting this contract. Another thing too, I did construction for some years and I know that the way that the contracts work and there's always extra work that they can add on top of the bill. So yeah, he gave us the lowest bid, but who's to say that he doesn't bump those fees up later and get what he really wants for the job. We don't know. So I think it's very convenient that he donates to more than half the people on the dais right now. Now whether the Levine Act is relevant or not because it's a year past, I think it's still a bad message that we're sending to the public. that Don Chapin just got half a million dollars. You gave him dollar leases on two of his passion projects that he's doing in the city. And now you're giving him a multimillion dollar contract, Dennis. And this is wild what you're doing. This is election season. You realize that people are not watching? Do you think nobody's watching what you're doing? It's blatant, Dennis. Make it less obvious. We know what you're doing.

So I wanted to comment on 292 about the Highway Patrol Tax Fund Grant. And I really think that this $400,000 grant should be part of a future agenda that it should, I mean, it should be shown to the public what kind of process, including the outlining and the technology and just all the activities involved in it. and um i'm guessing that it's to keep the illegal cannabis at bay but i'm not sure just by reading this what the you know what the process is and i'm not sure if that money is going to the chp or to the salinas pd or other people to like behavioral health type people so i just really think that and how they're going to implement it. It needs to be transparent because it's a lot of money. And so I'm guessing that you're going to set it up. It's not set up yet because it says establish a system. So if you're going to be setting it up, I think you need to bring it to the public. Thank you.

Good evening. Name is Eric Peterson. And just two questions on 173. First of all, this is a big pile of money, really big pile of money, our money. Why is it on the consent agenda? Something like this should be information given to the public without having to dig up the report. There's an awful lot of smaller things. that don't matter. This $13 million, that is a big pile of money. Second question, and I've got to disagree with Daniel on something. According to the report, Don Chasewood was number three, if I'm reading this right. That looks really bad. Granite construction is responsible. Granite Rock is responsible. There's two bidders. If I'm reading this right, there's two bidders lower than Don Chapin who are responsible bidders. Shouldn't one of those get the contract? We need to get this thing done. But we need to get it done with as little controversy as possible. And it has found quite a bit of controversy. Thank you.

All right, Marianne.

This is Marianne Worden again. This is 307. with a Sherwood Recreation Center. Is that our big building, or is this the building that took over the old swimming pool? The old swimming pool? Does this also include the senior citizen center that was supposed to be a part of that? It's a question I have to ask. The people that worked on that worked for a long, long time. They were shoved from one thing to another, and the last one was this one. And now the ladies that were involved with this, one's gone and one's got medical problems, so she can't be here. So I'm here for them. We haven't given up on that senior citizen place yet. And for the kids, yes, we should have it. We should get it completed. But our airport skyline thing there, don't put that big box in there. We're going to have more accidents. It's going to cost us more problems than anything else. Please, the picture is fine. Put it on the wall. Put it on the baseball park. Put it on the Sherwood wall, anywhere, at the airport. But do not put it in the middle of an intersection, regardless with the middle of that roundabout that is very small and very dangerous. You people don't live out there, but when you do, and you go around it, and you park, and you watch the trucks try to get around there. I had a laugh when the airport, when the airplane got caught there by Brandon. You got to think where you put these things. I'm just waiting what's going to happen to McKenna when those kids try to cross.

Thank you, Marianne. Okay. All right, we'll go ahead and see who's on Zoom. Jose.

Good afternoon. Once again, Mayor, like I said before, a lot of good points were brought up about that we don't have enough time to discuss these things. And like I said, we used to have the old agenda, which I believe we used to have two minutes on every item. I want that back because that will let me feel more comfortable about being transparent with my city officials, knowing that they will give me information that I might have misread or might have misunderstood. That's why we need two minutes on every item on that agenda. But thanks to Mr. Barajas, who is back now, and I will bring that witness forward when he admitted to saying that he will have that taken away, and it will be two minutes for the complete consent agenda. I hate to pick on you, Mr. Barajas, but you shouldn't say stuff like that in public, and then it's going to come back and haunt you. And like I said again, Mr. Mayor, we need to have our rights reinstated when it comes to giving public comment on every consent agenda item, two minutes each. But if people don't understand that, you don't understand that because a lot of these things don't have in your area, so you don't care. If you live in East Salinas, we have a lot of issues there. You guys need to understand there's issues that we cannot control. A lot of the people that live in our area don't know, don't come to meetings because they're not educated that way to get involved in the communities. But we're trying to get that started. Thank you again. God bless you guys. And I hope you guys have a good evening.

All right, we will go ahead and close public comment and proceed to go through the items that the council members wanted to discuss. So we'll start with 266, and that will be Tony, Jose, and Gloria. Tony?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor, as I'm, and I'm going to look towards Mr. Callahan, I would like to look at 26173 as well, just for, because I want to be straight up with everybody. Which one, Tony? I'm sorry. Yes, thank you, 173. But that'll be the... The next one, on the airport and the airport land use, I think this is great news. I just wanted to, congratulations, Matt. I just wanted the public to know the great work that's happening out there in economic development and I mean, great stuff, peace.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Would you like me to briefly talk about the through the fence agreement with Archer Aviation?

Yes.

Sure. Good evening, Council. I'm delighted to report out that we have Archer Aviation on our field here. Archer Aviation, for those who are not familiar with it, is that EV tall electric vertical takeoff and land. It's that air taxi service that you'll see coming to a. sitting near you. So there are many players. Joby Aviation is one based in Marina. Archer is another. Wisk is out in Hollister. And we are proud to have Archer Aviation here in Salinas where they do all their testing, flight testing, and they've since expanded over to the coke building because they're running out of space so this nearly 500 000 square foot facility will now be used to assemble archer aircraft here and so i'm delighted to report out that we're going to be receiving uh and this whole study with getting through the fence is costing the airport the city absolutely nothing archer is funding this through the fence agreement we're going to be realizing ten thousand dollars if it is approved tonight ten thousand dollars a month literally passive income for a period of 10 years which equals 1.2 million dollars now if archer were to leave hopefully they will never leave they'll be here for a long time that'll be now used as a fixed wing base or another ev tall electric for electric vertical takeoff and landing facility so it's a win-win for the city and we're just very excited about that

Yeah. And Mr. Matt, one of the things that we were concerned about was there, there was going to be a, a big empty building, just like you mentioned. And now it's now it's full.

Yup. And the city staff is working well to work on the permitting. And all the necessary items to to get that across the finish line. So the next step actually, we're working in tandem now with the FAA to approve how the FAA approve this through the fence agreement. And so essentially, even though we don't own the cook building, the airport has grown in size.

In the near future, do you see any. employment there for some folks?

We hope so. Aside from the through the fence, maybe it's a little off topic, but we do have this 13.25 acre site that is nearly shovel ready. That's in front of the airport office, the admin office on 342 Airport Boulevard. So we are shaking the trees looking for other opportunities to build out the airport and that would bring more jobs, livable wages, hopefully.

Thank you. Thank you. Jose?

I think Council Member Butter kind of addressed my question, but while we're on it, and since we can ask a slightly off-topic question, if you could just kind of touch on, you know, what Archer Aviation and MBEP are doing in relation to advanced air mobility in the area. I think you kind of touched on it, Hollister, Marina, Salinas. I think there was recently a meeting about it. If you could just kind of speak to that. Sure.

I think you're referring to the Camp C grant. That grant is, so MBEP, the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, is the fiduciary of this $7.5 million grant. And so what they're looking to do is stand up a test corridor between the airports in Marina, Salinas, Hollister, and Watsonville. And it's essentially how do you integrate a flight from Salinas over to Watsonville, Watsonville over to Hollister, Hollister over to Marina. So we're going to have these three stood up flight corridors, so these OEMs, these original equipment manufacturers, like I've mentioned, Wisk, Joby, Archer, how they can integrate into the space system and also with a vertiport. So we're also working on that as well as electrical charging stations. So obviously these are all electrically driven. If you don't have the infrastructure, you're kind of stuck in the water without that. So we're looking to realize and have stood up at the airports, electrical charging systems as well. corridors between the airports, as well as a vertiport for arriving and landing, taking off, as well as infrastructure for charging the aircraft.

speaking of electrical charging systems it's my understanding the city if should it be reached that point we would be able to receive some additional passive income from the fuelage costs of charging those vehicles as well correct great point so we actually have two uh charging pods they are owned by beta beta technologies and so we actually have online now if you happen to have your own e-vital

You could taxi up to and charge your own system there. So we may not need the electrical charging, but if we don't get the electrical charging revenues for additional infrastructure, we're asking for other things, too. So we're really in the works right now with the MOU, the memorandum of understanding and the business model looking forward. So essentially, we're going to get a good cut of this seven half million dollars. If we do well with this grant, it'll be getting more and more grants down the road. So the state of California In the United States, we're really recognized now of Monterey County as being the nexus of EVTOL, Advanced Air Mobility. There are a lot of acronyms, I apologize, but Air Taxi Service, AAM, which is Advanced Air Mobility, EVTOL, Electric Vertical Takeoff and Land. So hopefully that answers your question.

Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Sure. Laura.

Yes, mine is a comment Mr Nielsen good evening and it's a it was a pleasure meeting you and just hearing your vision for the airport and wow. Our airport is expanding and we don't have an empty building with Archer, so that's good. But again, I just want to thank you that it's great having you on board.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. One thing is that we do have an enterprise fund, so the money stay at the airport and we're actually in the black. Other airports that are approximate to us, there's one that is not in the black. They're in the red and they actually rely. on the general fund to help support them. But we're, my predecessor did a fairly good job, a good job of keeping the place well positioned.

Thanks, ma'am. Tony, why don't, did you comment on 268? Yes.

You've already taken care of that. Was there a question about the air traffic control tower as well? Did you have a specific question or just a background?

No, yeah, just a background, please. Sure.

We are, so the Monterey Regional Airport has a control tower. The only other control tower airspace is the Salinas Municipal Airport. So we're very lucky to have that. In 1985, we received the tower. So it's a controlled airspace. It's a Class D Delta airspace. And I pulled up a report on our operations. Operations are takeoffs and landings. And our lowest point was during COVID. And since 2022, we've increased with the takeoffs and landings. One thing we want to make sure of is that we really focus on takeoffs and landings. How do we do that? We make sure that all of the hangars are appropriately situated with airplanes in there that are operational and flying, purchasing gas. The worst thing you can have is an airport that does not have airplanes that are flying or they're kind of known as hangar queens that don't really add much to the community of flying. We have a lot of flying airplanes. I'm happy to report and the tower's in good shape. And this lease shows that the FAA is still interested in keeping that airport control tower for a long time.

Thank you. Yep. Thank you for your good work. Thank you. All right.

Tony, you had 173.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Mr. Callahan, and just because there's some bold statements being made here, and I trust my colleagues, but what does Levi, did he say Levin or Levi? Levi and I?

The Levine Act, yes.

Levine Act. Is everything, and I think the city manager, you and I, and Council Member Sandoval spoke during the briefing that everything looked legal and proper as far as This item, the Chapin.

Sure, that's correct, Councilmember. So just first of all to the Levine Act, it applies 12 months prior to the Council's consideration of certain things in 12 months. following the Council's consideration of certain things. The Levine Act would not apply in this instance because this is a competitively bid project. So that is not applicable here. And I just want to speak to the process. So these Public Works projects of which this is one are subject to competitive bidding. And so what that means is the city staff puts out a request for bids. It's available to anyone who wants to submit a bid in response to that request for proposals. The city staff receives and reviews those bids according to the criteria that are established in the project's plans and specifications. At no point at all does the city council get involved in that process. Until the city staff makes a recommendation to the City Council to award the project, right? So this is entirely driven by state law by the city's Municipal Code and by city staff So the council doesn't have any role to play whatsoever in that competitive bidding process so to the point that Mr. Peterson made no you have to look at the bid tabulation sheet, which is exhibit a to the staff report, and it clearly shows that the Don Chapin Company was the lowest bidder. The council's only role with respect to deciding whether or not to award the contract is whether or not a contractor has been determined to be non-responsive or non-responsible, or there has been a protest by another competing proponent on the project. And we don't have any of those facts here. So it is my recommendation from a legal perspective that it is entirely appropriate to award the contract as recommended by your staff this evening.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Okay, thank you, Tony.

All right, Andrew, you were interested in 274.

Sure, yeah, I don't know if we can hear from Grant Leiter or Ms. Mowery, just to speak to the process of how this project was awarded. I know a while back there was concerns about equal opportunity, especially to local artists. So I don't know if Ms. Mowery or Mr. Leonard are available to answer questions about how this process came about.

Yes, absolutely. Grant Leonard, planning manager. This was done through a competitive call for art, an RFP, a request for proposal. It was advertised through the city's Planet Bids bidding program, as well as through our social media and on our website. And we also did canvassing and direct outreach to local artist groups as well. So make sure we did a wide net, but that we also did some targeted outreach. AND THEN WE RECEIVED THREE PROPOSALS. THOSE WERE RANKED BY A COMMITTEE, A SELECTION COMMITTEE COMPRISED OF REPRESENTATIVES FROM THE COMMUNITY ON THE ALISAL VIBRANCY PLAN IMPLEMENTATION COMMITTEE. THAT'S A COMMITTEE THAT OVERSEES ALL THE IMPLEMENTATION PROJECTS FOR THE ALISAL VIBRANCY PLAN. BUT THEN ALSO GIVEN THE NATURE OF THE PROJECT WE WANTED SOME TECHNICAL EXPERTISE AS WELL. SO THERE WAS A REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE AIRPORT, FROM PUBLIC WORKS AND FROM LIBRARY AND COMMUNITY SERVICES WHO ALSO REVIEWED THOSE PROPOSALS. AND THERE IS A RANKING TABULATION SHEET AND FARILLON DESIGN WAS A CLEAR WINNER OF THE THREE THAT WERE PROPOSED.

ALL RIGHT. GRANT, THANK YOU AND THANK YOU TO PLANNING MANAGER MICHELLE MURRAY FOR YOUR WORK ON THIS PROJECT.

Thank you.

And then, Andrew, you had a question on 289.

Yeah, I know that this is an extension to allow staff to work through some issues. I know for a couple of years we've been talking about possibly adjusting the fees or, you know, other improvements to this franchise agreement. So I wanted to see if I can get an update specifically what will be addressed when we bring this back in a couple of months.

Hey, good afternoon. Name's Sergeant Morton, the traffic unit supervisor. During this continued discussion, some of the points of topics that we'll be discussing will be some of the abandoned vehicles, specifically the fees surrounding and the credits awarded for abandoned vehicles and recreational vehicles that are abandoned, and the request of increased fees on behalf of the franchisees.

I know that there was questions about making sure that the fees that we were collecting were sufficient to run the program. Is that what you're referring to?

It'll be fees on both ends, correct. The fees that the franchisees are charging for the abandoned vehicles and then the fees that the city's involved in as well.

Okay. All right. Those are all my questions. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Andrew.

All right. 292, are we there now?

YES. I BELIEVE WE HAD A MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC THAT HAD A QUESTION. SO I'M GOING TO REFRAME MY COMMENT AND QUESTION REGARDING 292. If you take a look at our agenda, it talks about supporting some grant activities. I was wondering if somebody from PD or staff could just elaborate a little bit more on the proposed activities. And this is regarding those relating to impaired driving. And then also a comment, because I know that there was an award, but we have to accept it by a certain deadline. Otherwise, we might lose out on that funding opportunity.

Yes, I'd be able to speak on all that actually. So yes, it's something new we've applied for. The California Highway Patrol Cannabis Tax Grant. So back in 2016, their Proposition 64 passed where the state generates tax revenue for the sales of adult cannabis use and some of that revenue. is absorbed by the highway patrol and then disseminated throughout the state in the form of tax, sorry, for grant purposes. So this grant specifically will deal with DUI and impaired enforcement, something that we haven't applied to before. But just a quick little stat, last year we had over 360 DUI arrests in the city. That's pretty much one every single day, just that we were able to locate. So this will afford our officers the additional equipment and staffing on overtime basis to go out there specifically for DUI enforcement. WHAT WAS THE OTHER PART OF YOUR QUESTION?

IT'S MY UNDERSTANDING THAT CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL, I THINK THEY MAY HAVE SUBMITTED AN INITIAL REWARD BUT WE'VE GOT TO ACCEPT IT BEFORE THE OFFICIAL AWARD LETTER COMES TO YOUR DEPARTMENT. DID I UNDERSTAND THAT CORRECTLY?

CORRECT. SO THE GRANT CYCLE STARTS TOMORROW. OKAY. RIGHT UP AGAINST A DEADLINE. AND IN ORDER FOR US TO START the grant uh process it has to be accepted um by the city council first let's make it happen yes thank you appreciate it thank you all right thank you margaret uh you wanted 300.

Yes, just a comment, and I mentioned this to the city manager as well, that we develop a better clarity between who's responsible for which type of duties within the Salinas City Center improvement area, because there seems to be confusion about planters and who's monitoring the planters and garbage and such, so he's going to be addressing it with his staff, and I just wanted to make sure that I come in publicly that we do get a lot of questions about it. I think we can draw a more definitive line instead of having it's their fault, it's their fault kind of thing happening. And that way Mr. Hammer won't have to hear from me on every planter. But I think we're working to improve those agreements so that there's more clarity in who's responsible for that space. So we're good, thank you.

Okay, thank you. All right, 336, Andrew.

Yeah, the staff report was was pretty light. So I wanted to ask you, Mayor, what is your reasoning? Other than it says you expressed interest in this board to be the primary, what is the purpose of changing it? You know, we're about six months away from December. So can you explain that?

Um, I am, um, it's important for continuity. Continuity sake, and as we said, said, said earlier, we're at a moment where we're assessing. All infrastructure needs and since I've. On a go forward basis, I think it's important that the. That the mayor be the beast sitting at that position because. all of the water needs of the county need to be assessed. So sitting on the MW1 board and also Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, I think that contributes to what we're trying to do with the Corallo report. So that would be some of the reasoning. But I think right now continuity is important and I think it's important that the mayor be the sitting person on the board.

I mean, well, Jose Barajas has been updating us regularly about this agency, and I don't understand the comment around continuity because if he's, I mean, in my opinion, giving us constant updates and feedback, unless there's a different position, And then my question would be for Council Member Barajas is if he wants this position, because this is the only position that's gonna come to the council for a vote. So I'd like to get his perspective on being put as an alternate.

I'm fine with being an alternate for this body.

Okay, all right. And then Mayor Donahue, this is a position where you're gonna be receiving a stipend as well?

Possibly, I don't know, I don't really. I'm not aware of what it is. I gather there's one.

Okay, and then the staff report, the continuity argument doesn't make any sense because you are up for election in 2026. So, in theory, you may not be there for more than six months. I prefer to have Council Member Barajas there. Second, the staff report lists that you would be the appointment all the way up to the appointment term runs from July 1st, 2026. to june 30th 2029 so does that mean that if you're not the mayor you'll continue to be the representative or how does that work if i were not the mayor i would not be the representative Okay, then maybe we can get a correction before we approve that.

Council Member Sandoval, Council Member Sandoval, if I may, if there are any changes in the election come November, we will bring this matter back to the Council for consideration. I'm looking at our City Attorney also for direction. The Groundwater Sustainability Agency requires the appointments by resolution.

Right, and this is the first time I've ever heard that we have such a long term for an appointment because those appointments are traditionally made yearly. So is this something new?

We brought this item to the Council in the past.

For this long of an appointment?

For this one and also if you recall the CPUC appointments are also brought to the Council as part of the requirement, the JPA requirements.

Okay, well, my final comments are the mayor's argument for continuity doesn't make any sense. But Alice has done a great job on this agency, keeping us updated. The conversation around the mayor should be seated at the table. I mean, I know you've taken over a lot of boards mayor shows little faith in your, your remaining council that you feel the need to take over all these positions. I haven't really seen a whole lot of reports from you on any of the committees that you sit on just very briefly. It would be good to at least have that same level of. Responsiveness is, but I hasn't had on this board, but I really don't see any validity to your request. Expressing interest. Is is not really a. There has to be some motivation for you wanting to take over the seat and I wish you were a little more clear about that. I mean, just because you want something without any clear. Uh, decision making doesn't make any sense to me. So I'll pull this item for separate vote, but I do want to also make comments that to the public that this is the only time you'll probably see 1 of these committee appointments, because my colleagues, with the exception of council member voted to remove their own voting power to make appointments. So, I want this pulled for a separate item for vote.

OK. All right. Thank you. All right. We will start with that. Take a motion on 336. Second motion. Motion to approve. I motion to appoint me to the Salinas Valley Groundwater Sustainability Board.

Second.

Just to confirm, Mayor, that's also going to include the appointing of the alternate, Council Member Barajas as the alternate. And second by DeRigo. DeRigo, correct?

Mr. Callahan, before we vote, that's legal and proper.

Yes, Council Member is. Okay.

All right. Calling for the vote on this item, on item 336, Council Member Barajas? Yes. Council Member Barrera? Yes. Council Member DeRigo? Yes. Council Member De La Rosa? Yes. Council Member Salazar? Yes. Council Member Sandoval?

No.

Mayor Donahue?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Okay, thank you. All right, I will look for a motion on the balance of the consent. Approve. Is there a second?

Second.

Salazar. Okay, thank you. All right, we go on for the question.

Council Member Barajas? Yes. Council Member Barrera? Yes. Council Member DiRigo? Yes. Council Member De La Rosa? Yes. Council Member Salazar?

Yes.

Council member Sandoval? Yes. Mayor Donahue? Yes. Motion passes.

Okay, thank you. All right, with that we will proceed to the city manager.

Yeah, a couple of, in brief is the operative word, a couple of things. Don't know if you noticed, but there'll be a presentation on this in the future, but our city bot, Sally, is up and running on the city website. So for example, today I asked it, where do we get an application for rental assistance? And the response, you can obtain the application for the pilot rental assistance program by visiting the city website. And so it laid out, and they also gave the phone number. So that's on the city website now, so hopefully folks. Yeah, so my phone is also addressing it. So hopefully folks that have questions after hours or whatever, where there's no city staff, they would get some information. So that's one. The other thing we've heard a lot on, rightly so, a lot of the common concerns about our street lighting. So we also on our city website, and we'll start messaging on this a lot more, we actually have a list of all the lights, streets, and the areas that we've lit. and what's coming in sort of the future phases. So folks want to make themselves sort of keep up with what's going on, that's available on the website as well. And then finally, we're going to post this, but we get a lot of thoughts and concerns, rightly so, on kind of what do we do with homelessness? And the team's put together, under Lisa's leadership, sort of a one-sheet description of everything that's going on in the homeless front. from our investment, what we're doing for prevention, sheltering, the housing, and it's a pretty detailed list of everything that we have been doing. I suppose you can argue that it's enough, but we are doing probably more as an individual city than most cities combined in the area. So again, I'll have this, but we'll start posting this and pushing this out as well. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. All right. Andrew, we'll start with you on any council council member reports appointments.

Sure. Thank you. We had a great air resource district board meeting where the board is going to be partnering with Santa Cruz, UC Santa Cruz on air monitoring around pesticides. I want to thank our executive director for taking the lead on that. And also there is plenty of opportunities for grants for nonprofits as well as government agencies for charging, not only charging, but let's say you're a nonprofit and you have an old gas powered ATV or an old tractor. There is opportunities for you to upgrade to a fully electric as well as great programs for trading in old gas powered landscaping equipment, both for residential and for commercial. So take advantage of those opportunities. You can check out mbard.com. I currently also have a vacancy on the airport commission. So if any residents are interested, you can find the application online or you can reach out to me. Tomorrow is a Northridge Night Market. So just a reminder, it's moved to the back of the mall next to the old Big Lots. Just a reminder, there are residents that are requesting updates on streetlights off of Cherokee. There's about six of them out. I know that PG&E needs to connect power for those, but whatever we can do to support those efforts, as well as if we can get some follow-up on a permitted parking program residents requested, as well as red zones in front of fire hydrants. and midtown mobile and there's some line of site access issue around jackson and just a reminder that we needed the cracks field off of boulevard thank you very much thank you mr mayor mr mayor at the during public comment we had a uh

A person, I don't know if she was from the, but she mentioned about the aquatic center needed some attention. I just like to echo that please. I mean, I'm just remembering that I want to thank encompass church and the rodeo for putting on the. What did July. show that's coming up here pretty soon you know i i don't know if you just heard soledad the city of soledad counselors because of funding we are blessed that there's organizations coming together um that are are going to put this show on and i want to thank uh the whole team that's got together to make sure that we have a He saved 4th of July during that day. And Mr. Mayor, if I may, once we're done, if we can close this meeting with George Sigala. And I would like a little bit of time to say something about him. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, just want to honestly start off by thanking the public and you all for giving me some grace while I was in the hospital and recovering. I'm happy to have my health back and happy to be back and ready to get back to work. But also did want to announce that I do have a vacancy for the Library and Community Services Commission. And this coming Thursday, I will have a district bond community meeting in partnership with the mayor at 6 p.m. at the bread box. And then also wanted to share that with some of the remaining funding from each council member gets some funding to travel for different and participate in different activities and different commissions across the state and in the region. Me, I had some funding remaining and I was able to use some of that funding to provide $2,500 match to the Salinas Soccer Complex to finish up phase three of their project, and then also provided contributions to the Monterey County Film Commission, the children's shopping tour, and the Thanksgiving dinner hosted by our veterans later this year.

Thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and piggyback on our 4th of July. Just wanted to share the following comment. As our nation approaches 250 years of independence, the 4th of July reminds us that the American story has never been one of perfection, but of perseverance. It is a story of ordinary people striving to build a more perfect union. through sacrifice, innovation, courage, and hope. From the founding generations to the abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs, soldiers, teachers, and countless unsung heroes, each generation has added a new chapter to our shared history. America has helped shape the modern world through breakthroughs in medicine, aviation, agriculture, space exploration, technology, and industry, while continuing to inspire the belief that freedom and opportunity should belong to every person. Yet the American journey also reflects the complexity of the human condition. Our history includes remarkable triumphs alongside painful chapters of injustice, division, and inequality. The same humanity capable of extraordinary compassion has also been capable of prejudice and conflict. The greatness of this country is not found in pretending those struggles never existed, but in the enduring willingness of its people to confront them, learn from them, and continue moving forward. Fourth of July is therefore more than a celebration of our past. It's a renewal. It's a renewal of our commitment to grow, take risks, learn from our mistakes, care for one another, care for our environment, and to strengthen our nation's foundation for future generations to see. So I just want to make those comments as our country approaches its 250th independence.

Okay. I also want to echo to thank the Compass Church and all the volunteers that have been giving and that are going to be giving more time on the event. It takes a lot of volunteers, a lot of their time. and it takes sponsorship. So again, thank you to them. God bless them all. I had the opportunity to attend last Friday, the Farm Bureau Luncheon for Women and Fashion Show. And that was a great event. Also on Saturday, I attended the Fiesta Italiana, the fifth one here on Main Street. That was a great festival, we had fun. Music, dancing, food, brought the community together. It brought Italians from the peninsula, so what a plus for us, you know, we had them coming over. So I wanna thank Anthony Ling and all the volunteers that he had and sponsors. Then on Sunday, I had the honor to attend the Salvation Army. They're going away, farewell. luncheon to the commanders ezekiel hernandez and catherine they were here for six years and they did a tremendous job with our community and wow it got really emotional from the congregation you know saying goodbye to their pastors and boy they really had a big heart for our community so we will be getting new commanders in this area in august So that was that. And then I did have a neighborhood meeting in the Rossi Rico area last Thursday, the 25th. And I want to thank all the staff that attended code enforcement, police, OUR FIRE CHIEF, OUR CHIEF OF POLICE, AND THE STAFF, OUR NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES THAT ORGANIZED IT. AND I WANT TO GIVE KUDOS TO THE SCHOOL, CAMPBELL SCHOOL. BUT, AGAIN, I WANT TO THANK THE MAYOR FOR ATTENDING ALSO. IT WAS A VERY, VERY PRODUCTIVE MEETING. Our residents, it was an hour and a half long, and our residents left with some really good information. And I want to thank, before I finish, yeah, you were there. I also want to thank our fire department, our police, and all the volunteers that are helping this coming Saturday. Because, yeah, they're volunteers that are going to be helping. And I think they're going to be patrolling our area and reporting the illegal fireworks. Thank you.

Okay, and thank you, Gloria, for attending the Grower's Shipper Fashion Show and Tournament. And all the proceeds from the fashion show, the women's fashion show, goes to Jacob's Heart. So they were very happy to receive the financial support. I also wanted to mention some of my fund balance went to two of my passions for women and girls empowerment, one being Teen Moms Inc. and Girls Inc. at the Central Coast. I WANT TO THANK TONY FOR COMING OUT TO MY DISPOSAL DAY AT PUBLIC WORKS YARD. IT WAS VERY LOW ATTENDED COMPARED TO LAST YEAR. I THINK THE STAFF THINKS MAYBE IT WAS THE TIME OF YEAR HAVING IT IN THE SUMMER. I THOUGHT THE LOCATION WAS GREAT. THE PUBLIC SERVICES THEY JUST DO AN OUTSTANDING JOB AND THE CITY WAS THERE IN FORCE. EVERYBODY WAS WELL DRESSED IN THEIR SAFETY UNIFORMS AND WE HAD LIKE I SAID ABOUT PROBABLY 50% OF THE NORMAL AMOUNT OF CARS THAT WE HAVE. SO THAT WAS KIND OF DISAPPOINTING. BUT THE PEOPLE THAT CAME WERE VERY HAPPY TO UNLOAD SOME OF THEIR THINGS FOR FREE. AND I ALSO WANT TO THANK SUN STREET FOR SENDING THEIR MALE VOLUNTEERS OUT TO HELP US. THEY WERE REALLY GREAT. AND WE ASKED IF THEY WANTED TO GO HOME EARLIER AND THEY SAID NO, WE WANT TO STAY. WE WANT TO SERVE OUR COMMUNITY. AND THIS IS ONE WAY THAT WE CAN DO IT. SO THAT WAS REALLY GREAT. That was really fun. The festival was great this weekend on Saturday. As Gloria mentioned, a good way to bring people together. But what I find is I like going to the events, but what I really enjoy is spending that one-on-one time with constituents. And I had a lot of constituent meetings in the last few weeks. Some announced, some unannounced, parking lots and grocery store visits, et cetera. But to really hear from people one-on-one about some of the struggles, some of the challenges and where they want us to spend our time and our taxpayer money. So I appreciate all of those who met with me and I'll be following up with them as well. And I guess future items, I'm gonna keep bringing it up because it's gonna be agendized here soon is the SNP and neuter mandatory ordinance that I believe will be adopted by the Board of Supervisors next week. They've asked for a final draft and it looks like they have the votes to move that forward. It will be modeled after the seaside mandatory ordinance. So it's something that's really important to me. not only is my role in the JPA just being, you know, growing up in a family where you didn't even think about not spaying and neutering your pets. It was the responsible thing to do, and I think it's the best thing for pets to give them a chance at living. So I'll bring that forward in the future. And then also I wanted to talk more about code enforcement, maybe have our code enforcement team come here and present. on on what they're doing where their focus is how they're circulating through the city because i get so many questions about them people see them driving but they don't see them interacting in their neighborhoods and i think that's what's really important is that we we see them talking with residents and getting jobs complete And then lastly, I just wanted to say I love what you did, Mrs. Salazar. That was a really nice tribute. And there's a lot of people that are unhappy with our government these days, local, state, and federal. I mean, it's all across the board. But I think we should be proud Americans and that we should celebrate our history and that we should always stay positive for our future, which I think is bright. So thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

CAN I ANNOUNCE SOMETHING REAL QUICK THAT I THINK WE'RE FORGETTING? FIRST FRIDAY, IS THIS FRIDAY? FIRST FRIDAY, YEAH. AND THEN THE CRUISING WILL TAKE PLACE. THEY'LL MEET AT THE TRAIN STATION. THEY'LL MEET AND THEN THEY'LL COME DOWN MAIN STREET.

Okay. All right. Just a couple of things. Obviously, as everyone can hear, it's been a busy city, and folks have been busy. I was pleased to join Gloria to say goodbye to our friends at Salvation Army. They really have done a nice job, and they'll be missed. And then I do want to announce the appointment of Christine LaRabel to the Measure G Committee. And then since the last time we've met, we had a well-attended HIGHLY NOTICED PRESS EVENT ANNOUNCING THE ALABRIJAS ANIMALS, MAGICAL ANIMALS THAT ARE COMING TO SALINAS. THE LAUNCH WILL BE JULY 31ST AT NORTHRIDGE ABOUT 5 O'CLOCK. THAT'S A FRIDAY. IT HAS ALREADY GOTTEN A LOT OF TRACTION. THIS IS GOING TO BE A STATEWIDE AND NATIONAL STORY. IT'S AN EXCITING OPPORTUNITY. um for for this city and then uh there will also be an exhibit for the small smaller animals that will be curated at one one main street and that will take place on uh first friday uh of august and then the event will uh conclude uh first friday in september so and they're going to be some eight locations throughout the city so that's And like I say, it's got a lot of attention, a lot of likes, a lot of clicks, all that good stuff. And then I will just before I turn it over to Tony for a moment of silence before we close. I am on the MW1 water board. So they have just completed a 218. And there will be for capital improvement projects. So they have a five-year plan. So they've created a cap not to exceed, but that bill will go up. They've announced a customer assistance program, which I think is inadequate, and I told them that. And this was a two-part process. Representing Salinas in consultation, I voted no, both times. I understand, and this goes back to kind of this integrated water conversation. Sigma is in a window of decision making and things going on to the state, but there's really been some concern about those projects. Likewise, MW1 has capital needs for current infrastructure, which, frankly, is inevitable at some point. But the emergence of Salinas as having to I think in terms of current water needs and future water needs, and those decisions have to be made now. You know, MW1 wanted to due to 218 to hit their fiscal year. Sigma has a deadline. But we are looking at our needs. We want to be collaborative. I told my colleagues on NW1, Salinas's position is we understand, we want to be collaborative, but we need a couple more months to begin to assess all this. So it was a respectful no, but not now. And then with a great deal of sensitivity to current rate increases. And I was very clear the planned customer assistance program, highly inadequate. And so I suspect that'll be revisited pretty quickly because colleagues on the board felt the same way. So just kind of a FYI. And I expect that conversation will be in front of us again in the near future. But Salinas's position was no to the 218 and to the rate increase. So just FYI. All right, and with that, Tony?

Well, that's good news, Mayor. You know, George Cigala was one of the founding members of the Crusaders. That was close to 50 years ago. George Cigala wasn't just an active community member. He was a great human being. He passed away on Father's Day. George is one of those people that was always looking for ways how he can make Salinas better. And through his club and his brothers, as they call themselves, and the Crusaders, and also I hear, Mr. Mayor, you just rode in a car with the new arrivals.

I did.

The new arrivals and the Crusaders have had long standing here in Salinas. Community work. As young men and women, In the past, they were considered sort of like gang members and all that, but they weren't. They just enjoyed their cars, invested in their cars, and enjoyed the friendships. And now as they got older, some of them were professionals, some are business owners, some have done great work. As a matter of fact, several of them have been at the airport, the Tavares Family Car Show. getting together during Christmas, thousands of presents for many, many children as well. I am going to miss George, and he leaves Diana, his wife, of almost, been married quite a while as well, several years, Gracie, a daughter Georgie, his son, and Aria, their granddaughter. I'm gonna ask you to join me with, just today, in this great human being, George Sigala left Salinas a better place. You know, some people complain about a lot of things about Salinas. If only they would get involved and plant some seeds like George did. All the seeds that George has been planting, There's children that have been productive young men and women, gone off to higher education, gone into business, have made Celina's better. And with that, I'm gonna ask you just for a few moments of silence and his memory, thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, thank you, Tony. All right, see everyone in August.

I'm going to miss you guys.