City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'll call this meeting to order of the City Council, and it is a review of our closed session report. Madam City Attorney.

So being that there's no public comment, I will report the items we're going to be considering in closed session tonight. The first item is conference of legal counsel initiation of litigation pursuant to government code section fifty four thousand nine fifty six point nine d four in one case. And item number two, conference is real property negotiators pursuant to government code section 54,956.8. The property APN o 29216 that's the Grove School agency negotiators, city manager Duggan and assistant city manager Boatman Negotiating parties, Doctor. Michele Suese, head of school, the Grove School under negotiation terms of possible property transfer to the Grove School.

And I think council member Davis has a report.

I do for closed session item number C2 I will be recusing myself from the decision as I own property within 500 feet of the Grove School.

Okay, thank you and thank you for that madam city attorney. I know I don't have any speaker slips public speaker slips but I'll just make a general call. Is anybody in the audience that would like to speak public comment on closed session? If not, we'll stand adjourned to closed session. Thank you.

Good evening. I'd like to reconvene the City Council meeting to order and I'll ask for the invocation by council member Tejeda and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you please, bow your head with me in a moment of silence. I got this information from officer Down Memorial page. There were five line of duty deaths this month for public safety officers and eighty six in line of duty deaths this year so far in The United States. I'd like to remember La Mesa Police Department officer Lauren Craven, San Bernardino County sheriff Andrew Nunez, and Chowchilla PD Ray Barrantes. Moment of silence, please.

Thank you. Lord, we are here today to conduct the business of our community, and we have in our thoughts and our hearts and prayers all of those people who are unhealthy right now, who are probably in the hospital suffering critical injury or some sort of health condition that is probably gonna take their life. And so we keep those folks in our heart, and we pray for them. We pray for everyone on our staff. Hopefully, they do their daily duty and make it home at the end of the day.

Every mother, every father, every child, as they engage in their daily experience. We pray that everyone makes it home safely and back to their families. Amen. Turn towards the flag, please. Right hand over your heart. Ready. Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,

Thank you, Member Council Member Tejeda. We'll now go to item number F, which is a closed session report. Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mayor. There were two items on the closed session agenda. For item number one, the City legal counsel to initiate litigation in one case. The defendants and other details of the case shall once formally commenced and filed be disclosed to any person upon inquiry. The motion to authorize the litigation was made by council member Barrich and seconded by council member Tejeda and passed unanimously. The second and last item on the closed session agenda, there was no reportable action and Councilmember Davis recuse yourself from this item. That ends the closed session report.

Thank you, Madam City Attorney. We now go to item G, which is presentations. We have a presentation of Blue Zones Health Proclamation to Alejandro Barajas and Felicia Navarro. Council Member Davis.

Thank you so much. I look forward to presenting this proclamation for Blue Zones health, but was just informed that Alejandro is out with a knee injury, so they won't be coming tonight, but hopefully in the future we can present this very soon.

Thank you. Thank you, Member, Council Member. Now to item H on our agenda, which is public comment. The first speaker is Joel Rothschild. You have three minutes and there are colored lights up on the podium there with the Yes, sir. Green, yellow, and red.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Good evening, mayor, city council members. I'm here tonight to speak about the ongoing lawsuit between the city of Redlands and Coyote Aviation. This is not just a legal dispute.

It's about fairness, dignity, and more importantly, it's about how we treat our sit our own residents and businesses. Coyote Aviation is a longtime residents business founded by a lifelong resident, school teacher and dedicated businessman who has invested his hard earning money to build hangars on city property. Instead of honoring that investment, the city has chosen to fight him in court, dragging out the much, dragging out the process and causing harm to someone who has given so much to the community. Last week, the presiding judge in the case made a powerful statement. She wrote, and I quote, the defendants here are accused of abusing their power to take millions of dollars from a lifelong residence causing them serious medical issues and dragging out the process in order to take property to generate income for the city while hiding this from the plaintiffs.

Such contact such conduct as alleged appears outrageous and despicable such that it would not be tolerated by civilized society. Here, the allegations are sufficient to support the cause for action for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Council members, these are not those words are not mine. Those are the words of the superior court judge. They reflect not only grave legal risks to the city, but also the moral risk of how you and our government is perceived by our own people.

Continuing this fight will only damage trust, prolong suffering and risk further harm to a resident who has already given so much. And this is not an isolated case. In recent years, as you know, Redlands has been sued and lost paying out millions of dollars in settlements tied to misconduct, retaliation and other claims. Each time taxpayers bear the cost and each time trust in our city government erodes further. Redlands is gaining a reputation as a corrupt and unethical government.

The pattern is clear. Frequent and prolonged litigation only serves to hurt residents, drain the city's finances, and erode the bond between government and the people it serves. You have an opportunity to break that pattern. I urge you to move quickly to reach a fair settlement in good faith with Coyote Aviation. Show that Redlands actually values its residents, its commitments, and treats its people with dignity. Thank you.

Michael Paysner.

Good evening, Mike Paysner. This morning at 8AM, there was ice activity on Tennessee Street in Redlands. There's video, and the story I'm hearing is that a father dropped off his child at school and then he was abducted by ICE. His truck left abandoned and his family left wondering what happened to him. We knew ICE was going to come to Redlands eventually. Well guess what? Today is the day. It's here. ICE is in Redlands. The city has previously previously stated that you won't assist ICE in immigration enforcement.

That is not enough. Allowing people to be abducted without a warrant and without due process is unacceptable. We all know what is happening is wrong, but too many people are trying to keep their heads down hoping it doesn't impact them or their loved ones, hoping this craziness just blows over. And while community groups organize to keep people informed, to keep people safe, I haven't seen the city do anything to protect people against ICE raids. Do do you inform people of their rights?

Do you require ICE to comply with state laws while operating in Redlands? Are you doing anything? I challenge the city, this council, and everyone in this room to do more. You know in your hearts ICE agents abducting people is wrong. America is supposed to be a melting pot of different cultures.

The city sitting on the sidelines while this is happening is wrong. I often hear people express pride in Redlands. Well, I struggle to feel pride if we sit idly by while people are abducted off of our streets. If we want to be proud of Redlands then Redlands needs to step up and do something to keep people informed and safe in this moment. Thank you.

Jermaine Miles.

Good evening. I wanna preface what I'm gonna say by stating that I'm just a 70 year old hippie. I am anti violence. I am anti guns. I am anti the death penalty because I don't believe anyone deserves to be murdered for any reason.

My comments tonight are directed to you, council member Barich. In August 2023, a businesswoman from a neighbor community of Lake Arrowhead, Laura Ann Carlton, was murdered in cold blood, shot in front of her business simply for flying a pride flag. Did you denounce that political violence in the meeting after that? Did you honor her by words or deeds? You were actually quite irritated that quite a few people chose to speak that night in honor of Laura Anne Carlton and to ask the city to fly the pride flag in her honor.

You wanted them to just wait until the following month's meeting when it was an agenda item. And I'd like to point out that that agenda item, you voted against it. In June 2025, Minnesota state elected official Melissa Hortman was murdered, gunned down in cold blood along with her husband and her dog in the doorway of their home simply because she was a Democrat. Did you denounce that political violence in a meeting after that? In September 2025, Charlie Kirk was murdered, gunned down in cold blood exactly like Laura Ann Carlton and Melissa Hortman.

You reported that you attended a local memorial service for him as a representative of this city council. You denounced that political violence. You stated it was regardless of whether or not we agreed with his political position. You referred to him as a wonderful young man, and you asked to dedicate that meeting to him, which was agreed upon by our mayor. You showed your true colors, sir.

No heartfelt words, no denouncing of political violence against the woman who fraught pride flew the pride flag or the elected official who was murdered for being a democrat. You only chose to glorify and honor the misogynistic, homophobic, white Christian nationalist. I am gonna tell you, you did not represent me at that memorial service for Charlie Kirk. And honestly, I don't think you represented the majority of the citizens of this city. Thank you.

Valerie Taber.

Speaking of political violence, again, this morning, a father was kidnapped off our streets by ICE. Tonight, a family in our community, a family who lives in our cities, whose children attend our schools, is torn apart and is going to bed in fear without their father. Our city, our streets, torn apart. Our neighbors deserve protection regardless of their immigration status. Do not sit idly by while people in our city are targeted.

It's time for action. If you won't protect our community, then you do not deserve to sit in those seats. Action is required, and it is demanded by your community members. It is happening. It happened this morning. Please do more than just sit idly by and express platitudes about how ICE is not going to be supported in Redlands. You need to take action, actual action, to protect our citizens. Thank you.

Jennifer Maravillas.

My name is Jennifer Moravias. I live in North Redlands, and I'm here to be yet another voice to amplify what happened this morning after a father dropped off his kid to school, his kid that goes to Citrus Valley High School, who's a baseball player and he's on his way to work. He was pulled over by several unmarked vehicles and he was taken, he was kidnapped. And then the family had to come back and mourn his loss because they don't know where he is and they don't know what the future is going to look like. This has been going on for months now in our region, in our county, around us. But today, it is very clear that it is here now. And with the question that I have and the community has is, what are you going to say? What have you said? What have you posted? What have you voiced?

Eddie Tejeda, Mark Shaw, Mario Salcedo, Denise Davis, thank you for sharing the resources that you have been sharing with the community. Paul Baridge, it might not affect you directly because you're in a privileged position, but there are lots in our community who are living in fear every day. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna say? How are you gonna show up for the community?

There's kids. I got an opportunity to speak to his both both of his kids. It is heartbreaking to not know when is the next time that you're gonna see your parent. It is heartbreaking to live in fear that maybe today is gonna be the last day that I see my dad or mom or my sister or my siblings or whoever is in danger of being kidnapped by ICE. And again, it is shameful that we dedicate a whole city council meeting to a bigot who said that the civil rights act of 1964 was a huge mistake.

That's the type of person that is a young, bright person to support and dedicate a city council meeting. And I know you're rolling your eyes pop because maybe you're not affected by this. But please speak up because our community is in fear. This is here in our own backyards. So the question again is, what will you do, what will you say?

I don't have any other speakers' lips off for public comment. We'll now move on to the consent calendar. I don't have any request to pull any items on the consent calendar.

Entertain. Approval of the balance of the calendar or the calendar itself.

Second.

There's a motion and a second. Madam City Clerk.

Council Member Barrett. Yes. Council Member Tejada. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Shah. Yes. Mayor Saucito. Yes. Okay.

Now move on to Item J, Communications, which is the first item was the presentation of the 2025 National Community Survey results. Assistant City Manager McConnell.

Thank you mayor, members of the City Council. Public information officer Carl Baker will provide an introduction to this item.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. In July 2021, the city the city contracted with Policy Confluence Incorporated, also doing business as POCO, to conduct the national community survey. This is the fifth year that the city has conducted the survey, and here to present the results of the survey tonight is Grace Arneson from POCO. So, Grace?

Thank you, Carl. This process, and he provided such thoughtful input at every step. I also want to recognize my colleague, Cindy Mays. She served as Redlands' project manager for this year's NCS handled the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Before we dive into your results, I'd like to share a little bit about Polco.

Polco is an online community engagement platform providing local governments with resident feedback. Hundreds of organizations nationwide use POCO for strategic planning, budgeting, and empowering resident voices. POCO merged with National Research Center or NRC in 2019. NRC is best known for our national benchmarking surveys, including the National Community Survey, the National Employee Survey, and the Community Assessment for Older Adults, among others. Our national benchmark database is the largest of its kind in The United States, which I'll speak to in a bit.

Polco also partners closely with ICMA and NLC, as well as many other local government and academic leaders.

We lost the video on this end.

Can you see that now?

Yes. We can. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. I also want to highlight that there are many different ways that you can use these results. Most communities we work with use the survey data to track resident opinions over time and help guide budgeting and strategic planning. The results also let you compare Redlands to other communities in our benchmark database, which helps to provide helpful context.

As we go through the findings today, my hope is that they will spark ideas for areas you might want to explore further. So a little bit about our national benchmark, database here. A benefit to participating in our community surveys is the ability to benchmark your results from other jurisdictions nationwide. This comparison also allows you to evaluate your service ratings alongside similar services in other jurisdictions. Our national benchmark database has about 400 communities currently.

So let's dive into the survey itself. The National Community Survey or the NCS is a standardized five page survey instrument that gives communities consistent way to measure resident opinion over time. The NCS looks at overall livability of a community. And in order to do that, we group questions into 10 main facets, which are shown here on this slide. These facets come from extensive survey research and represent the areas that most strongly shape residents' daily life.

Each facet includes several survey items, and together, those paint a picture about how residents feel of different parts in the community. These facets also often line up with city departments, making it easier to find ratings that are related to your position. So before we dive into the survey results, I want to briefly walk through how we conducted the survey. This was Redlands' fifth time conducting the NCS with their most recent iteration in 2024, and we began by purchasing a list of all residential addresses in the ZIP codes that serve Redlands based on USPS records. Then using GIS files provided by the city, we removed any addresses that fell outside of that city boundary.

And from that remaining list, we selected 3,000 households to receive the survey. Mailings began on August 4, and data collection was open for six weeks. The first mailing was a postcard inviting residents to participate, and the second mailing included a cover letter with instructions, the five page survey, and a postage paid return envelope. Both of these mailings also included a web link and a QR code, so folks could opt to take the survey online if they wished to. The survey was also available in both English and Spanish, and we received a total of 308 surveys.

That is about an 11% response rate and a margin of error of 5.6. Of those 303 responses or excuse me. Of those 308 responses, 303 were submitted in English and five were in Spanish. When compared to the demographic of respondents with the a census and ACS data for Redlands, we applied statistical weighting to your survey results. So this is a standard survey practice that ensures that these results represent the community as a whole.

Now in addition to that random sample survey, we did conduct an open participation survey that was available to all residents, and that began on September 1 and remained open for two weeks. We received 486 responses to that open participation survey, but the bulk of the report does focus on our scientific survey, of that random sample. And you can find those open participation results in the full online report. So now diving into the survey results of your random sample survey. In the survey, we ask two questions that directly relate to those 10 facets of livability I mentioned earlier.

The first asks residents to rate the quality of each of these facets, and you can see the resulting comparison here, and the shading on this chart aligns with the national benchmark. So we had relatively high ratings across all areas, and inclusivity and engagement, education, arts and culture stood out as areas that were higher than the national benchmark. The remaining items were similar to the national benchmark here. The one item that was a little bit lower in quality was mobility. The second question in the survey asks about those same 10 facets of livability, but it's centered on how important residents think it is for the community to focus on each of those in the coming two years.

So here we have the resulting chart with safety, economy, natural environment as the top three priorities, and mobility and health and wellness falling to the lower side of the list of priorities. So we ask about both of the quality and the importance of these facets, and we use these readings to create a quality importance gap chart, which we'll see here on the next slide. So we use this chart, which was included in the report, to determine areas that are relatively higher in importance and lower in quality to residents. So this chart is one of many ways to interpret your data, and it can be used to help a community determine which areas might need additional focus or resource allocation in the coming years and which others are comparing are performing well by comparison. So some notes here.

You can see that economy is the largest gap here, so the lowest in quality yet highest in importance, followed by mobility and safety. So of the 122 survey items for which residents provided evaluative weightings ratings, 22 were higher than our national benchmark, 98 were similar to the national benchmark, and two received ratings that were lower than the benchmark. Ratings are considered similar if they are within 10 points of the national average, and they are higher or lower if they are more than 10 points different from the average. Additionally, when compared to results from Redlands twenty twenty four NCS, 25 received ratings that were higher this year, 93 were similar, and three were lower. So moving now into the highlights of our findings, I wanna point out that these are items that stood out to us as survey researchers, but there is a lot of additional data in the full report that we won't cover today.

But today's presentation will focus on the few areas we found to be most noteworthy in the results. So first off, residents expressed a strong satisfaction with their overall quality of life. About nine in 10 residents rated Redlands as a place to live and the overall quality of life in the city as excellent or good. Additionally, a similar proportion plan to remain in the city for the next five years and would recommend living in Redlands to someone who asked. Our second finding is that results indicate that residents highly value the local government.

So now shifting to perceptions of local government, nearly two thirds of residents, about 63%, gave positive ratings for the city government treating residents with respect. Just over half were satisfied with the value they receive for the taxes they pay and the overall direction that Redlands is headed. That second measure is improved since 2024. So you'll see that, little chart next to that bar on the slide here that is indicating that there is a statistically significance statistically significant increase since 2024 in the 2025 results. So around half of residents gave favorable ratings for local government treating all residents fairly, their overall confidence in Redlands government, and the government's openness and transparency.

All three of those items increased since 2024. Lastly, about half felt the government acts in the community's best interest and is honest. These were similar two ratings in 2024, but roughly 45% gave positive ratings to the government informing residents about local issues. That area, while relatively lower overall, did see a statistically significant increase since 2024. Our third point, most residents perceive Redlands as a safe community.

So nearly all residents, about 98%, indicated that they feel safe in their neighborhood during the day, while about nine in 10 residents expressed feeling safe in the downtown and commercial area during the day. 88% indicated that they felt very or somewhat safe from violent crime, showing an a significant increase from 2024, while about seven in 10 residents felt safe from fire, flood, or other natural disaster along with property crime. In terms of safety services, more than eight in 10 residents expressed satisfaction with fire services and ambulance and EMS in red Redlands, while about three and four residents positively rated fire prevention and education along with police services. More than two thirds viewed the animal control services in the community favorably. And it's worth noting, I know it's a little hard to tell with the green care, all of these were similar to the national benchmark.

Number four, the economy is valued by residents while affordability presents ongoing concerns. So economy centered ratings showed mixed reviews, which you'll see here. More than eight in 10 residents were satisfied with the overall quality of business and service establishments, the vibrancy of the downtown and commercial area, and red Redlands as a place to visit. All of these were higher than our national benchmark. Meanwhile, around 75% of residents gave positive ratings to Redlands as a place to work, which increased since 2024, and to the variety of business and service establishments.

Both of these were also higher than the national benchmark. Meanwhile, some relatively lower reviews here. About half of residents were satisfied with well planned residential growth and employment opportunities, and about 44% were satisfied with the availability of affordable quality childcare, and affordable quality housing was the lowest scoring item here while remaining similar to the national benchmark. So about two in 10 approved of the affordable quality housing in the community. Residents also rate the natural environment positively while identifying a few areas for growth.

So when asked about the natural environment, about seven in 10 residents were satisfied with the overall, cleanliness in Redlands and with recycling services. Nearly two thirds, about 65%, gave positive ratings to yard waste pickup, though this was a decrease since 2024. About six in 10 were satisfied with the preservation of natural areas, and about half rated res Redlands open space positively, which also declined compared last compared to last year. Fewer residents gave favorable ratings for environmental environmental quality measures, including air quality, which received positive ratings from about four in 10, and water resources, that received positive ratings from just about one third. Both of these scored below our national benchmarks.

Our sixth note here, residents rate mobility as a key community asset. So when looking at mobility, more than eight in 10 residents expressed satisfaction with the ease of travel by car in Redlands, while about three in four rated the ease of travel by bicycle and ease of walking positively. Both of these were higher than our national benchmark, but

I

know that Redlands has ongoing projects working to expand those bikes bicycle lanes, and you all host that international cycling event. So I I expect that those influenced this and resulted in the higher higher than the benchmark score here for ease of travel by bicycle likely related to the ease of walking as well. Meanwhile, about six in 10 residents favorably viewed the traffic flow on major streets and showed approval for the ease of public parking. And lastly, about half of residents expressed satisfaction with the ease of travel by public transportation. This was higher than our benchmark and increasing since 2024.

A note here is that Redlands has also added some new train stops, so I'm guessing this rating was directly impacted by that. In terms of mobility services, about seven in 10 residents expressed satisfaction with street cleaning, and this was a marked improvement since 2024. 62% approved of street lighting, while about a little over half approved of street repair, bus or transit services, and traffic or signal timing. All of these were similar to the national benchmark. So in addition to our standard survey questions, Redlands asked a unique set of custom questions.

In the first one, we asked, to what extent do you think the city's efforts to support people experiencing homelessness have been successful? But it's worth mentioning that this question was only asked to those who were aware of the city's efforts to support people experiencing homelessness. Most residents, about 65%, indicated that they had not heard about this work in the city. So this data here reflects the 35% of residents who had heard about the city's efforts to reduce homelessness. That group was asked our question here, and among those who were aware of the work, more than 54% felt the efforts had been successful.

Most of those responses landed in the somewhat successful category here with about 7% feeling that they were very successful. About one third felt that the efforts were, not successful, so that is about 17% at very unsuccessful and 14% at somewhat unsuccessful, while a remaining 15% said they didn't know or have an opinion about this. All survey respondents were also asked to rate how important it is for the city of Redlands to implement each of the following to address homelessness. Nearly nine and ten residents indicated that enforcing no camping ordinances in public parks and rights of way is important to address homelessness, with 32% rating it as essential and 26 as very important. 84% expressed that providing access to health care and substance abuse treatment is important, with 50% considering it essential and 34% very important.

About three quarters of residents, 74% viewed creating affordable permanent housing as an important issue to address homelessness with 4043% rating it as essential and 31% as very important. So here we have a quick summary of your conclusions. Most residents enjoy a high quality of life in resident in Redlands. Residents value multiple aspects of the city governance in Redlands. Most residents perceive Redlands as a safe community.

The economy is valued by residents while affordability presents ongoing concerns. Residents rate the natural environment positively while identifying areas for growth, and residents rate mobility as a key community asset. With that, I'd like to open it up in case anyone has questions as long as we have time for that.

Thank you, Grace. Are there any questions or comments from the council to our, consultant Grace?

Yes. I have a question. Yes. Miss Grace, thank you for the presentation. Of the 3,000 surveys that you sent out, does Polco filter out any residences or addresses that they may have sent surveys to the previous year? Or do you try to send them to the same addresses or persons that may respond?

Yeah. Great question. We do not sample the same sample as 2024. We have a unique sample every year because we want to make sure that we are getting fresh opinions and also want to reduce survey fatigue where possible. So typically in a city with a population around 80,000, we don't see too much overlap. I would say 5% less. So we don't worry too much about pulling the same sample twice.

Thank you. My my last question is with respect to the homelessness question. You mentioned one, the initial question was asked only to respondents who knew of the city's efforts.

Correct. Yeah. So they were asked

then the second part of it, showed how many people thought we needed to do more. Correct? Let's see here. This question here? I think so. Yeah. Was that question asked of all respondents?

Correct. Yes. Okay. So this was asked of all respondents.

Okay.

But this was just for the residents who were aware of the efforts the city was making.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay. So if you could stay on, I have a public comment, and then I'll bring it back to the council for any other questions or comments. Mister Dennis Bell?

Good evening. First of all, I want to thank all city employees for their service who are out working in these storms. Then I was one of those who was randomly selected to receive an invitation to take this survey, which I chose not to. I know two other people who received invitations did the same. This random survey's open window to reply was six weeks in which three zero eight people responded. The open participation one on the city's website was only open two weeks. It generated 486 responses for a total of 794. But only the 308 of the random survey count. That means those 308 are telling the council the state of the city that has a population over 70,000. That's BS.

The city needs to the city needs to quit wasting the public's money on non essentials like this, and maybe it would have money for a new fire station. Thank you.

Thank you. I just I would like to thank all the respondents that took the time to answer the survey and all the citizens that participated as we're all working together to make sure our community is as safe and as has a quality life issues. I want to thank the city manager and the staff and all the employees for their hard work, for the outcomes that we're seeing and the improvement of the areas. So I want to congratulate our employees, our citizens for working together as we have an improved survey with a lot of positive things happening in the community. And so those are my comments and I'll open it up to anybody else here on the council that would like to ask any questions or comments.

I just had a comment. I'm gonna disagree with the part of the survey that showed that we were lacking in our fire, you know, our fire paramedic kinda response. I think that's probably not incorrect. I think historically they've shown that service is above average, above the national average. And I think it's important for us as a council to state that.

This survey, which I appreciate, does acknowledge the significant improvement, not significant improvement, but the similar support that our public safety officers or law enforcement also, I've long believed that our public safety departments are above average, above national average, and one of the best across the nation. So I think that goes without saying, and all my colleagues would agree with that.

Any other comments? I think the mere fact that we've scored high on people feeling this city is very safe. That speaks for itself. They can say what they want about our police and fire, but the mere fact they say they feel safe in the city. We should really hang our hat on.

And another thing too is, I'll put our homeless program against any city in Southern California. How many people have a homeless facility, which we hire as a high we have 110 homeless people are now housed. We have voucher program. We hired a coordinator for homeless and he's been doing a fantastic job. So again, people have to be informed on what we have do but I'll put our homeless program against any other city in Southern California for that matter, any state of California.

Any other questions or comments?

Mayor, if I can just make one statement to help kind of clarify what councilmember Tejeda was talking about. Our fire services actually were ranked pretty highly. The one area scoring at 87%, which is similar to the benchmark and it has been consistent across the board scoring 91%, 87%, 87%, 9487%. So we do feel that our fire services are top notch. The one area that was mentioned was actually ambulance and emergency medical services.

And that had a decrease. It scored 81, but I should note last year it had an unusual spike. And so it had scored 82, 77, 77 and then last year went to 91, I guess we hit a vein of people that were really happy with emergency medical services and ambulance, but it went back to its base of 81 this year. So it's not that we saw a huge drop off of emergency medical services, it was just last year was kind of an outlier. So I just wanted to point that out because both police and fire are ranked very highly by our citizens according to the survey.

Thank you. You might want to point out that ambulance, we don't have our own ambulance service.

That is true. That is provided through a county contract. Contract. Exactly. Again, it's pretty steady except for last year's unusual spike and you'll get that and that's why none of these results are taken in a vacuum from year to year solely by the number that scored.

We're looking at the trends and that's why we do it from year to year to see what's happening. I can tell you right now, 2022 was a pretty bad year across the board on a lot of things. And that also I think is influenced by a lot of outside factors, not just what we're doing. But if you look at the trend overall, we're headed upward in almost every category and that's what we're looking for, especially in areas of how do people like living here in Redlands, the customer service provided by the staff. Also, we're headed in excellent directions in things like communications and trust worthiness.

I just wanted to add one thing that I noted. We saw an 11 jump from 55% last year to 64% in public information services. So I wanted to give a shout out to Carl Baker, our public information officer and also Danny who's in the audience who does our social media. You haven't checked out our social media lately, I encourage you to do it. It's dramatically better than it used to be. So I just wanted to note that. Thank you.

I was curious on there's a question on here that struck me as odd. It asked about yard waste pickup and it was separate from trash services. And we had an increase in trash services. We had like a 16% decrease in yard waste and they kind of go hand in hand. I mean, you pick them up at the same time. Was there anything specific on that question that people comment on or was it just a generally asked question relative to that?

There was no comment. So it was a general question, but it could be interesting to go into your comparisons in the results and look at those results by different age, different demographic groups, different areas of the city, and maybe dig a bit deeper to see is there one certain demographic or area that is scoring that relatively lower? Do we have a focus problem, or is this across the city? So I I recommend digging a bit deeper there, and then we always have the option of some follow-up poll surveys to ask a bit more about those NCS specific questions as well.

Okay. It was a curious drop of such a significant number, yet our traffic services went up. So

There are two possible areas that could be influencing this. But yes, that's one of the limitations of we need to dig deeper on individual items. But the state has passed the organic waste and so we've been notifying people they've got to separate their organic waste and specifically put it in with their yard waste. So not sure if that has an effect. Also, yard waste is often grouped with bulky items like pickup of refrigerators and washing machines and things like that. And we do experience backlogs during the year from time to time. And so that could also influence that score. We're going to see what we can do to figure out and improve in that area and have a better score next year.

Yes, saw that recycling went up and there was nothing to differentiate the SB thirteen eighty three stuff in there. So thank you.

And I'll just conclude in the four areas where we had significant increases of positive feedback, which is quality of the City of Redlands services, overall confidence in Redlands government, which is 15%, a plus 15%, City of Redlands being open and transparent to the public a plus 14% and emergency preparedness services that prepare the community for natural disasters and other preparedness which is plus 14. So I just really want to focus in on some of those areas where we have real positive I think from last year those increases and really kind of shine a light on the hard work again that our staff is doing and the community is working with our city programs and city departments to elevate those numbers. So I appreciate that. If there aren't any other questions or comments, it's a receive and file. So if somebody wants to make the motion.

I move we receive and file the presentation of the results of the twenty twenty five National Community Service, parentheses NCS conducted by Policy Confluence Inc, DBA, HOPE? Polco. Polco. Polco. Like okay. That's close enough.

Second.

We have a motion to second. Madam City Clerk.

Council Member Baruch. Yes. Council Member Tejada. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Shah. Yes. Mayor Saucito.

Yes. Thank you so much. We appreciate the presentation.

Thank you. Have a great night.

You too. Moving on to j two which is the discussion of possible action relating to the formation of an appointments to an ad hoc committee of the City Council to review all applications for the Planning Commission and to interview Planning Commission candidates. I will take the lead on this. I would recommend and that we appoint the mayor, myself and mayor pro tem as the ad hoc committee members to review the new applications for our planning commission.

Mayor, I'm agreeable with that. I think you

guys did a We to make a motion though, right? Public comment everything.

I don't see I don't have any public comment speakers or sheets and I don't see anybody on public on Zoom.

So in that I move I make the motion for that item for the mayor and the mayor pro tem to be the ad hoc committee. Look through the Planning Commission applications and find appropriate applicant.

Second.

There's a motion and second. Madam City Clerk.

Council Member Baruch. Yes. Council Member Tejada. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Shah.

Yes.

Mayor Saucito.

Yes. Thank you. Moving on to item k one, which is a public hearing to consider ordinance number 2,993, an ordinance text amendment number three seventy to update the developmental standards and design regulations contained in the Redlands Municipal Code chapter of the CEQUA guidelines, development services director Dasatnik. I now declare this a public hearing.

Thank you, mayor. Members of the council, Brian Foote, our planning manager will be making this presentation. Welcome.

Mayor, council members. This item is a proposed ordinance to update our section of the zoning code on accessory dwelling units. Steph has been working on this item for a long time, a couple of years now. Seems like every time we would get a draft ordinance put together, the state would update the state law about September or October, and then we'd have to start over again. So we believe we have a finalized version of this ordinance ready to go.

So this is a specific work item from the housing element. The housing element was adopted in 2022. And one of those work program items is to update the ADU ordinance to align with state law, which is what we have here this evening before you. State law now requires all cities to allow accessory dwelling units by right. So in other words, no discretionary decision making can be exercised for accessory dwelling units.

That basically means that it has to be approved and issued approved for building with a building permit. They are allowed in all residential zones and mixed use zones that allow residential uses, and the property has either an existing or a proposed primary dwelling unit that could be either single family dwelling unit or a multifamily dwelling unit. And state law does include specifics regarding the allowable types of development standards such as yards and setbacks, unit sizes, both minimum and maximum, parking requirements and exemptions for any parking requirements. And then state law now requires any design standards to be objective standards. There's various terminology for accessory dwelling units.

There's detached units, attached units, which means attached to the primary unit. There is junior accessory dwelling units and then various different versions of accessory dwelling units as defined what's called 66,323 units. I won't get into the details, but there is multiple combinations of these types of units that must be allowed under state law. This is just a couple of images of detached accessory dwelling units. They're clearly supposed to be smaller and ancillary to the primary dwelling unit, although it's possible an accessory dwelling unit could end up being larger in terms of square footage than an existing house on a lot.

So this proposed draft ordinance, in some cases, just refers to current state law, for instance, the number of accessory dwelling units and the types of units, maximum size and minimum size. So state law generally requires that a ADU of 800 square feet must be allowed in most cases. And the ordinance, as proposed, would put an upper cap of 1,200 square feet for detached accessory dwelling units. There's different rules for an attached ADU, which is 50% of the primary units floor area or 1,200 square feet, whichever is larger. Then junior accessory dwelling units are capped at 500 square feet, and those all align with current state law.

The development standards such as setbacks generally refer to state law for side and rear setbacks, four feet minimum, which is explicit in state law. Then the ordinance just refers to current zoning standards for front and street side setbacks. Basically, the same is required for the primary unit. There's a new table inserted, which includes objective architectural design standards. And they refer to different styles of houses, whether that's Victorian or Mediterranean or Spanish Colonial Revival, there's a large list now.

Applicants can select their architectural style and then follow those guidelines, objective standards. There are some additional standards for high fire hazard areas, which basically refer to building code and fire code requirements. The parking requirements will mirror state law and then some additional details that are allowed by state law such as for improvements or utilities. The rental requirements align with state law no less than thirty days rental periods. So in other words, no short term rentals through accessory dwelling units.

The ordinance includes some clarification for the permit review procedures in terms of decision making and then an appeal procedure. They're more explicit now in the draft ordinance. Then there's a few other details that are required in local ordinances, and those have included. This ordinance is exempt from environmental review under CECO guidelines section 15,282 and that section refers to specifically the adoption of ADU ordinances, so it's a statutory exemption. The Planning Commission did review the draft ordinance on October 14 and made a few suggestions for some changes, which have been incorporated and then recommended approval to city council.

Also, I'd like to note that the Historic and Scenic Preservation Commission also reviewed the draft design guidelines on two occasions, April 3 and June 5, and helped staff finalize the architectural design standards, and including those for the historic districts in Redlands. And with that, that'll conclude my presentation. Staff is here to answer any questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from the City Council? No? Then we'll go to public comment. I have two public speakers Jasmine Hancock.

And again there's three lights on the podium there so once you get to yellow you have like one minute and then the red will come on.

Thank you.

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Jasmine Hancock. I am a local designer. My office is in Red Redlands. Probably design anywhere from four to eight ADUs a month within Redlands. So do Redlands does keep me quite busy.

And of course, I love working in the city of Redlands. So thank you very much for the presentation tonight. I just had a couple of comments the ordinance is written relatively well and it's very similar to other municipalities that I deal with. I do have a little bit of concern over some of the wording like on page five it says the minimum allowable size shall be not less than 800 square feet it should reflect closer to the ADU handbook which says at least shall not be allowed for I believe at least 800 square feet I believe it's just a little bit of a missed dialogue that needs to be addressed within the ADU so that people are not only confused but that it can't be misconstrued later on by planners. Another one that I wanted to just kind of comment on only because I have done several of these in the city is the the height restriction.

Currently, the city allows for if we do an ADU that's above a garage that's detached, I've done several even in the historic district where we've done a very the property didn't have a garage which is of course is always a concern with any design where we're always trying to provide off-site I'm sorry off street parking for each property. And so really what we're trying to do is design it to the best of the way that we can for that property. So a lot of times we like to do a detached garage with the ADU above so that we minimize the impact of the footprint on property. And so by limiting that, we take that option away from them. Even if it was another course that we went through where it's not just ministerial review where they allow for an entitlement, there are some other municipalities that allow for that.

I would love to see us have a little bit more options that could be taken based upon design standards. So that's that's gonna conclude my comments. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next public speaker, Bruce LeCook.

Good evening, council members and city staff. We're going to be talking in a little while about recommendation from the Planning Commission. But I just want to remind you that given the incredibly limited buildable land in Redlands about the importance of having a solid ADU ordinance, one that will not subject the city to lawsuit, but one that will also allow people to expand the amount of small homes where people of limited income may find a place to live. We need that. I know you're committed to it, but I support these changes.

But we just heard an expert, and I think her advice ought to be heeded as well. Thank you.

Okay.

I don't see anybody on Zoom. Madam city clerk, did we receive any written comments?

I did not receive any written comments.

Okay. Before I close the public hearing do we allow staff to rebut? Staff did you want to on some of those concerns that were mentioned in public comment? Or have we already reviewed those?

The first comment on just the wording change, that's fine. What's in the ordinance is, I guess, verbatim from the HCD handbook on that. But that's fine just to clarify that at least an 800 square foot unit must be allowed. So that's a minor edit that's easy to do. As far as the concern about two story detached, which essentially a garage conversion, it's the speaker was suggesting that an existing garage could be built with a second floor above.

That might be possible more than what we've seen more often than not is they'll demolish the existing garage and rebuild it to support a second floor in terms of framing and structural requirements. Another issue that we've heard quite a bit, just comments and concerns from residents generally is a concern about a dwelling unit on the 2nd Floor that could be as little as four feet from the side of your yard set property line. And then the concern is whoever's living up there can look directly down into somebody's backyard or into the back of their house or adjacent windows in their house. We do hear that somewhat frequently. So the way the draft ordinance is written is a detached ADU, new construction would be limited to one story, which is at 16 feet, which aligns with state law.

At least 16 feet must be allowed. That's one story. If if the council desires change that, we can certainly change that to allow for two stories. But what what we have proposed, we believe aligns with state law, what state law allows.

Alright. May I do have a comment on this? Sure. I think what was being expressed by the speaker was an instance where probably there's no garage. They built a they built a garage in order to add the ADU on top.

And the garage serves the purpose of, I guess, taking the vehicle off the city streets and, you know, having a parking space for that. I'm supportive of that. I think that's a great idea. And perhaps, I guess the nature of height is if you're at a certain distance, you're gonna be able to see over a lot of places. So as a remedy to that, would there be a could could there be a requirement for screening along at least the where there's a line of sight to a different property? Property?

Possibly, if there's sufficient room. Yeah. The four foot setback, there's not a lot of room for trees or Right. Landscape screening unless it's something else is designed designed or some kind of a hedge, which

Right. So wherever that's possible. I mean, could we amend the ordinance to do that and wherever that's possible? I think that's fair.

Or could or could there be a a carve out that if it's that close to the property line that it can't be a two story, but if it's x feet away from the property line, then then the two story would be acceptable?

That could certainly be an option if it's an objective development standard. Say, for instance, if it's a two story structure above 16 or 18 feet, then the setback needs to increase to x amount, 10 or 15 feet minimum. That as long as it's an objective standard and we're not exercising our subjective judgment and it's not a discretionary permitting process, we could certainly develop something like that. Alright.

Okay. Do we need to sorry.

I want to make sure that we can make that correction. The expert on that she we're to make that correction.

So we would in order to introduce the ordinance with amendments, 'd we need to be able to go through the ordinance and note exactly where in the ordinance we're making changes before you introduce. If it's not possible to do that because staff needs to go back and craft some specific language to address some of your comments, then we would just continue the item allow staff to bring back a revised ordinance addressing your comments and then at that time you could adopt I'm sorry introduce the ordinance as revised.

Could we also adopt the ordinance and then go back and do that or no? And then propose an amendment later on?

Right. I would prefer that we continue the hearing technicalities that might be involved in crafting this language and then we could continue it right and then introduce it at the next hearing.

Would you be ready the first meeting in December or second

meeting I in would say the second meeting

in September.

So the council at this particular moment can continue the hearing. We've already taken public comments, so you can continue this hearing till December 16. And then we'll bring the staff will bring back a revised ordinance and you can take public comment on that and then take action at the sixteenth.

Okay. So do I close the public hearing or leave it open till?

You can leave if you'd like to leave it open, bring back that ordinance and then ask for public comment at that time.

Okay. I prefer to leave the public or the public hearing open till the sixteenth.

Yes. So this would be a motion to continue the public hearing to December 16.

I would move I would move that we continue it with the understanding that we're gonna look at those two items, see if there's a way to incorporate those, bring that back.

And I'll second.

We have a motion and a second. Madam City Clerk.

Council Member Barrich. Yes. Council Member Tejada. Yes. Council member Davis? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Shah? Yes. Mayor Saucito?

Yes. Alright. Thank you, mister Foote. Thank you. Mister Dasatnik, thank you.

Moving on to item k two, this is a public hearing to consider resolution 8,731 for the approval of the following land use entitlements for the development of two vacant parcels located at 516 Cajon Street, APN numbers 170Three-fortyThree-fifteen-zero and 170 Three-forty 43160000 in the administrative and professional office AP district and determine that the adoption of resolution number eighty seven thirty one is not subject to the environmental review pursuant to sections fifteen thousand three hundred and fifteen and fifteen thousand three hundred and thirty two of the Environmental Quality Act, Development Services Director Dasetnik and declare this an open and public hearing.

Thank you. Brian Foote will be making this presentation as well.

Thank you, Mayor. So this item is a proposal to build a residential housing project with eight condominium units. It's located at 516 Cajon Street, and it is the westerly side of Cahone Street between Fern and Cypress. And this is an area of the photo. It's currently vacant.

Previously, prior to 1980, it was two single family houses, one house in each lot with a detached garage, which was typical for the neighborhood at that time. The general plan designation is office with the zoning designation of administrative and professional office. And these two properties are included on the housing sites inventory list of our housing elements for moderate income households. And the location is also within Historic District Number 3 as shown on the exhibit. This is an aerial aerial photo of the two lots.

This is standing on Cajon Street looking to the south. And this photo is a view from the alley, again, looking towards the south. I do need to mention the Housing Crisis Act of 2019, which is referred to SB30. It is applicable to housing projects. Some of the main points are that housing projects can have no more than five hearings on a proposal, and this council meeting would be meeting number four.

Previously, there was two historic commission meetings and one planning commission meeting. So this is meeting number four, and we do need to have a meeting number five to go back to the historic commission. If this is approved, we would need to go back for approval of a certificate of appropriateness within the historic district. Also, we need to use objective design standards. For example, typical development standards of setbacks or numerical standards are good to be objective design standards.

Any disapproval of a project or conditioning it for a lower number of units must be demonstrated that it does not comply with objective general plan or zoning standards. And any decision to deny density must be based upon written findings, and that must be supported by substantial evidence in the record. And the city carries the burden of proof to show that. The two findings that would need to be made in the event of denial or lessening the density would be that the city has to show a specific adverse impact upon public health and safety, and that means a significant, quantifiable, direct, and unavoidable impact that's based on objective identified written public health or safety standards, policies, or conditions. So a typical example of that would be a fire code section or a building code section.

And that there's no feasible method to satisfactorily mitigate or avoid that adverse impact that's been identified. So this is is directly from state law and it's fairly specific on the ability to deny or lessen the density of a project. This is a proposed site plan. This shows four detached buildings. There's two condominium units in each building, so that's a total of eight condos.

And because this is a condominium map, this will require review and approval by the council. These are the proposed architectural elevations. As you can see, they are house formed buildings. And as I mentioned, they have two condominium units in each building. These particular exhibits show the view from Cajon Street, and you can see the front doors of two of the units facing Cajon Street and then upper floor balconies as well.

And another exhibit showing the view from Cajon Street. And this is a photo of the surrounding neighborhood. There's a number of existing two story buildings on particular street, Cahone Street, between Fern and Cypress. I believe on the the west side of the street where this project site is located, there's a total of four two story homes. Some of them are really two and a half story with a 3rd Floor attic room that's evident.

And then on Easterly Side Of Cohen Street is There's a total of six two story homes and about three of those three of those have what appears to be a 3rd Floor, two and a half story attic room. In terms of the off street parking, a total of 20 units are required and 20 units or 20 spaces are provided. That's consisting of 16 spaces for the residents. So two spaces in each garage assigned to the unit and then four open guest spaces that are uncovered. Vehicular access would be taken from the alleyway, which is a common feature of those residential properties on both Cohen Street and then 4th Street to the rear of Cohen Street or to the west of Cohen Street.

And on the right hand side of the exhibit where Cohen Street is located, there would be a large planter area and then the existing sidewalk would remain, the existing parkway would remain and the palm trees would remain. And the front setback here as shown on the plan is 25 feet, which is consistent with the adjacent residential properties. This is a view of the landscape and open space plan. As you can see, there's a number of landscape planters and trees around the perimeter on all sides. And then the common open space area would be located towards the rear, which is the lower left hand corner of this exhibit and also an area on the upper left hand corner.

In terms of development standards, the project meets all applicable R3 development standards. This is in the administrative and professional offices own, which does permit residential uses consistent with the R3 standards. So this proposal is consistent with all applicable standards, including maximum height, setbacks in yards, common open space and parking. The architectural style as craftsman is consistent with the historic district. The building form and height are consistent with historic District number three, and I'll get into more detail on that in just the next few slides here.

And then the site layout and access is consistent with the historical development pattern within the historic district. The Historic and Scenic Preservation Commission first reviewed this project in December 2024. The initial submittal was designed as a three story multifamily building, a rather large Boxy building. Staff initially identified that as a potential concern, and so we we offered to take the design to offered to the architect or the applicant to take the design to the historic and scenic preservation for early feedback and early design review, and the applicant agreed to do that. And a number of public speakers were there.

And ultimately, the commission had several suggestions for revisions to achieve historic compatibility. They asked the applicant to reconsider the building form and massing so that it has more of a single family appearance, to reconsider the overall heights since the original proposal was three stories and to reconsider the architectural style and materials, and they suggested possibly Craftsman or Victorian, and that any exterior light fixtures should be shielded, and that needs to be addressed. After a few months, the architect came back with a second submittal, and that's what you have before you this evening is a project that has four detached buildings that have more of a single family form and massing. The architectural style was changed to Craftsman. Front setback was increased about five feet to match the adjacent residential homes.

And also, the site plan was totally revised, and the building placement was revised. Ultimately, the historic commission felt satisfied that the revised design would be compatible with the historic architectural design guidelines that have been adopted by the city. And fortunately, this process is precisely why you have a historic commission is to achieve these kind of results and ensure compatibility with historic districts. I would just point out the original submittal, the exhibit sketch really, is on the upper right of this slide. As I mentioned, it was was originally three stories in a Spanish Colonial Revival style, and the historic commission had made comments and suggestions about that to consider revisions that would be more compatible with the historic districts such as Craftsman or Victorian.

And then the revised submittal is shown on the lower right. It's been lowered to two stories and as I mentioned, has more of a single family form enmassing. This is an overlay of the aerial photo showing the proposed site plan overlay on vacant lots and how they would fit in with the neighborhood. As you can see on the Cajon Street side, the front setbacks, they'll align and match with the adjacent residential properties. The Planning Commission reviewed the project on October 14.

They made some suggestions for additional conditions or clarifying conditions addressing the exterior materials, namely to ensure that they're using natural materials such as water stone that are compatible or consistent with the Craftsman style and then also to clearly address the lighting that any exterior lighting should be shielded so that any glare is contained on the property. And ultimately, the commission recommended Planning Commission recommended approval to council. The project is exempt from environmental review under section fifteen thousand three thirty two for infill development projects and the project proposal meets all criteria for that exemption. There was also a socio socioeconomic cost benefit study prepared as required by Measure U, and the analysis shows that the expected cost benefit ratio would be 0.94. So in other words, annual revenues could be expected to be about $11,405 with cost to provide public services at about $5,909 and that's a net positive balance of $5,500 and that's the ratio of 1.94.

The recommendation from Planning Commission is for approval. And as I mentioned earlier, the Historic and Scenic Preservation Commission is satisfied that the design and the site plan are consistent with the city's historic architectural design guidelines. That'll conclude my presentation and we're here for any questions. Thank you.

Are there any questions for staff from on the City Council? No? At this time? All right. I'll call upon the applicant or his or her representative for any comments or testimony. Are they anybody here from the? Oh, come on up. Please introduce yourself.

Hi. I'm Jonathan Tarnios. Good evening, mayor. Evening. Of the council. We've been in Redlands for the better part of over thirty years. I've grown up here my whole life. We definitely have had a lot of feedback when it comes to this project. And I feel like everything that we've done has addressed that feedback. And we don't wanna be a burden to the local community, and everything that we've done has tried to be very accommodating towards the surrounding area. We could have done a maximum of 14 units. We put it down to eight. We could have had a lot more square footage. We ended up shaving almost 3,000 square feet off to be more compliant with the surrounding area. Setbacks are all compliant. And if you guys have any questions about

and questions and testimony from the members of the public. I do have one speaker slip, Chris Born. I may have mispronounced it, but Chris, come on up.

Hi. I'm Chris Bordeny. I'm a resident near the new development. One thing that I haven't really seen discussed that seems problematic to me is the usage of the alley. So I I was trying to do research around like the out the alley rules.

I was having difficulty kind of coming up with what they are or if there are particular alley rules. This one in particular, the exit of the alley on one side is only a 100 feet from the intersection at the Northeast corner of Kingsbury Elementary. So there's a lot of children and parents walking around there. There's also I have no idea if you guys are aware there is a pedestrian fatality on Cyprus less than a quarter mile from that alley as well as well. So you know, it's not a perfect situation already.

There's already 10 houses on South 4th Street that utilize that alley as secondary access as well as some other businesses on Cone Street that utilize that alley. Just last week I had to come to a full stop on Cypress because a car that was attempting to turn in the alley stopped abruptly and had to reverse out because another car is pulling out of that alley. So that alley has already got a lot of usage. It's extremely close to a school. My kids I have two little kids.

They're soon gonna be starting at Kingsbury and they're gonna be walking across that alley twice a day to and from school. So it just seems like with the amount of traffic they already that Alley already sees adding 20 more cars which is kind of equivalent to a whole another street of houses basically because there's like 10 houses on that block on the other side. So adding 20 more in addition to all the businesses and other houses that are already on that street just feels like we're really overstressing the alley. There's no stop signs. There's no traffic controls.

Just one lane alley. There's trash bins filling it. So, you know, I just would just request that the council considers, you know, the usage of the alley, how much we think is acceptable. I don't know if there's issues with it being

so close to school that can be

looked into. But yeah, that's my primary concern is just how close is that intersection next to school. There's already traffic issues like I said in the last month. There's been a fatality within a quarter mile there on that street and I've had to come to a complete stop and I've had to reverse or because a car was reversing out of that alley because of congestion in that alley. So that's my comment. Thank you.

Madam City Clerk, have we received any written comments?

Yes. I received three written comments, one of which is from Mr. Bourdney. So all three were generally opposed to the project. The main issues of concern included project was incompatible with historic character of the district. They're opposed to the increased usage of the alley and opposed to the building height and massing of lots.

Thank you. I'll call on the applicant or the representative if you have any rebuttal.

So engineering the engineering department commit did a study, conducted a study, and they discovered that during peak hours at the additional units would add one cart over every seven minutes. So they described that as nominal and give their approval. So All access was seen as not no problem.

Thank you. I'll now close the public hearing. I don't see anybody any public comment on zoom. I don't have any other speaker slips. I will close the public hearing.

Come on up.

We'll we'll keep the public hearing open.

Okay. We'll keep the public hearing open.

Quick. I have them pre prepared. Hello. Good evening, council. My name is Adriana Gonzalez.

After reviewing historic architectural design guidelines adopted on September 2024, specifically chapter six, seven, and eight, it is clear that this project does not comply with the standards for the early Redlands Historic And Scenic District. First, the parcel merger conflicts with the district's historic pattern of narrow rectangular lots. This merger eliminates the consistent spacing and side yard rhythm that define the block and places four buildings directly along the property edges as demonstrated in one of the images put forth today, which is clearly different from the surrounding structures in this district. Second, the project violates access alley access requirements. Homes surrounding the site use the rear alley to reach detached garages, a defining spatial pattern of this block of homes.

But the proposal adds a 30 foot central driveway that bisects the center of the new proposed parcel. This is a direct violation of the adopted standards and affects the historic lot setbacks. Third, the massing and scale are incompatible. Four two story buildings totaling eight units creates a consolidated bulk that overwhelms nearby historic homes and disrupts the scale and streetscape character. Finally, despite the presentation at the Planning Commission meeting October 14 claiming the project, quote, generally conforms to the guidelines, Earlier design review meetings identified issues with architectural design, massing and scale and material choices.

And while the 06/05/2025 design review meeting acknowledged some stylistic improvements, There were still clear concerns about the project's material choices and appropriateness for the district. For these reasons, I respectfully request that the council deny the proposal or require a full redesign that actually meets the historic design guidelines. Thank you.

Please fill out a speaker slip and give it to the city clerk so we have record. Can we open it back up madam city attorney for rebuttal from the applicant?

Your hearing is open so we can call the applicant.

You want to respond to any of the comments that were made?

We basically changed everything on recommendation from the historic council themselves. So everything that you see now is based off of the feedback from the historic council themselves. We wanted to go in a different direction, but we were amenable to any changes that they wanted. So we went back to the drawing board, spent 7 months on redesigning the project to have it meet their standards and then they gave their approval.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'll now close the public hearing. What's the wish of the city council?

Can I ask a question of

Yes? Absolutely.

Is that alley? Is that a one way alley or is that two way alley?

It's two way alley. And how wide is it? 20 feet wide. Okay.

Is there anything I mean obviously these all have garages. If somebody chooses to not park in their garage and park on Cajon or park somewhere else, is that is that their choice? I mean is that they can have any public parking they want? Is it just there's nothing we can do about that? We recommend I mean people I get the fact that we're adding x number of vehicles and then if people decide they want to use their garage for storage and not for cars, then what happens with those cars end up on

the street or It's just like in any other residential neighborhood. Just in terms of the trips of the IITE manual, how we would calculate trips for units like this would estimate about 6.5 trips per unit per day, that's about 52 trips over the course of a day and peak hour that's about nine trips spread out over an hour.

Was there any consideration to making the alley one way with with that it being 20 feet wide or that it's sufficiently with the trash cans and things like that that are in there?

I don't think we didn't think it's necessary and probably will cause more problems than it would solve. There's It's not adding there's alleys all over the city that carry many units accessing them as this will have.

Okay, thank you.

Mayor, I do have comments on this. I did view the planning commission meeting on this day. And the planning commissioners did express strong concerns about the alley alley access. They did ultimately determine that staff's recommendation was enough, sufficient, but the concern remained strong that and the preference was there for access off of Cajon Street. And if you look at just a Google Maps, look, view of the street adjacent to across the street, there are single family homes that have access off Cajon.

There's an apartment complex down on Cajon further a little south from this location that has access off Cajon and I think just for the and actually drove down that alleyway just to make sure it was safe. I found it to be really complicated. I just drove with me and my wife in an SUV, small one. I was driving southbound and there was already a vehicle parked close to the exit and they were basically interacting, probably exiting an ADU or something like that. But in either case, I did ask the question if council has the authority to overturn that aspect of this development and I think for the sake of safety and having seen the alleyway driven through it, I concur with many of the residents in the area that that is a going to be a problem in my opinion.

And so I would respectfully ask my colleagues to consider that this development provide access off Cajon and that the Alliguade be sort of an ancillary access.

I would argue that the coming out of the Cajon, especially if you were going to try to come out of there and go northbound, you've got traffic parked along the the curb line on multiple sides. You're trying to cut across that. Somebody's gonna come out and make a left turn there, and they're gonna get broadsided by traffic going down Cajon. So I would see that as being problematic unless they were only able to make a right out of there.

Council member Tejeda is correct that some of the properties have access to the street from the frontage. But as far as the historical district goes, the majority of the buildings take their access off the alley. And that's probably why the direction was to take it off the alley to keep it as consistent as possible through the historic district. Again,

I'm not an expert on this. So we have to rely on staff, but one speaker brought up some choices that were inconsistent supposedly with our ordinance and we looked into that. Again, don't know she was saying that it didn't comply with setbacks and a lot of things. She sent us a written request on that.

I mean the speaker commented that they were putting in a 30 foot wide driveway off of Cajon. That comment was after about the original design. That driveway is what was removed based on the direction from the commission to put it at the access to the alley. So there is no conflict to the plan. She just misstated that comment was just incorrect.

Well, thank you. Like I said, we have to rely on staff. I'm not an expert in building and codes and things like that. Thank you. Not

I understand there are a lot of concerns and I also understand the developer has worked really hard to address a lot of these concerns. I think overall more housing is good for Redlands. And so I would be willing to support the project.

Yeah, I've kind of watched this project go through the approval process and the with the Planning Commission and And think very you know find important opportunities point. To be polite in travel and traffic and again I commend the applicant for their redesign the amount of recommendations that you were asked by the city planning department and you adhere to them. And so I'm in support of the project.

So hats off to the developer for everything you did to address all the concerns. My vote is going to be not to support that project only because of the, again, the access. I really truly think that's important. I think you mentioned in the planning commission that that was your first option was to come off of Cajon and obviously you did what the Historic and Scenic Preservation Commission asked you to do. So again, I'm understanding that the rest of the council supports the findings and the determination.

So my vote's only for that purpose is that I think it's important for us to have that. I want the development to come in but we should also have the access off Cajon and so that's where my vote's going to go.

So I'll make the motion to move that the city council adopt resolution number eighty seven thirty one and approve the residential development located at 516 Cajon Street.

Second.

There's a motion and a second. Madam City Clerk.

Council Member Baric. Yes. Council Member Tejeda. No. Council Member Davis. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Shah. Yes. Mayor Saucito.

Yes. Okay. Thank you. We now move to item L 1, which is consideration let me get over here to this part consideration of approval design of Pioneer Avenue from Texas Street to Furlough Drive. Council Member Tejeda.

Yes, believe Director DeSatini is going to make a presentation really quick.

Thank you. I'm going to go through a short presentation and then I believe Council Member Tahira will take it from there. Okay, this is an aerial view of the area that we're talking about. You can see in the top left is Citrus Valley High School that was opened in 2009 I believe. And pretty much immediately after that the city was receiving a lot of complaints about traffic in the area in particular at that intersection at Texas and Pioneer but really all up and down Texas and Pioneer.

Oh in 2014 the City Council directed staff to look at some options with improving Pioneer Street to mitigate some of the traffic impacts that occurred after the high school opened. And staff studied that and came back to counsel with three options. All the recommendations included adding signals at Texas and Pioneer and then Pioneer and Orange Street. The Orange Street signal was put in by the city in 2015 and the signal at Texas and Pioneer was put in by a developer on one of the properties on the North Side of Pioneer. And so then there was the city looked at three options for Pioneer and presented those to the council again in 2014.

The first one, option one is basically finishing out the roadway with the current roadway alignment to a one lane in each direction adding curb and gutters, just relying on the two signals that were put in to mitigate the traffic. The second option was second and third option involved adding an additional lane in each direction. So there would be two lanes eastbound, two lanes westbound. This is just for about a quarter mile length between Furlough and Texas. The option two, you'll see I'm going to go to the next slide here because this is a blow up.

Option two included the installation of a median so that it pushed the two lanes, the two westbound lanes further to the north. And option three did not include the median. And the reason behind including the median was there was a desire at the time to try and preserve the Diodor trees which are fairly large on that stretch of roadway. At one time the Diodor trees went all the way to the I-ten Freeway and we're on the frontage of Citrus I'm sorry the 210 Freeway. But the high school, the school district took all of those trees out and so all that were remained were between Texas and furlough.

Now so given those two options, what diagram shows is the right away that would be required to implement those two options. The red line shows that that's was an option I think it was option two that had the median. That requires additional right away because you're preserving the median and the trees and so the lanes need to be pushed further to the north. And you can see the line doesn't go all the way across because some of that right away has already been dedicated to the city when the tract was approved. And in fact on one property it was already built out on the Eastern Most property.

They already constructed those improvements. But I would note that also on the West Side Of Texas, this option, option two requires modification of that corner as well and to require some land from the school district. So it requires quite a bit more land. Now this picture shows the right away that was already constructed. This was the in front of the Eastern Most property on that last slide.

You can sort of see I don't have a pointer but you can see that dirt area there that is all the additional right away that was dedicated by that developer. And on the north side of that dirt areas where they built the curb to align with that option. And let me I forgot to mention when the council was evaluating these options back in 2015, they ultimately recommended that we move forward with option to preserve the trees. And so they directed staff to amend the general plan and incorporate that design into the general plan and to then thereafter require that all developers of these properties on the North Side Of Pioneer build out their frontage consistent with that design. And that's why you see right here this dedication and this build out of a portion of that design, option two design.

Okay, I have a few pictures of the trees that we're talking about. There's some of the trees are in good condition, some are not good condition. Probably about half of them are in good these ones are not so good. Also these ones are not so good. There's a few here sort of in the middle of the stretch that are in pretty good condition.

But again, I would say there's only about three or four of them that we had them evaluated by the city's arborist and that was his opinion that about four of them were in good condition. The others would have needed some substantial rehabilitation to get back healthy if at all. This is a picture of the base and I put this red line in here just to show this is where you would build the curb on option one if you didn't widen at all, you would just put the curb there and the trees would be on the north side of Pioneer. Now this is if you were to put the center median in and you preserve those trees, then between these two red lines is approximately where the two north two westbound lanes would be located. And then where the trees are, you would construct a median and that would be in the middle of the street.

And then this line, this slide shows where you would put the curb if you were to just remove the trees and construct an additional westbound lane to the street. So you can see there's probably over double the amount of additional right away you would need to implement option two. So those are my slides. I will say comment that option two, we haven't estimated the numbers, but clearly it would be a substantially higher cost because there's additional right away. There's additional curb and gutter, you would have to rebuild the curb and gutter of the property that already built theirs.

And you would also have to construct the median, which is a substantial cost as well as the piece of property on the westbound of Texas that corner has to be reconstructed and the equipment move further to the north. And with that, I'll turn it over to Councilmember Tejeda.

Thank you, Director DeSachnek. This my colleagues, this was brought to my attention. I obviously knew having lived here over thirty years about this entire situation. Coming into the council in 2016, one of the first things I did was try to figure out how can we expedite that median in the process. And I subsequently learned everything that you just presented to the community at this point.

So, you very much for that report. On August 12, the Planning Commission reviewed a development proposal by Golden Management Services for the vacant parcel at the corner of Texas and Pioneer. The commissioners expressed the desire, they ultimately approved that project but they expressed the desire to expedite the improvements. However, they didn't really add, well, it wasn't on the agenda so they really couldn't discuss it but one of the things they didn't discuss was were the trees healthy, the condition of the trees, what the cost would be to bring in the improvements and so on and so forth related to bringing the median into fruition. So, and also I drive down Pioneer regularly and I've seen Diodors suffer over many years of drought.

In the time that I've been on the council, we've gone through a number of years of drought and if you go back to the picture that had the trees, one of those trees isn't even a couple of those trees aren't even there anymore because last year, the powerful winds that came through actually caused some damage to some of the trees that were pretty much very weak and subsequently our arborists decided or yeah, they had to come down, so they were not in good health. A lot of the trees are no longer there. Current if we took a current look at it, there's probably five trees out of the many more that were there. And so my proposal not my proposal, but my my for bringing this to the council is just for your consideration. You know, when we first when the council first decided to implement the idea of placing the median to protect the trees, that was a very good thing to do, but the underlying consequence was the properties were no longer giving water to the trees and they had to live off of what they were naturally getting.

And the trees that are there are the ones that are actually surviving by taking water away from other trees. And so we're down to the few that are there. And I think at this time, we should consider other options when it comes to making the improvements because one of the biggest concerns I hear in the district is the the traffic flow and how the safety issues that occur there. And so I think it's important for us to have safe route to school for the kids that go through there. They deserve that.

We lost an opportunity when the developer who's proposing the project on the corner of Pioneer in Texas, typically the developer makes the improvements, correct? The developer makes the improvements and the city really is not responsible for or the cost on that. We would probably only put the cost on the parts where we need to acquire the property which would be substantially less if developer had borne the cost of making these improvements. Because this preservation ordinance is there, we lost that opportunity to get that improvement. So I'm submitting this to you, my colleagues for consideration.

Okay. What we're going to do is we're going to go through our speaker slips and after our speaker slips, we're going to take a five minute recess after our speaker slips and bring it back to the council. So first up is Jermaine Miles.

Thank you. Oh, yeah.

Good evening again. You can get anybody to tell you that trees need to be taken down. But a true arborist will tell you that most important part of their job is doing anything and everything they can to save a tree. I had a 40 plus year old mulberry tree that I had some arborists and other people tell me I should take out. But I had an arborist say, no, I need to preserve it.

And I got another fifteen or so years out of that beautiful tree. Oh, man. As a person who lives in the historic South Side, I can pretty much guarantee you that if this was a situation on the South Side and these trees were on Brookside or Olive or Fern or Cypress or Highland or Palm, you'd be doing everything you could to save those trees. But this is the North Side, which is already a barren desert and needs more trees. Why, mister Tahira, are you advocating to take out one of the key issues on the North Side, which is shade on the North Side of this city?

I know that this city would happily spend the money to save the trees and to preserve those trees if they were on the out on the South Side. But because it's on the North Side, we're gonna ignore them. And again, I'm a South Side resident, but I know that the North Side gets left behind on a regular basis. And I'm disgusted that we're gonna try to do this again and leave the North Side without the same things that the South Side gets. We need to advocate for the North Side.

I get the traffic, but you already have a plan that was in place ten years ago. You've got a plan that's gonna help the traffic and it's gonna save the trees. So I urge you to please vote no on changing this plan and taking out those trees. Thank you.

Michael Pajner.

Hello, Michael Paesner. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind the council of this discussion on the climate action plan during your 07/01/2025 meeting, because I think some of those comments are relevant to this discussion. There was a general consensus at that time that we are not on track to achieve our climate goals. Council member Baric, you expressed that we should strive to make progress on our climate challenges where we can because some progress is better than no progress. Mayor Pretend Shah, you expressly stated support for improving our urban forest.

And council member Tejeda, you floated the idea of requiring commercial spaces replace the trees they remove so the areas that are currently green remain green. That was your sentiment at the time. Of course, I understand why replacing trees that are nearly a 100 years old wasn't proposed in this write up because we all know there is no replacing these trees. As for the current condition of these trees, while some focus on the challenges they face, I prefer to see the glass as half full. The arborist assessment is that six of the seven trees assessed can be preserved.

Sure, one of them appears thin and many are showing the wear and tear of the years. But if we give up on things that are showing their age, well that doesn't bode well for many of us in the room tonight, myself included. These trees improve air quality, reduce temperature, combat urban heat island effects and decrease CO2 in the atmosphere. Let's look for ways to expand our greenery not reduce it. Please find a way to save these trees. Thank you.

Andy Hoder.

Good evening, Andy Hoder, and greetings to the council and members of staff. As people who know me or have seen me speak here, I'm pretty adept at making myself unpopular with my personal opinions. But I will preface that by saying for many years, I was a member of the Redlands Street Tree Committee. You don't get on the committee unless you care about trees. You have a personal interest on seeing the preservation of the trees for all the good reasons that have already been mentioned.

They contribute to the environment, excuse me, they contribute to the aesthetics and of course the quality of life in the city. Having said all of that, there's a there's a factor of reality that comes to bear at some point. And these types of questions, should an old tree be taken out or not came up all the time in the street tree committee in that context in in a group of people who were very tree oriented. Should the tree go or not? And I was always the guy who said when in doubt take it out and of course that wasn't a very popular sentiment.

I couldn't think of a more diplomatic way to say that, but why I said it, were there numerous anecdotes or the hesitation to remove an old tree for sake of preservation ended up in a disaster where the tree ended up falling down and causing significant damage. So, the way I tried to put that in perspective is to say all those trees they were planted by people. They're not part of some natural forest. They're people trees and when they were planted, the circumstances were radically different than they are today. That area around Pioneer and the cross street there was semi rural or suburban with primarily agricultural environment.

And whatever the reason was for putting in Deaudor theaters, that reason doesn't apply today, but the trees are still there. They outlived that original decision and as was already pointed out, those trees used to extend in a tree theme all the way the length of Pioneer to the 210 Freeway. Most of those trees have already been taken out, so that theme has already been lost. What we have now is a few stragglers. So why should we take them out?

Well, we have to look at what's changed in the the environment there over those ensuing years or decades and that is traffic. There's a high school there now, there are houses there now and traffic is a serious issue and anything that congests the traffic is of course not only a detriment to efficient flow, but it is a potential safety issue. As is pointed out, some of the trees are already deserved diseased and dying or in declining health. And we know from the street tree committee just pouring water on a dead tree doesn't make it get green again. So, I think the right decision here is perhaps to take the trees out and plant other trees to sort of replace the missing trees elsewhere that makes more sense, perhaps on the grounds of the school or elsewhere in that neighborhood.

So you still have nice trees, you still have the shade, you still have the oxygen, but you also have better traffic flow. Thank you.

Valerie Taber.

I want to echo what some of the other folks have said here tonight, which is that if this was issue on the South Side Of Redlands, you would be preserving these trees. The fact that the city council already made a plan for this and the care of these trees has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle, I think, frankly, falls on perhaps not your shoulders because you didn't make that decision ten years ago. But that should have been part of the plan. If we were going to preserve these trees, I find it negligent from the city to not have taken care of them if that was always the plan. And so rather than just throwing the baby out with the bathwater now, why don't you do the hard work to preserve the trees like you should have ten years ago?

And again, when I say you, I mean the city. I understand most of you were not sitting on the council ten years ago when this plan was made. But these trees are beautiful. They are large. They provide so much shade and beauty for a side of Redlands that does not get the same attention as the South Side. And you just saw a survey where most of the folks that responded said that natural environment was important to them. And maybe these trees are not the natural environment. We do live in a desert area. I totally get that. But they are here.

And they are worth preserving. I did not hear that they were diseased. I did not hear that they were at risk of falling over. The evaluation said that most of them are in good condition. So do the right thing and maintain the one area of historic beauty that is still in the North Side. So many of it has been taken out. We can't change that the school district took out some of those other trees, but we could save these trees today. And it is better for our Northside neighbors as someone who lives in the Southside and loves our trees. Redlands cares about our trees. Please do not take these trees out. Thank you.

Jennifer Matavias.

I'm Jennifer Moravillas, North Redlands. I am a member of Northside Alliance, and we are a group of North Redlands residents that came together to advocate for ourselves because as you have heard other commenters, we are very much ignored and not really put as a priority. So one of the things that we did was create a survey and we got over or maybe about 100 survey responses, most vast majority from North Redlands residents. And this was related to the climate needs of our community. And the top thing that was on survey results was the shade, was heat.

And this is very clear. It is not just something that I'm saying or anyone is saying. There's a very clear shade divide between south and north. This results in the North having hotter summers. And so when we're talking about preserving trees, it is very, very important specifically on North Side because we don't already have the shape that we need.

So we're talking about preserving these trees, which are very important. We don't have very many mature trees in the North Side, as I mentioned. The topic of traffic, I live right off Pioneer Avenue right across Citrus Valley High School, so I'm very familiar with the traffic. The traffic on Pioneer Valley Avenue, excuse me, only happens during drop off and pickup, which is good because some people drive super crazy off on Texas. So the fact that Pioneer is slowing down some traffic is actually very beneficial as someone, like I said, who has seen the traffic, who has seen the kids come by.

I would recommend instead of this putting the energy, the time and energy and effort into fixing San Bernardino Avenue because that's truly where it is crazy hectic and a lot of traffic and it is dangerous at times because it doesn't have access to, say, firefighter needing to go to the side. So again, reiterating that the needs of our community for North Redlands is to keep trees and shade. And I will highlight also the the very clear indication that it is a priority. This past Saturday, we put together an event where we were able to distribute about 35 trees to our community. Very exciting.

It was very successful. We were we had a lot of folks come and learn about what we have available for our community as far as climate related needs. So, again, the city of Redlands bought those trees. You guys understand the need of having trees. So please don't send contradicting and conflicting messages when you are gonna go and chop down some very beautiful and precious trees that are very mature and needed and then say, oh, here's some new trees. So, again be united in your messaging and your priorities and make sure you keep these trees. Thank you.

Eddie Delatorre.

My name is Eddie. I am also a resident of the North Side. I live in the same area. I I see the traffic every day. It's It is an issue during the pickup and drop off times, thirty minute windows.

It's it's an inconvenience but I also agree with the sentiment that we want traffic to be slower. I don't see how the addition of this project is going to change the traffic flow, to be perfectly honest, how it's gonna increase safety. And being solution focused, I think that it would be prudent to have a traffic study of Pioneer and how that can be optimized, Texas and how that can be optimized as well as Tennessee. I think that there's a lot of opportunity for optimization here as well as a partnership potentially with the high school. My daughter goes to an elementary school nearby where there's only a single lane that goes in and out and they make it work really well.

I think there's a there's a lot of opportunity here for increasing safety where for the high school students, and I don't think that this is the only option. Thank you.

Okay.

Mister moderator, it looks like we have two public comments on this item.

Yes, mister mayor. Julia Lenhart, it is your turn to speak.

Hello, everyone. My name is doctor Julia Lenhart. I'm a climate scientist at the University of Redlands. Thank you for your time. I just want to encourage you all again strongly not to reconsider this plan for the sake of tearing down these trees.

Firstly, because the community already advocated for the protection of these trees ten years ago, and it would be breaking a promise to your community to reconsider this plan. And second, as has been said, the North Side is already disproportionately lacking trees and is also in a severe heat zone according to lots of data. And like miss Maravilla said, the city just funded a tree giveaway on Saturday for North Redlands, an event that was specifically designed to add tree cover because trees add shade and cool neighborhoods, but also because trees literally filter pollution out of the air. And these particular ones actually capture nitrous oxide, ozone, and particulate matter on their needles. It's been estimated that trees of this maturity can capture up to two pounds of particulate matter from the air per year.

And, obviously, we all know our air quality is a major public health concern, so the more we can do about that, the better. These types of trees also help manage storm water and raise property values. I think it's very clear that we should be doing everything possible to prevent tree removal in our city. And the argument that most trees most of the trees have already been removed, so why bother saving these last ones is backwards, frankly. And finally, I I would urge you to consider the age of these trees.

They're estimated to be between 80 and a 100 years old. They were here when our grandparents were alive and great grandparents, and, you know, if they're not looking good, if you think they're unhealthy, we should be taking care of them, not removing them. And I understand we all care about traffic, but some things are also sacred, like we should be maybe talking about how to raise funds to make up the difference or where in the city budget we can make changes, so that we can fulfill this original plan. Thank you for your time.

Roberto Seja, it is your turn to speak.

Hi. My name is Roberto Cena. I would be there in person, but I'm over here in my office grading. So, but I'm here to kind of voice in my opinion. I also live in the North Side Of Redlands, in particular, close to Pioneer Street, and I also pass by that street constantly. I do see the traffic flow. I do see that it is a problem, but as many of us have also argued that, the current statement of Redlands is preserving the trees, especially the South Side. I know many of us, all of us have seen how beautiful the South Side is, especially with the trees and preserving those trees. It's really pretty. And I know the North Side doesn't really have that much of love as much as the South Side.

But, one thing that I've been hearing a lot, especially with the, current proposition is that these trees, they're they're in somewhat good condition or moderate condition or maybe, they're just, you know, there there's no rotting or diseases, but they're just needing just a little bit of extra love. And so what I'm trying to say is that we do need to preserve these trees off for obvious reasons. It does provide consistency on shade. There's also environmental reasons why we need to preserve these trees. And also with the statement just to make sure that we're consistent with our wording so that way we're not creating contradictory statements.

But I also would advocate for public safety as, you know, as a parent myself, I would, you know, urge for public safety, making sure that my kid gets to school safely. I do under like I said, I do understand the traffic flow. I would advocate for more better, more improved infrastructure for public safety, maybe adding the right of way. But I will also advocate for preserving these trees and maybe giving some extra love for the North Side Of Redlands as the the past, event that just happened this past weekend. I wasn't able to attend that event because I was a little bit under the weather as well as my family, but I do see that adding more trees to the North Side does add a little bit of love to Redlands.

So I would just consider maybe relooking at this project a little bit so that way we can kind of address both concerns simultaneously. Thank you.

Those are all of the comments on Zoom, mister mayor.

Thank you, mister moderator. The idea was that we were gonna hear public comment and take a break, but from hearing from my counsel colleagues yeah. Okay. We are gonna take a break then. We're going to take a five minute recess and we'll be back.

To the members of the council, my name is Andy Quellazo and I've lived here a long time. Redlands has always been called the jewel of the Inland Empire and a lot of large part of that is the city's trees. I'm wondering if this if the jewel of the empire starts on I 10 and goes that way. Anyway, the Dior trees at Pioneer Avenue are so iconic. They have been a fixture in Redlands for over a hundred years.

Albert Smiley was said to have ordered 500 deodor trees from a Paris nursery. He passed them out to his neighbors to plant in their yards. When he ran out, he made another order of the same tree. Wonder why Diodor. Albert smiley knew the beauty of this tree and now we are considering the removal of these trees to put in more concrete and asphalt? That doesn't sound like the jewel of the Empire to me. Instead of removing them, I think we should be planting more of them. They have been a Redlands fixture for over a hundred years. I'm lucky enough to have one in my own yard. I drove along Pioneer Avenue today.

This is one of the more beautiful streets in Redlands precisely because of those trees. There are not many beautiful tree lined streets on the North side of town, where I grew up by the way. Let's preserve it or even add to it. Redlands has even been recognized by the Arbor Society as a Tree City USA for many years, I think twenty four. Ten years ago when this issue first came up, the decision was made to preserve the trees after public feedback strongly favored keeping the trees for aesthetic or and environmental reasons. I would guess that most people still feel that way today. It sounds like it. I urge the council to preserve the Diodor trees on Pioneer Avenue. Avenue. Thank you.

That concludes our speaker slips that I have slips for. I don't see anybody else on Zoom or in the audience. I'll go ahead and bring first opportunity. I would like to have our city arborist come up and give us a review or determination of what he saw as the condition of the of the Diodora trees out there.

Good evening, council. Since the arbors isn't here, I'll speak for him. No. I'm just kidding. My name is Eric Reeves. I've been employee of the city for twenty five years now. I started out I know most of you know this, but they don't. So I started out actually in the trees on in the tree crew, you know, working on trees and been fortunate enough to be involved with them my whole career. I've also lived in the city forty nine years, which is my entire life. So on the North Side, I still live on the North Side.

I know the trees, I appreciate the history they hold. I was asked to assess them and kind of give my feedback. I did know of the plan in past years and I wasn't heavily involved with it, I knew that was the thought, was to maybe keep them preserved in a median. The trees that's already been mentioned by staff, council and public, they're old, they're not in the best shape, kind of the worst shape. There's a couple, there's one in particular that probably should go right now, it's already way past the 60% threshold to remove. And as Eddie mentioned,

there was three

of them removed last year because they were what I call real dead. Of the remaining six that are there, again, one's probably, you know, meets the metric for removal. There's a couple more that you can see have real big old wounds, they call it coated compartmentalization of dead injuries from probably traffic collisions. And so they're, you know, a little questionable. There's, there's three that are moderate health.

I think that those could be saved given the right condition. And what I mean by that is whenever you do construction around existing trees, establish a TPZ, a tree protection zone. And you kind of base it off the drip line and the species of trees. For trees that size, you probably need a TPZ of 30 to 80 feet and that's like starting from the center tree going out just during construction. Not to mention when you're done, the the the place those trees are going to live in is crucial.

Right? So I I I don't think I didn't get the exact measurement of the median they're going to live in, but I think you would need at least a 20 to 24 foot median for those trees to live in. And I doubt knowing the knowing the street, knowing the north side, knowing the trees, that that was part of the original plan. The trees themselves are probably four foot in diameter. So again, you're you know, to give even four feet in each side, you're gonna end up you know, just under 20 feet.

So I feel that although a few of those trees we we could maybe save in the right environment, I don't think that there that we are gonna give them that opportunity, you know. So and then if we don't, that means that potentially crucial roots, whether they be like stabilizing roots or feeder roots, they're going to be impacted to a point to where, you know, there's a good chance those trees will fail in the next couple of years. And then we'll be replacing them, you know, in the meeting or or trying to do something like that where, I guess, again, being here and as Andy Hoder mentioned, we've gone over, you know, years of questioning tree removals and and or or saving trees. And what we've, you know, kind of learned over the years is even on iconic streets like Buena Vista and Alvarado, sadly enough, most trees aren't, you know, sequoias that are meant to live for three thousand years and when these trees start to, start to fall apart or they have to be removed, we've just followed the protocol of replacing them with the same species and starting that cycle all over again.

And in most areas we're able to get not just a 15 gallon, but a 24 or 36 inches box kind of give it a jump start. My recommendation, my professional recommendation would be to remove those trees, not, not, not keep them in a median, but yet once the north side of that tree is improved, replace them with new Diodors and the benefit in that or the silver lining is that you would, you would gain, you know, there's six there now, you'd probably plan 12 or 15, you know, and we've been using diadores. We just, last year's volunteer day, I think we did like eight of them. There was 30 altogether, think eight or 10 of them were diadores over at Sylvan Park. We've got plans to, to actually, the North Side does have less canopy and it's mainly due to just the disproportionate size of the North Side and the South Side in the city.

We, we looked at this in past years, but we've got plans to populate Bill Park, Sylvan Park, and Community Park with dozens of trees this next fiscal year. So we we're trying to increase that footprint where we can. Again, on on on pioneering these trees here, I feel like we could give it a shot. I don't think I don't think they they have the best chance of living and I think, you know, I'd hate for us to to waste that money when we could just plan on replacing them with probably twice as many trees there. I'd also like to mention there's four mature Washingtonia Palm trees.

Like we have that line all of our iconic streets. And we talked in department about transplanting those once the time comes because we can transplant those. And our plan has been our policy is to replace, like, missing areas of the iconic, you know, tree lined streets with those those big palms with those four there. So those we would actually, you know, no matter what, we would transplant those. So questions, comments?

Any questions for staff, mister Eric Reeves, our arborist?

I mean, in arborist.

I appreciate the work you do. I'm on the street tree community as well and this is where I've learned a lot about, you know, appropriate trees for medians and and even for sidewalks. Much of and the council knows much of the cost of lawsuits comes from trees, not appropriate trees being planted. This is historically in the parkway causing disruptions and issues with sidewalks and people tripping and falling. And so I think it's important as a council for us to start correcting some of the things that were done in the past to make sure that it's not an issue for future councils or future residents here.

Also wanted to point out that past councils have also tried to plant trees on the North Side. I remember participating in plantings that occurred on Colton Avenue, none of those trees survived and none of those trees survived because it required the property owner to voluntarily water the trees and I think most of the trees that fail and you've seen this yourself are trees that the owners are negligent in caring for because they may be a street tree, but the owner still carries the responsibility. The property owner still carries the responsibility of caring for the tree and watering the tree. And I think when we consider the fact that there's no water source for those trees that are currently that we're talking about today. As Eric said, they're bound to to continue to get weaker and fail.

And removing the trees doesn't mean that those trees will never that we can't replace them. And that's the good part about this is that we can replace the trees. And like you said, more is better than less. And so, if we have declining trees, let's replace them with healthy trees. So thank you very much for that.

Anyway, other questions for Mr. Reeves? No. Okay. Thank you, Eric.

Thank you.

So I'll just start off the conversation. I grew up here too, not as quite as long as Andy, but he's probably one of the oldest families here along with some others here that are listening and tuning in. I too am a tree lover. I think those are iconic Diodora trees. But again, as a council, we have to weigh a number of things, not just one interest or one viewpoint, not only the cost of the additional construction, but the liability should that tree fall down and create other liabilities for the city.

And I think after hearing Mr. Reeves talk about the viability of some of those trees and the opportunity to replant some trees behind the curb line that will eventually in time be able to grow new and start that life cycle over. It's unfortunate that, you know, we lost all those trees in front of Citrus Valley High School. I was one of the proponents talking to this high school or the school district to not do that. And and we see that that got removed.

But I also want to mention, you know, that a couple of work community workdays, there's about 80 trees that were planted on Riverview. And I was part of the climate control fellows from the state, and we planted about 80 trees out of the sports park. So there are a number of trees that have been replanted, and again, it was said that the 30 trees that were given out. So there is this ongoing effort of bringing trying to replant and provide shade. I don't know of anybody else that has planted as many of as I have as a community volunteer.

The 80 trees out at the sports park and and some of it, Selbyn Park, Riverview. So, know, I'm I appreciate trees. I I for the benefit that they all have aesthetically, climate wise, heat wise. So I appreciate that. But again, we here as a council have to determine what is the best thing for the community, for the city, for our city finances moving forward. And so those are my comments and I'll wait to determine where we are going to go with this after hearing from some of my other colleagues.

I was on the council ten years ago and you can see the trees are still there. I voted to keep them. Again, like Mario, I've lived here my whole life special is I have people that come in from LA and they know they're halfway to between here and Palm Springs because they're in Redlands because they see all the green. And I think

we should be very proud

of that. I think we've really I think we've gotten out of our way and again we can always improve on planting trees. Now in the comparison on North Side, you have to understand back in the 60s that was all orange groves. So it didn't have large trees planted around orange groves because was all orange groves. We had trees that way.

And unfortunately sometimes when you plan housing tracks you don't put the landscape in and we've since as a council we've I think we've corrected that requiring so much green space for any development comes in and I think they've done a great job. Just a good example is a development right next to Citrus Valley, they have a baseball diamond and everything else there for community. But I if we can save a tree, okay, those trees I think we should do every effort to be able to save them. Again, when was when are we going to widen that street or when we're to make the changes that were mentioned?

Would say that it'll be a long time before it happens. That's what I thought. Yeah. To put it plainly. You're right.

So I think we should do what we can to try to save them, keep them as long as if we need to remove the dead ones, I can see that because we have to think about safety. But we leave that to the experts, Eric. And once we have to take down which we don't. But I've never been in favor of taking down any of our old trees unless we're totally diseased or totally dead. And I still stick with that.

Council Member Baruch, I probably you deserve a better answer than the one I just gave because what I would say is the plan to have the median requires a lot of right away to be acquired by the city. That's what I was thinking of when I was saying it's a long time away. Because for us to get it in our work process and put it in, I don't is it currently part of our CIP for the Measure I

was going to add that this project is currently in our Measure I funding plan that you all approved earlier this year, although it's about a decade out. And we do have about a $05,000,000 budgeted for pre construction work engineering and surveying and that sort of thing in one fiscal year and then about $2,500,000 budgeted two fiscal years later. You all know that we can shuffle those priorities. So it's not a rigid schedule. If the council wanted to, if the city had the staffing to support it, we can move that project up earlier in the year.

Yes. So the acquiring the right away is a big hurdle. If there was no median and the footprint of the road was shrunk, it could happen sooner. Again, we would have to look at our budgeting concerns and reconfigure Measure I funds to move them up and to see if the money when the monies would be available for Measure I? I was on the representative of the city council on

the tree committee for many years. And I know one of the things we really pushed was to encourage our residents to water the trees even if just a little drip. In fact, I still have the sign that we were given out saying, hey, please water the trees. It's still in my front yard. So I I think we should try to encourage that because a lot of people just ignore it. Now unfortunately, because we had that drought problems and we were kind of restricting the water water use sometimes. It's hard once you get into habit of water and then you quit doing it for a couple of years and now get back. But I think we should encourage the citizens to make sure they take care of the trees that are whether they're trees or city trees, they're on close to your property, let's encourage people to water them.

I fully agree with council member Barich. It's really difficult to be having this conversation about removing trees, especially trees as majestic and old as these trees. Thank you so much to the public commenters. Mister Coiaso, I was so moved by your comment. And we got so many emails on this item as well.

People in Redlands are very passionate about trees and preserving trees for many reasons. Obviously, they're beautiful, but beyond that, they provide tremendous environmental benefits. We got a very compelling email from a local pediatrician talking about the asthma rates in our community and especially the North Side and how the tree canopy is very important. I would direct you to an article by Community Forward Redlands. It was from 08/01/2025 by Stephanie Hastings Miranda.

It's called The Shade Divide. And there are aerial photos of South Redlands and North Redlands. I understand the context you're talking about with the orange groves. But that said, we need to be investing more in the tree canopy in North Redlands. Certainly, I want to thank groups like Northside Alliance, ANCA, SURF from University of Redlands who have been actively giving out trees, especially on the North Side. We really need to, as a city, prioritize this more and more. And so for that reason, I'm certainly not in favor of removing these trees especially if there is room to preserve them.

My comments would be that it appears it's taken us ten years to get to this point where nothing has happened with Pioneer as far as, you know, an expansion or whatnot. So I'm not sure that anything's going to happen for the next five or ten years as as we're talking about it. And listening to mister Reeves and his comments about the trees, he says of the six or seven there, one is, I think he called it dead dead. So we may have one to take out because it's a safety issue. But I'd say let's try to rehab what's there.

Let's see if we can get those to be healthy and continue to thrive. Obviously, we have some time to make a decision. It's not like this is something we have to do immediately. So let's use that time and see if they come back around or we can get them to be healthier again. And then as we get down the road and we're looking at what's going to happen with Pioneer, if we're going to need to expand or whatnot, let's evaluate it then.

Because I think that his point about trying to put them in a median and the damage that would be done, we would likely kill them at that point trying trying to do the roadwork there. So that doesn't seem like a good option. So anything related to the median seems like we're going end up killing those trees. So if we can continue to I mean, a lot of the residents said traffic is actually beneficial there because it slows things down on Pioneer. I didn't hear a lot of sentiment about we need to solve a traffic problem. The bigger concern to people seems to be the tree situation. So we leave the traffic situation as it is right now, one lane each direction and work to see if we can rehab the trees.

Yeah, I'm in support of that, but I'd also like to see the cost analysis of what it would cost to acquire the right of way and the cost for options two and three if that couldn't be done and come back a at a later time to evaluate what those cost differences are. And the timeline. And the timeline.

We should move on. There's no recommendation. We have to propose that we felt finished.

If if there's no motion, then the council can move on to the next item.

That's what I'm suggesting. Yes.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Item L2 which is the consideration of ordinance number 2,994 an ordinance of the City Of Redlands amending Title XV building and construction by adopting by reference the twenty twenty five building code twenty twenty five, California residential code twenty twenty five, California electrical code twenty twenty five, California Mechanical Code twenty twenty five, California Plumbing Code twenty twenty five, California Green Building Standards Code twenty twenty five, California Energy Code twenty twenty five, California Historic Building Code and the 2025 California existing building code and making amendments to the related there to development services to SatNIC.

Thank you. I'm not going to dwell on this. This is an ordinance to adopt the building codes that were just referenced. It's a little unusual whenever we adopt these the first reading is actually not the public hearing, it's to set the public hearing which happens on the second reading which in this case will be December 2. So we're introducing the ordinance to adopt the building codes.

The building official is here if there's any questions. We're not there are a few local amendments, but they're the same local amendments we've been carrying forward for a number of years. So nothing really is changing in terms of our except for the changes to the new building code. And if there's any questions about that, our building official is here, John Thompson, he can answer any questions.

Are there any questions from staff on by the city council? I don't see I don't have any speaker slips. I don't see anybody on Zoom. What's the wish of the council?

Move to introduce ordinance two nine nine four and the city clerk is hereby directed to publish notice in accordance with government code section six zero six six. The public hearing to consider recommendation of the city council is to be held on 12/02/2025 at 6PM or as soon thereafter as the matter may be heard.

Second. I have a motion and a second, madam city clerk.

Council member Barrich. Yes. Council member Tejada. Yes. Council member Davis. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Shah. Yes. Mayor Saucito.

Yes. Moving on to item l three, consideration of a recommendation from the Redlands Planning Commission to initiate an ordinance text amendment to title 18 zoning regulations of the Redlands Municipal Code to prohibit new warehouses and logistic distribution centers as defined in article seven chapter of the chapter 18.156 of title 18 in all zoning districts and specific plans within the city of Redlands development services director Desatnik.

Thank you. Brian Foote will be presenting this item.

Good evening again, Mayor, council members. This item is coming to you from a recommendation from the Planning Commission. I'll just start off by providing a little bit of background on the development and adoption of the warehouse ordinance. So the council adopted a moratorium in mid-twenty twenty two. And then through the latter part of 2022, the Planning Commission discussed conceptual development standards for new warehouse and logistics centers in Redlands.

There was a final draft ordinance prepared by January 20 '23 when the Planning Commission reviewed that and then made a recommendation to council. Council held a hearing on 02/21/2023 and then introduced an ordinance on 04/04/2023. And the final adoption was 04/18/2023. In a nutshell, the Redlands Ordinance pertains to new warehouses and logistics distribution centers that have a gross floor area of 50,000 square feet or more or a building that contains six or more truck docks or dock high loading doors. The ordinance also pertains to the development or redevelopment of properties for warehouse uses that involve demolition, reconstruction, repair or rebuilding that exceed 50% of the reasonable replacement value of the previously existing structure or property.

I won't go into all the details, but generally, there are five categories of development standards, site location requirements, namely a one mile within a one mile radius of a freeway ramp and then screening and buffering requirements from adjacent uses, traffic patterns and signage requirements, sustainable energy requirements and then operation and construction requirements for warehouses. At the time, the ordinance achieved its intended objectives, which were to restrict new warehouse developments to be within one mile of freeway access or freeway ramp, that truck routing plan and traffic impact assessment be prepared for the particular project that was proposed. And so that large trucks could avoid residential neighborhoods and also screening and buffering requirements from sensitive receptors such as residences. And to lessen the overall environmental impacts of warehouses, particularly to air quality and energy use and traffic. This map shows an overlay of one mile radius from freeway ramps along the I-ten And 210 Freeways.

And this map shows the six sites or properties that had been identified back in 2022 that could potentially accommodate large warehouse developments. Since that time, three have been entitled, one has been built. The property at 1101 California Street, which is the upper left of the map here on the exhibit. That warehouse has been recently constructed and completed. I don't believe it's occupied yet, but that one is completed. And then two more properties, 350 Iowa Street is entitled for a warehouse use and then also 301 Tennessee Street.

Which numbers are those?

Those are on the lower right of the map on the exhibit, number five and number six.

Thank you.

And then three other smaller properties are without any entitlements at this time. So the commission had requested the staff bring back some potential alternatives. Staff retained a legal consultant to prepare a memorandum with a legal opinion about some potential options. And the three main options include just maintain the existing warehouse ordinance as is or have a code amendment to adopt some strategic zoning amendments. And the one mile radius is an example of a strategic zoning amendment.

It limits locations by use of development standards that could potentially be revised down to a half mile radius or other specific distance with an objective standard. And lastly, to make warehouses legal nonconforming uses and what that entails is delisting warehouse uses as permitted uses or conditionally permitted uses in the industrial and commercial zones of the city with or without amortization. And the memorandum with a legal opinion described the third option is likely the most risky in terms of potential future legal challenge or liability. And as an example, as a scenario, if warehouses were no longer listed as permitted uses, that means they're if were they legally established, there would be legal non conforming uses and potentially in the event of a fire of one property, if they were not allowed to fully rebuild that could possibly entail some legal risk, which for one property could potentially be millions of dollars. If it's a larger event like an earthquake or a conflagration or a flood where there's multiple of these expensive properties that are damaged and not allowed to rebuild to the full prior extent, combined those properties could potentially result in a very large liability, potentially billions with a B if multiple properties were to be not permitted to rebuild.

So that then leads to the specific recommendations from the Planning Commission, which is described in more detail in the motion in their staff report. One recommendation from the commission was to allow existing warehouses to be rebuilt if destroyed by fire or other natural disaster only to the same square footage and building height that they had prior to the events. Another option is to prohibit the construction of new warehouses citywide in all zoning districts and specific plans to allow the existing legally entitled properties warehouses to remain as permitted uses. So they're not considered legal nonconforming. Lastly, another recommendation was to prohibit the assemblage of parcels that may contain other existing or commercial uses.

The idea being developers are so motivated to build the warehouses that they would assemble properties and existing warehouses or commercial buildings and then essentially scrape the site, demolish all existing buildings and then rebuild it with a larger warehouse. So that was ultimately the goal of the Planning Commission is to recommend some changes to revise the existing warehouse ordinance. More recently, Assembly Bill 98 was adopted in September 2024 and that becomes effective for Redlands on 01/01/2026. It includes a definition for a warehouse concentration region, which is Riverside County and San Bernardino County plus several cities by name that includes Redlands, among others Colton, Rialto, Riverside and San Bernardino as some examples. So just a brief comparison of AB 98 to the Redlands Ordinance.

There are several overlapping provisions, which the Redlands Ordinance already has that AB 98 is now implementing as well. Some standards pertaining to energy efficiency, traffic routing, truck routing, screening and buffering requirements in addition to sensitive receptors, electrical hookups for serving cold storage and to prohibit idling of engines. There's a variety of options in the AB 98, several of which coincidentally are already in the Redlands Ordinance. There are also some other provisions that are in the Redlands Ordinance that are not in AB 98. For example, just the definition of a warehouse, Redlands uses a definition of 50,000 square feet.

The state considers a twenty first century warehouse to be 250,000 square feet or more. So that's five times larger than what the Redlands Ordinance will call a warehouse and then trigger the applicable development standards. The Redlands Ordinance requires a new warehouse site to be within one mile of a freeway ramp that is not in AB 98. The Redlands Ordinance would prohibit off-site parking of trucks on city streets that is not in AB 98. And then a few minor other details that are in the Redlands Ordinance that are omitted or slightly different in AB 98.

AB 98 does not automatically require a traffic impact report. Generally, AB 98 requires truck routes to be through industrial or commercial roads, major arterial or major corridor and not through a residential neighborhood. The Redlands Ordinance automatically requires a traffic impact study, whereas AB 98 is an option. If a developer wants to use a truck route other than a major arterial or major thoroughfare, they have the option to prepare a traffic impact report to justify why they're not using the truck routes. AB 98 also includes a requirement to update city's truck route map.

We're in the process of doing that right now. We plan to bring something to council on December 16 with a finalized map at that time. It's a separate project, not a part of this item before you tonight. And with that, the Planning Commission's recommendation, as I described earlier, is that the council consider directing staff to prepare a code amendment to the zoning regulations to either prohibit new warehouses and logistics distribution centers outright in new in all zoning districts and specific plans. And again, that's new warehouses, so potentially not the existing warehouses, they would remain as permitted or conditionally permitted uses.

This is for new warehouse and logistics centers not being allowed in all zoning districts. And then any of the other suggested code amendments that were covered earlier. Some potential alternatives for council's action. One, council can decline to initiate an amendment and just take no action. Or council can make revisions to the original legislative intent of the original ordinance and then direct staff to begin work on one or more of the previously described amendments.

Our council can continue this proposal and then bring forward any new or different issues for staff's consideration. And that concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you. Before we bring it back to the council, we'll hear from our public comment. Jermaine Miles.

Good evening again. In the past, and I'm sure like many here tonight, we'll speak about the health hazards of warehouses and all the horrible things around that. But you've always ignored all of that in the past, so I'm gonna take a slightly different approach tonight. In July 2024, after the Planning Commission recommended not to approve a warehouse at the old Faroes site and the public comment that night was overwhelmingly also against building a warehouse at that site, You went ahead and approved it. So I have a couple of questions about that particular site.

So did the city receive the $300,000 towards public art that was a promised concession from that builder for their reduced landscaping, which is almost nonexistent if you've driven by the building? And if so, where can we see that that money was received and see specifically how that money was spent or is expected to be spent on arts in the city? And then another part of their list of empty promises, the builder stated both verbally and in writing in their deck that quote, upon completion, there would be 200 permanent jobs. Sounds wonderful. Right?

Well, it's been completed for a while and there are no permanent jobs because in fact, there is no tenant. The building is empty. The only thing there are big signs on both of the corners and huge signs hanging from the top of the building saying for sale or lease. Is this what we want more of in our city? Empty warehouses, empty promises.

I think we should look at doing an analysis of past warehouses and what they claimed we were going to collect in tax revenue. Did we get that amount? How about jobs promised? Did we recognize the jobs that were promised? We already know this one's been completed for a couple of months, and we don't have 200 permanent jobs as promised by this builder. So I urge you to please stop allowing any other future warehouses in our city. I wanna make sure that the charm of Redlands does not turn into empty warehouses. Thank you.

Dick Corne.

Mayor Saucito and council members, I'm Dick Cornet. I've lived in Redlands for over forty five years. I love this city. I love living here. Accelerate Neighborhood Climate Action is a new five zero one c three and I'm the president of the board of directors of that organization.

And I'm speaking on behalf of ANCA tonight. ANCA opposes any new warehouses or the expansion of any existing warehouses in Redlands. Warehouses are responsible for many large trucks that would otherwise not be on our streets. In in the climate action plan you approved in July, transportation emissions from on road vehicles were 63.5% of greenhouse gas emissions. To meet the city's goal of reducing emissions to one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita by 2050, most of the reductions must come from the transportation sector.

Therefore, we do not see how you can approve any new warehouse developments that add significantly to the transportation emissions. We urge you to adopt the ban on all future warehouses and the expansion of existing warehouses. This will be a show by your action that you are serious about meeting the goals of the climate action plan and provide a cleaner, safer, and healthier environment in the city. Thank you.

Valerie Taber.

Well, I don't know what I can say that Germaine didn't hit the nail on the head on already. But we don't want more warehouses. The city overwhelmingly your constituents overwhelmingly said that we don't want warehouses. Your planning commission said no more warehouses. And so we are begging you to actually listen to your constituents.

And then maybe your scores on city governance and faith of your constituents in your abilities to lead faithfully for what we want will go up to more than like 55%, those scores are abysmal. And so if you listen, this is the way to avoid all of those issues that made you vote in favor of this last warehouse. You said, you know, we we can't go against our ordinance. We're gonna get sued the pants off because we're you know, this was zoned for a warehouse. They bought it with the intention of building a warehouse, and now we have to let them, which you didn't.

But this is the way to make sure that we are not adding more warehouses to our area. Warehouses that sit empty, that do not do anything to add to our community, that worsen the air quality, and, frankly, a concession that adds to our arts at the expense of our health, I don't really think that that was a great decision, honestly. But that's not the topic at hand. That's water under the bridge. But I am here today to ask you to please make this change so that we don't have more warehouses in Redlands. Thanks.

Michael Paysner.

Good evening, Michael Paysner. I also would give more time to Germaine if I could. She was brilliant. There has been much discussion about warehouses in Redlands over the past couple of years and a few arguments in favor of warehouses have been proposed. At one time, as the economics of agriculture became more challenging, warehouses were viewed as a promising means of generating revenue.

I don't deny that was a popular sentiment years ago. However, experience is the best educator. Now that we have experienced the negative effects warehouses have on traffic, air quality and the character of our city, the residents of Redlands are clearly stating we have hit our limit on warehouses. The second argument is that there are only a handful of undeveloped sites currently zoned for warehouses, so it's too late for a ban. This argument ignores what happened with the La Z Boy factory and the Faroe site.

Redevelopment of existing facilities into warehouses is the threat that makes this ban necessary. Finally, I've heard it expressed that property owners should have the right to do what they want with their property. This argument is the most job as council members to set limits so that one property owner's actions don't adversely affect the broader community. To state that property owners should have no limits is to abdicate your responsibility as council members. The Redlands strategic plan sets priorities for the city including quality of life and public health and safety.

Warehouses bring heavy truck traffic to intersections already graded as failing and that traffic adversely affects our air quality, which is repeatedly ranked as the worst in the country. Implementing ban on future warehouses moves us forward in achieving both our quality of life and public health strategic plan priorities as well as advancing our climate action plan goals, which we have previously acknowledged we are far behind on. I admit I'm not thrilled with a ban that allows existing warehouses to remain, but it is the choice that provides the best compromise, respecting the rights of existing property owners while addressing the needs of residents that have to live with the impacts warehouses bring to our city. Please ban future warehouses or expansion of existing warehouses in Redlands. Thank you.

And this bell? Left. Okay. Andy Hoder.

Well, at the risk of incurring more wrath from the audience here, let me say at the outset, I'm not advocating for more wet warehouses. I'm not speaking on behalf of the warehouse developers, but I did think about this quite a bit before I came to the meeting this evening and much of what went through my mind has actually already been said. What do we do now with the situation versus twenty or thirty years ago when the orange groves were in decline? How should we take care of the dying citrus industry? What you see from the map is kind of a checkerboard of what's left that you could even put a warehouse on and so the question that I would ask is, well then what do we do with that?

The argument and I'm not taking that side, but the argument in favor of developing that land is it brings more revenue which good for the city's bottom line. It potentially creates more jobs even though they haven't materialized quite yet. Those are the arguments in favor of it, but it's I guess the point I want to make is in the decision that you realistic. Look at the pros and cons. What do you do with the land?

If not warehouses, then what? What can we do to mitigate the potential for more trucks and more pollution? Should we mandate for example that all new warehouses can only be serviced by electric trucks? Well, there aren't enough electric trucks yet in production that you could realistically go there now, but at some point in time, maybe that's a solution is we'll get rid of the diesel fuel by using electric vehicles. So I'll leave it at that because as I say much of what's been said already ironically mirrors my own thoughts sentiment.

But I don't see it as an easy choice all or nothing at all. And that's where I would try to avoid is the all or nothing at all. The sort of hard line approach is it's all bad or all good. I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Jennifer Maravillas.

Jennifer, Jennifer Maravillas, North Redlands. I didn't prepare anything because in previous times that we've been here as a community, we've packed the rooms, we send the emails, we try to reach out to you guys to let you know and time and time again, you failed us. The community doesn't want any more warehouses. We haven't wanted any more warehouses. We've showed up time and time again and you all have sided with the developers, with profit, with the revenue that will come in. So I really don't have anything else to say. Mean, we've you've heard so many arguments, excuse me. But the reality is that, I mean, this is what the community wants. This would be a nice little PR thing for you guys because we only have a couple of spaces left, but it would be a win for the community. So that would look good on you guys.

So if you wanna go ahead and, you know, see it in that way because there's nothing else that has been working for you guys. We've talked about the health aspect. We've talked about our environmental aspect. We've talked about how our kids are growing with asthma, being sick. None of that matters to you guys. So like I said, so presenting in a different way, the PR stunt of like, yeah, you guys did something for the community would be really great. So again, just here to remind you that the community has overwhelmingly been here every time that a warehouse is on the agenda to say no. So this is an opportunity for you all to kind of redeem yourselves. Thank you.

Linda Hamilton.

Good evening, Mayor Sacedo, council members. I just want to make this very short, but I do want to say, first of all, I think you all know how much we appreciate your passing the climate action plan, putting that into place is very important to us. And what we're doing in Anka right now this in the fall is focusing our speakers series on the climate action plan. We are urging residents to support this plan in any way they can. We have them brainstorm practical actions that they can take and to accept the monthly challenge to do something to change their behaviors, which is kind of what this is a lot about.

And so I guess in the same way, I just want to urge you to support the span on warehouses as a way of saying, yes, we are behind this climate action plan too. I think it's very important that all of us who care about the city, who care about the future, who care about our children, do everything we possibly can to get CO2 emissions under control. And this even though we're not talking about huge warehouses, I know there's a lot of arguments you could make about that, but symbolically, I think this is so important that we say to the community, yes this is important, we need to bring down our emissions. Thank you.

Bruce Laycock.

Council members, city staff, I'm Bruce Lai Cook. I am a sixty two year resident of the city of Redlands. My dad went to Crafton Elementary in 1921. Okay? I'm invested in this community, and I know you are too.

What is the real issue before you tonight? I'd like to suggest it's really not about warehouses or distribution centers. I believe it's actually about what the city needs. First, there is precious little buildable land in the city of Redlands. Second, we all know that there's a dramatic shortage of affordable housing in our city and utilizing what little buildable space is left for warehouses would only make it harder to build affordable housing.

Third, the planning commission has recommended this to you after careful consideration and a lot of public input. Fourth, we have a really significant air quality issue in the East Valley due in no small part to the exhaust from diesel trucks that serve our existing warehouses and distribution centers. Adding to that pollution problem seems like a really bad idea. Fifth, you recently passed an inclusion inclusionary housing ordinance. It's an acknowledgment of your legal obligation not only to plan for, but actually facilitate construction of affordable housing.

Failing to stop warehouses prevents you from fulfilling the responsibility on inclusionary housing. Okay? You can't there's only so much space. You either build a warehouse or you build something that will home house people. Okay?

It's directly contradictory to your stated desire to have more inclusionary affordable housing. You know the City Of Redlands citizens don't want any more warehouses built. They've told you that time after time. So the question is, will you do tonight what is best for the City Of Redlands? Or will you abdicate that responsibility? Please approve the proposed text amendment to title 18 tonight. No more warehouses, period.

Mister moderator, do we have a public comment on Zoom? Or not public comment, but comment on the item?

Yes, mister mayor. Roberto, say hi. It is your turn to speak.

Hi. So I think for the majority of the, comment the comments that we just received, it's just basically an overwhelming consensus that we just don't want this to be like another city like Ontario or any other cities that have allowed warehouses to be built. And for the most part, majority of this community in Redlands does love and preserve the beauty and the nature of the city. I do understand the reasoning why for adding these warehouses, which is per developer development ish development or developers, and then also for boosting up jobs and the economy. I understand the logistics behind it, but I also don't want this, like, to give it in a more, like, natural perspective and a more environmental perspective.

You know, warehouses don't really, you know, provide much of a, environmental benefit as there is traffic congestion, there's people going into work, you know, with, adding more cars and adding more, you know, traffic. I'm sorry for stuttering, but it's just more like there's more environmental risks. And then also, you know, with the current status of what's going on nationally, a lot of the people that work in warehouses are usually people that are in with visas. They're people that don't really have citizenships, and people are at risk of getting, you know, removed by ICE because they're a fear of just because of the color of their skin. That's also another factor.

So even if you were to add warehouses to it, there are those people that have, you know, visas or that are not citizens, but they're working for it that are at risk of getting, you know, taken from ICE. And that's another risk, for that reason alone. And just again, I just want to reiterate the fact that, you know, as us as a community, we love Redlands. I myself, I'm not a permanent resident. No.

I haven't been living in Redlands for a long period of time, but I do love the community behind it. We are a community of giving and of sharing. And I know the city council does have the best interest in mind, but I also would urge, you know, to keep in mind that we want to preserve the beauty the natural beauty of Redlands, and we want to, you know, make our voices heard and understand that both the city can work with the community and the community can work with the city. So I urge in favor of banning warehouses and allowing maybe more of the we should probably think of something to do with those existing lots instead of warehouses, maybe implement some more environmentally friendly, lots. So, like, if we were to maybe come up with a park to implement more trees, more of a diversity on being able to have more community events, that would be more, helpful.

But, this is just me as a concerned citizen. Thank you.

Okay. Thank

you. We

have no other Zoom comments on this item, mister mayor.

Thank you, mister moderator. Okay. I will bring it back to the city council. Who wants to go first?

Several references about the warehouse that went up on California Street and I want to make sure we reminded that we just because we voted doesn't mean we're four warehouses. Did we get city attorney mentioned that we had some liability if we would deny something in in their state code that once something's approved just because we don't like something we can't just turn it down for that reason. Because I know I went to you before because I was very torn. I didn't want a warehouse necessarily there, but I also didn't want to have the city exposed to a lawsuit. In fact, someone already mentioned tonight that we've already had lawsuits for this or that, so why do we want to stick our neck out for another one, but.

When the project proposal came forward on California, The approach we always take on projects is we look at the findings and if the findings can be met and the project meets all this current city standards and ordinances, zoning code, development standards, zoning, general plan. The city council, they can't find any other reason on the findings to deny a project, it must approve it. So and that's what happened in California. The all the findings were met, the project met all the city standards and codes and so the city was hard city council was hard pressed to deny to try to make a finding that you had to base the denial on.

And that was the only reason and unfortunately you guys are right. I when I have to go east, when I'm at my office, have to get on California Street and the traffic is not good and that like I said, that warehouse is not even occupied yet. So it's hard for me to again, I agree with you 100%. I'm against any warehouses period, even under 50,000 feet. We don't have that much here anyway, but I would agree with the last speaker stating that well, one that was here that we do we have to really get affordable housing.

We need something a little more constructive for our citizens and that warehouse wouldn't be it. So I would be, you know, I'm I'm again, just because we went with that one doesn't mean we're pro warehouse by any stretch of the imagination. So anyway, I'm in favor of a moratorium on any kind of warehouses in Redlands. So

I'm commenting tonight not only as a council member who has for years listened to hundreds of public comments adamantly asking us not to approve another warehouse. It has been discouraging to say the least that our community has not been listened to on this issue. I think about that every day as I get on the freeway at California Street and drive to work. But I'm also speaking to you tonight as a mom of a two year old. I think about the air he's breathing here every single day.

I check the air quality daily, and more than half the days are moderate to severely bad. It terrifies me to know that asthma and respiratory illness rates are amongst the worst in the nation for children here in the Inland Empire. I believe that we need to do everything in our power to adhere to our climate action plan as was stated over and over again so eloquently tonight, and help reduce air pollution. I agree with many of the comments that this proposal in front of us tonight is important and I really thank the planning commission for bringing this forward to us. And even if it is just symbolically at this point with the three more sites that we have left, it sends an important message to the residents of our community who have not been heard on this issue for many, many years.

And it also sends a message to the region. Right? Redlands is not isolated in this issue. I think that we really need to be a leader and do a warehouse ban as soon as possible. So I'll be voting for it tonight.

Okay.

I think I echo those comments pretty succinctly as well. The thought I had was that we took I mean, we have these three we started with the six, now we're down to three. We can certainly go through and say, hey, on those three sites, we're not going to entitle any new warehouses. I think the council, obviously prior to me, put together an ordinance 2955. It had a lot of good restrictions in there.

Certainly legislatively things have changed with AB 98, with SB four fifteen. There are some things that probably needs to be some cleanup that goes into that as well. So I think with staff should make sure that we've we're covering all those bases, all those legal things that are going in there. But then I think we should move to undo, if you will. I'm not sure what the right terminology is for when those six locations were designated. The three are built, we can't undo that. But those other three, if we get if we can take away that ability to make those warehouse sites, then I think we're we're going in the right direction.

My

first comments are going to be towards the the sentiment that the council isn't listening to the community. I would feel the same way if I were on that side. But there's an obligation that we have that in most cases when we know that the community is heavily against a development of any type, the findings that need to be made need to be made based on development standards. And when the staff come to the city council and say, we are bringing to you a project that we recommend approval of, they've met met all of the standards. One of the ways that or I should say, community input is important, but that is not allowable an allowable way to deny a project.

We can vote to deny the project based on the community input, but that's gonna lead based off the fact that a project comes before the council has met all the requirements that is gonna lead to a lawsuit, guaranteed. So we vote to uphold the community's input, we go to a lawsuit and then it gets built, probably with some sort of punitive damages towards the city and that is true.

Fight it. Fight the lawsuit. Yeah.

Have a lawsuit.

Okay. My my comments still are what they are. They're based on that.

Can we refrain from speaking from the audience while council member is speaking? Thank you. So

I'll I'll go along with whatever the the council decides with respect to how we move forward on this. Think that, one of the ways that we could, approach this is to look at the prohibiting of the assemblages of parcels that may contain existing industrial warehouse buildings for the purpose of building new warehouses. That's an option that's I think a good option.

So I had a question for our staff. What does it mean by prohibiting constructions of new warehouses citywide in all zoning districts and specific plans? Don't we have the ordinance twenty nine ninety five that already addresses the prohibit the prohibition of of warehouses being built with a criteria within that ordinance? And then if we include what is already state mandated by next year on a b 98, would that not trigger any requirements for that development?

Well, ordinance as well as state law applies to all areas of the city right now, specific plans and but as that map indicated it first, you're only looking at industrial zones and you're only looking at within a mile of the freeway. So you overlay those two and then those are the sites that you right now could potentially build a warehouse on. And what I think is before you tonight is should we amend our ordinance further and just say all the existing warehouses are legal and can remain, but they can't be they could be rebuilt upon disaster or fire, but only to the extent that they exist today, not they can't expand assembly assemblage of multiple parcels to build warehouses would be prohibited as well.

Okay. So we're only talking these last three parcels that would prohibit any new warehouses. I see that one of them is 2.64 acres, which is 58,000 square feet potentially. The second parcel is a 2.8 acres, which is 61,000 feet or square feet, I'm sorry. And number three, which is probably the one that would prohibit a new warehouse would be 11 acres with a combined square footage of 240.

Well, are those, but I think but we're also talking about if you look in that general area, like a bit to the north there, you'll see some smaller buildings. So this would prohibit the idea would be to prohibit tearing down those smaller buildings and building a larger warehouse building.

50,000 square feet, right?

Well, haven't drafted an ordinance, we're just looking for direction tonight.

I think the suggestions they have here

is a

good start. Mean allowing existing warehouse remain legal. Fine. Allowing existing warehouse to rebuild if destroyed on fire that's we should I mean you can't penalize somebody because they have a disaster. Prohibit construction new warehouses citywide, I agree with that if we can legally do it and then prohibit the assemble of parcels which I strongly am for. So someone just doesn't want to buy a bunch of property around and flop a $50,000 or $50,000 we should resolve 50,000 square foot warehouse to that is. So I mean, I think we have a good start with the Planning Commission suggestions or recommendations, I'm sorry.

Are we ready for a motion? I move to direct staff to prepare a draft ordinance for the Planning Commission's consideration to accomplish the following: allow existing warehouses to remain as legal conforming uses allow existing warehouses to be rebuilt if destroyed by fire or other natural disaster only to the same square footage and building height, prohibit the construction of new warehouses citywide in all zoning districts and specific plan districts, prohibit the assemblage of parcels that may contain existing industrial or warehouse buildings for the purpose of building new warehouses.

Second. Okay. Have a motion and a second. Madam City Clerk.

Councilmember Yes. Councilmember Tejada Yes. Councilmember Davis Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Shah

Yes.

Mayor Socito Yes.

Moving on to item L4, which is consideration and acceptance of a $900,000 highway safety improvement program cycle 12 grant approval of a $730,281 construction with Sierra Pacific Electric Contracting to install new traffic signal at the Cypress Avenue and Cajon Street intersection, project number 253008HPHSIPSL5083032 approval of $900,000 of additional appropriations and determine that the project is categorically exempt pursuant to section 15.301 of the state guidelines implementing the Calum four Environmental Quality Act, Municipal Utilities and Engineering Harris.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This traffic signal project includes protected left turn phasing at each leg of the intersection as well as both visual and audible pedestrian crossing signals and stripes and signs and all of the other things that go along with the intersection improvement project. Sierra Pacific Electrical submitted the lowest of the nine bids that we received in October. It's right by a school. Perhaps in this case, the good news is that traffic signal components are long lead time items.

So we don't anticipate construction happening until the summer of next year, which works well in this particular project. The need for the additional appropriation is because the city has to front load the costs. We didn't know it was not included in the budget this year and then we'll be reimbursed up to $810,000 from the HSIP program. I'm happy to answer questions if you have them.

Are there any questions? I have one public speaker, Bruce Laycock.

Hello again. The last meeting I attended, there was a lengthy discussion about the speed of vehicles on Cypress Avenue between Cajon and Center. A fatality occurred. As you're planning this traffic signal, if you don't get another stop sign somewhere on that block, you're gonna have people that are already going 40 miles an hour headed west on Cyprus that are gonna be going faster all the way. You need to address that traffic calming issue and maybe put in a stop sign somewhere.

I don't know. I know that's a long lead time, but you're saying that this is going to get done by mid summer. That's fairly fast to get that other thing going. But if you don't, you're gonna have another fatality because you're gonna have cars driving faster on Cypress Avenue. That's a bad idea. Thank you.

Yeah. I could speak to that as a separate issue. Our department is looking at the very thing that the speaker is asking for and we expect to have some recommendations by December 4.

Thank you. Okay. What's the wish that I don't see I don't have any speaker's lips. I don't see anybody on Zoom. What's the wish of the council?

I move that the city council determine that acceptance of a $900,000 highway safety improvement program, cycle 12 grant and approval of a construction contract and construction of a new traffic signal at the Cypress Avenue Cahone Street intersection. Project number 253008HSI PSL Dash5083032 are categorically exempt from environmental review pursuant to section fifteen three zero one c of the state's guidelines implementing CEQA, and I moved the city council to accept the $900,000 California Department of Transportation Highway Safety Improvement Program, cycle 12 grant award. And I move that the city council approve the Cypress Avenue Cahone Street traffic signal project plans and specifications and award a contract, a construction contract to Sierra Pacific Electrical Contracting for an amount not to exceed $730,281 And lastly, move that the City Council approved an additional appropriation of $900,000 Second.

I have a motion and a second, madam city clerk.

Council member Barrich. Yes. Council member Tejada. Yes. Council member Davis.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Shah. Yes. Mayor Saucito.

Yes. Moving on to item l five, consideration of ordinance number 2,987 of the city of Redlands amending chapter 13.64 integrated solid waste management and 13.67 mandatory organic waste disposal reduction of the Redlands municipal code relating to organic waste facilities and community services director Crocker.

Thank you, mayor, members of the council. And the purpose of this ordinance amendment is to update the city solid waste regulations. And this is in order to ensure consistency and support the compliance with state mandates related to the organic waste disposal. The proposed language in the amendment also enhances clarity and supports the city's commitment to regulatory compliance, the sustainable waste practices and I'm available for any questions.

Are there any questions for staff? I don't have any speaker slips. I don't see anybody on zoom.

I move we introduce ordinance number 2,987 amending chapter thirteen point six four and thirteen point six seven of the Redlands Municipal Code.

Second.

Motion and a second. Madam City Clerk.

Council Member Barrich. Yes. Council Member Tejada. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Shah. Yes. Mayor Socito.

Yes. Okay. Moving on to individual city council member announcements and or reports on activities. We'll start down here.

Thank you, Mayor. Let's see. I attended Senator Ochoa's town hall on the November 10. Attended the RPOA fundraiser in honor of Seth Franklin, raising money for his children's college fund. I attended the Diwali Redlands cultural for the Hindi community, their cultural event celebrating Diwali And that's about it, I think.

Missed a couple of events I have on the calendar, so I apologize to the firefighters for missing the benevolent bowl, something that didn't put on my calendar and that's sorry about that.

I submit mine electronically, so I'll just wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving.

So I want to thank those that participated in the Veterans Day Parade and we had a great time. Again, I attended the Diwali Indian celebration. Also today we the city recognized the Citibank Building at their ribbon cutting this morning. We also have the new dog park dedication, which is an exercise area for the dogs to be able to run around and have a good time. And so that was done today. And again, I did tend to stop in to the firefighters' benevolent fundraiser at the bowling alley. And so that concludes my report.

So in in lieu of reporting on activities, I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the deep concern and uncertainty many in our community are feeling in light of today's immigration enforcement actions. We cannot ignore the human impact these raids and abductions have on our families, friends, children, workers and neighbors who contribute every day to the fabric of Redlands. Our immigrant community is a big part of who we are. They are parents in our schools, entrepreneurs in our local economy, caregivers, students and long time residents who simply want the chance to live, work and thrive safely. They are Redlands.

When actions like today's occur, it sends ripples of fear far beyond the individuals directly involved. Our community has changed after what happened today. As a city, our responsibility is to uphold safety, dignity and respect for all residents. You heard tonight calls action from several community members. We need to affirm that Redlands remains committed to being a community where families feel supported, where due process matters, and where we continue working towards policies that protect our community.

While our power only goes as far as it can at the local level, we need to exercise every option we have to help people feel safe. I encourage anyone feeling afraid or uncertain to reach out to trusted community organizations and legal resources And I ask that we all extend compassion in the days ahead. Moments like this call for empathy, leadership, communication and a reminder that our shared humanity must guide us. Please reach out to me with your concerns and ideas for how the city can better support members of our community who are being targeted right now. Thank you.

Thank you for those comments, Council Member Davis.

I attended the library board meeting and one was a big discussion is when we're going to have the finally have our museum opened and we don't have a definitive date still but one of these days we'll have it open. Attend the Veterans Day Parade, I think that's wonderful. We can never recognize all our veterans and we're one of the few communities that I know in this area that has anything. I don't think even everything in LA that I remember. So, matter of fact, we're recognizing our veterans as super.

There was Redlands Residence Expo downtown on the eighth of this month and it had different businesses. They were just basically Boost saying, hey, this I have a business in Redlands for residents and it was quite well attended. The ribbon cutting again at the animal shelter, my compliments to the staff that is overwhelming what you did. It's fantastic that how large I mean, I just was thinking you're going to add some crates and stuff, but you've added a wonderful and my wife appreciates even more so because she works down there quite a bit. I went to the firefighters fundraiser at Bowl on Saturday and that's it.

Before we turn, I want to acknowledge the appointment to by the governor's office to city manager, Doug and for the post committee. Can you remind me what that stands for again?

It's the Police Officer Standard and Training Commission And it has oversight for the certifications of officers throughout the state.

I want to congratulate his appointment by the governor's office to sit on that committee the next what, three years or so?

I have to I have to confirmed by the Senate within the next year.

Well, that's easy.

And if that happens, then they'll keep me for two more.

Okay. Great. So congratulations on that representing Redlands and the made a good decision.

We're once right

now.

Just don't take it. Let them take you away from us.

Okay. So now if there aren't any other comments, we stand adjourned to our next regular city council meeting, which will be held December 2. Thank you for your patience. Good evening and be safe out there.