City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, thank you. Welcome, everybody. We're going to begin our regularly scheduled meeting of the Atascadero City Council, and we're going to begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, led tonight by Mayor Pro Temderis.

...of the United States... ...liberty...

Okay, thank you. And we did do roll call prior to entering the closed session. But as that was a special meeting, we are going to take roll call again for regular meeting. So roll call, please.

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

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Darius.

Here.

Mayor Robbo.

Here. All present. All right, thank you. By the way, we thank all of you for showing up in the audience this evening. And if any or all of you listening at home through one of our various means of doing so, we welcome you to our meeting. and glad you're participating. We are going to begin this evening with presentations. We have some awards to be presented to the city as a result of our downtown El Camino Real project. And I believe this probably falls into Mr. DeBar's wheelhouse as the public works director. A stack of plaques.

Thank you, Mayor Burpo. Yeah, we have a stack of awards here. As you recall, we actually got a League of California Cities award for the downtown El Camino project in January or earlier this year. We have some more. We actually applied for these awards and I'm really happy to share them with you. The first, we got two awards this year from American Public Works Association, the Central Coast Chapter. So this covers from ventura up to Monterey so it's a big area and actually the first award we got was first placed for the 2025 project of the year transportation project five to $25 million. And then, uh, there's, there's, uh, I think five total awards, uh, in this, and then they award a grand winner and we actually were the overall winner for that, all of these projects as well. So I'm happy to present these to the council. And then, uh, the other ones we got were from American society of civil engineers. Um, so it's nice to be recognized by my colleagues. And, um, this was a San Luis Obispo branch. The first one was for outstanding roadway and highway project. This is recognized as projects whose primary focus is on roadway, highway design, construction for vehicle transportation or multimodal transportation projects and showcases advance or innovative in design. So this is the first one. So there I got four of them. Next one was outstanding community improvement project for for our area. This recognizes civil engineering projects with the primary goal of improving the community. So it's very nice to get this one. The third one from ASCE was Outstanding Sustainability Project. And this recognizes projects whose primary focus is to promote broad understanding of economic, environmental, political, social, and technical issues and processes as related to sustainable development. We really did, you know, with the business outreach and everything else, this was a really good award to get. And lastly, we had the Outstanding Construction Project. So this recognizes projects which utilize exceptional or innovative construction methods and or outstanding project management, design, and construction methods to overcome challenges and successfully complete a construction project. So very happy to share that. to present these to the city council and just a testimony as to how successful this project was. It really was.

Well, thank you, Mr. Barr. I don't know, Mr. Lewis, if you wanted to add anything and maybe we'll take a picture. There's enough there for each council member to hold a plaque.

We have one more award from the American Planning Association, I believe, that we'll introduce now. And then, yes, we'll have each council member get to hold a plaque because we're such big winners.

Now, Mr list to do want me to receive this particular plaque I think you told me okay i'll receive this particular plaque and then we'll all come down take a picture with a plaque for everybody.

yeah i'm happy to ever. A little blurb, I only have one, so apologies, but it's a good one. So on behalf of the Central Coast section of the American Planning Association, I'm honored to present APA's Urban Design Award of Excellence to the City of Atascadero for the Downtown Infrastructure Enhancement Plan. This award from APA recognizes projects that demonstrate exceptional design, thoughtful planning, and a meaningful contribution to the public realm. Atascadero's plan is an excellent example of how infrastructure improvements can do more than address circulation and utilities. Please join me in congratulating the City of Atascadero.

Councilmember from your stack of plaques.

Yeah.

Okay. You have a bit

Well, we've been very proud of the Downtown Enhancement Project for some time now, but it's great to see other organizations recognize what a great project it's been. So we really appreciate that recognition coming from these organizations, Nick, and glad to see you being recognized by your peers as well. And Phil, you too. And yeah, we thank everybody for that recognition, and I think it's well deserved. Our team did a great job of managing this project on time and on budget. And we're looking forward to phase two, the arches on either end. So we can enjoy it even more. So with that, we're going to proceed on to consent calendar. Consent calendar consists of items that are considered routine and non-controversial by staff and will be acted upon by a single motion of the council, unless otherwise requested by an individual council member. I will begin to see if any other council member wishes to pull an item or ask a question. Okay, seeing none, I wanted to make a comment and ask a question. Item two is we're doing a contract at the zoo on a project, but it's going to be paid for by the Zoo Foundation. I want to recognize the Central Coast Zoo Foundation and thank them for their ongoing and continuing support of the zoo and making extra things possible at the zoo. So just making it a better place for everyone, and we really appreciate that organization's dedication to the city, an organization made up exclusively of volunteers. Also, item three, general election. I just had a question for the clerk for clarification. The county charges us in this thing $75,000 this year, goes up every time to run the election. But if there are no candidates other than the incumbents, there would not be an election. The county would not charge us that $75,000. Is that correct?

We would have to have the Council not make a decision to not have the election, but yes, then we would cancel the election and then we'd know we would not have to pay for an election. Not have to pay the $75,000.

Okay, thank you. That's my question. Let's see if there's anybody member of the public wish to comment on anything on the consent calendar. Okay, seeing no bring it back to Council for a motion. Move approval of the consent calendar.

Second.

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

Council Member Funk? Yes. Council Member Peek?

Yes.

Council Member Newsom? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Derris?

Yes.

Mayor Bravo?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, with that, I believe, am I skipping over here the City Manager's report? Yes, thank you, Mayor. There we are.

Here I am. Yeah, I have several things to report on, but first, just exhale from the celebrations that we've been going through, right? So, congratulations to the Council on a successful groundbreaking yesterday at Fire Station 1, and as you can see, Fire Station 2 is well underway. Our firefighters spent their first night in the new Station 1 modular home last evening, so they are responding out of there, and the transition is well underway. So, And work is also occurring at the police department. So that was great. And how nice to see you in the community out at the dedication of the Monarch Butterfly Garden. It certainly looks a lot nicer than it did three years ago. And it's certainly the type of conservation work an AZA accredited zoo does. So that was really nice to celebrate both of those things. And we're getting good media attention for that. Okay, my first slide and report is on 4990 Traffic Way. So this was a project that has appealed to the Planning Commission. It's basically they're appealing a staff decision that it was at no long, it was still a conforming use. The Planning Commission ruled with the staff that the staff was correct. and they have now appealed to the city council. So the code says that a date should be set within 30 days of receiving the appeal. It doesn't mean the appeal needs to be heard within 30 days. And so the process in the code isn't really laid out as to how the date is set. So I'm suggesting August 11th, looking at your calendar, that there's no objection to the council, by the council, then that would be the date that the 4990 Traffic Way appeal would be heard before the city council. So I just wanted to announced that that's the date i'm setting unless the council at the end of the meeting wants to take action under individual determination so that's when the appeal will be heard for 4990 traffic way is that good dave Okay, next, the Lakeside Wine Fest is coming. Already the wine festival is here. Tickets are on sale now. You don't want to be stuck in a sold-out situation. They do sell out. So please join us this Saturday, June 13th at 4 p.m. The weather should be perfect. The heat is coming tomorrow and Thursday, so you don't want to miss out on this beautiful day in Atascadero. We'll have over 60 wineries, breweries, and cideries, plus food purveyors and artisans. art exhibitors, the whole bit. A portion of the proceeds from the festival do benefit the Central Coast Zoo. And so this is really a terrific way to promote the zoo, see the zoo, and enjoy a beautiful Itasca afternoon in our local wineries and breweries. Next, we have our Movies in the Park. So we're full swing events, as we talked about two weeks ago. Summer Movies in the Park starts June 13th at 7 p.m. Zootopia 2. So this will be a lot of fun. And you can see that that's a very popular movie. And actually, it received an Academy Award, I believe. So... Another neat thing is one of our residents, Jeremy Spears, who was nominated for an Academy Award, actually worked on this movie, on one of the characters. So Atascadero has a real connection to this movie. We're very proud of Mr. Spears. He was also nominated to win an Academy Award for different work. So pretty neat. famous Atascadero residence.

This is free to attend at Colony Park, 5599 Traffic Way.

There'll also be games, activities, and more before the movies. Just a great way to spend an afternoon with your family. Do bring a low-back chair or picnic blanket, though, so you'll be comfortable. Really proud to share with the council next that we are doing another aquatics program. This will be even a little fuller than last season. So I really appreciate the recreation team's work on this and Larissa's work really hard. Programming kicks off on Monday, June 15th. And so it's Monday through Wednesday programming. Lap swim is available from noon to four. Rec Swim is available from 2 to 4.15, so Monday through Wednesday. Thursday through Friday programming. Lap Swim is available from noon to 5.45, so these are much more extended hours, as you can see. This is really terrific. And Rec Swim is available from 2 to 4.15. Group swim lessons and private lessons are also available, but passes must be purchased in person, though, at the Colony Park Community Center, and registration for lessons may be done via the online, the active net portal. You can go to www.atascadero.org. and go over to recreation registration on the active net portal and sign up for your lesson so this is a much more expanded program we know the council was really pleased and these are the kind of things we are able to fund with d20 dollars and so i know this was a real priority to the community and it's going to be a terrific aquatics program Next, I think the most popular program in town right now is Coffee with a Planner. So we're going to continue rolling these out. This is at Amsterdam. We'll be on June 18th from 9 to 10. And just really good discussions going on with these. Come share a hot cup of coffee with our planning staff. This one, I think, is a more general, just talking about planning in general. And you can answer any questions. We've had a lot of questions about ADU, the general plan, land use, those sorts of things, what you can do with your property. So come on down and have coffee with a planner on June 18th. Next, we have the Saturday in the Park Summer Concert Series. Our first concert kicks off Saturday, June 20th at 6.30 with Garden Party. So this is a great band. This is classic soft rock. And so it'll be a lot of fun, 6.30, June 20th. All of the concerts are at the Lake Park Bandstand. They're free, and you can just really enjoy them. Bring your low-back chair. Food is also available for purchase. You can sip on some wine and enjoy a lovely Atascadero evening. We also, I think that other departments were getting jealous of the coffee with a planner. So now we have coffee with a cop and we will have a special appearance by our canine, Pomick. This is on June 24th at Joe Bella's from nine to 11. So these are great outreach activities. I'm really pleased that the staff takes time to do these. These really are better engagement and better trust building activities than like a formal workshop. And so we're really trying to roll these out more. And it's just a great way to engage the community. So Coffee with a Cop on June 24th. I'm really thrilled, too, that our police department, our school resource officer, Destiny, is putting on a Women in Blue Leadership Camp. This is a full day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. On June 30th. This is for 6th through 12th graders and is geared to female youth interested in pursuing a career in law enforcement. So really kind of hoping to encourage young women to do this amazing career. We'll have guest speakers from our police department, Cal Poly, Highway Patrol, Probation, the Sloan Sheriff's Office, FBI, and the District Attorney's Office. We'll have a canine demonstration and youth will learn a small portion on forensics. learning how to lift fingerprints. So it should be a pretty neat camp. And lunch is being provided from the Atascadero Police Foundation. Appreciate that. We'll see how this goes. This is the first time we've done this, and I think it could be a really neat opportunity to inspire young women to have a career in law enforcement. And finally, if you have any questions or want more information, you can always go to visit atascadero.com for our events or for citybusinessatascadero.org. Thank you, Mayor and members of council.

Does any member of the council have any questions for the city manager regarding his report? Okay, I just have two comments. So one is that thanks to the school district for enabling the use of the high school pool, city run program, but obviously we couldn't do it without access to the pool. So thank the school district for that. And also you mentioned some of the ribbon cuttings we've been doing. It's just, we enjoy, I think the council, you know, going to ribbon cuttings. Because, but it also represents progress for the whole community recently we've been able to do the lemur exhibit ribbon cutting and then yesterday, of course we had all got here up here got to swing sledgehammers to begin the destruction of fire station one, so we could be all torn down and rebuilt. So, It's just great to see the various projects begin to come to fruition or come to fruition. So thank you for your report. We're going to move on to community forum. And community forum is reserved for those persons wanting to address the city council on any matter that is not on the agenda. But the Brown Act prohibits the council from discussing matters not on the agenda. So whatever somebody speaks about, we will not enter into a discussion. We may ask staff a very quick question or ask staff to contact a speaker. on something they might raise. Speakers are allowed three minutes, and then we ask that you state your name for the record. So if anybody would like to speak at community forum, please approach the podium.

Good evening, Council. Jeff Oslin, resident here in our wonderful city. I want to address yesterday's nice little celebration with the fire department and police department and their upgraded and new facilities. I think that was a fantastic event. And once again, it does show that we do what we're supposed to do as a city when we say we're going to put funds to emergency services or recreation. I think it's a fantastic event. Fantastic tribute. Temporary housing facilities for the fire department for Station 1. My understanding is those temporary facilities are better than Station 1, so that's a step in the right direction as we start this process for a new firehouse. Our city manager wasn't here two weeks ago when I commented on the American flags, and I would personally like to thank Jim Lewis and his family again for doing the flags and taking it over kind of for Lon Allen. I think that's a wonderful civic duty. It goes a long way. On the aquatics, I also believe Kiwanis has donated some money to that as well, so thanks. You know, three or four of us here from Kiwanis can be proud of that. The other one is I meant to mention two weeks ago, I saw those banners, if you will, go up in the downtown celebrating 250 years. Those are fantastic. And thank you. So I have.

OK, thank you. Anybody else wishing to speak in community forum? OK, seeing none, we will close community forum at this time. And we will come back and we will proceed to our next agenda item, a public hearing item H1, adopting sewer service charges for the year 2026, 2027. And I believe I'm going to turn this over to Mr. DeBar, Public Works Director.

Thank you, Mayor Burbeau. And I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Ryan Betz, our Public Works Analyst.

good evening mayor city council my name is ryan betts public works analyst and i'm here before you for a public hearing to propose adopting the sewer service charges to be added to the 2026-2027 property tax rolls just a quick recap today is a public hearing to receive any objections to the placement of sewer service charges um We are a little bit of a unique community where we do not charge sewer service charges on a monthly basis. We do it on an annual basis with a partnership with the county. Those sewer service charges are fixed rates, and they are actually collected at the time of property tax when those are due with the county. Just by way of this year, looking forward to 26-27, we are proposing to bill approximately almost 5,800 parcels in the city of Atascadero. totaling approximately $6.9 million in wastewater revenue. For those that receive this bill on their property tax, it will be clearly marked as a Tascadero Sewer Service Charge on their statement. Just by way of the deadline to get that information to the county, it is due on July 20th, so it's precedent that we at least consider the proposal tonight. And as always, the county does charge a very nominal fee of $2 per levy to process all that information and get it on the property tax. And I always love this chart, so any opportunity I can to bring it up, just by which of what we looked at sewer service charges that were adopted earlier this year, we are still within the median with our comparables with the cities to the north, to the south, and of course our community service districts. And that's it tonight. Council, please consider conducting a public hearing to receive verbal testimony regarding the proposed sewer service charges to be levied on the property tax rolls. And number two, adopt a draft resolution approving sewer service charges to be added to the fiscal year 2026-2027. Property tax rolls and staff is available for any questions.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Betz. Does any member of the council have any questions for staff? Okay, seeing none, this being a public hearing, we'll open this up to public comment. See if there are any members of the public wishing to speak on this item. Okay, seeing no one rushing to the podium, will we return it to Council for any discussion or a motion? I'll move approval of the draft resolution. Okay.

I'll second.

All right, we have a motion by Council Member Pete, I mean Council Member Funk, and a second by Council Member Pete. Roll call, please.

Council Member Funk? Yes. Council Member Peake? Yes. Council Member Newsom? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Darius?

Yes.

Mayor Barbeau?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

All right. Thank you. We will move on to item H2, which is the beginning of the first of a series of public hearings on assessment districts. And I believe I'm going to turn this over to our Administrative Services Director, Geri Rangel.

Great. Thank you so much, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight we have before you the public hearings for the assessment districts. We'll wait just a moment for those to pop up. So we do have three separate assessment districts that we'll go over tonight. For expediency, we'll kind of give you some information on each collectively, and then we'll go each public hearing, if that works for you. We will have... like you say that apple valley de anza and las lomas are three areas for those developments council's long-standing policy is that new developments should pay for itself so part of that policy requires that developers put in a mechanism to cover the costs in those neighborhoods such as road maintenance and common landscape areas Developers had the options back when these were formed to either form a homeowners association or assessment district. The developers for Apple Valley, De Anza Estates, and Las Lomas, formerly known as Woodridge, all decided to form assessment districts. This is not a general tax to the citizens of Atascadero. It is just for the neighbors in these developments. For these three areas we are discussing tonight, there are a total of six districts. Because of the way that assessment district law works, each district is generally required to have two assessments, one for landscape and lighting and one for streets and storm drain. A public hearing must be held annually to adopt the levies for these districts. The general fund does contribute a small amount for public benefit. So staff evaluated the short and long-term costs of both districts in Apple Valley and proposed that the levy stay the same as the prior year. So $550 a year for the street and storm drain district and $900 a year for the landscape and lighting district. And that concludes my report on Apple Valley and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Okay, so we're going to do this three times or did you want to present a single staff and then we'll we'll hold three possible public comments. Do you have any different commentary to provide regarding the others.

Yes, if you'd like to go ahead and hold three separate comment period, that would be... Let's go ahead and just take each item then.

So this is item H2, Apple Valley Assessment Districts. Does any member of the council have any questions? Seeing none, we'll open it up to public comment.

Does any member of the public... Just as a clarifying point, would the... In the future with the Ramona Road realignment, that wouldn't be any part of Apple Valley's budget in terms of what their assessments are, right?

That is correct.

Thank you.

Correct. Yes. By the way, these things never, they don't ever expand, right? I mean, if you had a different development, you would create a new one, right?

Correct.

Okay. Got it. So, okay. Seeing that, we'll see any member of the public wishing to comment on item H2, Apple Valley assessments. Okay, seeing none, we'll close that and bring it back to council for a motion.

Move approval of draft resolutions A, B, C, and D for Apple Valley Assessment Districts, item number two.

I'll second.

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

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

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Darius? Yes. Mayor Brabeau? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, we'll move on to item H3, which is the same issue, but for De Anza Estates Assessment Districts.

Again, staff evaluated both the long and short-term costs for De Anza Estates for both the districts and proposed that the levy is the same as the prior year. So $342.48 per year for the street and storm drain district for the senior housing, $681.50 per year for the street and storm drain district for the single-family residential area, and $305, which is a slight increase for the landscape and lighting district for the next following year. And that concludes my report, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay, any questions of staff on this item? Okay, let's see. Actually, go ahead, then.

Just one, hopefully, simple question. The previous one, Napa Valley, there was no increase, including on the landscape. But this one, there's a $30 increase. I'm just wondering what precipitated that.

You know, we have been, we kind of spread out the, or project forward the costs and expenses that we'll have in working with public works and what type of maintenance we need. DeAnza district had some excess fund balance that we were using to kind of supplement the levy so that we could keep the levy low. And so over time they've been kind of, you know, utilizing that. So we're just, setting the levy to a place that it's more sustainable.

And I imagine the landscape in this district is quite different from the other. So you can't compare and say they didn't get, there was no increase there, but we're increasing here. So what, you know, that's, that's, I just want to make kind of wanted to clarify that. Yeah. It's just the difference in landscaping. Of course.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, seeing no other questions, we'll go out to the public. Would any member of the public wish to comment on this item? De Anza, the state's assessment districts. Okay, seeing no one approach, we'll close this and close the public hearing on it and bring it back to council for a motion.

Move approval of draft resolutions A, B, C, and D for De Anza State Assessment Districts.

I'll second. Okay, we have a motion by Councilmember Funk and a second by Councilmember Newsom. Roll call, please.

Councilmember Funk? Yes. Councilmember Newsom? Yes. Councilmember Peek?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Darius?

Yes.

Mayor Brebeau?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, we will move on to item H4, which is the same issue relative to Las Lomas or Woodridge assessment districts.

Thank you again. So for Los Alamos District, it is a little bit different. We did increase this by a CPI of 3% when compared to the prior year. So back in 2017, we had a neighborhood meeting to discuss the issue of funding of road maintenance with the neighborhood. The majority of the homeowners that were in attendance at the neighborhood meeting were strongly opposed to contributions or set aside for long-term maintenance. in that district. The proposed street and storm drain district levy is sufficient only for kind of the annual operating costs and periodic surface treatments of the roads. Residents were informed of this and that in approximately 20 years, the road would require a more in-depth road maintenance project and which would require significant funding. the residents were also informed that the homeowners would be responsible for those repairs and that the proposed levy at the existing rate would not be sufficient to fund these before fiscal year 2023-24 the district will need to come together to figure out how to fund the future maintenance of these periodic pavement rehabilitation that is set to occur approximately in 38-39. The estimated cost of this is about a million dollars. A notice was sent to the property owners in the district, which is done annually, and staff does have concerns about these long-term maintenance because we don't want to catch anybody unaware of this. But in order to kind of keep the cost down as much as possible. We are recommending the street and storm drain maintenance district be $464 annually and the landscape and lighting district stay at $347 per year. That concludes my report and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Does any member of the council have a question?

You mentioned that the cost, the ultimate cost to do the 20-year repairs on the road is about a million dollars. How many properties are in that assessment district, roughly?

I don't recall how many are in there. I can check real quick. It's in the engineer's report, I know. Okay, yeah.

It's in the report here for... Yeah, number, I believe it's mentioned very specifically perhaps you find that real quick. I had a question, which is, you've, as you've indicated, you know, the property owners, or at least a majority in the past, expressed a desire to keep the rate low. You have forewarned them, though, that, you know, this, this long term cost is building up. Are we, in terms of these letters we send them, are we reminding, you know, they're obviously new homeowners every year due to turnover, are we reminding them that, hey, you're building up a long-term liability that you're not set aside money for just so they don't come back 20 years from now or 15 years from now when the bill comes due or the street really starts to fall apart.

Yes, that is correct. We are doing that. There is documentation on the title reports too that we've filed so that, and we hold this meeting every year. So we're trying to make sure that every year neighbors and even as neighbors come and go, or we, you know, year to year, you kind of maybe forget. So we want to have those reminders there so that nobody is surprised about this.

Okay, thank you. I think that's the important thing is we're keep when you because you when you said you recommended this rate. It's really we're recommending this based on the neighborhoods feedback. Correct. So, God, thank you. Councilman, you had a question.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, yeah can we clarify, I had a resident was asking me about the green belt and there's a trail behind Los lomas there's some tree work, there was some clearing cleaning up of that space. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Just whether or not that's included in this or that's something the city maintains separately.

Yeah, so there's an open space around the Las Lomas district. And so the city, as part of the assessment district, maintains the trees and some of that, does the weed whacking and weed abatement and all of that on behalf of the district. So we do maintain that.

So when the city is there doing weed whacking, like maybe last week, is that paid through the CSD or the, not CSD, but the, is it paid through this? That's not a contractor that the fire department's hiring after June.

As long as it's in the district, within the bounds of the district, that would be paid through this assessment district. The city does contribute a small amount to that as well to maintain the trail.

Okay. That was what we need clarified. Thank you.

Okay, see no further questions from Council will open it up to the public. Any member of the public wishing to comment on this item? Las Lomas Assessment District.

Good evening, Council Jeff Oslin. Once again, I do have one comment, I guess. Because this has gone back and forth for several years. the million dollars to possibly have to do the repayment and all that. When was that assessment made? Was it 10 years ago? Was it this year? Because things keep going up and 10 years from now, that could be a $4 million project. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other member of the public wishing to comment? Okay. Thank you. I'm not sure when that estimate was and obviously it would change over time, but it's just to give people a ballpark.

That's correct. And we, every year, we look at the payment management, we update those costs, and that's reflected in the proposed rates as well. I did see on page 167 of your staff report is the summary. There's 181 APMs in Las Lomas, and it's equivalent to 231.75 EBU's equivalent benefit units, not to be confused by EDs.

Yes. Got it. Thank you. Okay. We'll see no other member of the public coming. We'll bring it back to council for a motion.

Move approval of draft resolutions A, B, C, and D for Las Lomas.

I'll second. Okay, we have a motion by Councilmember Funk, second by Mayor Pro Tem Darius. Roll call, please.

Councilmember Funk?

Yes.

Councilmember Newsom? Yes. Councilmember Peek? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Darius?

Yes.

Mayor Ruppo?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you. We will move on to our next item, which is item H5, a downtown parking and business improvement area, confirmation of annual assessment. And I believe this is going to be Laura Lykapel, our economic development manager, will present this item.

Thank you very much. Good evening. Okay. Tonight, we're here to talk a little bit about the Downtown Parking and Business Improvement District. It was established in 1986 as part of the Municipal Code, Chapter 11. This is the boundary that you see here. It is basically from Morrow Road 41 to Rosario, and then Highway 101 back to Capistrano. This requires an annual resolution of intent and public hearing for levying the collection of assessment. This year we'll have the budget on the next slide, but we basically bring about $14,000 every year through an assessment on business license fees. There's a $50 fee plus any employees that you have that the downtown merchants have voted to assess themselves so that they can have this for beautification events and marketing. We came to you on May 12th with a draft resolution and here we are today to bring forward a final resolution. We partner with the Chamber of Commerce on the expenditures so that they can actually administer these dollars and fulfill requests as the merchants submit them. The merchants have organized in the past couple years to now come together as a group of 10 or so and meet about every other week. Um, so they are more organized than they have been in, at least in the past couple of years, post COVID I'll say. Here we have the proposed expenditures for 2026, 2027. As you can see, we believe about $14,000 will come in. $13,700 is in the Chamber's budget, as they're estimating. And they typically divide the funds about 33%, 33%, 33% between events, beautification, and marketing. So they are holding some of these dollars for a larger project for beautification. They've been talking about lighting Entrada. They've had some struggles with the logistics behind that and the actual cost, but they are actually working through that. I was at the state of the BIA meeting last week where they're talking through that as a group of merchants with the chamber. So with that... We recommend that the council adopt draft resolution confirming the annual assessment for the downtown parking and business improvement area for fiscal year 2026 and 2027. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Does any member of the council have questions? Council Member Funk.

Yes. In conversations with downtown business people, I've been really encouraged to see more activity in doing events and things together and more cooperative. A lot of women business owners are stepping up to work together, and that seems to be a good dynamic there. And I was wondering if you could expand a little bit about it, comment on that, and also comment if you are, to the extent you're able, whether or not the downtown business owners are starting to see the improvements in their revenue streams that are consistent with that beautiful stack of awards we just got on our downtown project.

Yes. So I'll start with your first part, which is it's been really nice to see them organize. There's been some emerging leaders. And of course, new blood comes in, a new business comes in and has a lot of questions and has to catch up. But it's really nice to see them all understanding that they need a united vision because they're People come and go as councils change over time, and it's nice to have a general plan or a vision. So they're understanding that, and it's been nice that they've invited Terry, Banish, and myself to the meetings to answer questions over the years. The last piece of your question was about reaping the benefits of the downtown investment. Yes, it's been a mixed bag. I think that some people, depending on the industry that they're in and the type of marketing that they do, I've seen that, for example, a great example, Specs by Kyla, has a new location she's right on El Camino and says this is by far the most the best she's ever done and it's so excited and some other people are saying people aren't coming out to dinner like they used to be and they're hanging on to their dollars a little more so I'm seeing things based on whether they're in the food industry or they're selling retail merchandise just a lot of mixed bag but overall I feel like everyone's happy with the project and very excited about it so kudos to council for that vision.

councilmember peak yeah just to clarify um on that um summarized budget uh what used to be at on the revenue for events and how can we turn that dash into a number or what what used to be accounted for there and what what is it coming from somewhere else or they're just not getting they're not having events that cost any money or

You know, that wasn't mentioned in the Chamber's report this year. I think it was something that they used to have when the maybe when the downtown I would assume when the downtown BIA was hosting actual events and bringing in dollars. Now they do things like trick or treat or art hop and they're all free. So they're just expenses and not revenue earners, but it might be a good idea to keep it on the budget in case they were to host something. Like a sip and shop, which the chamber now hosts. So maybe if the merchants ever took it over, they could host something like that. They originally hosted taco day on traffic way, correct? They did. Yes.

That was from vendors. Okay. Sellers. Okay. Gotcha.

Yep. Good example. Thank you.

Mayor Mrakas, Any other questions from Council okay um My question is, you know we've seen this before we're taking in 13 $14,000 a year and there's been a plan frequently we didn't actually they didn't actually end up spending that the plan this shows are going to basically spend all the money they have. Mayor Mrakas, Yes, that is the plan of 64,000 leaving of balance zero which actually would be really cool to see him get a major project done. Mayor Mrakas, And how confident, are you that that's really going to come to fruition.

They made a motion last two weeks ago to spend it and they have other ideas. They're coming up with alternatives because to actually conduct the project that they had hoped to, it was more like a six-figure project and it was a bit cost prohibitive, but there are other alternatives like decorative art on our light poles, for example, that would have to of course be looked at by the city and our public works director and friends to make sure that could work and make sure those poles are electrified. So there's looking at other alternatives that don't include mounting things onto private buildings and putting larger poles into our right of way.

Okay, all right, thank you. All right, I'll open it up to public comment on this item. Any member of the public wishing to speak? Please approach. Okay, seeing no one approach the podium, we'll close this item and bring it back to council for a motion. Move approval of the draft resolution.

I'll second.

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

Council Member Funk? Yes. Council Member Newsom? Yes. Council Member Peek? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Darius?

Yes.

Mayor Brebeau? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you very much. We will move on to item H6, the Atascadero Tourism Business Improvement District, and we'll turn this over to Ms. Terry Banish.

Thank you. Good evening, Council. Tonight we're going to be looking at the adoption of the annual assessment of the Atascadero Tourism Business Improvement District. The City of Atascadero established the Atascadero Tourism Business Improvement District, referred to as APBID, to levy annual assessments under the Parking and Business Improvement Area Law of 1989 by adopting the Parking and Business Improvement Area Law of 1989 by adopting the Atascadero Mutual Municipal Code Chapter 16 on April 2013. The activities to be funded by the assessment on lodging businesses within the app bid are designed as promotions designated as promotions and marketing programs to promote the city as a tourism destination. It is required that the advisory board provide a specific report to city council annually for the expenditure of funds derived from the assessment and are paid by lodging businesses within the city. These levies are adopted annually and were provided in the annual report presented May 12th of 2026. The physical impact on the annual assessments are expected to be $534,030, and the expenditures are budgeted at $546,340 for the fiscal year 2026-2027. And in the annual assessment, We do note that the estimated fund balance for June 30th of 2026 is projected to be at $752,280. And I say that because the expenses are a little higher than the revenue on your slide there for the fiscal impact. For this evening, the recommendation currently in the agenda, I wanted to note is incorrect, but in the staff report, it is correct. And that recommendation is to adopt the, for council to adopt the draft resolution confirming the annual assessment for the APBID for the 2026-2027 fiscal year. And that concludes my report.

Okay, start on my left. Any questions from Council? Okay, any questions over here? Okay, I had a question actually. As indicated in the staff report, we increased the assessment by a half percent, and with that revenue intended to be focused on improvements to the zoo. Do is I don't see this kind of anything specific regarding how that would be spent. Can you elaborate on that or is that not been decided yet.

We are in the mode of putting that point 5% aside so we're roughly around 97,500 through 2025. And as that builds, then we'll be working with the outbid and with the zoo on where that money will go towards or what it will go towards. So we've included the outbid in that part of it the entire way. So we just have to get a little bit more funds going on there.

Okay, thank you. And even when you take out setting aside the money for the zoo, it still seems like a very large balance, more than a year's worth of revenue as the balance. And it seems that that's been there for a while. And it doesn't seem like we're saving it up for a big bang thing. So what is the purpose of having over a year's worth of revenue in fund balance?

Well, the TBID is kind of working on contingencies, contingencies in tourism where when we have a lull or we have a lot of vacancy coming on, we have an opportunity to do more promotions. That's pretty much the TBID board wanting to have those dollars available for that.

Okay. Okay. Cause it's always just concerning as a public entity or quasi, you know, the ad bid being really a public entity because we created that, you know, have holding large funds balance and at some point needs to be expended on the purpose for which it's been gathered. So, okay. Any, I'm going to open it up to public comment. Any member of the public wishing to comment on this item? Okay. Seeing no one approach, we will bring it back to council for motions.

Move approval of the draft resolution as specified on pages 208 to 209 of the staff report of the agenda packet. Thank you.

I'll second.

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

Councilmember Funk? Yes. Councilmember Newsom? Yes. Councilmember Feek?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Darius?

Yes.

Mayor Brebeau?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Mayor Mrakas, All right, thank you, we will move on to item I one city of atascadero emergency operations plan turn this over to I believe our fire chief Casey bryson to discuss.

Mayor Mrakas, Thank you, good evening mayor and Council excited to bring you this management report tonight on the. Mayor Mrakas, City of atascadero emergency operations plan this plan has been in the works for quite a long time, one of our fire captains Chris Robinson. I've been telling Chief Dave Vanson, myself, and many others, and I'll mention them later as we get a little further, have spent quite a bit of time on this. So we're happy to bring this to you. We actually did review the overview of the big components at our strategic planning in January. So it should be relatively familiar, but that was a few months ago. So this is the last, hopefully, of the large plans from the fire department. You'll see this spring and summer, we've already brought you the fire code standards of cover, local hazard mitigation plan, and the community wildfire protection plan. So this is the last of those plans we hope to be done for a little while. Just a little bit of the background. This plan that we've finished up this year replaces a 2018 version That was a revised version of a plan that originally started about 2010. So we were due for a total overhaul. This is a completely new plan. My fire captain, Chris Robinson, actually worked collaboration with a fire captain in Paso. We developed together a very similar plan. And that's important because if we have a disaster, we may be working with other cities to staff our EOC. So we felt that was super important. Basically, the EOP is a large picture document. It's big picture. It's not the exact plans of how we do things, but it's an overall process and doesn't get down into the fine details, and we'll kind of cover that here in a minute. This updated EOP provides a framework for managing emergencies and coordinating multi-agency response, so big picture disasters. The EOP identifies the city's primary hazards, A few mentioned here earthquakes hazardous materials wildfire. So it's going to identify those it's going to talk about who does what but it doesn't get into the details. Adoption of the plan ensures legal compliance, maintains eligibility for disaster reimbursement, and that's really a big piece of this document. There's a lot of high-level federal guidelines from FEMA that we'll talk about here a little bit further, but it's the legal compliance and then our reimbursement after the fact is a big driving force for a lot of the language in it. Further on in the discussion, we have followed our Test Bureau Muni code, Chapter 4. It outlines our city's emergency organizations and functions. The Muni code designates the city manager as the director of emergency services. The director of emergency services or city manager appoints the fire chief as the coordinator of emergency services. Coordinator then, myself, is responsible for updating plans, bringing plans to the disaster council which i'll get to here in just a sec but also so not only updating plans but also coordinating the training with city departments preparing the city the eoc for that next emergency two two other organizations mentioned both in the plan and in the municipal code or the disaster preparedness committee and the disaster council disaster Preparedness committee is a pretty special group, I think, made up with members from every department. We meet monthly and we prepare the city from all aspects, every department. We put in work, it's a working group where we prepare the city, look at those plans and review them. The executive team also provided input and review on the plan. And then that final piece is the disaster council. So that's identified in the municipal code. It's the mayor, the city manager, fire chief, and police chief. We met a week ago and recommended that we move the EOP for adoption by city council following the municipal code. In the staff report, there's a basic summary of each of the sections. There are a couple sentences, they're very short, but it describes the entire document. I think there's about 15 sections. I'm not gonna review or read all of them. There are a couple I do want to just highlight really briefly. The hazard analysis, we talked a lot about this with the local hazard mitigation plan. And that plan, they mesh together, they support each other, but the LHMP is really the looking at the process to mitigate those hazards and search for funding to mitigate those hazards. This is very high level where we identify the hazard. We're gonna say who's going to run the incident and then manage that through the EOC. It's a little bit different. The concept of operations, this is where we get that high level discussion with CEMS, the Standard Emergency Management System. which is basically in California, NIMS, the National Incident Management System, which is FEMA, all of which say that we need to follow the ICS Incident Command System. So there's a lot of that language saying, bottom line, if you would like to be reimbursed from these agencies, you will follow our language and our structure. The Organization and Assignment of Responsibilities, this is where it does detail down a little bit for Atascadero. This is Atascadero-specific, It outlines our Emergency Operations Center. It specifies which member of the team will fill different roles in the ICS structure. So that is a little bit more specific and a little bit more hands-on useful for us where we know that the fire chief may be in charge of the fire branch, right? It outlines who does what. Just continuing on on the summary. One more, actually I'll point out two more pieces and then we'll move on. Crisis communications. This is a more specific section that establishes a joint information center where we would be getting the word out. And then it does outline some of those public notification systems that we've spent several meetings talking about how we notify the public. Again, a little bit more high level, we would have another evacuation plan that would detail out how that gets done. But this is going to identify that we would use a joint information system and we would get the word out through different methods. And then finally, the last section, which is important, is the appendices and annexes. And these are the plans that don't necessarily come to Council, there are working documents, there are plans like our evacuation plan, like that crisis communication plan, evacuation routes, those things we update regularly, we make changes after different incidents. So those plans are all labeled and addressed in this last section, but they do not come to Council for approval. So again just kind of wrapping up the significance of the emergency operations plan, it is our essential guide high level guide to the city's preparedness response and recovery abilities. It strengthens strengthens the city's ability to prevent prepare for respond to and recover from emergencies adoption of this plan ensures the compliance enhances coordination and improves Community resilience. Our recommendation from staff tonight is to adopt the draft resolution, adopting the 2026 Emergency Operations Plan as the City of Itasca's official all-hazard emergency guidance document. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Does any member of the Council have questions of Fire Chief? Council Member Funk?

Yeah, we'd spent quite a bit of time looking at this as a council on a preliminary basis and at our strategic planning session back in January, I guess. Could you, so I'm not going to rehash anything from there. Could you note any major changes from what the council looked at at that time?

No major changes. I think the Review is continued. We've brought it since then at the department head team has reviewed it. And the disaster preparedness committee has also reviewed it. And we found minor grammar type of things, but no changes to the structure or content really.

Okay. And do our, the season annexes and all that, does that include something that addresses the role of ham radio operators in the community?

They would be mentioned under the crisis communications annex. Okay. Yes.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you. I also would note that this entire plan is available in the link on the agenda for any member of the public who wishes to read the entire thing. I want to open this up to public comments, see if any other member of the public would like to comment on this issue. Okay. Seeing no one approach, we'll bring it back to council for a motion.

I move stop option of staff recommendations.

second. Okay, we have a motion by Council member newsom and second by Council member funk roll call please.

Council member newsom. Yes, Council member funk. Yes, Council member peak.

yes mayor pro tim daris yes mayor bravo yes motion passes unanimously thanks okay we'll move on to our last item on the agenda um that is the 2045 task of general plan fiscal impact analysis overview and i'm going to turn this discussion over to mr phil dunsmore our community development director thank you mayor council yes tonight we're going to overview another portion of our general plan update and this time the fiscal analysis

And tonight, I'm going to basically talk about the land use plan a little bit as a basis for the fiscal analysis, tell you about some assumptions the analysis makes, and talk about next steps as well. Now, a lot of tonight is really based on assumptions. It's really based on the crystal ball. And this is really a tool for us to analyze how the general plan is going to work for our future. What's it going to do in terms of the costs and the benefits of our assumed land use plans? So it looks at whether the forecasted growth generates sufficient revenue to offset municipal service costs. This isn't a required action, but it's something we want to do as a city. It's something our council wants to do. And it's really another tool in our toolbox to assist us in making decisions. And it helps us adjust where necessary. So the key findings, I'm going to start out with that. And also I wanted to mention too, online tonight, we have our consultant that helped us prepare this analysis from EPS, Megan Gregory. And I think she'll be available. We can have her hook in a little bit here when I'm done. She can help us answer any technical questions as well. So we can do that. But I'll give you just some key findings. In summary, the general plan update, the 2045 update is projected to have a positive fiscal impact long-term to the city's general fund at build out. When I say build out, That's the assumption that we put into the general plan of what we think is going to happen in 20 years. And that could result in as much as 9.9 million in new annual general fund revenues, about 6 million in annual municipal service costs, and a net positive impact of approximately 3.9 million. And I'll touch on the fact that is based on us even increasing our staffing and service levels a little bit above beyond levels today and keeping up with the population trends. Now, This is all based on a scenario, a land use scenario, that assumes a mix of commercial, single-family, and multifamily uses. If land use trends lean one direction or the other, obviously the fiscal impact would likely change as well. But based on history, based on what we're setting up for zoning in the future, this is what we think is going to happen. This is our land use plan that we have run our environmental impact report on. It does change zoning in a lot of the areas that are close to the core, that are close to El Camino, that are close to Morrow Road. It brings in additional density. It brings in additional residential, mostly in the form of mixed use. This general plan, as a reminder, doesn't really change our single family areas a lot. We do still have single family that's gonna be developed in the future in the city. We can also see accessory dwelling units developed in the city. So a lot of the west side, isn't changed, but the areas close in are changed a little bit. And the city, I say this every time we have a discussion about the land use plan, it's not substantially growing. We're not adding new land to the city. We're not annexing land. Eagle Ranch still sits out there as a someday, maybe potential. But this is about looking inward to our city and increasing the quality, increasing the opportunity for new growth for business, and increasing the opportunity to mix residential with commercial. So over 20 years under this scenario of the assumption, we could see up to 2,890 new residential units, a lot of those being multifamily, very few of them being single family. And when I say multifamily, some of those can also be small lot, single family residential units. about one and a half million square feet of non-residential development or commercial development. Not a lot of that's going to be all retail. We think of commercial as well as being roll-up door space, light manufacturing, could be office, could be different kinds of things. And we do expect additional tourism. Obviously, the economy swings up and down, but we should see over 20 years up to 225 hotel rooms and new various lodging accommodations. Now, when we look at residential, it produces mixed fiscal outcomes. Single family generally is a positive fiscal impact, whereas multifamily, especially the higher density and more affordable housing, those costs exceed the general plan revenues. The city has to spend more money on supporting those than we actually make. Now, the ultimate fiscal impact really will depend on when and how much of each residential unit type is actually realized. but luckily the fiscal impact analysis did have a nice summary summary in table two. It's in your staff report there of what some of these things look like by land use. And I, I circled in green and red there, the positive and negative, the highlights there. And so the market rate, single family unit, and we, you know, we spend probably, um, just about $2,000 and supporting that through various levels. And the revenue, you know, the tax revenue from that is about 24, $2,500. So there's a positive impact of approximately $427. Whereas you look at some of the multifamily and it's the reverse. It's, you know, three, between three and $600 in the red by what the city costs, what it costs the city by what we would achieve from tax revenue. Look at the retail though. Uh, and this is per a thousand square foot positive 7,320. One of the reasons why revenues drive land use. And so obviously retail is going to do really well. So are hotels per room, um, as much as $4,500, uh, annually. It's quite a lot. It's pretty, it's pretty interesting. Um, so some baselines for these assumptions. Right now, city staffing levels are really strategically aligned with current the current budget to ensure sustainability. Ideally, and we put it, we put this into made this more conservative, we would expand staffing levels to help achieve more optimal service and operational needs to keep up with. what's happening what trends are happening in our region, keeping up with other cities as well. the fiscal impact analysis does assume some moderate additions of personnel to meet these service demands and workload in line with general plan build out but in summary and i think we've played with this back and forth quite a bit and i think um as you'll see in a bit one of our council members too went above and beyond and showed us a sensitivity analysis by adjusting some of the land uses see how you know when it would break when do we start really losing money and you can go pretty far with this so what we find is that growth enabled by this general plan update is fiscally sustainable and produces enough resources for services and reserves even if we don't see this assumed land use pattern we can play with it and get more housing or we can get less commercial or more commercial less housing and it still becomes basically responsible so Just a big picture of where we're at right now. We just finished the environmental impact report, public review period. The draft EIR is done. We're working on the final document now. We only got three letters, which is fantastic. And the three letters we usually expect, one from Caltrans Fish and Wildlife and one from a task and range water company. So they weighed in on some topics and had some comments. Not a huge deal. We are still working on draft zoning regulations. We've been bringing pieces of that to you. And we hope to bring a big chunk of it, if not the whole thing, back to you in August, not for final approval, but for a final look. And before we commence everything for the grand finale in September, we will have the entire general plan, the entire EIR, and the zoning. But you'll have seen bits and pieces of that all year long. So hopefully we're ready to go at that point. And that's our goal. As always, project website is up at Tascadero2045.org. You can always give us a call. You can always stop by. You can always even have a coffee with us at one of the coffee shops downtown and ask us questions about the general plan update and how the zoning is coming along. So that's it for me. Happy to answer your questions. And our finance director is very well versed in this as well. And she's here tonight in addition to our consultant from EPS. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Mr dunsmore and it is the consultant online at this point. For questions. Okay, Luke says yes okay excellent well i'm going to start on my left with count see if Council members have question Council member Pete no no Okay, I had a couple questions and i'll pass to my right um the when we talk about. Capturing well two things one is. the daytime service population defined as the total residential population plus 50% of total employment. Because obviously, people come and work in Atascadero who do not live here. But one of our underlying problems in Atascadero is a bad jobs, housing, and balance in that every morning, thousands of Atascadero residents get up and go on the road and go work in another community, typically San Luis Obispo. and far outnumber the number of people who come and work here, which is something we're trying to address through this plan. But so I'm wondering about that daytime service population, because we have a population of roughly 30,000 people, but in the middle of a weekday, there's less than 30,000 people here, whereas San Luis Obispo has a population close to 50,000 people, but on a given weekday in the middle of the day, there's probably 70,000 people in San Luis Obispo. So I'm wondering how, this assumption was arrived at and how it affects the fiscal analysis. Because obviously, there are people come and work here that don't live here, but they're more than offset by people leaving in the morning. So I'm wondering if you or the consultant can address why that is kind of phrased in that way or derived as a daytime population.

I am hopeful that our consultant can give us a more eloquent answer on that one. But I will tell you, We do have the second largest employer in the county here at the Tascadero State Hospital. But still, even with that, we are assumed to be a bedroom community. And a lot of folks do pour out. And we're seeing that in our numbers. So Megan Gregory, perhaps she's online and perhaps you can answer how that analysis assumed that daytime population and what numbers we looked at there.

Yeah, I can. My apologies. My camera has decided that it didn't want to work right when we were starting this particular item. But the service population is generally seen as the the as yes, the total residential population and half the total employment. And that's the typical formula we use for our fiscal analysis. I believe that Daytime doesn't necessarily mean like in the middle of the day. It's more like on any given day. What is the service population? And so we generally think of a resident as sort of our baseline for that service population. And then we think of our employees relative to that resident, if that makes sense.

Well, I understand how it was calculated. I just didn't understand why that metric was used given that, again, our underlying problem is a poor jobs housing balance that we put thousands of cars on the road every day so that on any given normal weekday, there are less people here than our population, not more people here than our population. And I just want to make sure that it didn't result or skew in any way the projected expenditures or anything like that.

It shouldn't because we calculate it. We treat the existing in the same way that we treat the calculated projected numbers. So any change that calculation, that formula would impact both.

Okay, thank you. Another question on page 226 of our agenda references table 14 says 30%. An assumption, key assumptions include 30% of new residential spending and 50% of new employee spending is captured in Atascadero. I'm wondering how that number was arrived at. Again, we historically have not had a real strong retail sector. We have substantial retail sales leakage to San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles. We hope to improve that. We hope to better that. We've made some progress on that. But I'm wondering how the figure of 30% was arrived at for residents and then 50% for new employees and I assume new employees spending is considered at a fraction of resident, because people are going to spend money where they work but not as much as where they live, I would assume.

Yeah, I can take that. And then Phil, if I miss anything, feel free to jump in. The net new household retail sales, the 30% spending capture, you are seeing that's a general assumption that we've used, like I said, in a number of these fiscal analyses. I think it is a an apt one for we expect the households to spend a portion of their retail dollars at local stores. We looked somewhat at the retail makeup of Atascadero and the neighborhoods where we are anticipating some of this development to occur. And they were close to to some general retail. And then additionally, we looked at kind of what Atascadero is capturing now in terms of retail capture in comparison to its market area and what we would expect. So there were a couple of different components we considered as we sort of centered into that 30% number.

Okay, so is it safe to assume, though, that if we are successful in attracting more retail, you know, as indicated in the report in terms of 4,000 square feet, that hopefully that 30% number could change to where the average household is spending more than 30% of their spending here in Atascadero?

Yeah, yeah, and that number will often depend on sort of the... the actual tenancy of that retail. And so if you get retail that's very attractive and new and competitive in the larger market area, you'll see a larger percent of that. Or if it's filling a hole in sort of retail that people currently have to travel outside of a Tascadero to get, but now they can get it in a Tascadero, that might increase as well. So it's kind of what ends up filling that space that'll determine that percentage.

Right. But it sounds like, you know, the number is based on as we are now, which makes sense. But I would hope it would change as we've noticed, you know, we've added more restaurants. I think more and more people think now about, you know, dining out in a Tascadero. They're not their first option isn't to think about going to another town because we have more and more dining options. So hopefully we're capturing more and more of the dining out dollar. So as an example. Okay, thank you. Those are my questions. Council Member Frank, do you have questions?

Yes, just a couple at this stage. First of all, big thanks to staff, both Director Dunsmore and Manager Lewis for spending time with me at a detailed level so that we don't have to go through all of what I asked. Following up on the mayor's question for a second, that 30% in residential spending, how does online spending figure into that number? And Megan, you can answer that.

Yeah. I believe you would generally consider online spending outside of that 30%. However, if there are cases of ordering for local pickup, like if you're ordering pickup at your local hardware store or something along those lines, that would be would fall under a local sale in Atascadero, but stuff that is coming in from outside of Atascadero would not be included in that number.

Okay. Then let me ask, since retail is the single largest category, could you expand further on what the definition of retail is and what the mix of that retail is of, say, gas stations versus restaurants versus stores where you buy stuff?

Yes, I believe I would say that retail, we are generally considering to be commercial space where there are sales occurring, taxable sales occurring on site. We do assume that 5% of what we're calling new retail space would be owned or operated by a nonprofit organization. So that can be... a variety of sort of service places, service establishments that would be exempt from sales tax. And so that is included in our estimates of onsite retail sales. We do kind of net out that square footage. Yes, but I believe retail can, is covering a variety of commercial uses.

I'm wondering if staff would like to elaborate on that. In particular, I'm recalling from other reports that we've received that the number one sales tax category in our community is gas stations. And as people start switching over to electric cars, consistent with the state's incentives and guidelines and so forth, with or without the support of the feds. As people make those switches, people are paying less in gas tax. That affects sales tax that we would be receiving from gas stations. How vulnerable are we to that effect?

I might defer to Director Dunsmore for that question, but I believe in this context, we're looking at the additions and the changes with the general plan, not the existing kind of gas station changes, and that would probably be a different modeling of our general fund revenues.

Okay, so the bottom line is since we're probably not going to be adding a lot of new gas stations with land use changes that are made in the general plan, then we're not, this impact is not really vulnerable to that switch over from gas to electric. Correct. Okay. Okay. Then I do also want to ask a question about the mix of housing that's included here because we had quite a discussion offline about the below market rate housing mix. because most of the projects that are waiting to be developed at Atascadero, expansions of Haslow properties, a people self-help housing project, so forth, most of that below market rate is financed through federal tax credits and occurs in big projects. And the assumption here is very different, that this will be mostly housing that's occurring in a context of commercial development. Is it fair to say that the main reason that the expected mix of below market rate housing occurring because of the zoning changes and land use changes in the general plan, that the reason it's set up the way it is is because most of that's occurring in mixed-use land use categories, and the not-for-profit developers tend not to do mixed-use land. So we would be expecting that to be commercial rather than not-for-profit land.

Councilman Funk, I believe that's a really good analogy. Yes, we do assume that a large portion of multifamily is going to be above commercial. And generally, these nonprofits are going to prefer the larger open vacant lands, such as the surplus land at the state hospital. Now, it's possible, sure, there is going to be some additional affordable housing projects taken on by the nonprofits, and we welcome those in our community. They really help us with our arena numbers. And we did assume a portion of those in this analysis, but we also do assume a significant portion of really specific zoning that we're putting in place that's going to allow, like you said, a lot more of this mixed use and a lot more of these projects that are integrated with commercial and a lot of these things that are going to be by right on these smaller lots that are infill. And those tend to not attract the nonprofits, but they're just a different mix of multifamily housing.

Okay, great Thank you for explaining what the assumption that I found really counterintuitive.

If I could interject on that i'd like to ask a follow up question when when people self help housing builds you know 40 units somewhere let's say. what's their property tax status on that because i'm wondering. When we talk about below market rate, some of that is where a developer being allowed to build is setting aside a certain number of units. But when an entity like People's Self-Help builds, are they paying property tax on those units?

They're exempt. So nonprofits are exempt. And also the other big land use that's exempt very often too is the – A lot of these big medical offices now that are owned by nonprofits are also becoming.

So an Adventist as opposed to a, you know, tenant. Correct. Correct. Yes. So, but I mean, so I'm wondering, given that much of the below market rate multifamily housing that's built in our community is done by entities such as people self-help housing, is this revenue picture actually too high for those if we don't get property tax from those?

We do assume some of the nonprofits built into this, but the BMR that's on this particular chart, when you see there's a 1027 or 1027 revenue, that is assuming that those are projects that have affordable housing in them because of our affordable housing ordinance. That's not assuming the nonprofit is the way I understand that in that particular chart. So if I had nonprofit affordable housing up here owned by one of those nonprofit companies, yeah, it would be a zero in the revenue.

It could be a zero or near zero in the revenue. And so the impact would be a further negative. I think we all appreciate what people's self-help does, but I think we need to be clear eyed about the, uh, the fiscal impact of those units is considerably more negative than what's displayed here.

They're expensive. Yes.

If I may add, and maybe the consultant would like to add, but we did have that very discussion and with concerns that we didn't want to overstate property tax revenues for those. So there is a percentage and I can't think of it now, but our consultant probably can answer that question on how much of that we kind of discounted just for those types of entities.

Okay, great. Good to know if taken into consideration and if the consultant could address that very quickly. If you know a number.

Yes, I believe the number is About 5% of total commercial uses are expected to be owned and operated by tax exempt nonprofit organizations. As I believe Phil was mentioning, The we expect the 100% affordable housing than tax exempt affordable housing we're not currently assuming that will occur within the. zoning changes of the general plan update and so not reflected in this model currently. But that is there's definitely a consideration to be had around that regarding the fiscal impacts.

Mayor Mrakas, Okay, thank you, yes, because I mean realistically speaking, much of the below market rate housing that is built in our Community is through nonprofits like people self out so.

Mayor Mrakas, Okay, thank you i'm sorry comes in front guy interjected in the middle of your question so did you have any other questions you done okay. Mayor Mrakas, Great yeah we're going to come back to you and your spreadsheet so councilmember newsome. Mayor Mrakas, Okay, thank you we're going to go out and see if there's any public comment on this item. Anybody wishing to speak, please approach the podium if you're if you if you do want to speak, please get in line at this point in time.

Good evening Council Jeff awesome once again. I have a few questions. build out is based on what percentage what happens at this. Billed out as 70%. What's that do to revenue? That would be question number one. Question number two is, is this taking an account if Eagle Ranch comes on board or not? Also, if fire station number three comes on board. I understand that we did build in some staffing, but I think those are prudent questions to that. And then the spend per household, concerns me a little bit in town. As Council Member Funk alluded to, we could have more electric vehicles on the roads, not just living here, so we have less tax coming in on the gas tax. The other one would be retail delivery, because I think we're going to have a hard time selling all the retail space that we may be building. And I drive through San Luis Obispo once a week and they have a ton of housing above retail and a lot of vacancy. So it's a concern if those numbers are not right. The other one would be, we all know things are transitioning for basically daily delivery, meaning a drone might be dropping something from a warehouse off at your house at some point. And that's not going to be coming from our city of Atascadero because we don't have a lot of space for industrial warehousing. So I'm just wondering on a 20-year plan, can't do the crystal ball as Phil says, but are we taking some of these things into consideration? Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. Can you pull the microphone a little closer to you? Okay, you got it on. Great.

Good evening, city council members. My name is Grant Dunn. I'm here tonight to ask the council to adopt a comprehensive three tiered framework that sets aside specific city parcels for affordable housing for youth, elderly, and disabled residents. To achieve this, we need a diverse approach to ownership. I'm asking you to direct city staff to utilize city land for three distinct models. First, community land trust, for single-family homes and accessible cottages, allowing our seniors and disabled neighbors to own their structures and modify them for long-term health without the burden of high land costs. Second, limited equity housing cooperatives, which lower the financial burden to entry so our youth can collectively buy equity in multifamily buildings and establish roots in our city. And third, deed-restricted homeownership parcels forced into new private developments, ensuring our vulnerable populations are integrated into modern, accessible, master-planned communities. Rental options are temporary band-aids by setting aside land for these three specific homeownership models. You give our young people, seniors, and disabled community members a permanent stake in our city's future. Thank you.

Okay, thank you for your comments anybody else wishing to address the Council on this item okay seeing no one else approach we're going to close it bring it back to Council for discussion and guidance, this is not an action item. City Council Chambers, For Council, but it is for us to address, make sure we understand it and provide any further questions or comments to staff. City Council Chambers, I know Council member funk had worked on a spreadsheet which actually partially address one of the issues, Mr Oslin raised, which is what happens if you know this doesn't happen and it won't happen, frankly, and in terms of every. category being built out to the max build out and you know identified here so uh you know there nothing ever is going to happen completely 100 to the way it's you know laid out so uh councilmember frank you you developed a spreadsheet that kind of tested what happens if some of these things happen to a different degree so would you like to just discuss that briefly and and and the which I read and understood.

Thank you. And Steph is setting things up so I could share this. I'll be brief on this analysis, but in the course of my professional career, I have built many models for business clients to enable them to ask exactly the kinds of what-if questions and to stress test the assumptions that go into complex models, the sort of things that Mr. Austin was asking about. And I deeply wanted to know that. So first, what we see here, if you look at your printed copy, you'll see this information in Table 5, basically the layout of Table 5 in the packet. And then the row up at the top here is... are the volumes that are in table six. So all of the data that's included in this model is stuff that's publicly available in the staff report. And because I am presenting this here at Council, this model itself will also be available to the public so anybody have a burning desire to run scenarios. for all three of us in the world that are interested in this. So what I did with this is to take the per unit assumptions of revenue and costs on table five and multiply them by the volumes of those different uses that we see in table six, and then also include in there a percentage. So first of all, we could test the very question that Mr. Austin was writing. What if this development moves out and we don't get some of these things that we're planning on, how sensitive is this to the volumes of various plans that we have in the assumption? And then the second thing I did was to take this and do a set of scenarios that also made the individual assumptions variable so that we could ask questions like the mayor was asking, well, what if we don't get any property tax from these below market units instead of getting property tax? How badly does that hurt us? And my conclusions from this, really, I did first of all, we see up here, I said I did plus or minus 20% on every single land use category. So that's the question. What if it develops a lot less than we're expecting? What if it develops a lot more? and then looked at what's the plus or minus 20% swing. So that's a pretty big range of impact. And what we see here in this column, plus or minus 20% swing, is that on all of the housing categories, although we make money on some, we lose money on some, none of them are really large impacts. So if those numbers develop out faster or slower or with a different mix than we're expecting directly, nobody should lose any sleep over that. It's just not that big an impact. The second thing is when we look at the larger things, where is there real impact? My natural assumption would have been to look at the hotels, and yes, that does have an impact, but the big impact is in the retail. is in the use of the new commercial spaces. So what that tells me is that we as a council, we'll want our staff to keep an eye on that one thing. to look at how the land uses we're creating in these commercial spaces are working to create, these mixed spaces are working to create vibrant commercial spaces that actually get occupied and used and generate tax revenues in our community. And the other thing that is worth paying attention to from my view is we need to watch the impact of one decision this council made, which is we looked at in the areas of El Camino Real where we're converting commercial zoning to mixed-use zoning, we're looking at a lot of underperforming commercial spaces you know, that aren't real attractive and probably aren't going to be real competitive over time. And we took that whole land use area and said, as a council, that those could be first floor residential, you know, in those mixed use. If staff, if you... remember or can look up which zoning we had had four or five different mixed use zonings and to just generally remember which ones the council directed would be first floor residential options or if that was all of them You can think about that for a second if you want. So we'll come back to that. I surprised you with that question. But it suggests that we may want to watch that over time, because if all of that grows in as only residential, and we assumed it to be a mix of residential and commercial, it could get to a point where it would have a significant impact.

But the bottom line is there's a fair amount of flex in the sense of there being a significant amount of less or more development in each category, and it would still be a net positive impact, financial impact. And that was very important to us in terms of the overall financial impact of our general plan update. And we... You know, we already had given council or staff guidance on certain zoning definitions, et cetera, sort of in response to the one gentleman's questions or requests. And this shows that, you know, that we had net positive fiscal impact. And your analysis shows that even if that, you know, varies from the scenario shown in the report, it's still going to turn out to be a net positive unless things went wrong. way off track, particularly in the retail arena.

And by the mayor's leave, if I could have a couple more minutes to address some specific scenarios. Just so that we know that I looked at some per unit scenarios. So what happens if a lot of our housing develops with people who bring in Prop 13 assessments and pay less property tax because they're baking in special deals from wherever the housing that they've owned so far. And what if all of our below market is owned for not-for-profits? And that scenario does reduce our projected impact, but it still leaves over 3 million positive impact. All the basic scenarios that I ran that you see listed here, what if we only get 70% of the hotel revenue that we're expecting, even though the hotels all develop? All of those scenarios are still substantially positive. The one that's a little trouble is if all the revenues are up 20% and all the costs are, all the revenues are down 20% and all the costs are up 20%, it's still a positive impact to the land use changes, but we wouldn't let that just happen. We'd take action. And then last, I want to mention what happened to try to get a worst-case scenario. What I had to assume is basically to get an impact that was negative, had to assume that we would have... Let me go over here.

Well, you had that narrative comment there.

Yeah, I have it in the comments. So basically assumed we get none of the hotels, we get half the offices and industrial, we only get 28% of the retail that we're helping to have, but we get twice as much below market housing and 150% of the hotels. other multi-family housing and only half the single-family housing. That's almost impossible to achieve when most of the housing, a lot of our multi-family housing and all the below market rate mostly is going to be occurring in mixed-use development that have commercial and housing together. For me, I concluded this is really robust and we are unlikely, in any scenario that we can really identify, unlikely to have this plan grow us into trouble fiscally. And previous situations have done that, where councils basically forgot to build a tax base community, and we've lived with the effects of that. So now we're really, this is a solid plan, and I feel very comfortable with it.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, I mean, the bottom line is a lot of things can go, you know, somewhat wrong. Like a negative direction from the base scenario and we would still have a net positive impact.

Yeah.

And so I think we can all feel pretty comfortable that overall the guidance we provided for the general plan update is going to pay off with, you know, an increase in revenue and with that the ability to provide increased services so I feel comfortable about the council. Do you have any questions? Okay. Seeing that staff, you have what you need from us in terms of the input. We've, we've really not provided you any guidance or input, but.

This is really just for us to view and contemplate. I will say that, you know, there's a lot of things that aren't considered here because they're difficult to quantify. I mean, when you add more residential, you generally have more people shopping and doing things in your community and buying gas and all those other things. And you can't, get every number a lot of these things are just pure tax revenue and it's hard to get all those other factors that are in here so there's some there is some positive even for a non-tax revenue residential the other component too i wanted to answer uh councilman punk's question on the mixed use there is a mixed use zone that will allow for solely residential under a discretionary permit but that's only a very small area a couple tiny areas where we found that the commercial districts are very small and couldn't really support a substantial commercial use. There's some areas just north of downtown and just south of downtown where the lots are very narrow and shallow and where the commercial is really watered down. Those are the spots we pinpointed for that to be a potential. And there were some areas too where residential can share some ground floor area with commercial, but it can't be all residential. And some of those areas are on Morrow Road, but Again, it usually falls into a discretionary category when it's got the residential and the ground floor and there has to be a predominant commercial land use. And we're working on refining those standards right now. When we come back to you with the final version of the zoning, it'll have that in there and it'll be an important piece to look at.

I did have a question for you, Mr. Dunsmore, or the city manager. In the table where it shows the estimated net impact of the different categories, showing single family market rate having a positive impact, $427, et cetera, along with the retail having a substantial impact, you know benefit there is you see seven thousand dollars per thousand square feet um i'm wondering if this is um should push us to revisit the issue of the community facilities district um charges particularly in the downtown area for mixed-use properties where because of the positive impact of the retail component um you know that would offset let's say where even the negative negative impact to some to a large degree on some of the multifamily. And so the CFD that we charge community facilities district that we impose, particularly in the downtown areas, that's something that could or should be revisited as a result of this study.

I think that would be something the council might want to consider and give us direction on. I think these are numbers now that we've seen that do show for every thousand square foot of retail, there's a significant benefit. And you can see then that several units of housing above would impact, but could still, based on your policy or guidance, create a positive development. We've heard that from some of the owners of those developments in the past. I believe we are one of the only cities in the area that does the Cfd on that type of use, especially in the downtown area. So I think we were waiting on this chart. A couple of you have asked me about that. I think it is something worth considering, but it would have a significant impact on the general fund, and so that's something the Council would need to consider.

Right. But I mean, you know, the CFD is based on the premise that, you know, these new developments don't generate enough revenue to offset costs. We have to charge the CFD. And this study would sort of undermine that to some degree. So I'm looking to see if council would feel that staff should come back at some point in time. you know, in the next six months and, you know, analyze that further and come back with a recommendation or an option on how we address that.

I think that the analysis supports that in action. With the caution that the mix of what goes into that retail makes a huge difference on the level of profitability to the city. So I would ask staff to be nuanced in looking at that because if... Our retail is all coming from gas stations, and what we're putting it over are our yoga studios. But then we're not getting the payoff that that's assuming.

Yeah, I think that if you wanted us to look at this, there's direction to do that. I think this is the time to tell me that. And I think, Council Member Funk, you're right. If we were to look into a program like this, I think because when you were discussing mixed-use projects a couple weeks ago, you were very flexible on that first floor for office or potential residential. I think in that use, the CFD would still be required. However, if a developer wanted to set forth perhaps a restriction that the first floor and record that would be restaurant retail sales tax generating, and they were able to commit to that, then that perhaps might be a trigger for waiving the CFD, and it ensures we get those types of uses in certain places.

And I think that what you just discussed would be part of the analysis we'd like you to take a look at in addressing the issue. But I, for one, would like to see you, you know, take a look at that in light of this and potentially bring it back to us for discussion and potential action, let's say, you know, within the next six months, if that seems. Yeah. Do I have?

Yeah, I'm totally in support of that. I think it's a great idea.

So, okay. Good with that. Okay, looks like we have consensus to do that, Mr. City Manager. And with that, I think we're done with this item and we're ready to proceed on to council announcements and committee reports. We'll start on my left, Council Member Peek.

The RAC, Water Resource Advisory Committee, went over the 2026-2027 budget. It was basically it for the meeting. It went to a number of great events this week, much like was spoke about earlier, and looking forward to summertime in Atascadero.

Mayor Portenderos.

Thank you. Last Thursday, Visit Slocal met the advisory committee. They continue to do a great job promoting our area, the whole county and individual cities and everything that goes on. They do these videos, which they're short, maybe 10, 15 second videos. And it occurred to me that I didn't feel like I really saw them much. And as it turns out, they're on Facebook. I just tuned out advertising. I saw one the other day that they do a great job with those. But one of the more recent adventures that they did was to team up with Firestone Brewery and Slow Cal now is a label of beer from Firestone I've tried it it's good beer I recommend it and I think it's a great promotional thing that they're doing the numbers for tourism and revenue and stuff I think are trending up everywhere and including in Atascadero so they're continuing to do a great job and that's all I have to report

Thank you, I have had no meetings since our last council meeting. Tomorrow I have an Integrated Waste Management Authority meeting and next week a Central Coast Community Energy Board meeting. Council Member Funk.

I have no meetings to report. It's been a real busy time for lots of events here in Atascadero and elsewhere. And so I want to just register that deep appreciation to staff for moving all these things forward to get our big public safety facilities i also want to mention that last night i attended the opening ceremonies for welcome home village this is a homeless shelter and supportive housing project in san luis obispo on the grounds of the county what used to be a parking lot right near french hospital in that area i'm up on And it's beautifully done. It's the first national, first 3D printed housing project. And they're looking forward to folks being there, real attention to how to create community so that they can get folks who have been encamped along the Bob Jones Trail and get them into shelter, get them into permanent housing and thriving in places that are better for the community than sleeping on the Bob Jones Trail.

Thank you. Council Member Newsom.

We had a SLOCOG meeting on the 3rd, no RTA. SLOCOG, there was a lot of discussion about the RENA numbers and the different cost adjustments and a little bit of pushback and a possible objection. The letter was drafted as well. That's it.

Did the SLOCOG board vote to place the absent sales tax measure on the ballot? Okay. Thank you. Okay, do we have any individual determinations or actions from council members? Okay, seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you all.