City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome to the Rockland City Council regular meeting. May 26, 2026. We will do our call to order. First, we'll start out with the Pledge of Allegiance, if everyone would join me. Thank you. We will do a roll call vote. Sorry, attendance.

Good evening. Council Member Janda.

Present.

Vice Mayor Halden.

Here.

Mayor Bass.

Here.

Council Member Broadway.

Here.

Council Member Gialdo.

Here.

Thank you. All right. And next is for agenda review. Anything? No. All right. We'll now move on to citizens addressing the city council. This is an opportunity for the public to comment on matters not listed on the agenda. Public comment on items listed on the agenda will be taken when the agenda item is called. Also, this is mostly a one-way conversation. We cannot actually start a full-blown discussion with anything that is brought up, but we can direct staff to assist. Do we have any speaker cards?

No comment cards received. Checking to see if there's any comments on Zoom.

Okay, thank you. Anybody in the gallery that would like to say anything about a non-agendized item? Seeing none. Follow back up on Zoom. Nothing? All right.

No hands raised.

We will close out that portion. We are going to move on to reports from City Council. I will start with Council Member Janda.

No reports tonight.

Vice Mayor Alden? Just a few things. We approved the budget for the Western Placer Waste Management Authority earlier this month with no tipping fee increase for the first time in a while. So I know residents received an increase, notice of an increase for ecology rates, but it does not include a tipping fee increase this year, so we're able to keep it. relatively modest. Also just wanted to mention a few events. Several of us participated in the Lighthouse Counseling Celebrity Waiter fundraiser, which was a lot of fun and great to see so many people out to support Lighthouse and the important work it does here in Rockland and throughout Gloucester County. Also, we had a big turnout yesterday. at the Rockland Cemetery for our Memorial Day event. And just like to thank VFW for putting that on and continuing the great Rockland tradition with that event. And then lastly, I want to thank Congressman Kiley for securing some seed funding for some Rockland Road interchange improvements. He made a check presentation yesterday to us for $3 million. and appreciate how he has kept his head down to see the needs that we have in our community and work with us to find funding at the federal level that we can tap into.

So those are a few things, Mr. Mayor. All right, great. And online, we'll start with Council Member Broadway.

No report today, Mr. Mayor.

Okay.

Council Member Galdo.

Thank you. Just real quick on the 21st, it was the Sacramento Area Council of Government's regular meeting. No updated report from what I reported on at our last council meeting. And then just on a couple events that were just appreciate the ones you've mentioned, but also the groundbreaking for the Pacific Street Apartments and the groundbreaking for our pickleball courts at SWRA. That's all for me.

All right, great. As for me, yes, we took a table together, Council Member Hald and I, on celebrity waiter. It's not that cool of a thing in terms of we don't actually have celebrities. We are considered the celebrities, so you can imagine that that. Uh, might be a letdown if you thought that there was somebody famous there. Uh, but we still did a good, uh, job. You raise funds for charity and, um, we mostly just make, uh, fools of ourselves, which is a lot of fun. Uh, chamber, uh, I don't think I was able to mention this one from, since our last meeting, but, uh, graduation of leadership. That was a great event. And you already mentioned Memorial Day. And then I just want to give kudos to everybody for the city, for Team Rockland. The Farmer's Market was too much of a success. So we're going to have some issues with parking, but it was a really great first annual event. So thank you for everyone that put that together. And just so everyone knows, it will be going off next Saturday as well.

Yes. One other thing. I was on hand at the Rockland High School annual awards night and just a great opportunity to see how much this community supports our graduates. The Springfield community was handing out $2,000 scholarship awards and the families that have created awards. I mean, it was really I think it was well over $200,000 that was handed out that night to students. And we played a little part. City Council personally funds four scholarships, I think four or five scholarships this year. So I was there to present two at Rockland High School. The mayor will be there next Monday night to present additional scholarships at Whitney High School. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

And city manager.

Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to echo what you said about the farmer's market, which was extremely successful and appreciation to the Parks and Recreation Department staff who negotiated that agreement and got it started very quickly. So every Saturday, rain or shine, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Quarry Park Adventures parking lot, we will be hosting a certified farmer's market, and we hope everyone comes out and enjoys that. Of course, Quarry Park's Ventures parking lot is also going to be the site of construction when the Big Ben public market starts. So we will probably have a temporary relocation to a site TBD during that. And then we'll figure out, again, how to address the world's best problem if you are trying to attract people to your town, which is parking. We will work on that together as it gets closer. I did have one more item that I need to read into the record. On May 12th, results of testing at Fire Station 25 indicated the presence of mold in a number of areas, and that resulted in a relocation of the crews. to Station 24, and so we have crews from Station 25 operating out of Station 24 while we work on addressing the issue. The delays in emergency response that can be caused by relocating Station 25 staff to 24 are a matter of health and safety. And this resulted in my declaration of an emergency under our municipal code in order to expedite the procurement process. The remediation is currently underway and restoration will begin this week with the goal of reoccupying next week. Two contracts have been executed using emergency authority, which will be brought to the city council for ratification in June. I want to assure the council and the public that our response times remain in place, and we don't anticipate any delays. But we do not like it when our firefighters are out of district. It just puts a bigger strain on our resources, and so we will be working to get them back in the station as soon as possible. And this completes my report.

Thank you. All right, we will now move on to the consent calendar. All items listed under the consent are considered and acted upon by one motion. Anyone may request an item to be removed for separate consideration. Do I have anyone that's looking to remove an item on the consent calendar? No. Online?

No. No.

Okay. Then I will be looking for a motion for approval of C1 through C10. I'll move approval of the consent calendar. All right. Second. All right. I have a first and a second. All in favor?

To clarify, that's inclusive of the blue memo?

And inclusive of the blue memo. Inclusive of the blue memo, yes. Okay. First and second. And because we're on Zoom, we'll do a roll.

Council Member Janta?

Aye.

Vice Mayor Halden?

Yes.

Mayor Bass? Yes. Council Member Broadway?

Yes.

Council Member Gallardo? Aye. Yes. Thank you.

All right. Now we move on to presentations. This will be for recognition of Granite Oaks Middle School girls flag football team for two undefeated seasons. I will be approaching up here for the dice. I would ask that the team stand up and join me back here along with any coaches.

And parents, you can get closer too. You can come up if you want a better video. Come on.

I will mostly be reading this proclamation, which is a mayor's proclamation. Whereas the Granite Oaks Middle School 8th grade girls flag football team has demonstrated extraordinary athletic achievement, dedication, and teamwork throughout their middle school careers. And the team achieved the remarkable accomplishment of becoming back-to-back undefeated players Faisal's league champions compiling an impressive record of 23-0 over the last two seasons, and whereas the team consistently displayed excellence on the field, averaging 28 points scored per game while allowing only seven points per game defensively. And throughout the season, these student athletes demonstrated outstanding leadership, resilience, determination, sportsmanship, and teamwork. especially while competing against opponents who viewed Granite Oaks as the team to beat. Whereas the players represented Granite Oaks Middle School and the City of Rockland with pride, integrity, and excellence, both on and off the field, and through their commitment and achievements, these young athletes have created a lasting legacy for future student athletes and inspired their peers and community. Now, therefore, I, David Bass, Mayor of the City of Rockland, on behalf of the City Council, do hereby recognize and congratulate the Granite Oaks Middle School 8th grade girls grade girls flag football team for their outstanding achievements, exemplary character, and lasting contributions to their school and community. I would like to invite now coach. Come on up and say a few words if you wouldn't mind.

Hey, ladies. Thank you so much, council members, and thank you for taking the time today to recognize this group of wonderful and talented young women. It's been said that a coach is only as good as his players. I know that to be true. Whatever compliments or accolades that I receive, I can guarantee you 1,000% that's entirely because of these girls in front of you tonight. I consider it an honor and a privilege to have been their coach for the past two years. As mentioned earlier, they truly accomplished something amazing. Back-to-back undefeated league champions. In the span of two years, this core group has won an outstanding 23 games in a row. That alone is a feat that each of them, their families, our school, and this community should be proud of. But if you don't understand middle school flag football, those 23 wins in a row are quite remarkable. For 23 games, this team never had a bad day. The team we played knew who they were playing, and they did their very best to beat us every single game. Now, there might have been a few bad games or rough games here and there where we didn't play as well as we could have or things didn't go our way. But one of the strengths of this team is that they are so strong, so united, and so resilient that every single game, someone stepped up. One of the keys to our success this past two years was our stout defense. We've never given up more than two touchdowns in a single game and often held our points to zero. On a related note, I would often promise my girls that if we had a shutout, I would buy them popsicles. We bought a lot of popsicles. On the other side of the ball, our offense was extremely successful. No team was going to outscore us. They set a school record by scoring 337 points in just 12 games. We were led by our, in my biased opinion, the league offensive player of the year, quarterback Emmalyn Passaro. She threw 41 touchdowns to only five interceptions. This offense was so good that each position was led by a young woman who could score almost at any time and had multiple games with touchdowns. Emmalyn's go-to targets were, in my opinion, the league MVP, Ava Taguchi, who had over 20 touchdowns on both sides on offense and defense, and Abigail Salazar, who had over 10 touchdowns. I can go on and on about each of these girls and of all their accomplishments, but please just know that I am super proud of each and every one of them. What made this team great wasn't one player. It was the way they trust each other and played for each other. They encouraged teammates when things got tough, celebrated each other's successes, and represented their school and community with class. And as with most great teams, these girls are even better off the field. I'm excited for their future and for all things they will do to accomplish. So thank you much, ladies. I'd like to recognize them by name, if I may. Thank you to Hannah Arca, Kelsey Baker, Charlotte Bass, Maya Essie, Mia Jaime, Renee Kranitz, Kinley Liu, Addie Memo, Ava McKeeve, Gianna Mallett, June Morgan, Audrey Parker, Emily Basaro, Abigail Salazar, and Ava Tucci. Thank you, ladies.

So usually I give anyone a chance that does want to say something. I give one or two minutes, but I... Do we have anybody online that has anything to say? We good? Okay.

I say I'm going to jump in just to say congratulations. I am beyond excited at how popular flag football has become, and I'm so – that's a tremendous accomplishment, not just back-to-back, but when you look at the undefeated games and then you look at the score discrepancy, that's pretty darn impressive, and I can't wait to see what these young women do at their respective high schools, hopefully playing next year.

All right. Thank you to everybody that's here today. It means a lot. Thank you to the parents. And go get them in high school. I'll be watching. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. All right. We will allow them to clear out, and then we will just pick up on the next item. All right, we are now moving on to the final item we have for tonight. Discussion items include presentations, including those recommending receive and file. Today, it is the placement of a general transaction and use tax measure on the November 3, 2026 general election ballot. And we have assistant manager Andrew Keyes.

Hi, good evening, Mayor and members of the council. Andrew Keyes, assistant city manager. Tonight I'm here to talk to you about the placement of a general transaction use tax on the November ballot. This is a presentation, as you see here, we're entitling Moving Rockland Forward. It is the culmination of a conversation that we've had with the community over the last year that started in these chambers with an analysis of the city's financial position last year. We'll go over a background of that financial condition, what really led to the initiation of the conversation, talk in depth about the community outreach that has been done, and then we'll go into council deliberation and consideration of the measure. This chart here, numbers are not the most important piece of it. It's just to jog your memory. Last year when the city approved the budget fiscal year 25-26 and fiscal year 20-26-27 budget this forecast was presented along with it and at the time of the adoption of the budget there were deficits that were shown in the outer years of this forecast as can be seen here on the bottom line of this chart. This is representative of the services and how they're provided today and projecting that forward. So this is what we consider funded, but as you can see, we even have a gap in that funding source. So that prompted the conversation at a policy level is how do we address this, what appears to be imbalance in the out years of the forecast to put the city's revenues on par with its expenditures going forward to maintain the service levels that Rockland residents enjoy. Going a step back, leading up to the budget last year, council was presented with three long-term department-specific analysis and needs from the police chief, fire chief, and public works director, on police services, fire services, and infrastructure and general support. I'll draw your attention to the two lines on the chart. The blue line is, and everything below it, represents the funded services. So that's the projected funded needs. That says, as is how we operate. projected going forward the uh colorful bars above that and the red dotted line represent the unfunded needs and those are unfunded needs really for the city to maintain the service level we have they're not unfunded needs of additions that the city has they're unfunded needs to keep our services aligned with what they are today as you can see there's a gap and that further adds to the uh numbers on the to the gap that was on the previous chart showing that in order for us to keep services where they are today, there is a need for additional revenue. Further background, talk a little bit about the growth challenges and efficiencies. As a reminder to council and also just for the general public, Rockland has challenges with growing its way out of a revenue imbalance or a revenue expenditure imbalance. Rockland's landlocked. There's limited land available for development. We're surrounded on all sides by incorporated territory with the small exception of the kind of northeast Clover Valley exit, which really doesn't provide us an opportunity to take in additional land for large-scale development of revenue generating properties. We also have state imposed restrictions on the land use that, on the land that we do have here and how we can use that land and how we can zone that for revenue generating purposes. Specifically, housing law requires us to make a certain number of properties available for developing housing units, and that places further restrictions on our ability to grow. You also have a macro shift, not just isolated to Rockland, but this is a nationwide shift towards retail as service, not retail as tangible goods. Goods are taxable. If you go into the store, you buy a TV, you buy really anything in the store, it's taxed and the local jurisdiction receives a piece of that. We have a shift towards entertainment-type services, gyms, jump houses for kids, party places for kids, those types of spaces, which are valuable amenities to the community, and they're great from a business standpoint for somebody to operate that business and make their living off of that, but they don't provide any revenue to the city. or very minimal revenue, as opposed to a tangible goods store. Goods are also increasingly purchased online, and not to get too far into the weeds, but with online purchases, the existing sales tax we have, not all of that revenue comes to the jurisdiction where the goods are delivered. And so we are losing out on that growing piece of the economy from a revenue standpoint. The type of tax that is being considered tonight actually would provide that 100% of your Amazon deliveries that come to your door, the revenue you pay on that would stay locally.

So it helps us to modernize our revenue structure as well.

And even big retail wins, we do have opportunities. I'm not going to shy away from that. There are some vacant spots in the city. There are a few spots for infill development. But even those big wins are incremental. You may, in the best of cases, in a large retail store, gain tens of or a few hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue. Helpful, certainly appreciative, and the city encourages and looks for those. but not something that's going to materially change the outlook. Efficiencies that the city has sought after and projects the city's worked on to try to do the best with what we do have. The city has a very robust investment policy with a stringent oversight, including an investment committee so that we now over the last few years have been taking idle funds that we do have as required by policy or as required by timing of spend on longer-term projects. When we have money in the bank, we are putting it to work for us. We are investing it in the number of products that are available to us as a municipal agency, which are still conservative investments, but they allow us to earn more yield than parking it in the safest or strictest of investments that we are allowed. And that has brought in additional dollars and helped us to provide more revenue for overall operations. We've also made heavy investments in technology to make our service delivery more efficient, notably in our police services and providing additional resources for them to monitor and track crime as it occurs, to be able to respond as quickly and efficiently as possible. We are currently Also undergoing an RFP for an asset management system for our infrastructure management so we can modernize how we are analyzing what needs to be fixed and the timing thereof. So we are working to use technology to our advantage to help bring costs down as much as possible. We are currently undergoing a comprehensive fee analysis to align the revenue received for specific services with those direct service costs. I will note that The conversation and the revenue imbalance, I don't believe I highlighted that on the previous page, is our general services, our general fund services. Those are generally services that don't have a direct fee tied to them, largely police and fire, general access to parks, maintenance thereof. There is not a direct fee that's charged for that, but it still has a cost to deliver. And it would be very tough to develop fees for things like that. It would discourage the actual use of those services. They're not things that we would want to consider or are considered in most cases. But we are undergoing that to help us from a financial standpoint avoid additional impact to the general fund from those fees. We also maintain as an agency a AAA bond rating. This is a equivalent to a perfect credit score for an individual about a quarter of one percent of all agencies nationwide maintain this rating it's not given by us it's given by the private sector that analyzes local agencies and their outstanding debt or if they are going into the debt market you you gain this rating so that you can access the market it would mean that if the city were to have a capital need that required borrowing we'd be able to access the market at the best rates and uh the best terms but it also is an indicator of how we manage our finances we also receive national and state recognition from peer organizations for our financial management and transparency last a little background slide on the city budget as mentioned it's the general fund that we're talking about and this little donut here shows us the um relative percentage or relative allocation of those dollars, you see the largest two slices being police and fire, and smaller allocations going to the other services on there, particularly public works and parks. Doesn't mean that those services are less important, but those services have dedicated revenue that also helps to fund them. Think things like gas tax for road infrastructure Those dollars can't be used for police and fire. As you know, they have to be used for repairing roads. Your parks and recreation does have some dedicated revenue sources. Think when somebody signs up for a program or a class, or there's also a specific property tax for parks and recreation as well. So going into the conversation that we started with the community. So after presenting that information and saying, hey, we need to really start to figure out how we balance this in the long run, we began some conversations with the community about what their priorities for the city of Rockland in the future were. That conversation took many forms. We did a global survey. with a survey where we sent a survey to every resident in the city, every household in the city. That survey was open from September to November of last year, and then we analyzed the results of that. We had community leader conversations fall to current where we met with 30-plus individual leaders within the community and had an in-depth conversation about what their priorities were. We also met with community groups. So these are groups like the Chamber of Commerce, like the auto dealers on Granite Drive, like the sports groups, and had conversations with these groups where they meet and said, hey, what do you think? Then we published the results of that survey in an additional mailer and invited people to town halls. And we held four open to anyone Come ask any question you would like. Town halls in March. There's a link here. If you Google Rockland Town Hall or Rockland Spring Town Hall, the link will pop up. But this is actually a recording of one of those town halls. The presentation that I led during those sessions was the same at all four, but the community questions kind of varied depending on who was in the audience. But you'll get a flavor of what it is if you didn't have the opportunity to attend or members of the public didn't have the opportunity to attend. It's still there. This is an example of the survey that we sent out. I think you've all seen it. And as you can see, we had the city survey on the side that allowed people through paper copy to tear it off and mail it in, ranking their priorities, or they can use the QR code and scan that. In addition to just mailing this out, we spent some resources on advertising it on social media, as well as preparing videos of a number of different staff. little short videos that called people to action to take the survey at the end. Uh, we got a significant amount of traction, um, close to three quarters of a million in, um, impressions. Uh, that means that the video showed up on people's feeds and they actually watched it that many times. Uh, most people saw it more than once that live in Rockland. Uh, many people, um, 10 times probably or more, but it had, uh, it had the impact of trying to get that word out there because we really wanted to get as much feedback as possible. We also had this, um, uh, the presentation of the results here. This was the followup mailer that I referenced. Uh, and it notes, um, key things on that center page there that we received 2,879 total responses from residents out of the, those surveys we mailed. Uh, and it summarizes their, um, their rankings of the priorities. In addition, we got 140 questions that were directly asked to staff. There were 900 comments, but 140 specific questions. We answered each and every one of those with myself or other members of the team. I even went and had coffee with a gentleman who just insisted on meeting with somebody. And so we went and we sat down, we had a conversation and shared all the information that we could just to make sure that people had their voice heard and was recorded as part of all of this. And blowing up from that slide, the priorities, just so you can see directly, we had six top priorities. They were tiered. One and two were a clear tier one. Three and four were a clear tier two. And five and six were clearly the lowest of these six priorities. Does not mean they're not priorities. Does not mean they're not critical to the city and a well-functioning city and providing residents the quality of life that they have come to expect. They just were lower on priority when actually forced to do the job that you have to do every year in making a budget and putting dollars where they need to go. The number one summarizes public safety from a police standpoint. Number two is public safety from a response time standpoint for medical and fire emergencies. Number three, keeping our parks and open space clean and accessible. Number four is safeguarding the city's financial stability and transparency in our operations. So overall, after all of that, the most striking thing that I learned, you know, I've been with the city now for about a year and a half and am still learning the community. But the most striking thing that I learned, I think, is how much people in Rockland really enjoy living in Rockland and how much they really care about keeping the city the way that it is and keeping the services that they receive the way that they are. The dialogue was incredibly respectful. People came and asked questions, but people were really there to learn and engage and try to make the community better. And I think that the people in Rockland are a great asset to the city. So the two specific statistics that we learned from information, we gathered 64% of people in Rockland think the city's on the right track. 14% think the city is on the wrong track. That's almost five to one, right track, wrong track. That's a pretty good place to be, particularly in the kind of polarized environment we think that we're living in here in Rockland. The city of Rockland is on the right track in general. And the rest are undecided. So they... Can't think we're doing too bad if they're undecided, I would say. But 95% of residents think Rockland is a great place to live. I'd like to find those 5%. We didn't encounter them through this process, but we'd love to have a conversation. So feel free to reach out if you'd like to talk to us about that. Citizens generally think highly of the services they receive. Our police and fire departments are very highly regarded. The approval ratings for the fire department are in the high 90s, for the police department are in the high 80s. Phenomenal record for both groups. Our residents generally find that services contribute to the quality of life and they want to see them maintained. And there's an understanding generally that maintaining services sometimes requires difficult conversations like we're having here about potentially considering additional revenue. What's next? Tonight is what's next. This is the decision point that's before you about moving something forward to the November 3rd, 2026 general election. A little background why that's important. The city council is only able to place a measure on the ballot in a general election when there are members of the body that are up, which this election qualifies. SO THAT WOULD ONLY BE AN EVEN NUMBER OF NOVEMBER ELECTIONS IN ROCKLAND. THE OTHER OPPORTUNITY THAT IS AVAILABLE TO US BY STATE LAW WOULDN'T QUALIFY. WE WOULD BE DECLARING A FISCAL EMERGENCY WHICH AS NOTED BEFORE WE ARE FAR AWAY FROM SO IT WOULD SIMPLY HAVE TO BE EVERY OTHER YEAR. AND THROUGH THIS PROCESS WE STUDIED OUR NEEDS AND THE BEST WAY TO ADDRESS THOSE WHILE MAINTAINING A BALANCED BUDGET WHICH IS CRITICAL AS COMMUNICATED BOTH FROM THE COUNCIL AND THE PUBLIC AND FROM A STAFF PERSPECTIVE THAT WOULD BE CRUCIAL. Input confirms that there is an option that is potentially viable for a fiscally sustainable solution to maintain service as being a half-cent transaction and use tax. The mailers that went out during the town halls and those community conversations, it was brought up that this was something that may be considered. It's being considered actively tonight. And so residents were aware or attendees of those meetings were aware that this was on the table. Council approval of an ordinance tonight would empower voters to have the final say in the city's ability to maintain services. And just of note, this is a general use tax that is being proposed, which means it could be used for any general revenue purpose that is within the city's jurisdiction. In order to place it on the ballot, it would require a four-fifths approval of the council. supermajority approval. If approved tonight to move forward there will be a second reading of this ordinance held on June 9th. There will also be some resolutions that are necessary similar resolutions to when we call the election for the candidates to place the measure on the ballot to consolidate with the county election but also in this case specifically there would be ballot language, which would be the 75 or up to 75 word ballot question that would be posed before the voters specific to this measure. So the next course of action, recommended action here is for city council. If you have any questions of staff, feel free to ask those. You'll need to take public comment and then return for deliberation and consider introducing the ordinance to place the one half cent transaction and use tax on the November 3rd ballot. And just for point of clarity, I don't think I said it any time during this, but transaction and use tax is a technical term, but for the general public, it's a sales tax. It behaves very similarly. There are some nuanced differences. Happy to explain my knowledge of that if you have questions on that, but it's a sales tax. So, questions?

Thank you. So I'll start with just calling for questions from council members. Is there somebody that wants to start off? Council member John? Okay. Council member Holden.

Can you go back to the five-year budget slide?

Yes. The table or the graph?

I guess the table. Yeah, that one. This one.

I'm sorry, the other one. No problem.

The other one, actually. Oh, the other one. Sorry. There we go. So we are in the process of hiring nine firefighters using a federal grant. I'm just curious. The expenditures for those nine firefighters reflected in here, and is the grant reflected in here?

So neither are reflected in this because this is a part of the adopted budget and not the amended budget that you saw in a quarterly report. So there will be some changes, of course, because that happened in the middle of the budget year. But we wanted to remind the council kind of where we started. So we used the adopted budget forecast.

And can you just give us a little rundown of what some jurisdictions in the area have done with their sales tax? And if you could talk Placer and maybe Folsom and some other places if you have that information.

I don't have the full picture, but... I think you're looking at comparative levels of Rockland's tax versus the neighbors. Roseville has a half cent tax. So if you shop in Roseville, you're already paying a half cent addition to what you would pay in Rockland. If this were to be approved by council and voters, you'd be parallel to Roseville. Loomis has a quarter cent, so they already are higher than us. This would put us a little above them, but it would be a quarter cent. If you go into Sacramento County, most jurisdictions in Sacramento have some add-ons. Some have multiple add-ons, so a cent or more. I think that's a general picture of.

So the base rate is seven and a quarter, which is where Rockland is. Rockland has never put an additive on its base sales tax. City of Sacramento is at eight and three quarters. So they, through numerous things, have gone much higher. Many counties or cities in the counties in the Bay Area are even higher, are upwards of 10 or more. That's not the way it is around here. But the two jurisdictions that Andrew mentioned are neighbors who have sales taxes. One has the quarter and one has a half cent, and so they're a little bit higher.

And I would note Lincoln does not have one currently. Thank you.

Actually, Mr. Mayor, that kind of posed a question. So are you aware of any... Any proposal for the state to increase the base rate or the county to increase the rate?

Not currently that I'm aware of, no.

Do you know when the last time the state changed the rate? I think it's been this long for a long, long time.

In my career, there's not been a state-level change. That's 20-plus years. So I don't even know that anyone was talking about a recent one at that point. So, yeah, decades.

So do you know if the state or the county raised – so if the county, for example, put a half cent, would that – That would also increase our overall rate from seven and a quarter to seven and three quarters. Then if we add this, it'd be eight and a quarter. But we wouldn't realize any additional revenue either with the state or a county increase, would we?

From a county increase, no. The state increased the potential that there was sharing, but

So the legislation is trying to understand with that seven current seven a quarter What do we get out of it so we get one cent out of the seven and a quarter So the city's sales tax generated which you can see our estimates on the screen in front of you right now is based on one cent for every seven and a quarter cents that are imposed on sales tax or taxable dollars in Rockland I was able to just do a bit of research. It was 1991 when the space sales tax rate in California became seven and a quarter. So it doesn't seem likely that that's something that they certainly don't move it very often. But there, of course, are opportunities for other local government entities to, through votes, through voters, through the voters, increase it.

But even if the state and or the county add a portion to the sales tax, that typically would be just for them. It wouldn't necessarily be an increase to Rockland. So it wouldn't benefit us, even though we would be paying it. Where this 100% of it would stay and benefit us. So essentially, a half cent would take our 1% to 1.5%. which is a 50% increase, potentially.

There's, again, there's some nuance to the type of tax, but yes, that's, in essence, it would be an increase to what we would have, and it is important, as you know, to point out, these dollars would be restricted by, because they're voter approved, that they would have to stay in Rockland, and council, whoever's sitting in the council seats, would have the ability to

Allocate that to whatever purpose they saw fit not any other body not the state not the county no other body And I don't know if this Andrew you can address this question, but This chart Or the spreadsheet or whatever you want to call it that you're showing Shows a required reserve funding. So without that required reserve or a lower level We wouldn't necessarily have who necessarily have deficits.

So we did reorganize the way we displayed the five-year forecast to show kind of the direct expenses and revenues, but the city's key management practices do require that we fund our reserves to certain levels. That's best management practice in many ways for emergency purposes, but it's also one of the reasons that we do have such a high credit rating. Our bond rating is AAA because we have SAFEGUARDS AND FAIL SAFES IN PLACE TO ENSURE THAT WE'RE NOT, YOU KNOW, JUST COMING STRAIGHT UP TO THE LINE AND NOT PUTTING FUNDING TOWARDS OUR EMERGENCY RESERVES AND OTHER PLACES. SO WE ARE REQUIRED TO MEET A CERTAIN PERCENTAGE OF OUR BUDGET EACH YEAR AS A RESERVE, AND SO THIS REPRESENTS THAT DOLLAR AMOUNT. IF THE COUNCIL WANTED TO CHANGE THE KEY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES, THEY COULD.

RIGHT. OKAY. GREAT. THANK YOU. THAT'S ALL I HAVE FOR NOW.

So this tax obviously would be paid by people shopping or buying things in Rockland. Do we have any sense of the even some kind of raw data points about the percentage of shopping that's happening in Rockland that's not Rockland residents?

We do know that people come into the city to shop. You know, we have large retailers right on Highway 80, Bass Pro Shop, Walmart there, you know, the Target on the other side of the freeway, certainly are draws. We don't have actual data, and that can vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. you know, an estimate from our neighbor when they were doing their sales tax, Roseville, I believe was in the two-thirds range of people coming from outside to shop, but this was isolated to, you know, certain centers that they have. We certainly wouldn't be that high. My previous jurisdiction, though, it was 30% range. So then, you know, so it could vary, but certainly everybody that spends a dollar in the city of Rockland, that would be taxed, would be paying this. It wouldn't be all borne by Rockland residents.

Okay, thank you.

And I will get to our council members online. But I did want to just ask, because I think it's a good follow-up question to that, which was, so I'm looking at our top 25 producers. I'd be curious to find out at some point how many outside people come in to purchase at Audi Rockland, Bass Pro Shop, because like you said, these are the ones that are right off of the 80, Genesis of Rockland. Homewood Lumber, Jaguar, Porsche, Mercedes, Pottery World. So it'd be interesting to see how much of that is outside taxpayers coming in at our largest establishments. It'd be something to maybe follow up on.

We did make that request of the sales tax consultant, but they said they were going to charge us money to tell us that data. And so we haven't gotten that far. So we can certainly pursue it if it's something the council desires.

Certainly. I will reserve the rest of my questions and now ask Council Member Galdo.

Thank you. Yeah, and I know you just brought up on the vehicles, a person buying a vehicle in Rockland pays the sales tax rate for where they live, but we get a very small portion. This wouldn't impact that, I'm assuming, or would it?

Yeah, so that's one of the... differences in how this tax behaves. It's a transaction and use tax as opposed to a sales tax. So when somebody comes and buys a car in Rockland now, we get the 1%. So somebody from Roseville comes to Rockland, buys a car at Audi, Rockland would get 1% of that sale because the point of sale transaction occurred here. That same resident if we were to adopt this new tax would not pay our half cent tax. They still would pay the Roseville rate, whatever it is. That's because they're registering the car to their home. A Rockland resident right now goes and buys a car in Roseville, you pay the Rockland rate. So you don't pay, even though Roseville has a tax, you don't pay that. Under this, Rockland residents buying a car, they would pay this tax, no matter where they bought it. You can go buy it in San Diego. You can go buy it in Roseville. You can buy it in Rockland. You're going to pay that tax because, again, assuming you're registering it to the address here. So those larger ticket items are the one area where residents would pay more as a result anywhere they bought it. However, as mentioned right now, when somebody gets an Amazon delivery to Rockland, the way that that delivery is allocated is to the county pool. So all of the revenue collected goes to the county pool. And then that gets distributed by each jurisdiction's percentage of brick and mortar sales, so traditional retail outlets in our county that skews Roseville. So our Amazon deliveries, a portion of the tax that we as a city pay if we were to get a delivery like that, residents pay, is going by that formula, which is a state law formula, So there's winners and losers in the existing tax that we do receive, the existing 1% of the tax. Under this type of tax that's being proposed, every penny of that would stay here. So there are benefits to that. Sure, you would be paying more, but those dollars would all stay here.

Thank you. That is very helpful because it was the vehicles I was curious. But then also I'm assuming then if they're going to the dealerships for parts, that would be sales tax for Rockland then?

Yes. Every one of our dealers, every one of the Rockland dealerships that has a service center, all of those parts, regardless of who bought them, would be taxable and stay in the city of Rockland under this proposal.

Thank you. So just the things that I've picked up and just to confirm, 100% of this stays not just local, it stays in Rockland.

Correct.

And then as I heard when we were talking about the jurisdictions, so we're seven and a quarter. It sounds like Loomis is seven and a half. If you're shopping there, Roseville, $7.75. It's a little surprising to hear Sacramento. I believe you said it was $8.75. So if somebody goes to Target currently, if they go to the Target on the border in Roseville, they're paying $7.75. And if they come to ours right now, it's $7.25. Correct. And then the other thing, and I believe I heard that at one of the community meetings, but I just want to confirm. So I know we just celebrated our 133rd birthday. This would be the first time we've ever adjusted our sales tax?

Yes. The city has not presented a sales tax option to the voters, so this would be the first time.

Thank you. I think that's the only questions I have.

Thank you. Council Member Broadway.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My questions have been answered through the presentation and through staff's answers to the other council members' questions, so I'll reserve my other information for comments during deliberation. Thank you.

Thank you. One of the only other questions I had is when you spoke to other leaders and whatnot, did you speak to any business groups?

Yes. Presented to the Chamber of Commerce as well as members of their board. Presented to the auto dealers on Granite Drive. Staff has a quarterly meeting with them, so we gave them a couple of bites at this conversation. Those are specific groups as well as other individual business owners as part of the other meetings.

Okay. And then just as a general question about the general fund, is that this is the type of tax where we're not making promises to do a specific project. There haven't been promises made to anyone. You can't do that with these types of taxes. Is that correct?

That is correct. These can be used for any general municipal purpose.

Thank you. I think I will reserve for just comments at this point. Do you have another one? Yes.

Just to follow up on your conversations, Andrew, with the business community, any feedback worth sharing?

I don't want to represent their position because there was not a formal action for them to take. I think if I could, though, just generally, They're generally understanding of the conversation. Both the chamber and the auto dealers, we have very good relationships with, and they are very appreciative of our service levels that we provide and understanding that we're running a business just like them so that these conversations have to happen.

I'll share in my community leader conversations, there were a lot of questions and a lot of thoughtfulness, but not a lot of pushback. I think a general understanding about how city operations work and some of the constraints that are placed upon us and a lot of pride in Rockland and the services that the city provides and the parks, the public safety, the open space, our streets and roads, and a willingness to be partners in maintaining that quality of life.

Thank you. Great. And without any further questions, I'll now open the public comment period. Do we have any speaker cards?

No speaker cards received.

Before I go online, I will ask anybody in the gallery to step on up.

Three minutes. Greetings, Council Members, Benjamin Rocklin, lifelong Rocklin resident. I wouldn't call Rocklin completely landlocked. There is, I don't believe, anything of note on our eastern boundaries, so that's the potential for expansion. With regards to YouTube impressions, I know that those, that impressions rarely convert to actual benefits, especially considering that you've got three-quarters of a million impressions, and yet... Only a couple thousand responses, if I recall correctly. So please be advised when you are advertising for marketing online. Ultimately, I do not believe that this tax will pass, considering that the bottleneck breaking... ballot proposal was shot down very extensively by Rockland voters. However, I personally would not mind paying an extra bit of sales tax. And I do believe that it should be presented to the people just to see if they are interested at all. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Is anyone else? OK, online.

There are no public comments online.

Okay. At this point, I will close public comment and bring it back for further discussion. If there's any follow-up questions.

I just wanted to clarify. I would agree that there may appear that we are not landlocked, but... In addition to the incorporated cities that we do share exact boundaries with, the city's sphere of influence is very small, and the only area that we could potentially develop, as Mr. Keyes mentioned, is Clover Valley, which has recently had a conservation easement placed over it, so there will be no development there. To the east, everything else is either in the town of Loomis or... a part of Roseville or a part of the county who has no interest in allowing us to annex.

And then there's that which has not yet been developed that is already because of the college. Correct. Okay. Okay, thank you. So bringing it back for further discussion, I will start online. So Council Member Broadway.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor was having trouble getting that unmuted. Thank you so much for the opportunity to just have really a few comments to make. As we know, Rockland is well known for its quality of life, which is reflected in the feedback we received from our residents. We have excellent parks, strong public safety, fast emergency response, and a history of responsible financial management. And it hasn't happened by accident. It reflects years of thoughtful planning and disciplined decision-making. And of course, to be clear, our city is not in a financial crisis today, but the long-term forecasts show that we will face structural deficits beginning as early as the next budget cycle and growing in the years ahead if we do not take action. So the question before us is simple, is do we wait for the problem or do we plan ahead and address it? And that's the opportunity we have today. We have the opportunity to provide the residents with the ability to make the decision on what we do moving forward. And this is all about us being prudent stewards of our community's resources. It's a responsible approach. If it's approved by the voters, this will enable us to maintain the services that define Rockland while continuing our commitment to accountability and transparency. And ultimately, it'll again be up to the voters. Our responsibility is to plan ahead and provide a clear, responsible path forward. I think that's been laid out for us here. And now we've been asked to make the decision on whether or not this is placed on the ballot for the voters to make that ultimate decision. And I support moving forward with doing so. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Gallardo.

Thank you.

I think we all know the most important job that we have serving our community is to ensure a stable, positive budget. It impacts literally everything that we do. That's how we're able to fund the high level of services that our residents expect and to continue that high quality of life. I'm really pleased that we initiated these multi-year budget projections a while back. I think it's just really helpful for us to see down the road because We know we're not gonna be in these seats always. We need to make sure that we set this up so that the city can remain financially strong. We also know we run lean. It's something that we've always done, but it's also because we prepare for the day when we are at build out. But while we're running lean, we also provide some of the highest level of service. And at the same time, we're doing that at the lowest possible tax level, and certainly among the lowest in the area. All of us are reading. We're seeing what's happening around us. We're reading about service reductions and massive layoffs in this area, including things like browning out fire stations and layoffs. And certainly, I think it's our job to make sure we don't get to that point. Like everybody, all of our families, we're getting hit by inflation. I know one of the things we need to look at in the very near future here is to see what's the impact been on our fuel budgets for our police and fire in particular. Things that really struck me, I was at one of the community meetings and as we know, Rockland was one of the early people to adopt the sheep and the goats for grazing. And it really struck people when they said, when we started, we were paying $50 an acre for the grazing. we're now paying $500 an acre. And I think that was really telling to me. It's important for us. that we continue to make sure we have the highest level of service, but we are stable. Rockland is known for being stable and consistently great service. Our parks, people continually comment on how nice our parks are and the quality there. People might not always be aware, but when you call for fire service in Rockland, you get a full-fledged paramedic. Not that there's a negative to an EMT that other cities might provide, but if you need that lead for a heart attack, you're going to be darn happy that a full-fledged paramedic's there. So I think that's some of the service that I want to make sure is there for our voters. But as our public speaker, Benjamin, spoke, I agree with him wholeheartedly. I trust my voters. Let the voters decide. If they think this is important and they want to maintain those levels of service, I trust my voters. And I am very comfortable with putting it out for them and letting them choose what they wish to support. So with that, I'm supportive of putting this out there to the voters.

Okay, great. Council Member Jonda?

Yes, thank you. Yeah, I mean, we're a city, we're a government, but the bottom line is we are a business. We have income and we have expenses. Our income options are very limited. We're not like a private business where we can continue to innovate and come out with new products and try to expand into other markets. We essentially have sales tax and property tax. And that's very limited with our growth is pretty much maxed out. A lot of our land, due to some state policies on housing, we've had to convert to residential, which really doesn't generate the revenues enough. There are net use of services and revenues. So our commercial options are even more limited. And it's been noted that the changing nature of, You know typical sales and retail outlets is also effective So there's number of headwinds just on the the limited revenue side as far as expenses. I mean as Councilmember guy Aldo mentioned, you know, we're all paying it. We're paying six and seven dollar gas. The city pays the same thing Medical insurance or employees continue to go up just like it goes up for our personal families and SALARIES CONTINUE TO GO UP, EQUIPMENT, VEHICLES, ALL SORTS OF THINGS. SO IT'S CLEAR THAT JUST OVER TIME SERVICE OR EXPENSES ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO INCREASE AS SHOWN IN THIS FIVE YEAR OUTLOOK. Nobody likes paying more taxes, and the vast majority of taxes we pay don't even come to our community. They're often pushed off to other parts of the state or other parts of the country. The one good thing that's been mentioned about this type of tax is 100% of it stays in our community. So we're essentially paying ourselves to keep the community operating. As has been mentioned as well, this isn't out of a dire need. This city has a long, long history of being extremely conservative, running extremely lean. I think every one of our employees can attest to that by the amount of work that they have on a regular basis. To me, it's an obvious thing to look to the voters to decide. Again, I wouldn't support just raising taxes but certainly support giving our community the choice and I appreciate the extensive outreach that's been done I think we've given everyone in the city an opportunity to to comment and be part of the discussion over nearly a year which is I think is unheard of it's amazing and the feedback has been been outstanding So folks are very happy here, want to continue to see the city thrive and be in the condition that it's in for many years to come. And I support giving them the choice to help us do that. Thanks.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Helm.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Once again, I'm going to ask, can you put up the slide, this time with the bar chart that you put up the last time? There we go. So, you know, I think the critical thing for us to be thinking about here is those portions of these bars that refer to police build out and fire build out and police build out and fire build out basically mean. more resources for police and fire that maintain the level of service that we have today. And if we don't do that, then we're not going to maintain the level of service that we have today. And as a council, I think that we listen to our experts in police and fire about what we need to get the job done here in our community. And this is what we're hearing. And we know that our residents value these services and think highly of these services. So to me, that establishes the need side of this equation. And then it comes to the, how do we find a way to pay for this? I've met with residents around town on different issues. I always bring this up so that they're not surprised that this idea is being tossed about. And one of the things residents say to me when I point out that Roseville's at a half cent higher, I don't think there's a Rockland resident who's ever said, I'm not going to Roseville because it's a half cent higher, the sales tax. And similarly, I don't think there's anybody who's ever going to say, I'm not going to Rockland to buy something because it's a half cent higher, or frankly, the same as Roseville. And today, our Rockland residents are contributing to expanded services in Roseville every time they go. And so I'd like to see the Roseville residents contribute to our expanded services when they come and shop in Rockland, as well as the Loomis residents and people from throughout the greater Sacramento area. And it's a, I think an appropriate way to do it because people are coming to town, they are relying on our services. You know, if they come to town and they have traffic accident or something that requires police support, the police will come. Similarly, if they have a medical incident or a fire-related incident, the fire department is going to come. I think this is a good way to do it. Ultimately, we have to explain to our residents why we're proposing this, and I think it would be, I think we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't present the facts and the needs to our residents and give them our recommendation, which is we're putting this before you because we think we should do it. If they don't, if they don't support it, then this This bar chart shows what happens, which is we fall behind on our services to our community and our response times won't hold up and other things won't hold up. And we'll see what the voters decide on that. But I think as a city, we've done a good job of making the most of the resources that we have. We don't have, you know, I always consider us a limited service city. We don't have a lot of things that we do. And what we really focus our attention on are police, fire, parks, and roads, and other, you know, critical services. So I'm comfortable with it being a general use tax because we're very transparent in where we spend our money. And if we get more money, That's where we're going to spend our money. And we know what we need here. So I think I'm supportive of putting this before voters. And I hope voters will support this because I think it's the right thing for our community. And as I said, I think nobody has not shopped in Roseville because they've been a half cent higher for the last eight or nine years and uh... and we've been subsidizing them for a long time So we'll ask them to do the same now. So thank you.

Great. So a lot of points that I would probably make have already been made. So I'll just start with, I'm not going to speak for everyone here, but I think most of the council, if not all the council, would start from a no spot when it comes to tax, just in general. But then having to see the arguments being made that convince any of us to think that this is a good idea, has been so persuasive that, at least for me, it's not really an option to not support it. I hate the term revenue whenever we're talking about taxes, but I understand that that's the way we speak on it, right? And it is to a local government revenue, even though we're obviously calling it a tax. I think the most important thing is we're giving the voters the chance to decide whether they're going to even accept this or not Right. And I agree with our speaker that, you know, we have to look at the lessons from Measure B and what happened there. I would say that one of the main differences, which is that this is 100 percent comes to Rockland and we don't get to promise any group certain things. And I will say, I think one of the biggest problems that was faced with that measure was that really only half of it of the money that was going to be generated went to the actual problem and everything else that went was, that's where everyone objected to all the extra stuff that was being spent. And I think it's a clear distinction here where we have painstakingly shown that this is about maintaining services, police, fire, parks, quality of life. Every single person is going to actually get the money back to the community. I think it's important for us that we're clear that you don't get to a AAA bond rating by accident, and you don't get this fiscal leanness by just being stingy. Our budgets are always well thought out, transparent, and nothing is going to change if and when this passes. And so everyone can see exactly where the money is being spent. I think Vice Mayor Holden said it perfectly about other jurisdictions, so I just want to second those statements. I think it's really important to recognize the market forces that are happening right now when it comes to, for example, Internet purchases. the amount of purchases that are being done. Obviously, we probably don't have a metric on that. But if I were to look at my own house and assume that there's a lot of people like our house that buy things on the internet, we have to capture what we can out of that. And I think it's intuitively for me one of the stronger points. But I also think that – and I, from my perspective, want to be frank with voters on this. And the way I see it is we have market forces like – what we just discussed, but then we have non-market forces that we as a jurisdiction have to deal with. That includes unfunded mandates placed by the state on our jurisdiction, and we are constantly having to figure out how to deal with that. Obviously, some of them that are legislative, like housing, which shrinks our ability to create tax-generating properties, is one of the more pressing issues. But for example, we have over a million dollars that the state has owed us for decades. They haven't paid just out of tiny little pieces of legislation that every year we're putting $10,000 towards. And they owe it to us. They've even admitted to it. They just don't want to pay. And so when you add all that up, we are, it's like the boiling frog. And we're just trying to maintain these basic services. And so And, of course, what Councilman Regaldo brought up about the grazing is perfect. That's a legislative. That wasn't a market fix. That was an interference with the market, to be quite honest. So for all those reasons, I'm going to support it, even though, like I said, I start with a flat no on taxes until I'm convinced otherwise. But I do want to echo – Really proud of the staff for the responses to the surveys and being responsive even in the face of where you may have gone into hostile territory with a citizen. And even when people were bringing up things that had nothing to do with really the core of the issues. I know I heard stories about, you know, our chief, our police chief, our chief, people going out and talking directly to citizens. and addressing those issues, even if they didn't really have something to do with the questions that were originally posed. So thank you to everyone that had taken the time to reach out to our citizens. And all I will say is I hope that that continues as this goes forward, that when those questions arise, we are addressing them the same exact way that we did from the beginning. So on that, I'll look for a action on this item from the council.

Mr. Mayor, if I can, just before we go, I just want to say, I think everybody hit it just right on the head. Looking at us as a group, we are not exactly a group that would be out there encouraging any kind of tax increase. I think we're all very, very cautious about that. And quite frankly, I don't think any elected body really wants to be the people that go out there saying, hey, we want to increase any kind of taxes. It's not exactly a positive way to conduct an election, certainly by any means. I'm just really pleased to hear the consensus that I'm hearing with the understanding that we're not waiting till we're on fire. We're looking to the future and looking to be and prepare so that we continue with our stable, strong financial position to maintain those services. So I appreciate that, and I think it's important to acknowledge, as you said, none of us are the people that would initially support any kind of tax increase, but we're not going to wait until we're browning out fire stations. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. With that, can I have an action on this item?

Mr. Mayor, I'll move approval of item D1. Do I need to read something? Okay. Do I read the whole thing? Okay. All right. Placement of a general transactions and use tax measure on the November 3rd, 2026 general election ballot. Introduce, waive the full reading and read by the title only, an ordinance of the City of Rockland amending Rockland Municipal Code Title III, revenue and finance by adding Chapter 3.25, 2026 transactions and use tax by imposing a 1.5% general transaction and use sales tax until repealed by voters. To be collected and administered by the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration Subject to voter approval.

I'll second. All right. We have a first and a second. We will now do a roll call.

Council Member Janda.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Halden.

Aye.

Mayor Bass. Yes. Council Member Broadway.

Yes.

Council Member Gallardo. Aye.

Yes. Thank you.

All right. Motion passes unanimously. That concludes our discussion item. Future agenda items for anyone on the council? Nothing? Online? Council Member Gallardo? Broadway?

And I don't know if it has to be an agenda item, but maybe at one of our next meetings, if we can get an update on where we are on our fuel budgets, in particular with the increases in costs recently.

I can provide that either in my city manager report, or if we need something more in-depth, we'll put it on the agenda.

Yeah, just city manager report would be great, but I would like to see where we're at. That's got to come from somewhere. Thank you.

Thank you. Having no other items, we are adjourned.