City Council/Public Finance and Economic Development Authority/Parking Authority - Regular Meeting

I know. We're going to call our May 26th special joint study session of the City Council and the Planning Commission to order. We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. And Mr. Emmanuel Ochoa, our District 3 Planning Commissioner, will lead us in the pledge. Mr. Ochoa. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice Thank you, Commissioner Ochoa.

Okay, agenda item B, roll call. Councilmember Dupont.

Present.

Tao.

Present.

Harris.

Present.

Smith. Zhang. Mayor Pro Tem Boyle. Here. And Mayor Serrato. Here. Okay, Commissioner Smith. Ochoa.

Present.

Swigert. Present. Vu.

Present.

Vice Chair Greggins.

Present.

And Chair Gonzales.

Present.

Okay, Mayor, I'd like to remind the audience that if they wish to address the City Council and Planning Commission, they must submit a green request to speak form located at the podium in the back of the chamber. Additionally, citizens can submit public comment to the City Council and Planning Commission electronically no later than 1 p.m. on the day of the meeting. Comments received before the deadline will be sent to the City Council and the Planning Commission and will be part of the record and will be mentioned as part of the public comment portion of this agenda and will be posted on the City's website. Material may be emailed to cityclerk at cityofmerced.gov and any correspondence received after 1 p.m. will be distributed to the City Council and Planning Commission and retained for the official record. And also for those audience members who wish to hear this joint meeting translated into Spanish, please let our interpreter know.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Hola, mi nombre es Elizabeth, estoy con Healthy House y soy su intérprete de hoy. Voy a estar allá sentada si me necesitan.

Okay, agenda item C, public comments. Mayor and chair, the clerk's office received an email from Julian Chapman and Strong Towns Merced regarding agenda item D1. The emails were received by the 1 p.m. deadline. They were sent to council and the planning commission and posted on the city's website. Any emails received after the 1 p.m. deadline will be sent to council and the planning commission. And mayor, if you would like, we can take public comment after the presentation or if you wanna take it now.

Either way we have, how many comments do we have?

Looks like we have three.

Okay, let's take it now.

Okay. If I can get Marilyn Sobel and Norma Cardona. Oh, we have two actually, Norma Cardona.

Okay. Ms. Sobel.

Good evening, Council, Planning Commission. So it's human nature to be more critical than to praise. And you all know that I have no problem with that. But tonight, I'm here to praise. I just wanted to make a comment about how great Bob Hart Square has turned out. And I've been down there several times. I just think it is a wonderful thing that I assume the Planning Commission, the parks, and the city council all had something to do with, and it's turned into something that I think is really a great thing for the community. And I just felt that after all my criticism, you guys deserve some praise as well. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, Ms. Cardone. Welcome, good evening.

Hi, good evening. I normally don't wear hats to City Council, so apologies. My name is Norma Cardona. I am a resident of the downtown Merced, and I just wanna, I have a couple of questions, but first of all, I wanna thank the consultants for the development of the general plan. It's very, very detailed, and at the same time, I would also like to ask a little bit more questions of the general plan. One of the questions I have is from, it quotes the largest growth and projected in industries of transportation and warehouse. And so there's also on page 13, economic shifts. It focuses on specialty knowledge-based industries compared to manual trades. So I'm curious what these specialty knowledge-based industries are being recommended and what those manual trades, easing on the manual trades, what would that look like? I also noticed in the housing aspect of the general plan that there's disproportionate impact of housing costs on renters with lower income renters, particularly smaller households and the elderly being impacted. And so I recently, so I recommend actually more rental units. And I recently attended the workshop, Placemaking 101, Understanding What Makes Great Places Work, sponsored by North Valley Thrive and CBOF. And I found some really interesting information, particularly on the property tax revenue by acre and building type. where it found that for residential buildings, the tax revenue typically averages around $384,000. Where for mixed use housing, there's a property tax, possible property tax revenue of 9.9 million. So I'm really just also really interested in highlighting mixed use housing as a form of expanding not only property tax, but then also Also, rental units. And then finally, as much as I appreciate that there was a mention about internet access, it also mentioned digital divide. And I just want to highlight that the digital divide doesn't just include spotty or not having internet access, but it also includes digital literacy, digital navigation, and also access to devices. And so the digital divide is alive and well in certain parts of our community. And so I would like us to also include other parts of the digital divide as part of the general plan. And let me see my notes. It was 263 pages. I think that is it for my comments. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your patience.

Thank you, Norma. Good to see your voice is appreciated. Jennifer, anyone else from the public at this time?

That's all we have, Mayor.

Okay, we'll move on to our presentation.

Okay, agenda item D1, Joint Planning Commission City Council Study Session to Report on Existing Conditions and Trends Workbook and Progress Update for the Comprehensive General Plan Update.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Okay, good evening, Council, Mayor, Planning Commission, great to be back with you this evening. The intent of our meeting tonight is to report out and provide an update on the general plan process that the city is currently undergoing, go over one of our latest major deliverables that was released to the public, went through extensive review with city staff, your CFAG, And then as part of this discussion, we will also walk through each of the individual chapters of the existing conditions report and report out some of the facts. And I think what's important tonight as we walk through that is to realize that this document has been vetted. posted, publicly reviewed, and updated. And so the purpose of tonight's meeting is to really just inform both the City Council and the Planning Commission for this transparent process to lay out what was presented to the public. If there is additional questions that arise as part of this, we'd be glad to answer them for you. If we don't have the answers, we will get the answers as well and provide that to city staff who can forward that on. At the end of the presentation, I'll give an update on the community engagement that's been completed thus far, and then just give an overview of next steps, so what to anticipate moving forward. So as part of this, we'll walk through the existing conditions report. I'll give a little bit more information into that. And then we'll talk about the visioning process and what that means as part of the overall general plan. But let's talk about this existing conditions and trends workbook and the reason why we're here tonight. So the existing conditions and trends workbook is a pivotal part of any general plan update. And this may sound cliche, but it's true that when you start a project of this magnitude and scale, and you're looking at policy changes and looking into the future 25 to 30 years, which is the intent of a general plan, it's a blueprint for a community, which is required by the state of California. So every city, county, and town must have one. Before you can actually start envisioning the future, planning for it, you have to know where the community's been. You have to know the existing conditions. What's on the ground today? What is going to affect policy? What is going to affect the different portions of a general plan from what a general plan covers? So everything from land use to safety, circulation, economic development, environmental considerations, and so forth. So when you start a general plan, typically what you do is you go through what's known as an existing conditions process. And the consultant team, along with your city staff and your CAFG, which is your community advisory focus group, started this last year and took a snapshot of Merced in 2025, 2026. What does the community look like from an economic standpoint? What's the housing stock? What's the population, educational attainment, whether environmental considerations, your circulation pattern. And as part of that, that gives us a better baseline and representation in order to help assist and facilitate discussions that look toward Merced's future over the next 25 to 30 years. So the workbook is intended to be, as noted on the screen, a high-level snapshot of existing conditions within the city. These are all based on relevant and recently published data. This is not new data that was generated as part of this. It's reporting out mechanisms from the census, Department of Finance from the state of California, regional plans, and local city plans, initiatives, and ordinances. As part of this workbook, as a member from the public mentioned, it's approximately 260 pages of a lot of information meant to help drive the process forward. And the workbook is informed not only from the background of our team, but it's also informed and confirmed by your city departments. So as I had mentioned, our consultant team went through, it's not just us as the consultant team, there's a larger group behind us that focuses on many informational items relating to traffic and environmental as part of the general plan. Your city departments vetted this, went through it, and for accuracy purposes made sure that what was being reported out reflected not only the city's knowledge when it comes from the local scale, but from a regional perspective as well. So the intent of this document is just to be that snapshot. It's just to look at where we are today. And then what we end up doing is moving forward and we get into the visioning aspect. And then we start getting into the meat of a general plan process, which is the policy document. That's the policy that helps guide and facilitate to the decisions of planning commission and ultimately to the city council moving forward. And that starts to look at how we implement a general plan over the next 25 years and what those changes look like and any impacts that may arise from that for the city. So just to give a little bit more background on this report, it was prepared over a number of months. It's a series of nine to 10 chapters, including an introduction. As part of this, the CFAG had two meetings where the CFAG reviewed this document, provided questions, feedback. If you're not familiar with the CFAG, it's your advisory. So the CFAG includes some of the council members which are here tonight, some commissioners, and then other interested individuals from local organizations, agencies, or community members at large. And members that were interested in joining the CFAG went through a vetting process and application process to become part of a CFAG. And they're basically signing up for a commitment through the general plan. to help advise on the documents and review them before they go public. So they're purely advisory. Throughout this process, they'll actually make recommendations forward to Planning Commission and then Planning Commission makes recommendations on to Council. Having a CFAG or otherwise known as a GPAC in other communities is a common use of trying to get community feedback and to get the pulse on the documents before they go public. And we'll be meeting actually with the CFAG tomorrow night and I'll get into that later in this meeting. So the existing conditions report went out for a public review period. We collected comments and this is after the CFAG reviewed it and provided feedback and edits and modifications. Again, advisory vetting the document before it goes out. Then in addition, we brought this document out to a community workshop. And at the end of the presentation, I'll go into some of the findings that came out of that. So this has gone through extensive review, extensive timelines and periods. And now what we're doing is bringing it kind of full circle back to both the planning commission, the council, just to give you a snapshot of what we've been doing and what this document includes. So I'm going to hand this over to Michael, who is the assistant project manager as part of the general plan team. Michael's going to walk through each of the chapters and he will take a pause for questions and we'll hand it back to the mayor at that time to facilitate. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Brent, and good evening, Council and Planning Commission. Wonderful to be here tonight. So Brent provided you an overview of what we're going to be reviewing. As Brent also mentioned, we have a CAFAG. A lot of this content, if you are on that group, will be familiar, as you had had a chance to review it and inform the consultant team as well as city staff before its final publication. So what I will be going through next are the, I would say, the substantive chapters of this existing conditions and trends workbook, really sections, chapters two through 11. I'm going to do, creates a total of 10 topics. What I want to do at some point is pause after I get through five topics and take any questions. And that way we don't have to run through all 60 slides and to what your questions until the end. So what I'll do is I'll start with land use, then I'll work all the way through and talk about market and economic conditions. I'll take a pause and then we'll transition to some of the other topics. Again, as Brent mentioned, this is really the presentation of facts, findings, and trends that will be used as the baseline condition for where this general plan will take us and where we will plan for the next 20 to 30 years. So we'll start with land use. Let's say this is probably the largest topic that I would say residents interact with planning on a daily basis. And some of the most notable facts here is that the largest land use by actual use itself, according to the county assessor, actually is for public facilities. So that would be schools, libraries, infrastructure, utilities. When we then look at your general plan, the existing general plan now, your general plan emphasizes single family, really low density residential. 22% of your general plan actually is planned for residential. Translate that down into actual zoning regulations and a majority of your land use is again that low density residential. That makes sense. And as well as these what we call planned developments or planned development zoning, which is essentially kind of unique development regulations for certain portion of your city. It's a tool that developers and cities can use. Then when we actually look up at the makeup of the zoning by acres, you can see that high density residential as far as a zoning typology, there aren't very many acres dedicated to it. And as I'll show in some later slides, actually ends up being kind of below the county and the state average as far as land dedicated to higher density residential. Majority of land is dedicated for residential purposes to low density, single family, traditional style zoning. Looking at population and housing trends, the city at this point is at the time of taking the population was just shy of 100,000, so 98,000. And when we look at trends over the last 15 years, we see that things are actually on the up and up. So we have employment numbers increasing consistently. From 2010, we see that we have an annual growth rate between 2010 and 2025 of about one and a half. That is over Merced counties and also the California state average as well, where we're seeing about a half a percent increase in the annual growth rate each year. The ethnicity makeup in the city is quite interesting. We see in 2010, a majority of the population was identifying as non-Hispanic or Latino. Fast forward to 2023, and that actually has flipped. So we actually see a majority of your population identifying as Hispanic and Latino, and a minority, 41%, identifying as not. So kind of an interesting flip that we're seeing. We see that happening in other communities throughout California. There are shifts in ethnicity and population, but an interesting trend that should certainly be noted throughout this process. When we look at industry types across the city as well, we see a strong market for employment or those that can be readily employed. So we have about 35,000 individuals, 36,000 of your population that is employable with really the highest markets being healthcare, education, and then supporting trades like retail, arts, and entertainment. It kind of makes sense for a county seat and for a city so strategically located. When we look at medium household income, that also is following the same trajectory as your population and employment trends. So we see from 2015, almost a 60% increase in the household median income in the city. Fast forward to 2023, and that's almost 60,000 compared to around 37,000 in 2015. Speaking more a little bit about the actual housing mix within the city, again, I had mentioned that a predominant portion of your residential typologies is dedicated to single family detached housing, kind of our traditional single family housing, 65% of that. which is actually lower as I had mentioned than the state's average, sorry, which is lower than the county's average, but it actually ends up being a little bit higher than the state's average. What we do see the county or the city kind of being on the lower end is these larger apartment complexes. We're looking at 20 units or more. We do see that those are increasing, but a large majority and the typical urban fabric of the city has predominantly favored these single family detached homes. Going along this trend as well, when we look at median net worth by tenure, we also see that really favoring the ownership market. So whereas the renter market for a median net worth has stayed relatively the same since 2019 through 2025, We see an increase of between 2019 and 2020. But really where we see the highest wealth increases at least for net worth individuals would be the homeowner market, which is really shown in the average home value, which has increased to about 340,000 in 2025. The next topic that we'll talk about is mobility. So mobility, circulation, traffic is a large component of your general plan update. We can't talk about land use decisions if we don't think about the impacts that it will have on infrastructure and needs and traffic and how we're going to get around this city that we're planning for. So we will in this process update your circulation maps, the types of roadways, your classification roadways, and we'll work with city staff to inform those long-term decisions as we look at land uses for guidance. But for an existing conditions standpoint, we have presented kind of on the ground trends that we've seen for the purposes of this report. So when we look at inflow and outflow of your labor source, you see that we have a larger majority of your population leaving the city for employment purposes than we have those that are actually living and staying and working in Merced. And then when we actually look at the inflow, so how many workers live outside of Merced but are driving into the industry, we see that as an even lower number. So for us, that is an indicator that we have potential for increased market value. We have jobs to capture if they were to stay. And there is potential, as we'll show in some of our economic forecasting, really the ability for increased square footage of industry in all sectors. In total, kind of an interesting fact to look at here, you have 150 miles within the county of trails and bike paths. majority of which are actually within the city limits. So that is a benefit that can be capitalized on. And what we see overall is a trend in those who are taking more active means of transportation. However, we see that in those that are biking has actually decreased when it comes to more active transportation methods. Though we do have a very strong market for public transportation services in the city, as you are all probably familiar, we have a multitude of rail providers, we have bus transit, we also have ride sharing opportunities, yards, and a multitude of frequently recurring bus routes throughout the city. say a large factor and a large contributor to the economy here is your Amtrak rail station, which over the years has had an interesting influx in ridership, but for the most part has been fairly consistent. We see that 2020 to 2021, I think we all know what COVID restrictions did to ridership during that time. So we do see a dip there. But for the most part, ridership has remained fairly consistent and strong throughout the valley and throughout the station. Another aspect that we'll look at and certainly a factor is aviation facilities and certainly something that we don't want to miss out on and talk about and capitalize on in this update. So when we actually look at the number of employments, so landings, we see that these have also increased when we kind of forecast them out. We have had some increases in certain years and some dips in others as we have some providers leaving. and then providers coming to and from the airport Next, we'll take a deeper dive and look at the market and economic conditions of Merced. And to kind of start our analysis, what we did is we looked at, we did a comparative analysis. So we looked at two other jurisdictions as models and compared kind of Merced to those. Those other communities that we looked at are your Northern neighbors, we have Stockton, and then we also have Modesto that we looked at. And when we look at Merced in comparison to those jurisdictions, we have a relatively younger population. We also have the shorter commuter times when we look at some of the other jurisdictions in comparison. And then the unemployment rate is also lower in Merced than compared to these other jurisdictions that we looked at. Again, really just a comparative market analysis of other similar valley communities. When we look at industries and occupation profiles within the city, as mentioned, education, healthcare, social assistance, kind of government work ends up being the predominant focus economic driver here. And again, that makes sense as the county seat. When we then look at Modesto and Stockton, we see those areas as having a little less. Natural resources, construction, maintenance occupations also tends to be higher here. And really in comparison to the other valley, that makes sense strategically just based on where Merced is located and the fact that it is providing, I would say, more affordable housing. And we can kind of correlate that to some of the outflow of jobs that we saw in the mobility section. From 2015, when we look at retail sales and economic activity from 2015 to 2024, we do see that the taxable sales in the city increased almost about 40%. But that is still below the county and the state's growth rate averages. When we look at retail markets and what would be especially strong we see that we have some declining and weakening sectors and really in the city that's really attributing to motor vehicle parts dealership and general merchandise types of activities. Diving into more of the retail market and the industrial market, when we actually look at vacancy rates in square footage, we see that vacancy rates for retail have increased slightly by 1% in comparison to quarter 25, was previously 5%. And net absorption remains negative. And you'll actually see that through each of these, whether that be office market or your industrial market. Really what that negative net absorption means is that there's a constricting market when we have a, when there is an imbalance between what spaces are available versus what is the need. So whereas we have lower vacancy rates in, let's say, the office market, so we don't have as much vacant office space, we are seeing a trend of a constricting market for office based on our analyses. Same trend holds true for industrial. Vacancy rose from 16 to 14, sorry, from 14 to 16%. And again, we are seeing a negative absorption, so a slightly constricting market for industrial markets. looking at the existing trends. To see what that would look like if we forecasted that out, we took this one step further. So we just didn't look at what we're seeing on the ground for the last 10 years. We actually built that out and okay, let's forecast out what some aggressive modeling might be for potential for increased markets like office, retail, industrial, and residential. And fortunately, we see that there is capacity for increased development for square footage for these land use industries and for these land use types. We looked at existing scenario, kind of a baseline methodology, business as usual. And then we looked at an aggressive scenario. We're assuming that office, the need for office and the need for industrial spaces would increase. Now, as we can see here, when we look at office space and potential in our baseline scenario, we're about 195,000 square feet, according to our calculations as potential growth up to 2024, up to 2045, apologies. And when we forecast that out into an aggressive market, we're looking at a potential of over 250,000 square feet in potential additional square footage for development. You see that trend continues down from retail industrial. However, our residential square footages for single family and multifamily stay the same in this scenario as we only really addressed and only we're looking at forecasting an increase in demand for that office and industrial in that more aggressive scenario. Next we'll talk about your public facilities and then I'll take a break for any questions or comments on the topics covered so far. But another important aspect of this general plan that will allow the city council to prioritize goals and policies when it comes to infrastructure, utilities and public safety is we really have the potential to do that as part of this general plan update. So things that we'll take a look at is water supply, what are our safety concerns from a staffing standpoint, what our infrastructure needs, and what can we reasonably expect over the next 20 to 30 years. So in 2020, we looked at the city supplied over just about 20,000 acre feet of water, of potable water, around 4,000 feet of recycled water. We anticipate that the demands for water will continue to increase as land use is continued to be developed, as new industries come in. However, based on current modeling, based on current assessments, the city has the capacity for that plan growth. However, there are necessary improvements that the city would need in order for that growth to be maintained. So as already called out in your improvements, there is kind of the requirement of the installation of additional groundwater wells. There is also the anticipation of a construction of a 10 million gallon surface water treatment plant that is also being assumed in your kind of your water delivery supply and what's being forecasted out. As far as law enforcement goes, as of this report, there are 98 sworn officers, 45 non-sworn staff operating out of two stations in the city. For fire protection, the service area is around 23 square miles and operates out of five stations and apparatuses include seven engines, one truck, one ambulance, and 85 personnel. What really sets Merced apart in the Valley is its dedication to education. So you have a thriving education economy here. You obviously have UC Merced, Merced College. These end up being huge economic drivers for the community. We know that UC Merced is in the top 100 research, is in the top 100 for research universities continuing for growth potential continuing to add population and economic driver and to the city. Merced College is the same providing additional extra extended education. And really what we see for his topics in research there are science and agriculture and mathematics. And as of 2023 to 2024 had a student population of around 12,000. So with that, I'll take a pause. To recap, we went through land use, population, employment and housing, mobility, market and economic trends, and then public facilities and infrastructure. What I will touch on next will be open space and parks and recreation, air quality, the environment, safety and environmental justice. So if there are questions related to those topics, I will get to that portion of the presentation. But in the meantime, I will hand it back to the mayor for any questions of the consultant team or staff on the topics discussed so far.

All right. Thank you very much, Michael. We appreciate your presentation. Appreciate the comprehensive update and all the good work you guys have been doing. Before we take questions, I just want to make sure everything's squared away here on my monitor. Commissioner Vu, could you please press your just request to speak button real quick? I want to see what it says over there. It should be staff. You know what I'm saying? That's gonna be a problem. Yeah, we got a problem. All right, figure it out. Anybody on the dais have any questions? Anybody on that end, any of the planning commissioners have any questions? Commissioner Ochoa.

Do you mind going back to slide six about the water numbers? Absolutely. All right. I just wanted to see what that number was, the construction of the 10 million gallon per day for the surface water treatment. Thank you. Yes.

Do you know, you gave the numbers with respect to the low density and high density split, the percentage of... low density residential versus the large apartment complexes and how we compare to the county and state averages. Do you have, and I don't recall if we addressed this at the CAFG meeting, but the general Central Valley numbers, how do we compare to the San Joaquin Valley? If those numbers are available.

I can't remember specifically, but my gut reaction is I feel like you're pretty on the trend with valley communities.

It's certainly common sense to dictate the valley communities tend to be more focused on low density residential as to pair to the big population centers like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Traditionally, that is the development style that we've seen certainly in the county and throughout the valley. Brent, I'm interested to see if you have any additional thoughts on your experience.

No, unlike the greater LA, San Diego, and Bay Area, which have more aggressive housing policy, which focuses on more mixed-use, multifamily, high-density development, the San Joaquin Valley tends to focus on more affordable products and single-family development. Having worked for several counties as a consultant and as a land-use planner, it's pretty typical of what we're seeing in Merced, where a majority of the population is housed in single-family products. We are, though, starting to see a shift. Housing elements, as the city is currently going through, aim to increase different housing typologies. And so even though single-family has been the dominant housing type in the Valley, we are starting to see that trend start to shift a bit. But it also depends on each jurisdiction's appetite for that change and how that is computed within your housing element. But yes, traditionally, single-family residential has been a valley typology.

Okay.

Thank you, Brian. Additional questions?

I had a question on it. Just when we're talking about land use in regards to high density versus low density, part of the general plan is to outline the go forward. Is there any commentary or feedback that you've received from the community during these open sessions on affordability tied to low density housing? Because when we're looking at the numbers, right, one of the things you mentioned was that 45% of our population is... was it 25? It's kind of the age range. And these folks, right, over the next 10 to 15 years should be out there looking to buy a home, right? And I think one of the concerns we have here in Merced has just been affordability. So, you know, if you can share some of the feedback that you've gotten through these open workshops with folks from our community, has that come up and how is that going to be addressed?

It sure has come up. And in part of the public comment that came in for tonight's meeting was brought up. During the community workshop, actually, I'll start with the CFAG. With the CFAG, it was a topic of concern that was brought up, housing affordability, housing typology, with the demand for housing being so high there's not enough housing within statewide. It just isn't something that we're seeing within Merced. What ends up happening is it drives up the cost. So your first time home buyer is getting priced out, even for a traditional single family home. Prices may not be as inflated as other parts of the state, but it is rising fast and becoming unattainable. So as part of our CFAG meetings, it was discussed that the general plan should focus policy on affordability tied back to your housing element. There should be policy that looks at land use patterns that include different typologies. What that looks like, still to be determined. We're not quite there within the general plan yet. I can say that as part of our community workshops, we received the same feedback from a variety of community members, different age types. You had individuals who were retiring looking to downsize that couldn't afford even downsized products. And you had college-age students or those recently graduated starting their career that couldn't afford certain housing types. So part of this will be up to the CFAG, the Planning Commission, the Council, and the community at large to start to weigh the pros and cons of what type of housing will define Merced moving forward. What is that balance? What is that mix? And what type of policy needs to be in place in order to get that expectation achieved? And so we'll start having those conversations. This just kind of gives you the snapshot of what the facts are. And some, you know, it's not every, not everyone is happy with facts, but this is the on the ground conditions. And so it's up to the city to drive its future. So what does that look like? And we'll have those discussions further on through the process. Thank you for additional questions.

All right, see no additional questions. Please proceed, General.

Okay.

Okay, so next, let's talk about open space and recreation, which the city is in no short supply of. So as I had mentioned, there are over 150 miles of bike paths and trails in the county, half of which are in the city limits. Here are some of our major trails that we've mapped out. Sunset Trail, Michael O'Sullivan, Black Rascal Creek. We look at parks, formal parks also function as a extremely important part of the community. Again, from early analysis, there's great access to parks. We have a total of 17 mini parks, 14 neighborhood parks, four community parks, and then three regional parks. kind of starts with small and working down to larger. So your regional parks are gonna be serving your broader communities, other cities, kind of more of that county. Your mini parks are gonna be kind of smaller, more neighborhood centric, followed by your larger community parks and then neighborhood parks. Public art is also a very important aspect and something that your existing general plan capitalizes on, something that this team and city staff also intends to continue emphasizing, and that would be your murals, the various art projects for painting the utility boxes, public art installations, sculptures, making sure that the arts community is being represented in the public space, making sure that we have the appropriate triggers and mechanisms for are to also be provided in our new development and more of our private spaces. Programming and arts is also an important aspect of what the city provides on a yearly basis. So there are summer camps, there are classes, youth and senior services and sports leagues and various community centers. Again, these are provided, funded by the community and for the benefit of the community. Air quality is a topic that is, while important, is also required for the state of California for valley communities, given the unique location of the valley and the weather, and I would say the amount of traffic that we get through our valley communities. The state requires that jurisdictions, at least in the San Joaquin Valley, address air quality. Monitor it report out and create specific goals policies and programs to help lessen the concerns from air pollutants when we see some of the more noticeable air pollutants In the city really this translates to other communities throughout the valley majority of what we're seeing a lot of these air pollutants come from or two things traffic and agriculture and As I'll talk about here in a moment, air quality for healthy people isn't necessarily, is a long-term concern, but where we see the largest concern in air quality really comes down to vulnerable populations. So people that are already sick, the elderly, or young children. And so what we've done, as I'll talk about here in another required part of this presentation, of report that we've done is we've looked at what's called environmental justice. And we've mapped and we've identified some of these more vulnerable populations and gone beyond just analyzing air quality impacts, but looked at other impacts as well, cardiovascular disease, and looked at how else the environment plays a role in health and longevity. But here we can see some of the percentile scores of the city of the hard metrics that were run. And again, really this I would say coincides to a lot of other valley communities that struggle with air quality just given location in the valley. The environment, we live in California. We have regulations that we have to follow as planners and certain best practices. One of the best practices that we are bringing to this is mapping out a lot of your sensitive resources and identifying some species and populations that are at risk. So in this analysis, what you'll find is identification of your relevant water sources. We've looked at your biological resources, whether that be from threatened, endangered, and then also identified sensitive habitats, historical sites, tribal and cultural resources as well. We've mapped all of those out, identified those. And when we look from a biological standpoint, we see that a majority of our sensitive threatened and endangered species or the items that we want to pay particular attention to are really concentrated up north. So when you start to overlay the symbology in the legend, when we start looking at the salamander and our vernal pool shrimp and our orchid grass, we can really see that's concentrated in the north of the community. They start to really overlap on each other in some cases as you're seeing. When we look at safety, we also looked at your geological concerns, fire risk, how that relates with climate change, drought, and also flooding. Say the most noticeable finding that we can see is a majority of the southern portion of the city is in the 100-year flood plain zone. So there are requirements, there are certain factors that need to be taken into consideration for development, but is certainly a noticeable and a factor that will have to be and continues to be taken into consideration through planning applications. And at least from these maps, these are the most up-to-date data as far as 500 and 100 year floodplains are concerned. As mentioned, we also looked at environmental justice. Environmental justice may be a new topic as far as identifying it as an actual topic, but it's really an older and old practice. And that's really, it's planning for those portions of the community that have historically been left out or unrepresented in planning processes. So the state of California acknowledges that there are portions of our communities, cities, and counties, which bear a disproportionate amount of environmental and pollution burdens. And I think we can all think of some portions of the communities either that we grew up in that are a little bit rougher, a little bit have a harder time with investment, a rougher time in getting businesses and housing compared to other portions. And so the state of California really through environmental justice and SB 1000 initiated state law for communities to really do two things. One, identify if there are any portions of your community that are bearing this disproportionate amount of pollution or environmental concerns. And then two, if you do have areas within your community that are at risk, then to create specific goals, policies, and programs to address those concerns, rectify them, and hopefully not have those concerns bleed into other portions of your community. So, when we look at environmental justice, we are looking at, again, the environment and how that relates to health outcomes. So, we've looked at a total of 73 factors ranging from air pollution, ranging from heart attack rates, diabetes rates, and we mapped all these and compared census by census Merced to all other census tracts in the state of California. And what we found is that there are a total of 14 census tracts that meet the state's definition of disadvantaged. And really to meet that definition, these areas need to have lower income, higher proportions of minorities, and again, bear that disproportionate amount of environmental concerns, whether that be pollution, whether that be pesticide use, but 14 tracts have fallen within that threshold that the state has defined. Beyond that, our team then went a further step and analyzed that further. And we used some federally provided data sets through EJ screen to confirm our findings. And again, kind of mapped out some of these census tracts and then identified what are the specific topics of concern that this general plan should address as we go as it progresses. Here is the identification of those parcels. Ideally, in the state of California's mind, everything would be green. Most valley communities, we see this orange to red. Really a lot of this comes down to traffic proximity, pesticide use. air quality concerns, lower incomes. So there are a multitude of factors. There's really no one contributing factor to all of these. It's these 73 different factors that we looked at. But when you compare these census tracts to other portions of the community, what that 98.2 or what that 98% means is that these census tracts are feeling at 98% higher than other census tracts in California. So it definitely is a cause for us to take a look at addressing what are the specific topics that are leading to these higher scores, how are we going to address that over the next 20 to 30 years, be compliant with state law, but also create an opportunity to rectify and improve some of these situations and topics that we're finding are putting these census tracts on that threshold. So dive in here a little bit more of what our findings are. Again, I had mentioned pesticide use is really affecting the city edges and the fringe parts of your community that really tracks with a lot of other communities that have a surrounding agriculture. When we look at the central portion of this city, what we see the largest factors that are kind of putting some of these census tracts in that state defined threshold is language isolation. So that would be where someone speaks a language that is not the predominant language. So that can lead to the ability to not understand the civic decisions, to integrate better in your community. We also see higher portions of lead exposure, really that's gonna be a cause for older homes, whether that be lead-based paint or lead pipes. And then we also have traffic proximity. Again, that's going to be, you have a major transit route that runs next to your downtown. So we'll see that traffic proximity and the causes of higher exposure to traffic are also pushing the central portions of the community into that tier. And then lastly, in that southern portion of the community, we're seeing cost burden as being one of the higher topics of concern in running these metrics. So we're looking at how many low income residents actually are living in that portion of the community, what is the home, what is the tenure rate, and what is the ability for future development and for future cost relieves for housing. And then another fact that we take into consideration and we model out actually comes down to local roadway safety in which we are mapping accidents. Really that's gonna be the killed or severely injured. It's a KSI rate. We also applied that and looked at where in the jurisdiction we're seeing these higher levels of these accidents. And we're seeing that really a vast majority, 93% of these collisions are happening in these census tracts that we've identified as disadvantaged. And there's a multitude of findings that we can kind of draw from that. But it is certainly again, another factor that we want to take a look at and plan for knowing that this is gonna be kind of the foundation that we're working from. So with that one more time, I went through the topics of open space and parks and recreation, air quality, the environment, safety, and then environmental justice. I'll hand it back to the mayor if there are any questions on those topics presented. Thank you.

Councilor Smith. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I'm gonna say you got a great radio voice, sir. Can we go back to the topic of environmental justice we were just talking about? So I understand that we wanna comply with state law and these are very important concepts, but I'm having a hard time understanding the method used to identify the disserved communities. I heard you say that you, we come up with these scores to determine who's disadvantaged and who's not by comparing all census tracts in California. And that's in state law, that requirement, or is that sort of a good planning practice?

So that is a state-provided tool called CalEnviroScreen. At the time of this preparation, we prepared it on 4.0. They have now come out with a new model, 5.0. And what that model runs off of is all census tracts within California. It can then compare publicly available data sets, and it does, for the state's model, compare it to all other census tracts within the state.

So why are we comparing Merced to La Jolla and San Francisco? I mean, in science, you would throw out outliers that have nothing to do with the median. So I don't understand why we're including coastal communities, wealthier communities in this comparison.

So this comparison is really identifying still those topics of concern that are rising above the threshold. 75% is kind of the state's cutoff for some of these methodologies that we look at. So any community that's gonna be crossing that threshold, that established threshold, whether that be a valley community or a community along the coast, if they have any of those topics that kind of increase that threshold, they'll be flagged. kind of those cumulative scores then add up to their score. I would say in addition to this state model, which I think this is a great point that you're bringing up, we just don't rely on CalEnviroScreen as the state's model for it. We also rely on a federally available data set called EJScreen, which in some cases provides even more information and what California can provide. But what's great about the state or the federal model is that it's comparing all other states and cities in the country. So we're pulling from a wider source of variables, but I would say that it is specific to the city in question when we look at EJSCREEN. So we did go through multiple routes of sourcing, and this is just from the data perspective. So this isn't including kind of the community's perception as well. We can look at and we can understand, okay, what are the numbers saying? But really what people feel on the ground might paint a very different story. So whereas we may have some indicators that may be flagging of a concern for us in our outreach efforts, there may actually be a clear picture that's painted for that. Or from the community's impact, they may not feel one over another. Conversely, there may be some indicators that we're finding in our research that aren't of a concern. But when we talk to the public through engagement, when we get to that point in the process, we find out that we should actually be including as a topic of concern for our process.

Well, the comparator is important. I mean, what does the EJ screen tell us if we only compare against valley communities from Bakersfield to Sacramento? Where do we stack up in that?

It's a great question. I would highly recommend if you have the ability to go on CalVirus screen, you can pull up the data. When you look at, name the communities one more time. You're gonna see a huge swath of red and orange extending all the way up from Sacramento all the way down to you hit Bakersfield along the county, along the coast, and on the mountain ranges you'll see heavier green populations that's gonna be really associated with lower population areas. The further north you go, you will also see a decrease in some of the environmental concerns coming down to traffic proximity. But I would say all of the results are accurate for the city of Merced for comparative purposes though, just to see for comparisons visually, that's where it uses that reference. But if you go and actually pull the data sets, the modeling for air quality, those are all specific to the city. Yeah.

I mean, I guess I'm just concerned with this. It's an important topic. I mean, it's called environmental justice. Who's against that, right? But this just seems to me a tool to force Valley communities to make land use decisions, to make us look like the Bay Area, which is something that we grapple with all the time. I mean, how are we gonna move two rail lines and a freeway, which is where all the red is. There's nothing we can do about that. So, you know, the drive to build multi-unit housing. We need more multi-unit housing, but how are we gonna replace the ability for middle-class people to build generational wealth that they can't buy a house? I mean, a lot of this just doesn't, I don't know. I'm worried that this is the book of truth now for this process. And it seems to be dictated by a biased political perspective out of the state Capitol that we don't have a whole lot of saying. We're being told to grow our town in a certain way. I find it a little bit less useful, unfortunately. So, but it helps me understand kind of the limits and the perspective of the environmental justice analysis. So thank you.

Council member, listening to what you're saying, there is some truth to it as a planner. I feel that frustration, one of those things that I would probably think about would be vehicles miles traveled in the way that we're supposed to implement them, right? It is frustrating being as a planner in the Central Valley and you see that feel for them to push us towards that Bay Area LA model and that's just not our culture and that's not who we are. But what I would say, the EnviroScreen is a decent model in the sense of, yes, you have to take it with a grain of salt. We have to look at numbers. There is some good information that you look in there. Like one of the things that it's going to go ahead and touch up on is air quality. I don't think there's anybody in here that thinks that the San Joaquin Valley has the best air quality. Unfortunately, we have some of the worst air quality in the state of California. So it does bring in some useful data for us to be able to look at. and get a better understanding of what we're looking at. But to your point, yes, when we're looking at this information, we can't just be taking it in as data sets, we have to look at the bigger picture.

Thank you, thank you both.

Thanks for jumping in.

And then for environmental justice too, they take in factors such as language, income level, those kinds of things as well too.

They do. Yep. Car ownership, educational attainment, income, jobs. It's really trying to translate what are the potential environmental impacts the city does have land use control over and how can those potentially conversely impact certain portions of the community. So where we're talking, how that directly relates to a planner's job is where are we locating potential impacts noxious land uses in comparison to residential. At a fundamental core, that's what planning is all about. We want to provide and we want to eliminate those potential areas of conflict. But the state of California, as noted, being very heavy-handed in land use regulation is certainly a factor that communities have to contend with and build in as part of their general plan updates.

Thank you, sir. Council Member DuPont. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for your questions, Council Member Smith. It's difficult to look at because it's quite correct in the sense of how we're looking at land use policy in the Central Valley. And you see it time in and time out, the state will say, well, you have to do this because we're gonna do this for the whole state. But that model does not work for the Central Valley. This is a key case in point. But even if we look a little bit before that, we see the flood districts as well. I mean, the whole Southern portion of the city is in a flood district. Now, is that reality? there could be an argument, right? But that impacts and these models impact the way in which we're now supposed to do land use. And so we have to caution ourselves when we're looking at some of these state and federal models. because the land use that they, they meaning the state legislature and really Congress as well, want to put on local jurisdictions is not a one size fits all. And you have to be, that's the problem that we get into. We talked about housing earlier, single family residential versus higher or higher density of apartments. you know, there's no flexibility. You have to be able to be flexible. And when we look at the general plan policy this year, or during this process, how can we be more flexible to build by right versus needing to go through environmental process every single time that creates time, money and costs that's just passed down to the consumer. So, I mean, it's a little worrisome to see because these models aren't always, they're what the state wants us to see, but it's not always the reality of what we're dealing with on the ground.

Additional questions? You guys over there? It's a good look. Jennifer, we have a speaker you said.

Yeah, Marilyn Zobel. She had two speaker cards for tonight. One she did for public comment and then I think for this one as well.

Okay.

All right, Ms. Zobel.

all right welcome back thanks this time not for compliments i'm afraid so um well first of all i'm a scientist and so i actually disagree uh with council member smith that there's something unscientific about the methodology that methodology that was used first of all there seems to be an assumption that there would not be any environmental problems in rich communities Although, in fact, older homes are often full of lead. And in fact, lead abatement has been a big problem for people that buy old Victorian homes. I grew up in LA. People in Beverly Hills suffered from smog and pollution just as much as people in poorer communities. There's no particular definite reason why these variables would not apply across the state. And so as a scientist, I want to make that really clear. I'm also kind of disturbed that people's first reaction to the map, you know, which showed these large red areas in South Merced was kind of, oh, you know, this must be the state trying to make us do something, not like, oh, it's terrible that people have to live under these conditions. Do people really, really, really believe that the conditions, the environmental conditions are identical in South Merced as in North Merced, which, by the way, has a green spot. in spite of the fact that it was being compared to barrier communities and like. So obviously Merced can have green spots. So why doesn't it have green spots throughout the community? And how can we make that happen? One of the things that I'm most concerned about with the general plan is what do we want? What do we want Merced to be? What do we want all this growth to be for? More and more houses, more and more affordable houses? Are they affordable for our community? For example, do we have enough water for these houses? This is really a big problem that we're starting to see in Arizona where communities are actually running out of water, literally, okay? No water coming out of their faucets. So I think we need more discussion about what it is that we really want. And I don't think more and more single family homes is necessarily a good form of growth for our community. Because along with those single family homes comes roads, bus routes, more traffic, more pollution, more potential for accidents. If we can have some good come out of that, yes, we should have more growth. But maybe we should be thinking about other forms of growth. Maybe we should be thinking about ways to build up our community so that we have more economic power. Why do we see a fall in retail purchasing? Probably because people are spending so much money on their rents. They don't have money to go out to restaurants. They don't have money to buy things. So it affects our community a lot when we do not have affordable housing and when we have a community that suffers a great deal from ill health because there isn't environmental justice. Thank you.

Thank you. Cardona, welcome back.

Thank you so much, and thank you for that presentation. I just wanted to make a few points. First, I've been in the south of Merced when it floods over there, and one of the requirements as per SB 99 is for there to be two evacuation routes, and some of these streets get so flooded that it only has like one, if any, evacuation route in those type of emergencies. Two, I'm also curious as to the impacts on housing on short-term residential units such as Airbnb. What does that look like and how does that affect our available rental units? I also want to elevate the importance of the extreme heat and how that's just going to continue unfolding in the Central Valley and the need for coverage and shade in high foot traffic areas. And then also, you know, as per the justice lens that the consultants identified, the importance of engaging the community in, you know, non-traditional, atypical ways so that those who experience the brunt of injustices and who are language limited also have a voice. I also wanted to share a picture with council from the, if it's possible. This is a picture that I took from the Placemaking 101 that North Valley Thrive and the Central Valley Opportunity Fund that they, one of the presenters Oh my gosh, sorry about the blurry photo. And so here is just the, I believe it's the property tax revenue between residential, oh that's really blurry, between residential mixed-use housing and the comparison between low density, medium density, and high density. And so I just wanted to show this and the opportunity of tax revenue, city dollars coming into the community and investments happening. There's two examples here downtown that I think would fall under mixed use housing. One of them is off of Canal, which has the church and it has a couple of businesses at the bottom. It has offices at the top. There's also the apartments on Main Street, which have, you know, Farmers Insurance, Senga, Anissa Farmers Insurance, Senga, you know, other small businesses, and that has apartments at the top. And so it's something that we've done already. It's not, it wouldn't be necessarily something new for Merced. We would just have to be bold and really looking at, instead of expanding out, expanding up. And I do support building generational wealth through home ownership, although we also need the jobs in order to give the down payment. We need the jobs in order to afford the quality of life and living here in the city of Merced.

Thank you so much, I appreciate your time.

Thank you, Norma.

This is terrible, can I send it to you?

It's okay, well, aside from making everybody pretty dizzy, I think it worked. Jean, come on.

So I thank you for the presentation. And as a lot of you know, I've been involved with the Strong Towns. I've been involved with the Flat Valley Land Alliance. I'm a farmer. I've also been on the East Merced Resource Conservation District, which is a... A lot of people don't know what it is. It's part of the county. And so we study resources and water or soil. We go into schools and educate. And I just ask, why do we have so much of a 100-year floodplain? And is not the 100-year floodplain more like a 50 or 75-year floodplain now because of climate change? Why do we have it? We have the Sierra Nevadas with the Merced River, and we have the water coming down in many streams. We have four streams that go through Merced. Does Turlock have that? No. They don't have all these streams coming down, and we can't stop that water. We have reservoirs, okay, we can hold it back for a while, but... if we don't have the snow pack, which we're not getting because of climate change. So we think about the environment, we gotta really look at what we're dealing with. I think the idea, Lake Yosemite was designed first, I think, for fresh water, right? Another thing, I see Mr. Harris up here. We do Jane Jacobs walks, and it was in the County Times, an article that I wrote just recently. We just did one. We're gonna do more of them. We'd like to get the public and all of our representatives to walk together. And Mr. Thao walked in South Merced, and Mr. Harris has walked, or we've been on 21st Street, which is traffic concern. So we're concerned about... You know, calming the traffic and having housing. When I came tonight, I passed about eight homeless people. And you have two off ramps. And a couple weeks ago, I came into town. I live in the country, but I have property here. I have property in District 3. And I did have property in North Merced. I still have it, but I'm going to be selling that. I'm concerned, this is where I'd like to shop. I've already been in town once today, so I drove another 20 miles, or 25 miles to get here tonight. Again, I'm gonna be 86 on Sunday. But I'm not gonna give up. I think we really need to work together, build a community, and work as strong as our weakest link. So when I see the homeless, And I see people that are saying, let's put the high-speed rail out there where we're gonna have cars to go to it. How are you gonna get, that's not moving people. Why do we want a home? Why do we want the high-speed rail? We wanna have it to connect people. And we should be considering it. This is ideal downtown. We're building up the downtown. Why don't we make this a place where we have housing, we have bikes and walking. Thank you.

Thank you, Jean. Thank you, Zoe, for your comment. All right, Jennifer, any other speakers?

That's all we have, Mayor.

All right, we'll bring it back to the dais. Council Member Smith.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I do have a comment, but because my friend and constituent, Ms. Sobel, called me out, I want to make sure the record is clear that I have a bachelor's of biochemistry from UC Davis and a PhD in cellular molecular pathology from UCLA. I became a lawyer only after I decided after 10 years of research, I didn't wanna be a cancer biologist, but be that as it may. I agree with some of the speakers. I didn't know we were gonna do intermediate public comment. I think we need to stick to an informational study session here, but the data is sobering. I wanna point out as well that over half of our town doesn't work. And maybe it's mostly because they're 25 and under. but that's why we have a short commute time, guys. And two out of three of us who do work are leaving Merced to go to work like I did. That's why I was two minutes late, I apologize. So yeah, land use decisions that foster industry that we think is sustainable, I think is gonna be an important part of this. It's gonna be hard to guess. The last general plan update left a whole lot of land aside for office space. We saw that that's not doing too well, but yeah, we got to focus on jobs. If families don't have money to spend, then we're not doing anybody a service.

Thank you, Mayor. We even look at our market and economic conditions, our retail sales and economic activity. Even if we take the point that we don't have the jobs to sustain the retail sales, we still are below both the county and the state in growth rates between 2015 to 2024. And that's wholly unacceptable when we've had a UC during that same time. So I think there's also some sobering numbers in here of showing us that we've missed the mark. We should be looking at how we can grow economically as well because it not only brings jobs, but it brings jobs. retail sales tax as well. So I think we there's some aspects in this report that we need to really look into how we are conducting ourselves.

Additional comments or questions.

Thank you. It definitely shows that we have a lot of work to do and thank you for the presentation. As you mentioned earlier, this is a checkpoint and I'd like you to just to go over the timeline of us getting this done as far as the general plan, just for the public, if you can.

Are you speaking to the general timeline for the entire project or what to expect next?

I would say if you can touch on a little bit of both, what to expect next, but I understand that this is also going into next year. But if you can just outline the timeline of all the work that you folks are going to be doing and helping us put together a general plan that we're going to pretty much adopt.

Sure, sure. And it kind of leads into the final component of the presentation, which I'll get into momentarily. But from the existing conditions portion, once you understand a snapshot, what we'll end up doing is crafting a draft vision statement. And that draft vision statement is built off of public feedback, CFAG feedback, and what we've heard from initial community engagement conducted thus far on the project. That vision statement is meant to be kind of the driver. Think of it as it is your common goal that the general plan would achieve. That vision statement is meant to help guide the policy within your general plan. So wherever the vision goes, policy will have to be consistent with and will move forward with. The visioning process takes a number of months. So it'll basically go through the summer. There'll be a public comment period on the vision. Both planning commission will have the ability to approve and recommend a vision and weigh in on community feedback. And the vision will ultimately get adopted by city council in the fall. In the fall timeframe is when we'll actually start the general plan policy document itself. So the different elements within the general plan, land use, circulation, economic development. That process will probably last 10 to 11 months. It's a rigorous process. We go through each element. We evaluate all the policy within it. That policy is floated by all your department staff. They have a chance to weigh in and comment on policy that is no longer relevant or is still relevant. The consultant team adds some additional feedback on policy that needs to relate back to state legislation and or federal legislation that needs to be included within a general plan that's state mandated. And then each of those elements is floated by the CAFG. where they weigh in on policy perspectives on each of these elements. And then once all of that feedback is combined, the entire general plan is put out for public review. Public review typically takes 45 to 60 days. Local, regional, state, federal agencies are all notified, which is a requirement of the state of California. We collect all feedback from the public. from all of these agencies, and then that is evaluated before planning commission and council. During that time period as well, the state of California requires that you evaluate the impacts of what this general plan means over the next 25 to 30 years. That's through the California Environmental Quality Act, otherwise known as CEQA. So as part of this process, our team will be preparing an environmental impact report, otherwise known as an EIR. The EIR will analyze future land use changes that are proposed, the implications of policy, what does that mean, And what are the impacts that may arise? And from those impacts, how do you mitigate it? What are the different options that the city can mitigate impacts that may arise from this general plan? And I say may, because we don't know where the land use map is heading yet. We haven't had that discussion. As you see here on the slide, visioning, we're in the visioning phase right now, and that's what I'm going to present on. But the vision hasn't been hammered out yet. What does Merced look like in 25 to 30 years? What does the land use pattern look like? Still to be determined. And that'll come down in the end to planning commission and counsel through decision-making processes. Once you get through the EIR, there's a comment period on that. EIRs take nine to 10 months to complete. So you're starting to see we're going through 27 and into 28, and then there's adoption from there. By that point, you'd hope that there was a lot of community feedback throughout the process. You want this to be as grassroots as possible. And that's why we're working with your staff in the CFAG. We're working through community workshops and all sorts of other innovative ideas and creative techniques that we're working with their city staff on to make sure outreach is maximized as much as possible. So that by the time you get to an adoption, we can all coalesce around a common vision moving forward. That's a snapshot of what to expect.

Thank you for that. A lot of collaboration and time in front of us. So I just want to just reinforce that the collaboration piece between the city council, our planning commission and our community. So thank you for that. Of course.

All right. Additional comments, questions, anybody. Again, I want to thank you guys for all your work. We'll keep pushing forward through this general plan project. We're back tomorrow as well. So hoping to deliver a good product that helps guide growth for the next generation in this town. So you guys will be a big part of it.

If you don't mind if I can just go just for a few more slides and then we'll conclude. And this is really meant to tee up what the next step in the process is so that the Planning Commission and Council are aware of where we're heading just within the next few months in particular. So we're talking about community vision. So we've had that existing conditions report as Michael walked through. It's available on the Merced General Plan website for viewing. Now we're working our way through what's known as assets, issues and opportunities and the visioning process. So we've conducted a series of outreach methods. We had a community open house. We had a vision assets, issues and opportunities survey that went out. And then we also had our CFAG meeting number three. All of these culminate with a lot of big ideas, differing opinions from the community and the advisory group. And that is helping to drive the community visioning discussion. So our community open house that was held in January of this year, it was from a 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. window. Again, that time on that workshop is intentional, trying to meet people where they're at, different times that individuals are available, evening, afternoon. As part of that meeting, we covered what Merced's strengths are, what the issues are, and opportunities are. Now, these may not necessarily be factual. This is what the community is thinking and what the community is saying. As part of that, we asked residents, what would you like to see for the future of Merced? What does it look like? And as you can imagine, there's a range of ideas from middle schoolers to the retirees, lots of different visions, but it's fascinating to hear some of that feedback and how that plays in looking forward. And I think the bigger question is, what are the lessons that the community thinks we should learn from past? and maybe what not to carry forward or to carry forward. Just depends. Over 50 people attended. Activities were available in English, Spanish, and Hmong. We had live translation. Lot of good discussions happened within that timeframe. Shown here on the screens, sticky notes. It's always fun. People get to write down what they'd like. I think that also provides a tangible component to these workshops. It's not just talking to a person and hoping we write it down. All of it's documented, and it really shows a wide variety of feedback received as part of this process. So we had a series of boards focusing on issues, opportunity, and assets, and everyone had the ability to freely speak, provide any feedback that they wanted to as part of this process. I will say that when we start looking at the assets, what are assets in the community? What did we hear? Downtown, big asset. The education system here, the higher institutions. We heard Merced is two hours from everything. It's perfect, ideally located. That's an asset. You have great transportation infrastructure. That's an asset. Access to recreation, trails and parks, big within the community. One of the main things we heard was Merced is a family friendly community. That is an asset and it should be retained. So this is some of the initial feedback that we heard as part of this process. Now, the thing that people like to talk about and the easier thing to ask, what are the issues? As Planning Commission and Council, some of the issues probably aren't new. Infrastructure is aging, so you may have a great grid, but the roads aren't in great shape. Access to 99 creates a barrier between neighborhoods within the community. Bike lanes, sidewalks are missing in gaps. How do we improve that? How do we improve economic conditions with the change in retail, commercial, and industrial? And how do we move forward with housing affordability? That was a big topic that was brought up. Housing affordability, different typologies, not enough options provided. How does the city tackle that? How does the city tackle renters market? Or how does policy help drive that discussion? And should the general plan cover that and to what extent? And then we talk about opportunities. So we can all talk about the issues, we can talk about assets, but what do we want to see? a more connected city, a walkable city, areas to get around, access to transit, more access to higher education away from the campus, so more opportunities within the community, expanded parks, more green space. I had one mom talk to me about, we love the parks and playgrounds, but there's no trees in parts of it. It's too hot in the summer, but we'd love to go. Opportunity to focus on recreation. So there are lots of feedback that we've received through this process. And then the thought was interesting, too, is what are the lessons that we've learned? The number one thing that came out of lessons learned was outward growth. Is outward growth the way of the future for Merced? No right or wrong answer to that. Different opinions. Should we focus inward? Should we focus on downtown growth? Should we focus on growth around transit or not? How do we entice the younger people to wanna stay here after graduating from the college? What are the needs? What are they looking for? And so all of those conversations are floating around. We take all of that feedback and that's what's going to move forward. That's what's gonna move forward tomorrow night to the CFAG is we're gonna provide them that feedback and then present the CFAG a draft vision statement, which comprises a lot of the community opinions, thoughts, and looks forward to what Merced could be. And the CFAG will have the fun task of vetting a draft vision statement first before it goes out for public review. I do want to mention that we did have online exercises. It is hard. We're all busy. I do this for a living. And when there's planning where I live, I don't go out to community workshops. I'm tired. I work just like all of you. And so we want to make sure that all of these exercises and everything is available digitally. We had over 75 people take the survey online. 90% of those individuals did not come to the workshop. which is great. That shows that we started some additional outreach and about 25% were actually came back with in Spanish, not English. So we're trying to increase that opportunity and transparency amongst the community. This was open for 45 days following the workshop and similar feedback came through from the survey as was in person. Lastly, we did meet with the CFAG in late February. We asked them the same questions. What can be improved or what are the lessons learned? Similar conversations. So you start to see themes that are coming out of this. Now from those themes, where do we go? And that's the visioning aspect that we're starting tomorrow night with the CFAG. And as part of that, we'll walk through a draft vision statement that basically pulls together all of the aspirational concepts that were brought forward. And it's up to the CFAG to take the first pass at having that kind of philosophical conversation. Is that where Merced wants to head? Here's the pulse of what the community said. Is this where we want to go? And the CFHE will have the opportunity to edit, wordsmith, pick apart, rewrite. Who knows? If you're interested, tune in tomorrow night to see how that conversation goes. And I do emphasize it's just a draft. This is just a starting point. After CFHE, the community will have the opportunity to weigh in and give their thoughts too. There will be a public review period throughout the summer leading back to the planning commission. So that lays the groundwork of what to anticipate next. We do have the next planning commission meeting tentatively scheduled for August 5th. That'll be on the vision statement. So that's after the CFAG has had an opportunity to weigh in That's after the community has an opportunity to weigh in. We'll present to the planning commission all of the feedback received, and then the planning commission will have the opportunity to tinker with, provide modifications, recommendations that'll make its way to council. At this point, I believe we're looking at a council meeting in September, just to kind of give the council an idea. And that is where the council will have the ability to make any additional modifications to a vision statement, and then you'll formally adopt it as part of your general plan. So I know that's a lot to get out, but I'll hand it back to the mayor. That does conclude our presentation. If there's any questions on schedule or other items to anticipate next, I'd be glad to answer them. And if not, we do have our CFAG meeting tomorrow. So if you're interested to see what they think about the vision for Merced moving forward, I would invite you to attend six o'clock tomorrow night here.

All right. Thank you, Brent. Any additional questions for Brent and Michael? All right, we're seeing none. Takes us to item E, which is adjournment. I entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion.

Second.

Let me start this one out here. DuPont was first, and I think, yep, I think.

So, Mayor, if we can, it's just easier if we can just do all in favor and all opposed, because since there's two different entities up here.

All right, is anyone in favor? If so, please say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Hearing none, motion passes unanimously. All right, thank you all.