City Council - Regular Meeting

pest of a 60-year-old man and to have the officer side with a 60-year-old man kicking a child out of her public park. Number two, the problems laid bare when trying to run a public park as a private venue. If it's a public park, the public deserves access. Is this Spade Entertainment's park and Todd Spillman's park, or is it Tulare City's park? Is this a public park or is it a private venue? In light of these questions and this experience, I would like to make a proposal to the council. Number one, either we allow time in the early morning, let's say till 11 a.m. so parents can access their public playgrounds and Mr. Spillman can still have his park. Number two, we split off the children's portion of Zumwalt Park with a fence along the border. kind of along the gazebo, because then there would be no problem. The public would be able to have access to their children's playground, and Mr. Spillman would have access to his park for his amphitheater. And then the last thing is that last week, the council set precedent opening up the coffer for 400 handwritten letters from the business owners, 0.05% of Tulare's 74,000 residents. My question to the council is how many letters do you want me to get you to give for you to give the public access to their private spaces or to their public spaces? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Young. I have your card. And I think to some of the questions you asked, we will have our staff get back in touch with you on the policies.

Thank you, sir.

And would it be possible for the council to be appraised? I'd like to be appraised on what happens with this issue.

I'd be happy to let you know that I responded in the weekly report.

Is there anyone else in chambers who wishes to make public comment at this time? Yes, sir.

Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for inviting me to the lectern. Good evening, mayor and council members, city manager and city staff, respectfully. My name is Rick Gorham. I'm a lifelong resident of Tulare. I understand that there's a fact-finding discussion happening at the local and state level regarding global stack. I've been independently doing my own research on this for months, including meeting with fair staff and reviewing the information for myself. I want to clarify one point. The Emergency Resilience Center at MLK and K Street is not a stat global proposal. That project came out of 2023 when the city of Porterville experienced their floods. The California Department of Food and Agriculture already gave the fair $11 million and that's already approved in May of 23. This is intended to serve the community during disasters, and when there's non-emergencies, it will be a youth center. It is combined into four sections, a banquet hall, a conference room, a dance hall, and then volleyball courts and basketball courts. Again, this is not a Stack Global. Global Stack is proposing something different, a multi-level parking structure on the opposite side of the fairgrounds. with its mesh computer systems underneath rather than a traditional standalone data center. Lastly, I believe our residents deserve transparency and accurate information. We're now seeing no data center flyers posted on street poles and lights. This appears to raise questions under our hand-built ordinance. Residents are protesting something that in my view has not been fully explained or understood. This is creating unnecessary confusion and chaos. The answer isn't to dismiss the residents or dismiss the concerns. The answer is transparency, fact finding, and giving the public information they need to make an informed decision. That's why I'm here asking the council to hold a study session. I know some of you already know what's going on, but I love Tulare. I come here, I've been here, I raised my daughters here. And, you know, this fair thing is spreading outside of that state control, and it's coming into the Tulare City. As you guys know, this morning, the Board of Super supervisors placed a 45 day temporary ordinance. within the county for no data centers even in any city in Tulare. So I just asked the council please to just go ahead and get with Alex Macedo because I've been told that Stat Global said okay we'll sit down with you guys so please guys just sit down with them and address the community because they're all protesting right now and I have a big concern because they're combining the two And for somebody to protest a youth center is something that it just goes against what Tulare is. So thank you for your time. Thank you.

I can just provide quick clarification. Uh, the board of supervisors did vote on a 40 day, 45 day moratorium today. That is not a moratorium that prohibits data centers from going forward in cities. It's 1 that just says the county's opposed to any data center absent any facts about it. They're just. A blanket opposed to any data center that might go forward, which would include potential data center at the fairgrounds. And then just for this gentleman's benefit, we have no more additional information. Yes.

And then again, I know I have to go, but again, guys. Just let the community know that there are two separate things. Let's not combine the two. Let them go ahead with the emergency center that's already been approved. Let them go ahead and build that at the youth center. And then let's figure out StatGlobe. But thank you, guys.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else in chambers who would like to make public comment? Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor Isherwood, council members, staff, fellow citizens, Jason Bender, Tulare. Today, I'm here to invite you to our Tulare Rotary 9-11 Memorial Blood Drive. It'll be happening Friday, September 11th, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. We're receiving blood donations. It is the 25th year of remembrance for 9-11. It is the 20th year of our blood drive. In that time, I believe, based on pints that have been donated and their factor of three lives sold for every pint, this blood drive has been able to save approximately 34,000 lives in our community. Attendance has been low as of recent years, and this being the 20th year, I'd really like the community to come out and donate. 7 a.m. is our remembrance ceremony that our fire department and police department do an excellent job on. We could also use some additional attendance on that. It's a great way to start your morning on that Friday. I don't have everything confirmed at this moment, so I don't want to promise anything, but I know that we do have food all day, whether it be pancake breakfast from Kiwanis, some sort of hot meal, either chicken or pork from River Valley Church, Lunch we're still working on but it's going to be some mixture of pizza sandwiches and maybe an additional hot food. We have tons of coupons for different places in our community and last year we started a drawing every hour where you can earn gift cards from multiple retailers here in Tulare and we're getting some more information on that. If you'd like additional information or you'd like to make a reservation to donate blood go to the Central California Blood Center's website, donateblood.org. That's donateblood.org. And we'd be very happy to see our community come out on Friday, September 11th. Thank you.

Just to make clear, who sponsors that?

This is the Tulare Rotary 9-11 Memorial Blood Drive.

Juanes makes the pancakes.

Yes, we do allow Kiwanians to cook for us.

But you put on the show. Is that correct?

Yes. Myself and another young lady. I think you're familiar with her. Kathy Medeiros. Yes. Easy vendor.

Thank you for that point of clarification. Is there anyone else in chambers? Mayor Clark, do we have someone on the phone or online?

Okay, Mr. Mayor, uh, yes, then that, uh, asked to be let, you know, she intended to be here, but she was caught up with something else today.

Yes. Okay, I'm going to move forward then with that on item for presentations. 4.1 business toolkit presented by economic development. Is that you, Jennifer? That is me.

All right. All right. Give Melissa a chance to pull it up. Okay, so this is something that I've been working on over the last couple of months. This is a business toolkit. It's meant to help. It's mostly focused for small businesses that are so we have a local resident wanting to start a business. A lot of times people have no idea. what the regulations are, what they need to do to even start a business. And so this is a very comprehensive document. And so I'll just try and go through a few of the slides. So it's broken down into a few sections, just a general checklist of things that people should be looking at doing. At the section on what things they should consider when choosing a location, then I have a section that gives them some advice when they need to get some financing for their new business. And then we have the section that focuses mostly on city permit processes and then the last section are some general resources that people can go to. A common thing is creating a business plan. Some people don't realize they need a business plan and how important that is to starting their business. It's often needed if they're wanting to get a loan through a bank. And so first they don't know it's needed and then they don't know how to make one. So we do provide the resources on here of the local organizations that they can reach out to to help them create a business plan. you know, registering their business name. Again, you know, things that they need to do for choosing their location, permits, even recommendations when they're ready to hire their workforce, the local organizations that can help them find those employees. And of course, the importance of marketing and utilizing the various tools out there that they can do to get their name out there. And of course, also various support and networking that they should look into for their business. For the location section, I was trying to City Council Chambers, inform and educate people, the importance of understanding where their businesses might be allowed and not allowed some people will lease a space. City Council Chambers, and come in for their permits, only to realize that they're not in the correct zone that it's not a permitted use, and so this is just to help them understand that these are things they should contact the city about before they maybe even sign a lease. And then for funding, just some general advice on ways that they can raise the capital that they need to get their business off the ground. And then the section here that's probably the heaviest section of this document is just what they can expect in our processes and what they will need to do. I put it in here. It has an entitlement process, an estimated time frame it'll take for them to go through each phase of that process. The different types of forms and permits and licenses that they will possibly need. But they need to get a sign permit. have a section here about the building permits and that they're going to be needing to go through various inspections. Then, of course, there are things that can just be done over the counter so highlighted some of that information for them. Again, some people don't realize that there are things regarding public works that they need you know with a grease traps and wastewater discharge permit so again it's just educating them of things that they might need depending on the type of business or opening. processes with getting their business license set up, pointing out to them that if they are going to be serving alcohol, they'll also have to get an ABC license. If they're serving food and beverages, then they also have to go to county to get their permits through them as well. And then the last section for resources I capture all of the different departments that assist in starting these businesses and so, if they have questions during their process or even once they're open this little kind of give them a better idea of who they should probably be reaching out to. And then, of course, I note other providers of utilities on here, so they can know who they should be reaching out to to set up other type of accounts. And then, these are all the local resources that they can use to help them get started or even once they're open various resources that they might need. And that is it. So very excited to get this completed. We do have it also available in Spanish. And so we should be getting that up on our website page probably in the next few days. When we do, I'll reach out to Melissa to see if we can put something out on social media letting people know that that is out there. But yeah, so hopefully our local residents will find some good use out of this to be able to get their businesses going and growing here.

All right. Council members, any other comments? Questions? Okay. Thank you, Jennifer.

The downstairs counter, are they going to have a copy of this so they're familiar with it when people come in and start? reciting something out of this and the counter goes.

That's a good point. Yeah, I can certainly provide copies of that. So yeah, I can do that.

Thank you. Great job. Quick question. I guess, trying to understand on particular on food trucks, where Do you and your department and Mario's department sort of either come together or merge? Because obviously for a food truck, they go through the condition to use permit process, but then through they may need some help with capital or they may need some help with business plans that Mario's department I don't think handles. So what point kind of like. Do you guys hand off or merge?

For our role in economic development, we are certainly there as guides and direction to people that have various questions about starting businesses here. And so that's why instead of me holding on to all this information myself, I wanted to make it available to the public. But we are certainly there to help them one-on-one if they have questions. and point them to the correct staff that can dive deeper into things. I might be able, at a high level, answer questions about zoning or land use, but then when it gets down to the nitty gritty, I'm certainly going to pass that off to community development, have them address those things.

Right, because I think one of the things I've been hearing out, at least in my part of the city, is they're trying to organize some kind of association to kind of have some representation on things that I think mostly on enforcement and compliance, because I know that I would venture to say that maybe half the trucks aren't in compliance with the necessary permits. So I know that they've been talking about trying to form an association or have some kind of advocacy channel to whomever, your department or Mario's department.

Yeah, and I certainly there for anyone and everyone that has questions about compliance issues or concerns if they've maybe been dealing with the city, but I feel like they're and their questions aren't being answered or they just aren't understanding what's being explained to them. I'm more than happy to kind of get in there and try and resolve any questions or concerns they have. Of course, these things are not decisions I make, of course, and so I'm not there to do that. It is still up to the appropriate departments to make those decisions and follow the rules and regulations and ordinances and such. But I'm certainly there to try and help with any meetings and trying to get everyone to be basically on the same page and make sure we're all talking the same thing.

And if I may add, I think this is a fantastic addition to the information we already provided at the front counter at City Hall. We've created an outline that we share with these food vendors on the permitting process, on working with the health department, kind of the regulatory process, if you will. This is now going to add the business component of it. My understanding with economic development is they're going to help businesses from the very beginning when they just have a concept to help them with a business plan and some resources. Then they come through us and even after they're operating, maybe they're ready to move into a brick and mortar. Or we can send them back to TV. So it's there's a lot of back and forth that happens between the and city hall and our 2 departments, but that's intentional. I think we want to have that coordination and the more information we can provide. City Council Chambers, Our small businesses, not only on the regulatory process, but also on the business and financial resources that are out there, I think it's only going to enhance our outreach to them.

Okay.

City Council Chambers, Moving forward on our agenda item five communications any communications received.

City Council Chambers, No communication.

All right. Item six, council reports and items of interest. Vice Mayor Harrell.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On the sixth, I represented the mayor at the reopening of grandma's house. It's been about a year since Laura passed away. They've had to get some things in order, which now has been completed and it's opened and it's now being supervised and run by Monica Lindsay, who comes to us by way of, I believe it was Baltimore. A lot of interest, a lot of excitement. Uh, it was a great opening again, so I look forward to continuing on with that. And then on the 12th, it's in the downtown association.

Yes, I just wanted to say that on August the 6th as well. I attended the 1st. Tulare Avanza Tulare Marketplace event. It was great. There was about 2600 people that showed up with 70 plus vendors food and a number of things that Were provided, they had like music, 300 backpacks were given away to kids and it's a great event. Then the following Thursday, they had a little bit less about 2000 people that showed up to the event. And so this Thursday again is another. Thursday night market where there's a lot of food and vendors and there's a farmer's market. There's a lot of different things that are going on and it'll be going on every Thursday till October 22nd. And again, they will have live music tonight. I mean, Thursday night. So it's just a great event. I'm glad that they're moving forward and it was very well organized and congratulations to all the folks who participated in the Tulare marketplace at Zumwalt Park.

John Potter, Pictures all over social media look good good turnout so he said pictures all over social media good. John Potter, yeah good stuff.

John Potter, Council members on August 11 I attended the monthly mid Korea GSA meeting. John Potter, That was August 11 August 12 the ribbon cutting for ag West farm credit with our mayor, we did a great job, thank you. John Potter, Other than that. That's it for the second time. Let's keep moving.

Yes.

I got a note handed to me. Did I say something wrong?

I was sure it was a public comment. No, I have notes handing. I just want to make sure. I thought maybe somebody wanted to speak. Yeah, I think to piggyback with that, it was great to be at the Ag West ribbon cutting. I don't remember how many years they said until there, but what, 103 years altogether? What was the years that they've been in business?

They used to be downtown Tulare. Yeah. And then they were farm credit. I mean, they were a federal land bank production credit at one point. Then they merged that into farm credit West and moved out to the site that was built just before the overpasses were built.

Yeah.

And then there was mergers and now they're ag West farm credit. The amazing thing. in reality, was the architecture of the building that existed and the way they encompassed the expansion so that it looks like it was all built at the same time, virtually, and having the exposure of that facility right on Freeway 99 is a real credit to AgWest Farm Credit and a real real exciting for the city of Tulare.

Yeah, it was great to learn about their history when I was there, a deeper history that As well for Council, I attended the TCAC meeting on Monday, and last week I did attend the Cal City South Valley collaboration event. Thomas and other staff, Jason, were there as well. A key topic that came up there in their presentation was just, you know, they were sharing information coming out of Sacramento on the vehicle Miles traveled. I'm Ted Smalley at TCAD. Give us an update on STIP, State Transportation Improvement Fundings, and the FTIP. So really what it comes down to is collaboration and money, money, money, money that helps with our road projects in Tulare and in the region. It's good information. Moving forward, well, item number seven, consent calendar. I did receive a request from staff council members that Dave Kuntz, Staff is requesting to pull 7.4. Dave Kuntz, 7.7 7.8 and 7.14 for different reasons, I think, so there's those ready those items are not ready to be in front of us for action at this time.

Hal Hallstein, With 7.5 was not part of that Thomas.

Before we dispense, I had one question, though, on 7.4. I don't know if it's part of why they got pulled or just a question, if I may, Mr. Mayor. But on the side letter agreements on this particular topic that are part of 7.4, I noticed that in the close seal one, there was a clause missing that the rest of them had. So the rest of them is under F. They're labeled A through D, half or whatever. And the CLOSIA is like one through five, one through six. So it's labeled a little different, but it was regarding the minimum, nothing in this policy shall reduce the leave. So all the other ones had it except for that one. So I don't know if it's just oversight or they just have a different contract.

Allow us the opportunity to review and we'll get back to you.

Yeah. So I just wanted to note that because that's the reason why I have pulled it is just that the CLOSIA contract. I didn't have this clause and the, all the other ones did so just thank you before staff come back.

We'll double check that.

Okay, does counsel have any other items to pull or a recommended action on just real quick?

So, so the other 1, that's recommended for postponing is 7.14 as well. Um, so just again, just wanted, I had also requested, I was going to request for that to be pulled, but maybe in the looking at it once again, I had two sort of questions, um, on this. The first one is, is there a threshold in our purchasing policy for, uh, something like this going out to RFP? So is there a threshold that has to be under, under it? And then the last one is, well, they're in the scope of work that the company is doing. Will there be a specific area for an over cross or will there be options presented to council in terms of like cross over here or over there in terms of like their scope of work that they're looking at? And so those are the two questions that I was going to ask. And I don't know if that'll be something that we looked at as well.

I can answer both of those now. Uh, there is a purchasing threshold for different types of services and different dollar amounts. However, in this case, Michael Miller will correct me if I'm wrong. Your council will recall that every year we go and not every year, but. We have a number of times we go out to get contracts for continuing services from firms, engineering firms, architecture firms, landscape, architecture firms to do a lot of the ongoing work that we do. And so when we have opportunities that come up from time to time, we'll contact them and they'll give us sometimes we work with 1 firm that already we already know has a specialization in that process. And they went through the separate RFP process. Sometimes we, we can, that work can be done by several different firms. We might reach out to each of them and say, how much would you charge for this work? And we pick 1 of them. Michael, does that sound correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And then in terms of the location, not really, there won't be multiple options. This is a proposed location of putting a. Interchange and over crossing over the railroad through the city's corporation yard. So it really would just align with international agri center way extension as it comes over 99 and heads West. Go, it would go straight right through J street right through the corporation yard. We had a conversation with Union Pacific if they would allow an under crossing. in addition to the concept of an over crossing and they said they will not allow an under crossing they would only allow an overhead an over crossing just like at or very similar to what's at cart mill uh and so this item we have to some we have to do some more work on this we'll bring it back in the future and then uh then i'd like to ask uh 7.13b pulls from the consent which one

Can you pull 7.3? So what we have remaining so far, 7.1, 7.2, 7.5, 7.6, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11, 7.12, 7.15, and 7.16. I'll move the consent calendar as described by . Second.

We have a motion and a second. Just for clarification, there was a couple of items that indicated that I had a potential. John Potter, Conflict of interest and. John Potter, I came to the there isn't a significant nexus that brought me to the point to where I felt like I did so, I am going to vote yes on adoption of these conflict these consent items.

John Potter, Okay, so we have a motion and a second all in favor. John Potter, Oppose that's approved 7.3 Mr madaris.

I just want, there's a couple of things I wanted to, I think Mr. Segal has indicated that he likes to have this presented whenever it comes in front of us. And I also wanted to have an update as it relates to status of active projects, the International Agri-Center Way Extension. We had a, Michael, I think we had a timeline. And these days in light of COVID, John Potter, Should have brought this up, I guess, in items of interest my inactivity during the period of time to file to run for office that kind of made clear that some of these items. I'd like to see completed within the next few months. John Potter, Are we on track.

James Meeker, we're still on the the last schedule that was put together and shared with anyone with everyone which is ready to list for construction. October fifth, James Meeker, all final revisions for the various nipa studies have been submitted to Caltrans and are sitting up with them. Right now, being reviewed, we're hoping to have those cleared by the end of August, which then gives us from the end of August to October 5th to get ready and list the project. Put it up to bid.

Can we work on some of these items to put it out to bid contemporaneous with waiting for approvals on some of the other items so that. We we have no delay whatsoever.

Yeah, there's actually not a whole lot that needs to be done to the plans are complete. The specifications are complete. It'll just be a matter of filling in dates in certain areas. So it's not going to be a significant amount of time to actually put it out to bid.

Very good. Other than that, I had no questions as it related to the report, Jennifer, unless you wanted to add something.

No, I don't think I had anything else. Again, just a lot of building permits in the last month. So the summer has been very active. So that's great.

Okay. Do we have a motion to receive the report? Anybody else have any questions? If not, I'll make the motion.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion's approved to receive the economic development updates. Thank you, Jennifer. 7.13, Councilman Segala.

Well, just had a couple of questions for Alex. This particular item has to do with an agreement with Saltlight to provide some services for the homeless. I was reading through the new staff report and I just had a couple of sort of questionnaire to verify something I'm trying to understand. So in the staff report, It's noted that the grant is being provided to assist with dealing with some case work or some case work regarding homeless folks that will not be. In the shelter that are not going to necessarily be in the shelter. It states that that the funding is going to be for this within the city in the immediate surrounding areas. So, are we providing services outside the city?

Right in county areas, so if I'm understanding you're correct. I think just generally what the gap that staff are looking at with this award recommendation to salt plus light is to have an organization that has a necessary experience to offer what we call rapid rehousing or case management or outreach case management housing navigation for people that are likely going to be ineligible to go to the shelter and for folks that inevitably will not remain in the shelter. So it's a, it's a. best practice to provide for uh community ride street outreach that can be possible and in this organization they're not going to be beholden just to work within city limits they'll be able to follow people and provide ongoing case management at least for a year's period if in fact these folks move out of the community but by and large if you look within the staff report and the attached agreement that was provided their schedule is going to be for functionally the vast majority, if not entire, of their time will be spent working along city staff. There could be an opportunity for Pd and for code enforcement to notify this other agency prior to encampment actions to give this group an opportunity to offer services.

Right, because I think that kind of just Kind of what jumped out at me was, I know that we have a Tulare first policy with the shelter, right? That there is criteria that you have to be from Tulare. I mean, there is, I think, a percentage, I think, a quarter from other county areas as part of a deal with the county. So someone from Porterville or Wood Lake or Goshen or whatever technically could be housed at the center so I was just curious to see that that kind of that kind of jumped out at me because obviously this is a grant we got for the city for residents but so you're telling me that that someone that lives outside of the city limits within the anywhere in the county or just specific areas is eligible for services as well

No, no, sir. So the intention of this is to have an organization. So the clary cares emergency shelter team, which is contracted the lighthouse rescue mission. Their focus is to provide intake for all the people experiencing homelessness that are going to be eligible for that. They're going to fall into the Tulare first policy, though there's likely, which we can see observationally throughout the community. Tens, if not over a 100 people experiencing homelessness right now, based off payment point in time count data that may not be eligible for the emergency shelter or folks that go into the emergency shelter that are going to be exited for a variety of reasons, both involuntary and voluntary. So this group will provide street outreach. within city limits with the intent to get those people housed as well. So this is not running contradictory to the focus. The vast majority of the city's resources are going to the operations of Tulare Cares Emergency Shelter. This is a supplement where instead of asking Tulare Cares or city staff to lead street outreach and resolve homelessness for people that may exit themselves from the shelter or for people that are in fact ineligible, this could be an opportunity for the city to leverage a best practice. and enforcement and offer of services to anybody experiencing homelessness within the city of Tulare. And then at that point on outside of city limits, that was meant to note that if in fact somebody moves just outside of city limits, this organization can still offer help to them, though the initial point of contact is happening within city limits.

And so one of the one of the reasons a person can be ineligible is that they don't meet the criteria that they're from Tulare.

Well, that could be one of the reasons that could be one of the reasons, but there there's, I mean, the people experiencing homelessness, it's a fluid population. No, no, I understand. Right? And so there's going to be people that likely have been in and out of homelessness or been street homeless within the community for a year or more. But that in and of itself won't establish somebody to be eligible to be, uh, to utilize it.

And then along those lines, um, So, for the case management, I think you set up the grants of the thirty right individuals that can be monitored throughout whatever timeframe. Where where are those folks eligible to be housed. Anywhere outside the city as well, so there's a spot. Let's say at Salt Lake's facility, they can recommend them to their own facility, or they can rent them to what is the eating house? I think is that what it's called? Yeah. So, so technically they can go if there's no room for them in Tulare, they can be housed in Porterville, Lindsay, wherever. And that includes the, the village that salt salt and like manages.

Well, basically, for anybody experiencing homelessness that goes to an emergency shelter like Tulare Cares or is engaged when they're street homeless, we call it the coordinated entry system in Tulare County. And the idea is that available permit supportive housing or interim housing anywhere in our county would be made available to people working with the case manager so in this scenario if the city has an organization like salt light that's focusing on everyone that's not going to utilize emergency shelter they would just connect or facilitate exits to interim permanent housing wherever it may exist in the county just like it's larry cares team's going to do for their guests This is just adding a layer of service, at least for the first year of the shelter's operations, when there's going to be some unpredictability and understandably movement of folks in and out of the shelter. This might bolster things, and then we might be able to resolve homelessness for those folks as well.

Right. And I think that I definitely agree that that should be the end point, that that should be the final purpose of the whatever funding we have through this grant. So I'm just curious to see where would folks be housed? Because if you're ineligible to be at the shelter or you don't follow the very minimal rules that there are there and you you end up out in the street again, then what happens, right? So this attempt to take care of that, and I was just curious to see, you know, how far the reach would be in terms of, you know, like I said, the language with, you know, within the surrounding areas, the language that was in there, and then where they could go potentially, right? The idea is to get them off Tulare streets, The shelter is the first option, of course, but if that doesn't work, then we need to figure out where they go. I just wanted a little bit of clarification in terms of how that was going to play out. I appreciate that.

If I can add a couple other quick comments. This is a good example where we sometimes will receive comments from citizens that don't necessarily understand grants. Grants are very complex and they change all the time. sometimes people will say, well, I don't think we should be using this $125,000 for this purpose. We've already spent too much money on homelessness. We should fix our streets. And what I would say is, first thing is, you can't use this grant to fix streets. Right? So what we're always doing is we're trying to match needs with available grants. Right? So, if the grant shows up and says, oh, we will do these things with it. We're going to use that money before we use our, our local dollars. Right? So that we're always finding opportunities. That's the 1st thing I want people to understand. The 2nd thing is. The way I think of this a little bit is. As this discussion was going, you know, if you're a person that finds himself homeless and you're in our city, we've had this discussion many times. We are providing this homeless shelter and assuming that you meet our criteria requirements, you should go to the homeless shelter. And if you find yourself not going to the shelter, choosing not to go to the shelter, and you're creating an encampment somewhere in the city limits, you're going to ultimately be arrested and taken to jail. That's the reality of it. This doesn't change any of that. That has been the approach and the strategy from day one. However, to Alexis's point, there may be some individuals that a part of a softer approach is you can go to jail. Or you can work with salt and light through this grant to see if you could be relocated somewhere else outside of the community in one of the facilities. And so. We're trying to do both not only is that consistent with our ongoing philosophy, right? That we, we, we are firm, but we're also humane in how we treat these individuals. But it's this is the part that's important in my mind besides that that piece. If you want to keep getting state grant funding, you have to remember the state doesn't have the same philosophy we do. So we have to try to also meet their interests, their goals, their requirements if we want to keep trying to get state funding. Because what will happen is we'll apply for state funding and they'll be like, well, how are you dealing with this, this, and this? And if we don't deal with it the way they want us to deal with, we get no money. So this is an example of where we're going to use some dollars that we can't use to fix roads. and we're going to offer a slightly softer approach to those who don't qualify and find them a humane place to go with these grant dollars not our local dollars and still be eligible to get more state funding so that i want you to see that whole picture okay thank you okay well there's no other questions uh if there is other questions okay alexis uh just clarification

These are grant funds, the PLHA funds that are provided by the state of California. To a certain degree, we're passed through, is that correct, to Salt and Light? These are not general fund? Correct. Not general. What do we have? Because the state's given us the money to administer it, and we're choosing through this agreement to administer it through Salt and Light. I didn't read the agreement. word for word, but just so that it's clear, do we have in this agreement assurances that Salt and Light uses it for people experiencing homelessness in Tulare and they don't take that money that has been allocated to the city of Tulare and use it other places that they provide services?

I appreciate the question council member. What was set up in the scope of work of the agreement is there's actually an exhibit that talks about a schedule for their full-time staff, and it's it's going to be a requirement of the contract that city has with if Council chooses that their street outreach and their offer of services. We're going to be for people experiencing homelessness within city limits. Of course, their case management work could function to get them housed in a different community, but they are not starting their street outreach and picking up clients in communities outside of the city of Tulare. Their focus is just our community.

And I ask this question because I want to make it clear to the people. I thought it was important that we as a council and you making the presentation, that it be clear, that point be clear to the public at large, that this money's not coming in from the state and then we're sitting there and turning it over to another agency and they're free to spend it however they want, which doesn't help the city of Tulare exclusively under the terms of this grant. That is clear in the agreement itself that they have parameters under which they're going to administer the funds that we're passing through to them.

Correct.

And this has gone on for more than just this year. We have done that with them for how many years?

Yeah, I would say, if not with salt plus light specifically, but with comparable nonprofit organizations, we've had street outreach agreements like this to offer case management for the almost six years that I've been with the city. So it's a common practice. Just this time it's going to be unique, because now we have a really formidable emergency shelter where, in theory, the encampments should be not as persistent, not as large, though we still want to offer this service. And I want to also note it's only for a year term. Right. So, you know, we hope that once things are functioning, the encampments are essentially rare and brief and there wouldn't be a need for. Considerable street outreach like this. Sure. Yeah.

Thank you.

Of course.

Mayor, before I do the motion for this item, just real quick, maybe in the next, in the weekly report, I know we sponsored a bill in Sacramento regarding homeless housing. So I don't know if we maybe get an update or that bill's passed or stuck in committee or got killed or whatever. So maybe an update on that. But without any other questions, I'll move to adopt item 7.13 on our consent calendar.

I'll say it.

Okay, we have a motion and second for approval of 7.13. All in favor? Aye. Motion approved. Thank you. Moving forward to item eight, public hearing. Comments related to public hearing items are limited to three minutes per speaker for a maximum of 30 minutes per item, unless otherwise extended by council. Again, for those that wish to provide public comment while attending the meeting remotely, you can press nine on your phone to raise your hand or click raise hand in the webinar. We have 8.1, a resolution of necessity for APN 172-370-032. Mr. Thomas.

Sorry, I'm still pending the appraisal, so I just wanted to get a motion to continue this to September 1st so we don't have to re-notice it.

Okay, I think counsel with that is, I look to legal counsel that we actually open the public hearing and then continue the public hearing.

You don't need to and especially because this is a resolution necessity for a specific property. We'll have to keep it open regardless for the property owner to come at the next meeting. So you don't have to open it at this time, but you can continue it to the next meeting.

Okay, I'll make a motion to continue this to the September 1st, 2026 council meeting.

Okay, we have a motion a second to continue this to the September City Council meeting all in favor. Hi, any opposed. Okay, moving forward on our agenda.

Well, just a quick question. Is this delay anything on that project?

No, this is a, this is a project that would side in Edison are working on for a power pole relocation. That's already taken them some time. So we don't anticipate it's going to delay it any further than it's already been delayed.

Okay. Item 9, general business, 9.1, investment performance review by PFM Asset Management.

Mr. Roberts. I'm going to start off. Comments related?

I generally don't. I do for public hearing, not for general business. I can. What Councilmember Medeiros is referring to is that for comments from the public related to general business, As well, you can, if you wish to provide public comment, you can press nine on your phone or to raise your hand or click raise hand in the webinar. For items under general business, we will call upon for public comment. Is that helpful? No, I don't. However, I take the point, which is to all the public, There are times in general business. I have not went to public comment. And so I should. So it helps me to stay mindful. Yes, to go to public comment during that period. Okay, 9.1 investment performance review by PFM asset management.

So, council, I'm just going to provide a quick introductory comments on the next 2 items. We're happy to present these and I'll turn it over to Mark and then Mark will introduce our guest council where we call. A little over a year ago management recognized that the city. Really had not in its history been utilizing professional asset management services. We've been doing a lot of that in house with staff and. or allocating the majority of our funds in one or two different places. We felt based on the performance that we were receiving and based on our observations of other organizations that it made a lot of sense for us to. Seek out proposals from professional firms who specialize in this type of work. Uh, we have considerable amount of. Assets to be invested that we would build it. We thought we bill achieve a greater rate of return in particular in some terms of some short term investments. And, uh, and so. You'll recall, we hired a firm to do that. That firm is here today to share with you their sort of one year results of that efforts. And I'll turn it over to Mark.

Thank you, Mr. Mondale. Yes, as the City Manager alluded to, the City has taken measures, several actually, over the past approximately 18 months to enhance the City's investment returns. Turning the City over, a portion of the City's investment portfolio or surplus funds over to PFM asset management for active portfolio management as opposed to the, what you might call passive management that was occurring before, has been beneficial. The city acquired the services of PFM Asset Management in November of 2025. There was, as the city manager also said, there was a considerable amount of assets to transfer and they don't just turn over and sell everything. So once we got the agreement signed and we got the account set up over the next several months, five to six months, they set up the portfolio that they can now pretty much call their own as far as what they're managing for the city. And so the, the presentation that is before you will be the 1st, full year of management of the assets under asset management. And, uh, sorry, Michael better the, the relationship manager with is here to present the results from that year.

Great Thank you. I appreciate the introduction and background on. on the the content i'll share with uh the city today uh good evening mayor vice mayor council and staff appreciate this opportunity to come and present our first presentation to the city uh for the work we've been doing with this city which we are uh greatly appreciative of the partnership uh that we have to be able to serve the city and um continue to add value uh through uh the markets that we um are contributing uh through our management of the portfolio for the city so It's a pleasure to be here. One little fun fact. I'm from the Valley. I grew up in Fresno and my grandmother still lives in a neighboring town here. So I spent a lot of time here coming to visit. So it's good to be here. I'll start by saying I see my name up there alone on this title page. And it's kind of embarrassing because this is not a me effort. This is a really large team effort. I get to come and talk to everybody and report on the changes in the portfolio. But ultimately, there's a team, a portfolio management team, a credit and a strategy group and analysts and just a team of various people, accounting and so on that we should all appreciate through this. So again, I'll just be the lucky one to get to present. Um, turning to the first page, I thought it might be a good idea to set expectations for the portfolio. Obviously, the city is a local agency of California, and therefore it's subject to California's government code and section five, three, six hundred. um uh the section that begins 53600 in terms of what it can and cannot buy, and how it must invest, or may invest the city's reserve funds. So we are managing within those confines, and it does outline three objectives for the portfolio and an order of priority. It's safety of principle And then liquidity. We've got to meet the liquidity needs of the city, and then return on investment on investment. So in terms of safety of principle, what we're talking about is high-grade fixed income securities, non-speculative investing, not stocks. It's diversification requirements, limitations on maturities, and so on. liquidity. Of course we're maintaining sufficient funds. The city does a good job managing its operating needs for the current year, looking at overnight investments to make sure that the city continues to operate with sufficient cash, and then finally return on investment. Our job is to maximize what we can with the funds that are available within the guidelines of the city's own policy, and of course state code. So just as an overview in terms of types of investments, we're looking only and able to only purchase those in that top section that's labeled high grade fixed income off to the far left in that vertical print. Everything between treasuries listed at the top row down to local government investment pools is what we're able to purchase. And of those in the green section out to a maximum of five years, That's the policy that's generally state code 5 year max. There are situations where you can go beyond that with certain approvals. Um, but but that's where we're investing for the city. So items that you may be more familiar with in pension or your own retirement plans. Mutual funds from with equities, et cetera. Everything listed beyond beyond that local government investment pool row is strictly off limits for for this portfolio. So everything in green is permitted, and what we're looking to do to diversify the city's funds for safety. And then moving to the city's investment portfolio for the fiscal year end, June thirtieth, two thousand and twenty six. It's appropriate that it's that I'm here. It's the first full year we've been able to manage. So we have that opportunity to present the performance over that time. And over the year, the market value of securities, which includes security market values, accrued interest and excess cash that remains to be invested or may still be invested, came to $156.6 million for the portfolio. And as I mentioned, we're looking to invest only out to five years, but we don't put everything at five years and keep it there. Bonds have various maturities within the portfolio with various durations, and the average of that is at 2.06 years. We are looking to target a two point. Well, we're looking to target what the benchmark of the portfolio is. We have a benchmark that measures performance and help guide strategy, and the duration of the portfolio is two point. Oh, one years as of June thirtieth. So we're about two and a half percent beyond that as of June thirtieth. That's within kind of our five percent up or down mark. um but we are leaning toward a longer duration at this point we feel it's a good time to extend duration where we can although ultimately we want to stick to what the strategy is that zero to five year we use a zero to five year us treasury index and overall all bonds in the portfolio if we were to let them mature we have a current average yield of all positions in the portfolio of 3.52 And that compares to where the market was on that same day to 4.37. So we are trailing market by that amount. Part of that was the dramatic increase of rates since year to date, the unexpected turn of impacts that we'll kind of look at in just a moment with higher inflation and kind of geopolitical concerns and pass through prices of energy that caused inflation and market concerns. So yields did rise about 70 basis point on the two-year treasury. So there was that impact as well. That's showing a higher yield at market as of June 30th. But significant improvement over the prior year in terms of the portfolio's earnings at this yield. And looking at credit quality for the portfolio, we have a requirement on any credit security in the portfolio with credit on it. This on the bottom left quadrant represents S&P's rating, but there may be other credit rating agencies that have higher or different ratings. So we're only reflecting S&P with this particular chart. And about 74% of the portfolio at this time is in AA or better. um there are some indications here triple b for example um again that's just s p but the requirement is a single a among any of the nationally recognized statistical rating organizations and so moody's or fitch are others that we also rely on and names like goldman sachs city group or wells fargo where they have a triple b with s p would show in this orange section but we otherwise meet that criteria And then the not rated, these are asset backed securities in the portfolio that by Moody's and Fitch are AAA rated. So the highest of credit ratings there. sector allocation. If we look to the top right, we like to see colors here, because diversification also serves to that safety model. It also lends to higher returns in asset types like corporate bonds, which we have done a good job facilitating diversification into that sector. This chart looked very uniform uh the prior year with primarily agencies in the portfolio so we we you know we feel confident about the diversification here um currently corporates lead uh federal agencies and cmbs represent about 55 of the of the portfolio those are also government securities um and then treasuries round up kind of the top holdings as well Um, duration distribution is simply how the portfolio securities within the portfolio compared to the benchmark itself. Ultimately, we get to a similar duration, but we're, um. Each of the ranges of years may differ a little bit and so we reflect that here blue bars are the city's portfolio versus the benchmarks gray bars.

Yeah, Michael, would you take a moment for those who may not understand the difference between duration and maturity? They may think it's the same thing. Could you explain? what affects maturity, why you might want it higher and when the market is in one place and or you're expecting it to be in one place versus the other.

Yeah, thank you. Duration is the measure of the portfolio's change in value for a given percent of change in interest rates. So the higher duration, the more the larger the impact, the portfolio will react to changes in interest rates. And again, the portfolio is exclusively fixed income securities. So all of the positions in the portfolio have a component of interest earnings on that holding. unlike other types of securities like stocks. So these are all interest-bearing. So the higher the duration, again, the more impact in volatility the market values will have as interest rates rise and fall. As interest rates rise, market values fall in fixed income. And conversely, as interest rates fall, market values rise. Maturities are the final maturity when the final principal payment of a particular security will be paid back to the investor along with that last interest payment date. Okay, great. Thanks for the question. We'll flip over directly to the portfolio's performance for the three-month and one-year period ending June 30th. Here we're looking at... the contributions to the returns of the portfolio. The interest earned is accumulated interest in the portfolio. So for the one year, if we just look to that column, the one year column, total interest earned is $3.89 million. And there was a change in market value. And as I just said, thanks to Mark's question, the overall over the past year, interest rates had fallen in general, although there's been a trend of rising rates lately. But since the prior year, interest rates did fall, and that helped contribute to a market value increase of 1.3 million. So the total dollar return, as we're reporting here, of 5.2 million, this includes that accrued interest and change in market value, which may or may not be realized. The change in market value includes just strictly beginning of period, end of period, and the change in market value of the portfolio. So a component of that is unrealized gain as well.

Can you clarify, just so I know what our portfolio is doing compared to benchmark? Benchmark is expectation of performance. Is that going in? Is that what we're looking at? Thank you.

Excellent question. Benchmark sets... kind of the strategy for the portfolio, the performance, how how the portfolio should be performing gives context to how we're doing compared to something. And for the portfolio, as as footnoted there, it's the zero to five year U.S. Treasury index and footnote for that was selected for because of the maximum maturity, because the primary The primary objective of the portfolio is safety. So we're using that zero to five year US Treasury index because it most

um appropriately sets the tone for the portfolio and it's within the parameters of what's permissible on our interest circumstances correct it wouldn't be appropriate for example to choose a one to ten year when um uh that's a a different part of the yield curve that creates very different results or take a flyer on a corporate stock of some sort you can't do that anyway i'm sorry or take a flyer on a on some stock ibm or apple or whatever you mean correct or low uh high hold John Pimentel, bond right right um during this one year we had 5.2 million that's what's indicated. John Pimentel, In total return yes return during a light period prior to you entering into our investments, what was our return. Or am I jumping ahead?

Well, not really, because he's not going to be reporting on that. But suffice to say that when we transferred the assets, the average return was 83 basis points or 0.83%. You can see how that compares to the performance over the past year. Yeah, it's quadrupled.

Okay, so basically, was a quarter of this figure. So we've got four times as much as

Pretty much, yes. If you look at the investment returns from 2025 and what we're projecting in 2027, you're going to see a sharp increase due to this and other measures we've taken. Unfortunately, only a small portion of that goes to the general fund because the city has many funds. But yeah, you'll see a significant increase in the performance of the portfolio.

And most of this is in the enterprise fund that Tricia manages. Is that correct, Tricia?

Correct. Yes, it goes to those funds as well.

Yeah, yeah.

that doesn't mean tricia gets to spend those no she's got them allocated already is that the best way to put it so yeah we're saving our rate payers with those savings good okay great fine thank you thank you for the questions and observations um so as you were asking the the benchmark is kind of um the the performance measure that we um aspire to exceed And we've done that for both periods reported here, both the last quarter ending on June 30th and for the full year where we began, that since the inception of the portfolio is June 30th, 2025. That was the end of the first quarter of active management of the portfolio. And then Mark shared with you prior to that, it was the setup of the account and the transition over to have PFM manage this portfolio. And so, therefore, the one year column in a since inception, the numbers are the same because they measure the same period over time will allow the other columns will fill up, of course. So this is the total return page, and the next page shows from more of an accounting view, actual earnings achieved on the portfolio. It strips out unrealized gains and losses and looks only at any realized losses or gains in the portfolio, as well as that interest earned, which is interest earned is the same number from the prior page. Now we're reporting only realized gains and losses. And then there's a kind of an amortization book value that's held on these bonds over time. The bond changes until its maturity date. So this is reflecting that accounting change. So these are kind of your book earnings, if you will, for the three month and one year period as well, with the one year being 3.5 million in earnings. And that, again, is the since inception date. um this would kind of most closely tie off to that first page when we started talking about the portfolio and the yield was showing at 3.52 this kind of ties out to that figure and we have made significant progress over the year to increase that so earnings continue to grow That would end the portfolio portion and I'll just kind of speak to some points in the market and economy to give an indication of what we're monitoring in the markets to maximize value in the portfolio. If there might be any questions on this, I'll be happy to entertain them. Mayor Mrakas, Okay. Mayor Mrakas, So so each quarter we provide a report to the city on its earnings on activity on holdings on market values and we concern ourselves with a theme over the quarter and what's transpired and what we're looking at and monitoring to maximize again the return of the portfolio. Mayor Mrakas, You know the economy through a lot of volatility over the past six months, seven months has remained quite resilient. The economic growth does continue to be supported by consumers and business investment. What we saw in the past few months of the year is kind of an interesting contributor to GDP more than we've seen in the past. And that's technology investment. That's really supported growth in the first quarter that led growth. In the second quarter, consumers return with more spending. So that's positive. We're seeing consumers continue to spend at a growth. There's always two sides to the coin, though. And part of that is, although consumers are spending, the wages aren't keeping up with that growth. So when you look after inflation, wages aren't necessarily keeping up with that spending. So we're looking at maybe that as a leading indicator, something to watch for long-term sustainability, how healthy is the consumer. And since they represent about two-thirds of GDP historically, then that's something that we take note of. Unemployment remains low. It's 4.1% most recently in July. That's down a little bit, but it might be down for the wrong reasons because participation rate in the economy also fell. So good. There seems to be a good and bad to every side of the story here. The participation rate was sixty one point four percent, and that's measured as people looking for work versus versus the total labor force in itself. So it might be the wrong number moving there to get to get to that unemployment rate. So something to continue watching. Inflation remains the primary focus for the markets in the fixed income world anyway, and equity, I suppose. Obviously, with the introduction of the Iran war this year, energy prices kind of shot up. and it impacted headline inflation. So the interest at the time when that began in the beginning of March was how that would pass through to core inflation, where you strip out energy and food and just kind of look at discretionary spending components. And that didn't have as big of an impact as we saw with the headline inflation. So that's positive because that interim impact on energy didn't necessarily flow through to the greater core goods and services components. And it's since subsided as well. So Inflation seems to be in check, although it still remains elevated. We've returned to pre-war, I guess, war levels as we saw coming into the year at 2.5% core inflation. And that's still a little bit elevated from what the Federal Reserve would like to see. So they haven't made any changes yet, given all of this input to their assessment on where monetary policy should be. Their overnight benchmark rate hasn't changed through this year. It's 3.5% to 3.75%. But if we look to the next page, uh the market is setting up potentially for rate Heights this is the year-over-year change in U.S Treasury yields from one year ago and June 30th the year ending June 30th the dark blue line represents U.S Treasury yields on June 30th and the light blue line represents the prior year and the shaded area is where yields have been over the past year So we're, I guess, in the upper area of the range of where rates have been. This is a surprise to the market that thought we were going to be seeing lower rates this year. I think most notably on the far left, the light blue line was higher a year ago because short-term rates really do follow what the Federal Reserve does with monetary policy, and they did reduce rates since that period. I hear myself getting into quite a bit of detail. Ultimately, what I just wanted to share here is that we're in a positively slope yield curve where the city is getting rewarded for going out longer and getting higher yield. If we just look and focus in on the 2 year, which is now at 417 to substantiate the view that we have that it's a good time to extend to lock in rates where we are. This compares the dark blue line, which is the 2 year Treasury over the past. 10 years and compares it to the 10 year average and 20 year average and we remain elevated to those. So we, we use that as well as the fed funds rate. to to kind of substantiate that position so we are continuing to look for opportunity out in the market to continue buying um over the next several uh it'd be six or seven months the city still has bonds that were purchased at a lower rate environment so we'll continue to see we anticipate that overall average yield in the portfolio continue to rise as well as we reinvest those And finally, we'll end on factors to consider and things we're looking at. Off to the far right, there are the two squares stacked on each other, inflation and labor markets. This is what's considered the Fed's dual mandate. Inflation, of course, still remains a little bit elevated, but There there has been some breathing room for the Fed to not tighten policy because of the recent data points that have come in and the labor markets I've kind of addressed. But these really do have a significant impact on on yields. And so we watch those very closely along with all the others that we we have here as well. But I thought this would be a good point to end on just to show kind of things that we're considering in the decisions and strategy, and as we carry out the strategy for the city. And I'll conclude and take any questions.

Council members, any questions on monetary policy, economic growth, inflation rate, consumer spending? John Potter, The other fantastic areas we just through what where's your grandmother from.

John Potter, She and my grandfather had a farm and Lindsay back in the 1950s, and then the she now lives in by Celia and Sarah village.

John Potter, he's a Lindsay boy down there, I think. John Potter, Right go car. John Potter, Avenue to to a. John Potter, There you go there you go.

John Potter, Thank you very much.

Good presentation.

Thank you. So perhaps just in recap, and I think for everybody here, I'm understanding this right, is this is a, it was mentioned this is primary enterprise funds. Mark, is this 100% enterprise funds? Is it 97% enterprise funds? What's the mix here?

No, I mean, the city has 50-ish funds. The enterprise funds do represent I want to say about 40% of the overall portfolio or of the overall budget. I think as far as fund balance, which is essentially, or cash is essentially what this is, probably is about 50%-ish of the portfolio.

So quickly, what would you say the other 50% there? What are some of the major? I don't need all of the major other.

Well, the, the general fund would be would be the next would be the next biggest. Um, I apologize. I am drawing a blank, but there's just, I mean, those are the major. Those are what you would call the major funds. Everything else is as smaller funds development impact. These is another 1, but after that, you start getting into just many, many. Small smaller funds where there's just smaller amounts distributed.

I took a follow up on that.

Yeah, I just was going to ask 1 more, but if with the, what you had said, the general fund, so we receive a report that our general fund reserve balance is like 20Million. So, with that general fund reserve balance be captured in this.

The portion of, I can't speak to exactly what the general fund balance is. We have a specific reserve of 15.4 and then some unassigned fund balance. But yes, the portion of that that is cash, yes, is captured in this. Yes, that would be surplus funds.

So we have a report here that's collectively the enterprise fund and the general fund. investments that we're talking about here. Correct. Are these separated so that we know what the performance has been for the enterprise portion, and in particular, which ones are earning what, and how do we allocate that for the enterprise side, even though it's, let's say you indicated 50-50, can the enterprise fund perform at one level and the general fund perform at another? and they're separated in that regard? Is that how you're accounting that?

No, performance for one is performance for all. We allocate any of the interest on every part of the portfolio on the basis of average daily cash balance for the month. So everybody, If you have 10 million in cash that was invested for the prior period, you get, and another fund also has 10 million, they get the same allocation regardless of the nature of that fund. It's just, you might call it blended because we have these funds, we have a significant amount in the local agency investment fund or LAIF, and we also have sweep account investments with the bank. And so you have three different interest rates essentially They get blended, they're all posted separately, but the blended rate is the same for 1 and all.

So, it's kind of like, uh. To simplify kind of like, uh, this is a community property type of situation where the enterprise, which is 1 spouse. And the general funds another spouse, and we earn collectively together. how we deal with this, no matter what the rate is in the individual savings accounts.

As long as all spouses are happy.

There you go.

I like to say happy spouse, happy house.

Yeah.

And I would say all the developers impact these other children.

I'm sorry I started this.

Don't get me started on the inverse relationship between bond prices and interest rates.

No, just thank you for your report. And I think the questions and with that is I know and I don't mean to embarrass any individuals. I just want to kind of put this message is we do have two individuals in our audience at least that have will be coming up in election for city council as across our community. And I hope that this shows and is good information for those interested in being in City Council, that basically our savings account amongst those funds is $156 million. The interest rate for which you talked about at 854 interest in the quarter, but the gain and the whole interest, but with the gains is at $3,895,000. We have a report that is coming out of our general fund savings that came out at least above the 20 million mark to be exact. I just hope that this information is very valuable and I think provides that public demonstration of how our accounts are doing, what we're doing with our accounts, and you get to see straight from the horse's mouth what those balances are for our community. So, um, it's not negative, for example, which is great, but I just wanted to add that little summary, but thank you. Are we ready to move on council? All right, thank you for the report. Thank you.

Our next presentation is also a financial one. I'll turn over to Mark here in a second.

Can I take a step back? Sorry, Mr. Manager, I need to mind. I started where I said I did not allow public opinion and public comment. I'm always getting public opinion. For 9.1, I do want to ask if anyone in chambers would like to have public comment on the investment performance review by PFM Asset Management.

seeing that now click do we have anyone on the phone all right thank you back to you Mr. Mondale sure thank you so much uh the next item is also a financial matter um you know council where we call that In addition to hiring a firm to help us with our short-term investments, we also hired a firm, went out and did an RFP process and hired a firm a year or two ago to help us with overall financial advisement. That firm is NHA Advisors. They help us with a lot of different things. They're sort of a, they help take a, you know, I have a saying that says, if you're always working in the business, it's hard to work on the business, right? And so all day long, we're in the business, all the directors are. I try to step outside of the business. And then we have a firm, NHL Advisors, that sits there at a higher level with us also to look at strategically the investments we're making, Different strategies we're moving forward with to say, you know, it might be better if you go left or right. It may be better if you double something here. Triple something there and so they're going to be talking with you tonight about another opportunity we have to potentially save the right pair of some money by. Refunding refinancing some of our bonds and so I'll leave it at that for now. Mark, I'll turn it to you.

Yes, and Eric Scriven with the, I'm not sure if Mike Meyer is here as well, but Eric Scriven with the City's, there is Michael Meyer, is with the City's Municipal Advisor Consultants, NHA, are here to present the proposed sewer refunding bonds.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Good evening, Mayor and Vice Mayor and members of the City Council. Eric Scriven here with NHA and my colleague, Mike Meyer, who actually put the presentation together for the city. We've got really six slides. It's very brief. It's an alert to this refinancing opportunity. Let me bring it up. Is that working? Is that up on the screen?

Not yet.

Eric, let me try to share it.

There we go.

Is it there?

Yeah. Just maximize it.

Yeah. Maybe that's yours. Okay. Thanks, Mike. All right. Six slides. As your finance director mentioned, there is a refinancing opportunity with your sewer revenue bonds. There's four bonds outstanding, two of which are now available to be prepaid if the interest rates were low enough to accrue savings. The 2015 and 2016 bonds are outstanding, approximately $102 million outstanding. There is 132 million of bonds that you have outstanding that have been issued that went to constructing and refurbishing the wastewater treatment facility in 2009. And then there have been subsequent refinancings. Since then, that's where we have our four transactions outstanding. As I said, the 2015 and the 16 are refinanceable if it's attractive to do so. Next slide. So in aggregate, all four of the deals that are outstanding are approximately $10 million. You can see the pieces of the outstanding debt are kind of irregular. The 2015s are in the light blue, and the 2016s are in the gray. Again, the 2015s look to be what we call in the money for refinancing in the current market, and a portion of the 2016s appear to be in the money. So the 2015 and 2016 bonds, the sort of aggregate outstanding true interest cost in those bonds is 4.73. We've been tracking the potential transaction for refinancing these bonds over the last nine months. And we're trying to integrate it with your cost of service studies. And we've been seeing those interest rates vary between 3.5 to 4.1%. They're on the higher end of that range. Currently, as we all know, rates are going up. the savings won't be realized until any type of transaction has actually gone to market. So, but currently we're looking at a transaction that has an NPV savings of approximately 5%, which is above the industry standard of about 3% NPV and the projected cashflow savings for this refinancing as we sit here right now is about 13 and a half million dollars. So the idea is to monitor this transaction gain direction as we're going to ask for in the next slide or two. But we've been looking at this and there may be different ways to benefit the city's rate payers with this refinancing, integrate the refinancing, either doing a level savings or perhaps structuring a refinancing where we gain some of those benefits, the savings upfront. The typical transaction process is about three to four months. This is sort of the standard process where you assemble a team and then you go through the legal disclosure and credit rating process. And then you go to the market and price the bonds and close a couple of weeks after that. That takes about three or four months. And we do believe, based on the size of the transaction, that it should be a public offering versus a direct placement to a bank. Interest rates are lower with the public offering. However, it is more work, therefore it takes a little longer of lead time to prepare for such a transaction. The normal team that would be in place to execute such a transaction, of course, the city's finance department leads the effort. And as the city's municipal advisor, we would serve as the fiduciary and the essentially eyes and ears project manager for the transaction. And then you would have your bond and disclosure counsel and an underwriter selling the bonds. And there are other players as well, like a trustee. The credit rating agency would be engaged. And there are some other miscellaneous parties that assist in bringing a transaction to market and close. So we put these recommendations on paper. I think that we concur with them. Your finance department has had us put these down, and I think we're in agreement that we would recommend that the city continue to evaluate the refinancing opportunity for the 2015 and 2016 bonds, authorize staff to engage the necessary team members to analyze structuring options and prepare the legal and investor disclosure documents, and then go through a standard bond financing process, including a credit rating. The idea would be to get the transaction teed up, if you will, so that it could be executed when the market is right, the savings thresholds meet the city's expectations. that would not happen where we would bring a transaction to city council's uh review and final approval and at the earliest would be november of 2026. i believe that's it so that's that's our final slide and i'm glad to answer any questions council members all right

I think in quick notes that I have.

Go ahead, Council Member Durst. My question is, basically what you're doing is you're watching the market and determining, in your opinion, when the best time is to strike. Is that correct?

We have been watching the market, but we wanted to be, in combination with staff, very strategic about when to execute this, knowing that you've been going through a cost of service study. And we want to make sure that we optimize the refinancing and integrate that so we keep the rates as low as possible for your customers. So, yes, we have been monitoring it, but we believe and recommend that the time is right to tee the transaction up so that you can strike. We want to make sure that the result, though, meets the city's expectations, so we work very closely with staff to structure the transaction and set the parameters for the right savings levels before we execute.

So the answer is yes, basically.

Yep. Yep.

Sorry. The 2015 and 2016 are the two that you're concentrating on because those can be prepaid at this time.

Correct.

And once you refinance or recommend and it's approved to refinance at favorable rates, when you refinance, those bonds are for a period of time, not, not be in a position to where they can be prepaid. Is that correct?

That's correct. Typically, you're going to be locked out from prepaying the new transaction for about 10 years. You can negotiate that, but that is the standard of the market.

So fundamentally, if you decide, which you apparently have or were arriving at that time, to make this move at a lower rate, you'll save the amount of money that... that you're projecting, but if rates continue to come down, even more could have been saved. That's kind of the projection that has to be made by experts such as yourself. Is that correct?

Well, no one's got the crystal ball, right? I guess that's what I'm getting to.

That's what I'm getting to. Go ahead.

I mean, nine months ago, the interest rates were lower, right? We could have saved a lot more money. So we but we wanted to be very strategic and integrate this refinancing with your rate structure to optimize it and keep the rates as low as possible. Truly. That's what we've been doing.

But there are a lot of factors or when you when you take everything in conjunction with what's going on in the the economy, the appearance is that there's right now a lot of inflationary aspects of what's going on that could very well cause this to be a problem if it continues to head in the other direction. So I can see where your recommendation may very well be we better strike now or tee it up, as you say, as opposed to waiting to see what's going to happen six months from now or a year from now or whatever the case may be. Is that fair?

It is. I think once we establish structure but also savings targets, the idea is to strike and not look back. could look back nine months ago as well, right? And say we could have done it nine months ago, but we want to make sure that we do, we get what we want and be thoughtful about how we structure the deal to, you know, maximize the benefit. But no one has a crystal ball for 12 months from now.

Just do the best you can and move on. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead.

No, I was just doing a recap, which is my understanding, like I said, 2015, 2016, $103 million in sewer bonds, $10 million annual debt service. You had mentioned the MPV savings at around 5%. So that would save us roughly $13.5 million towards the total bill, or roughly $680,000 a year, if my quick summary has that right.

That's correct. Although you can structure so that those savings are not uniform over the life of the loan, you know, 680,000, you could structure that 13.5 million so that you front-load it a little bit to John Potter, You know, in enable it to benefit the ratepayers in the near term that's to be determined, I think, looking for staff and counsel to give direction as we get into the process that does not need to be decided now, but something that. John Potter, I think, is important.

Dave Kuntz, And I think also if I could I think. Dave Kuntz, When we're. Dave Kuntz, Doing these studies. for rate studies as it relates to our enterprise fund, that's, if I'm not mistaken, that's more in line with decisions that the Board of Public Utilities will make. And we'll basically get reports on that. Is that correct?

To a certain extent, but as you saw in their presentation, we do intend to bring it back to you guys as well. We want to get everything teed up and bring it back to you. We know that It gets a little, it's a little strange in the city of Tulare, because of the bifurcation of those duties and responsibilities.

So we definitely are strange.

Well, it's, it's very unique, very unique and very well thought out, but I think the chart of the founders of our charter, but. um i've just never seen anything like it before so it's strange to me and i'm a strange fellow so um but you know we do intend to present this to them as well make them aware of this i'm hoping there's not a conflict between what you want to do and they want to do i think everybody wants to save money so i think we should be okay i don't know trisha if you wanted to add anything

No, I was going to add the same comment. This same presentation is going to the board on Thursday. So some of these big decisions do have like joint approval requirements under the board and the city council. So that's why we bring them to both.

Okay. With that, I'd like to open this up for public comment. Is there anyone in chambers who would like to comment on 9.2 authorization to proceed with refinancing process for sewer revenue bonds? Okay. Clark, do we have anyone on the phone? All right. Anything else? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Meyer and Mr. Scriven. We appreciate the presentation. Yes.

Um, thank you so much, uh, fellas. Um. I want to build off of something you said earlier the last presentation. So we're really pleased that we are able to show you tonight. Some other examples of things that the city is doing to. Save money to generate additional revenue. There's many other things we work on to gain greater efficiencies and reduce costs, et cetera. I just want to remind everyone that, you know, they might look at this information and say, wow, like, the city's. Making 4 times on its investment earnings and so we wouldn't need a sales tax measure for example. Um, or the city could refinance these bonds and generate 10Million dollars and we could use those dollars and. Fix all our streets and the reality is, of course. No, you couldn't do that. Um, these dollars are restricted on how they can be used. Right? So they can't be used to do streets and. We're getting ready to come back to give you, I think probably in September. A pavement management study that's going to show you I don't know what the numbers that I haven't looked at it, but I'm going to. Bet it's going to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars of work. It's going to have to be done on our streets. That's in addition to the. $1.5 billion of master plan improvements that we have to deal with in the city. And that is compounded by the reality that we see other revenues, some of the revenues we really count on like sales tax revenue declining over the next five years. So if you only look at a little sliver of something like tonight, which we shared, you might, and it is something to be optimistic about, but you might look at that and say, oh, everything's great. And the reality is we're doing okay. But over the next five years, we're projecting some real challenges that are coming away. People say, well, we haven't fixed the roads. And it's like, because we don't have dedicated revenue stream to fix the roads. And so that's why we're talking about some of these other strategies. And when you look at the totality of all these strategies, it puts us in a really good position going forward into the future. I just don't want that to be lost on anyone. Thank you.

If no one has... Did we do? We did public comment exactly. I'd make a motion that we authorize city staff and the city's municipal advisor to proceed with the next steps necessary for evaluating and executing a refinance financing known as refunding or teeing up, as was referred to several times, of the city's 2015 and 2016 sewer revenue refunding bonds.

Second.

Council, we have a motion and a second to authorize the city staff and the city's municipal advisor to proceed with the next steps necessary for evaluating and executing your refinancing of the sewer revenue funding bonds. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion approved, 4-0. Okay, moving forward on our agenda, 9.3, progress report on housing element, housing plan implementation. Mr. Anaya.

Yes, good evening, Mayor Isherwood, council members. We have a moment here to allow my colleague here, Alexis Costales, Housing Grants Manager, to come to the podium. I'm going to kind of tag team this presentation, but quite a few slides. We're going to mostly hit the high points. This will be a conversation with council, and there'll be a chance at the end for questions and feedback that we're requesting from the council. So with that, I'll start the presentation. Council may recall we adopted locally the city's housing element for the sixth cycle back in May, and so it's been a few months since then. One of the requests and in the conversations we've had that we've heard from the dice has been, Hey, you know, there's a lot of commitments here at the city's making in housing element, and we have these numbers are in our arena housing production numbers. We have to meet How can the city do a better job of meeting those, especially when it comes to affordable housing? So this presentation is meant to provide an update on where we are with the housing plan, how we intend to meet those goals and those actions in the housing plan. And so with that is maybe we'll start at the beginning. What is the What is the housing plan? So the housing plan is the last section in the housing element. The housing element has a fairly thorough needs assessment that looks at all sorts of data points that show. What the housing needs are in our community and city artillery. And then the housing plan is essentially the, how the city plans to meet those needs through a variety of. As you see listed there, the goals and policies, there's 15 implementation programs, which will cover this evening. And then there's, um, actions and quantified objectives that are covered in those in your staff report. There is a, um. There's a print out of that housing plan that chapter. So, uh, the goal with the presentation this evening is to review those programs in the, in the housing plan. Um an update on the actions that have already been taken by staff that have been implemented by program since 2023. So the the housing current housing element cycle runs from 2024 essentially is when it starts in January through the December 31, 2031. So we're about two and a half years in um and then a preview of anticipated actions. We've we've yet to complete as well as gathering direction information from Council. on the progress we've made on some of the challenges ahead of us. And so just to note, as we go through the slides, like I said, the housing plan verbatim in detail is included in your staff report. We're gonna focus on hitting the high points this evening in our presentation. And so the slides, as we go through them, we'll highlight several completed actions for each program, as well as those that are yet to be completed. And then there's a progress bar that's indicated that essentially mirrors, hey, there's different actions for each program. Roughly, where are we for each program? Are we at 50% progress, 25% progress of actions completed, and so on? So without further ado, we'll start with the first program. The first program is called Regional Collaboration. And it focuses on actions that the city would take to collaborate with our regional partners, whether it's county or other surrounding jurisdictions that are in our region around regional planning issues, particularly around housing and transportation. Right? So you'll see there. In terms of action taken actions taken some of the things we've done to collaborate. and some of the anticipated actions that are described in the housing element that we've yet to implement. One potential idea you see there is something like a regional housing trust fund to provide greater affordable housing in our region. That's just one idea. You'll hear several ideas mentioned during the presentation. That particular example in some of the research that Alexis and I have been conducting came from our colleagues in San Joaquin County who have done just that and have taken a regional approach to creating kind of a pot of funds for affordable housing projects. Program number 2, you've heard me mention this during prior presentations quite a bit. This is about having this is kind of the 1st step is how do we provide. For the housing needs in our community at the various income levels. Well, the 1st step is we need to have enough sites zone that the appropriate density to meet those needs. and then monitoring those sites to make sure we don't lose that inventory. Right. So you'll see here there's a couple of maps in the presentation, and these are just examples. We're not going to go in the weeds on them, but just to give you some Some examples, so the 1 on the left, these are kind of maps to prepare when we meet with developers to show them. Hey, you're you're a multi family developer, for example, and you build higher density housing. Here are sites that we have in our city that are already zoned. To to allow projects such as those that you're interested in developing as by right projects. So here's where they're located on the right is the greater housing needs inventory, which was in our housing element. So that includes all of the opportunity sites. It includes the reason side we had over by the winery, but it includes other sites. that um are already zoned or have been up zoned to provide different you'll see different colors those equate to also different densities right so we need sites for single family we need sites for medium density multi-family as well as high density and when we talk about no net loss it means making sure that We're not losing the inventory of land we have available for multifamily development by allowing too many what we call down zone or zoning to lower density. And when we do that, the state actually requires by law that we replace that acreage by including other property that can incorporate those needs. Program three is a by right approval. So this is a very specific language that the State Housing Community Development Department requires. This is something we do in practice already, but there's specific language they want in our code To make it explicit that this is a policy that's been codified and you'll actually counsel within the next month. This will be coming back to you. We are knock on wood. I think this is the final revision for us to get certification from the state on this housing. It's been adopted by council. It's been in review now over the summer with the state, and they want us to make some very minor text modifications to the section of the ordinance. And this in particular pertains to hey, making sure that if we have a developer that's actually willing to propose a project that includes 20% of their units as affordable. to owners, so if it's an ownership project at 60% area median income or below, or to renters at 50% area median income or below, that that project is permitted by right. That's required by the state, and they just want to see that reflected in our development code. So once we bring that through and through council approval, we would meet our requirement for that specific program. Program four relates to replacement housing and displacement protections. So this is what can the city do to make sure you'll see on the left that we continue to work with our partners and with different legal groups to provide our community with resources and education around fair housing. that's required by law, but it's also just a practice of I always say in our department we're looking at the housing needs of our entire community from luxury housing all the way down to transitional housing and our own house neighbors and everything in between. So it's how do we make sure that the folks in this community are educated and know, one, the rights, but also what resources are available for them, whether they're renters and they're participating in our tenant-based rental assistance program, or they're looking to become first-time homebuyers and participating in that program, which we'll talk about in further slides. And so one of the things that you'll see here in anticipated actions is some of the things we can do are, hey, maybe we adopt an anti-displacement strategy. What does that look like? And really at the core of that, this is something the state is really hammering home because in some communities, this is one of the big kind of topics in urban planning, is how do you go into a community and increase investments in a positive manner and improve the community and make sure that the folks that are already living there that it's serving their needs and they're able to benefit that and it's not just displacing folks because all of a sudden property values just you know go through the roof and people are being evicted and so trying to be very intentional and that's a very there's more to that um and there will be you know future study sessions and policies that we can have with Council to explore that issue but that's what that program is is related uh to Program 5 is about accessory dwelling units. Council, you may be aware. I mean, you've heard of I'm sure ADUs or accessory dwelling units for the past several years. The state has passed a number of laws really emphasizing really at the end of the day streamlining the process and making sure that local jurisdictions are not making it harder to develop these secondary units on residential properties. uh so one of the things we've done to um show progress in under this program we've amended our zoning code to comply with state adu laws that's you know bare minimum of course but then one of the things that have there's been new laws passed now that we've incorporated that allows us to facilitate and promote the development of adus by establishing a um and they do program essentially. And we have a webpage dedicated just to folks that wanna develop these in the community that includes, these are all the ways if you pull a permit for an accessory dwelling unit, these are the steps and it's heavily streamlined. There's very little kind of local provisions outside of state law requirements. And then we also have now adopted pre-approved plans. We've worked with an architect to develop a set of several plans. So someone could come into city hall, and talk to the planners there and say, you know what, I want to prepare one of these units Pick a plan and if it fits on their site meets the requirements, um, you know, that may get them a little closer to the feasibility of their project because now. They can use that design. It's been Pre reviewed by staff. So it's already approved. To be used with their permit, and here's a picture of our accessory on unit page on the city's website and the planning department. So we have, um. a place to submit plans. There's forms that the applicants fill out. There's forms that architects that want to submit plans to have available for folks to use can participate in. And then we actually have links to the plan. So we have a studio at 360 square feet, a 484 square foot one bedroom, 748 and a 1200 square foot pre-approved plan. One of the things that you'll notice if I go back a little bit on the to-do list is How do we get this education out into the community and make sure more people are aware that we have these resources and that we really do our best to advertise and promote this? So accessory dwelling units in any neighborhood in Tulare, if there's folks that have room in their backyard and a lot, sometimes it's multigenerational housing, right? We will have, whether it's the parents or grandparents, they may want to live you know, on the same home, but still have their in the same on the same property, but have their own cyber private space. Um, other times, uh, those can be turned into rental units and income units for families.

Yeah. I had a, I had a question along those lines. So what, what would be the driving force for, I, I know that in previous, uh, reports you, you shared with us that I think we've only had like 40 built over five year period or something like that. They were like, averaging 8 or a year or something like that for.

Yes, it's gone up recently. So we were averaging about 5 to 10 a year up until I think the last year or 2. we're now about 20 a year. So it's doubled.

So what would be the, what would be the driving factor? Is it more to make income generate income for whoever puts it together or to provide. Sort of more housing, because I guess the question is, is there any limitations on on that those pre plans? I mean, I saw one that was like 1200 square feet. That's a pretty sizable. Is there anything that prohibits them from turning those into Airbnb type of situations? Because that would generate income for someone that need that may need it versus someone that's trying to house. people that need a place to live.

Yeah, there's been a little bit of back and forth at the state level on how straight at one point when they first were passing these adu laws, you even had to have a covenant that says that the primary property owner has to live in one of the units, and they got rid of that. The state's going all in on these adus, and so I think they're willing to overlook things like short-term rental provisions. Now, granted, we're to Larry. Kind of a short answer I give to people when they ask about, um, short term rentals is. We have not had a significant number of issues with them where it's a reoccurring issue once in a while. We'll have a problem property. We'll address it through working with our code enforcement partners and usually it's resolved. But as it becomes an issue, we can adopt specific short term rental regulations. Now, in some communities that have much higher tourism numbers, you know, maybe along the coast or near a major tourist attraction that is a major factor in their housing market. And in those communities are specific. Policies that are put in place and as part of their permitting to ensure that, hey, you have to have. 30 days stays or longer, you know, you can no longer or even even longer in some communities. So. um we'll see if the state comes in with various uh specifics but as of now um they're pretty loose on the requirements um i think the intent is they want to see production and they want to see they see adus as a way to have in low impact infill so in other words And we do see this in our city. Um, especially we have some of the older properties in town. They're deep, narrow lots that have Ali access. You could easily fit a 2nd unit. And have off street parking where it doesn't crowd the street necessarily. Although with they use, they don't require you to replace parking. Right? So, um. But, yeah, it's, uh, it hasn't really been an issue and to answer your other question. from the applications we've seen at the counter, it's a split. We get folks that are, hey, we need extra room for a growing family where it's a multi-generational family. And then we also have folks that have rental units and they see it as, I'm going to get two folks living on this property where previously I had one or two families. And so, so far it's been a mix.

But is there anything that prohibits us as a city or as a council to kind of prioritize one over the other through incentives for example when you put out those hey here's some free plans on that have been approved on what how you know what you can build those are made available to everyone but if they were just made available to folks that may be committed to providing more of a housing type of scenario versus a for-profit scenario are there are those things that prohibit a city from doing that

No, well, to answer your question, the specific, the pre-approved plans, we have to make those available to all. So we cannot condition those on that they'd be used for, like, say, affordable housing. But to your point, and you'll see that reflected in anticipated actions, one of the things we're going to look at is, hey, can we offer incentives that go beyond that? So maybe it's, you know, when it comes to improvements that are required, or maybe there's a certain, one of the biggest challenges with building accessory dwelling units, you could have pre-approved plans. If you look at the overall cost of a project, there is a cost to have someone design the plans, but by far the largest expense is actually getting the thing built, right? materials labor um and that's where the state was offering financing they still do it's been very limited and oversubscribed and so can the city do something to create an incentive program there's been some cities that have these programs they call them like how's a neighbor where hey if you are willing to rent this at a certain rent cap right so it's affordable based on your areas area median income maybe there's uh the city has some skin in the game and can help offer some gap financing or maybe there's something around the development uh standards that the city can offer some flexibility on so there is room for us to go beyond just a state minimum and i think honestly and as we go through this presentation with the housing element a lot of it is hey you're checking the box you're meeting requirements but if we're really going to move the needle on terms of how do we get a greater variety of housing types and especially at different income levels i think it is going to take um council and our community as a whole together to to kind of take some of those steps of what what else can we do right to go beyond kind of the minimum uh to get especially on the development side have these actually be incentives uh to achieve some of the goals we have Um, and then so moving along, um, program 6 zoning code amendments. This is I'm glad to say this is the 1st program. We have 100% achievement on and the reason for that is because. Council may recall the comprehensive zoning update that we, we can, we completed. And what staff did is we had a list. You'll see all the actions on the left here actually on both sides. Many of these are driven by state law requirements around different things like transitional housing, just different modifications around parking that we have to implement by law. So, as we were completing a comprehensive update, we had our consultant for that project, incorporate all of these in our zoning code. So, thankfully, we were able to meet a lot of, we were able to meet all of these by adopting that zoning code, which thankfully your council approved and we were able to show progress on that one. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Alexis to go over some of the next programs.

Hello again, Council. Just a few notes here before jumping into Program 7 and the subsequent ones. For definitions, when we say affordable housing, think on the rental side. I'll just give you some figures. This is just a simple estimate. On rental housing side, think for Tulare County, which we would use, whether we're using HUD or federal or state limits that are set on annual basis. For an area median income for Tulare County, think for a household of four, that's a little over $90,000. And then when we say low income, we're referring to households at 80% of 90,000. So that's usually around low 70s. So think household of four making about $72,000 a year gross income for all adults. Then for a single household with one person, that would be about $52,000 a year. So when we think rental housing, take those gross incomes. And usually the calculation is about 30% of gross income should be set aside over the course of the year to cover your monthly rental fees. On the home ownership side, we want to promote affordable opportunities for our residents to purchase homes at an affordable rate. Think those same income levels, but then the calculation is what type of mortgage primary mortgage are those low income houses going to qualify for? And typically programs that the city's implementing is are offering some type of secondary grant or loan financing to help close the total purchase price of a home. Just wanted to ground it there on program 7 here, facilitate affordable housing development. On the actions taken side. uh those those examples given it's just really the city looking to leverage as much subsidy available possible so think federal and state programs whether that's grants or preparing a project that competes for federal tax credits these are you know usually new multi-family rental construction projects uh also think what actions are the city taking uh to train and network properly so we can build staff capacity And then, as Mario's mentioned, there's considerable examples on land use or zoning changes or changes to development services to facilitate this type of new rental housing construction that is, in fact, affordable. And then on the anticipated action side, it's a lot of the same that you saw in the actions taken. It's for the City to focus on additional land use or development services adjustments to facilitate these projects. Never want to get in the way or hinder them. And then also uh adjust the deployment of maybe our existing resources so the city is a federal entitlement grant jurisdiction we receive home investment and cdbg funds annually the city has has had a decent trash track record on competing for additional state grants so we can get more of this affordable rental housing built and on this slide just as an uh as examples the project that you'll see uh santa fe commons that's an that's a typical It's a great project for the community of Tulare, though it exemplifies the often necessary complex financing involved in getting this type of large multifamily project built. Think 100 plus units. Think the tenants there are at incomes of 80, 60, 50, and even 30% AMI for your community. and uh to the city's credit and our partner on this project self-help enterprises the city was able to put up a little bit of a million dollars up front to help with development costs and that made the developer be able to compete for tax credit financing to get this whole project built and then on the back end the city's been able to help with operating subsidies which basically function as ongoing rent assistance for some of the tenants Then also pictured here, this is an example, a target area for SAF where we wanna continue to facilitate. So the image on top is actually a project. It was to be considered a small multifamily rental infill project. I think maybe under 10 units for the whole build. David. Staff are are encouraged to learn that you know this is a it's a great product being built. They're actually offering rents that are at limits, hud, or state limits and below, and then also would be just this illustrative of missing middle. So there's going to be a considerable staff attention to facilitate this bill, and we're actually going to be coming back in October. with a pilot program where we want to try to capture we want to try to work with the developers of these type of projects in our community to see if we can't get some of those units set aside with minimal affordability restrictions but at minimum promote this both of these types of projects large multi-family without that are 100 rental and also promote some of this small more uh you know missing middle type builds that can be that the footprint and could reach all areas of our community Uh, program 8, this is going to be more about preservation. So, when you think here on the action side, it's the focus of city staff to always have an accurate inventory of properties. Think single family units and rental units in our community that have some type of affordability covenant. And so that's usually tied to the development financing, or the financing that went in to help somebody purchase that home. and uh it's city's task to be able to keep an adequate inventory of the properties they were involved in and also just generally all subsidized properties within their community uh so that we can hopefully coordinate to maintain those covenants so even when they expire there's going to be an opportunity for the city to get another low-income household to purchase a home or to work with an owner of a rental house, excuse me, a multifamily project so that maybe there could be an opportunity for a new group to purchase the unit or work with the existing developers for them to maintain a level of affordability within their share of units. And then on the anticipated side, think what are the city needs to have a defined strategy, deploy its resources or financing to uphold those covenants when possible. It's not always gonna be the case, though it's very often, and I'll go on to the next slide here. This is just illustrative of an opportunity to try to preserve housing that's already affordable. So on the left side here, this is actually a table taken from the city's housing successor report. And I just want to call out this is single family. So think your three bedroom, two bath homes. It's likely that the redevelopment agency used financing to either help the homeowners rehab their home. And then there was a covenant or they use redevelopment financing to help them purchase this home or a combination of the both. So when those covenants expire, there's an opportunity for the city to coordinate with the homeowner and using it's like, for example, it's first time home buyer programs to keep to get the new buyer of the homes to also be moderate, a low income household, usually within the affordability restrictions. That's a a lean excuse me, or yeah, to lean on the land itself. So it stays there for a fixed period of time, and that's when usually the city has the either the opportunity proactively or at the time of sale to try to keep that home affordable. And on the right side, that's a picture of the Tully Vista project. So that's a example of the redevelopment agency working with the housing authority of Tulare County. That one's unique, where it has the 55 year affordability company, which is affordability covenant, which is common for a lot of large multifamily rental projects like that. though it also has a special provision within it where there's going to be an option for the existing tenants to perhaps purchase the unit that they're living in. So city staff right now are actually working with the Housing Authority on developing a feasibility plan for that, which we would bring back to Council for direction. Program nine, housing preservation and rehabilitation. This is probably an area where the city has a long track record, even from redevelopment years into more recent of the last five. So think here, council, this is city staff using federal and state grant funding typically to help owners that are in fact low-income owners of homes complete necessary rehab or even complete reconstruction when there's considerable health and safety issues in the home. And on average, the city's helping about 15 different homeowners complete either minor rehab rehabilitation. And I'm going to move to the next slide here, though, looking on the left side here for you, the MORE program is an example of the city receiving 1.5 billion from the state to focus on mobile home parks within our community. So that's a subset of your existing housing stock. And what we've seen thus far today in about a year and a half of running that program, we've helped with 11 different households complete both repairs and rehabilitation in the ballpark of about 80,000. And we've seen complete unit replacements like for like. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, So kudos to city staff and our partner self up enterprises for getting that more program off the ground and then our CDB G that's one of our more common examples where we use grant financing. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, And you're completing a necessary roof replacement or adding H back and then we're going to look at program design to try to emphasize energy efficiency or accessibility improvements within a home for that for that owner that's the grant financing piece. Program, ten lower income and special needs housing. This is over the course of two slides, but just something to emphasize here. This is really a subset of program seven. So it's a focus on either think new development, new builds or rehabilitation projects, or how is the city leveraging its G.L.A. available program resources and policies so that's there's housing adequate housing for our seniors there's adequate housings for people with a disability. G.L.A. Adequate housing for people exiting homelessness appropriate housing, as well as housing for farm workers, those are very common. G.L.A. Examples of special populations within your community where there's usually federal or state resources for the city to buy for to put some projects together both new new build and rehabilitation. And just an illustrative here. So the city was successful in securing encampment resolution funding round one and round $2. In the round two fund, the city was able to put about $900,000 towards Madsen Gardens. That's the two-story multifamily project here just north along Highway 99. And so that set aside 15 units for people coming out of homelessness to that property through the City of Tulare program. So that's excellent. That's not a new build. That's a use of, yeah.

John Potter, that's beyond the city limits, though correct I mean that that's actually counting but that's in the tagus area that's that's. John Potter, County is that correct was that coordinated with the county.

John Potter, Given it was like a that specific project was a home key or room key type rehab project because they were dedicating all of the units for people coming out of homelessness city staff strategy was to secure a portion of those units for. exclusively artillery residents that are experiencing homelessness so that we could have basically 15 floating units set aside for us at any given time.

Similar to what was done with Eden House. I think we had some beds in Eden House. Correct.

Absolutely. Under ERF, that too, we had operating subsidies go to Mattson Gardens, Eden House Interim Housing, and the Neighborhood Village Project in Goshen. HAB-Jacques Juilland, yeah but that's a that's a good example for within getting permanent supportive housing for our local residents, we really lean on a county wide network of housing options. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Of course, the city can continue to build its own projects and, for example, at Santa Fe commons that's within our city limits that also had a set aside a units for people coming out of homelessness. And then the project on the right, Tulare Cares Emergency Shelter, specifically highlighted there the 16 modular buildings with 13 individual rooms that was built with $1.2 million from ERF2. So that's to function for foreseeable future as interim housing for people coming out of homelessness, both individuals and families as well. Program eleven first time home buyer. So, of course, different than trying to promote new rental housing. This would the city's had a long track record, although there was a pause on one of our most sizable sources of funding for this type of thing under the home program. The city right now has a little over five hundred thousand dollars available to offer special secondary financing to our residents to help them purchase homes, both new builds and existing homes within our city limits. Uh, so thank you to council, uh, and city management over the last few years for, you know, investing in the people power and the housing division and planning and community development writ large, because it's our, our. hope that we're going to really work on marketing we're going to strategize and work with available lenders and our partners help up enterprises to help implement this type of program to make sure that we're reaching a large pool of interested and eligible residents that may want to purchase a home and that we get the type of production outcomes and loans that we're hoping for And program twelve. This is really illustrative here. The focus is on how the city and other public agencies, including if there's any state government on property within your jurisdictional limits of how our public agencies. But in this case, the city repurposing or releasing their property. There are both state requirements and incentives available for the city to sponsor affordable housing, or even mixed use projects on available parcels. So this one's really specific that in this cycle, if we have a surplus surplus of property, and there's an opportunity to have some type of portable housing built. There's a considerable state resources available for cities to go forward with that type of project.

So I had a question on this one. I know we have sold surplus property in the past, in the years that I've been here. When we do have that property available, we make it available to nonprofits, right? I mean, developers or nonprofit developers first to see if it's something they would be interested in acquiring. But I'm recalling the property on K Street that I think Knight, was it Knight? I'm thinking Knight, right? Or that's a show, but. All right. Okay. The property that's over by the night transportation right on K street. I'm not sure where that property is. I know that that we had put it out for someone, but I don't the fact that it's in the middle of nowhere. There's no infrastructure. It's not a place to build anything, but the idea of swapping land was something that I had brought up. Is that is that something that's been on the radar somewhere? In other words, for example, that that K street property that would be sold for X amount of dollars. if there was a way for the company that wants to acquire to expand their business, from what I remember, I don't know if that's still the case, but if they were to say, hey, we found a piece of property within the, you know, closer to the city that we would swap it for, in other words, you know, we'll take this land, 10 acres at X amount of money, and we'll get you three acres at X amount of money, the equivalent, right? Is that an option that cities have to be able to say, we'll buy some land here and then we can offer it to a developer? Because we lose that opportunity when the land's just out there.

I've heard you bring this up before and I'm always confused. Why would you do that?

Well, because the idea is you would build housing. I mean, one of the goals from the surplus land process is to try to encourage housing. Try to encourage, and you make first dibs to a self-help or other types of groups that are into that business. But if the land's not usable, would it be, instead of getting X company, To pay a 1M dollars for a piece of land, they just instead of paying a 1M dollars, they just find a land that's equivalent in not necessarily size, but in cost where it would be easier for a developer to build where the infrastructure is already built and so forth. So, is that is that an option?

For example, you're talking about the Blackstone property.

John Potter, Well, it's off, I do know.

John Potter, You got that up which yeah I think that was the one on Jackson by the freeway yeah well it's actually black stone that would turn into J street it's what that is K street i'm sorry. John Potter, night transportation is close by that might be a piece of property that they would be interested in, but. So what you're saying is let's make them go buy another piece of property, and then we'll require them to swap those two pieces of property. But from a commercial standpoint, somebody like transportation, They will run risks if they go buy another piece of property as to what the circumstances of that particular piece of property is once they go on title as it relates to whatever may come up on that other piece of property when all they want to do is buy the piece of property that we have available to sell them. and and they're not going to see any advantage whatsoever in doing a swap because there's no tax advantage to that because we're a governmental agency what we do is we sell it to them take that money and then set it aside if we want to and go do the kinds of things that you're talking about but there's no advantage i know you've talked about this before there's no advantage of a swap there's no tax advantage there's no advantage whatsoever Right. Yeah.

You know, I mean, you're you're you're a lot more your attorney. You have that background. I mean, for me, it's just the idea that, you know, I'm going to be in December. Being here for 10 years on this council, and I don't just quite honestly don't see any head away. We're making our arena. I mean, I'm just trying to think outside the box and what can we do to try to reach those arena numbers that just keep getting bigger and bigger and harder and harder. So, I mean, if an attorney is going to come in and say, hey, this is you can't do this, this is the wrong thing. Well, let's figure out something else. I mean, let's let's let's make a policy that that says that any surplus money, I mean, any money generated from surplus property will go into a housing fund. I can support that. because the fact is you know just be creative i mean if this night transportation company really wants that piece of property then you know we're probably going to sell it to them for whatever price i just hate those opportunities to be lost so can we think outside the box to figure out how we can provide young families with affordable housing or low-income families to have a decent place to live I just think outside the box. If you come and tell me, hey, we can't do it because X, Y, and Z law, then maybe we try to change the law. But at the same time, let's not just get further and further behind on RHNA. That's the fundamental problem.

I'm not saying you can't do it. What I'm saying is a swap doesn't accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. There's other ways that can be done that. But I think staff could explain.

I want to move forward. Alexis, do you have a program 13?

We do. Council. And then I'll go, I'm going to turn it back over to you.

Yes, and we'll definitely have some room at the end for further discussion. So this is just to introduce the policies. You know, like I said earlier in the presentation surplus line, that's a good example of that. There's what we're required to do surplus land as a process. But then what we do with those funds, and if there's a specific council policy, it's a policy decision, which council obviously has liberty to come up with the policy. As we move forward with the implementation, so moving on the program, 13 and economic development, there's a number of actions here that are required around this. Many of these are actually. One of the benefits, you know, thanks to the city leadership and this city council funding the team is, for example, we have right next to see all. working closely with our Chamber of Commerce, a lot of these programs that are called for around employment workshops, around everything from if you're starting a business, if you're looking for a job, if you're looking to hire employees and kind of having that be Kind of a jumping off point, if you will, to working with other regional partners, like the workforce investment board that has a quite a bit of job training opportunities. And then it also includes this program also includes continuing to invest and. Mayor Mrakas, neighborhoods through our CIP process, and so we include as part of our CDBG funds that the city receives every year we typically allocate some of that to infrastructure projects in qualifying low and moderate income neighborhoods to improve the infrastructure. Dave Kuntz, In those locations and so there's two examples I just have the picture there, of course, as a team is here's some of the work that's funded by the CD CD BG dollars to fill in sidewalk gaps and make sure utilities. Dave Kuntz, are upgraded to we partner with our utility funds to do those projects, but this is April cotton Academy so an example of that. Dave Kuntz, program 14 Alexis elude this to us earlier, what can we do to so our owner occupied rehab program, for example. Maybe the more program for, for that matter, most of the projects that are funded through those are critical infrastructure in terms of if someone's roofs failing and they qualify for the program, they'll receive assistance to replace the roof. So, a lot of it is structural components and kind of major systems, but there is also funding for, you know, we had a conversation around the heat here at, you know, why don't we have more participation in the cooling centers? For example. well, maybe we can take a proactive role in advertising to some of our low and moderate income households. We have a lot of seniors on fixed income that don't have access to air conditioning, or maybe need to have their air conditioner replaced. That's a qualifying project. Insulation, weatherization. The goal is, as the city receives these funds, is to utilize those funds. And obviously, if someone needs a roof replaced, that's a pretty high priority project. But the point is, let's get this information out there and make sure our participation rate is as high as possible to make sure. That folks are taking advantage of these programs and I don't know, you know, making sure that information is available in the community that they understand that. Like, man, I wish we could afford to replace RAC. Well, there are programs if you qualify as a qualifying household to take care of some of those things. And so that's something we need to do a better job of. Alexis mentioned, hey, we're going to start kind of pounding the pavement and doing better advertising, both through social media, having booths at community events, continuing to engage with our community. And Alexis?

Yeah. And then lastly, Program 15 is revisiting the area of federal and state law around Fair Housing, Fair Housing Choice Act. So in this current housing plan cycle, they added people power and the availability of grant program administration funds, housing staff in conjunction with planning or other staff as necessary. We're going to do a better job of So really think the target populations for everything fair housing would be your renters, your property owners, or excuse me, your property managers and landlords of rental units, your lenders within your community for first-time home buying opportunities, and your prospective buyers. Those are just generally your target groups for a lot of the underlying issues with fair housing, which is essentially anti-discrimination across all of that. And just for illustrative purposes here.

Go back to the last one. Is that where you're at now? Yes, right here. Can some of these funds be used to, when people buy their first home, used to buy down interest rates to assist them to get loans at a lower interest rate? Therefore, when they get a loan, their monthly payment's going to be less. It'd be a long-term benefit that might make the difference between them buying the home and not buying the home.

That's a good good question. Councilman from what from what I understand very often, whether it's grant financing or in the form of a loan, it's usually like a secondary instrument that they used, which. Perhaps if we're working better with lenders, they could see that as additional asset or income source right for the homeowner, and maybe they get more favorable rates. So staff are happy to look into if we could structure the money specifically for that purpose.

Yes, sometimes a person's in a situation to where, say, interest rates are today at 6.5%, but if somebody pays that interest rate down or pays extra money, $5,000, $10,000, whatever it may be, they could take that down to $5.75 and someone who's not otherwise capable of making a payment at a higher rate may be capable at that point in a first-time homebuyer would be able to get in. So that's a program that could be used to assist people to buy that first home. Understood. And can these funds be used for that purpose?

Staff are going to want to clarify specifically for the idea of improving your primary financing or your primary mortgage. Though, as of right now, I wouldn't want to rule that out. So staff, if you have your permission, we'll get back to you.

Okay.

And then lastly here, this is just to be an example of educational materials. On the left is something available to the civil rights department here at the state level. Everything around just a general fair housing fact sheet that we can make available on our website and market appropriately. And then on the right, this is an image taken from a guidebook that is that could be shared with landlords of rental housing in our community as well as tenants alike and this is just about situations about what what may or may not be within a lease what might be instructed to tenants that have children so covers a variety of topics And lastly, next steps. So we've gone over all the programs within the housing plan, though city staff just wanted to call out for council's attention. Some actions in the very near short term where council and all other stakeholders in the community can input or have input on strategy on and how things are implemented. 1st, in October city staff plan to bring back a pilot that city that. housing staff along with Mario, our community director, been working on that. We're going to try to incentivize small infill rental housing projects within our community, where there even could be a set aside to to have some of those units on like a eight or ten unit project set aside at a for households that are low or or low income and under. then in December. So we'll bring that for Council's full review in October, and then in December staff are by December housing staff with our community plan to carry out a request for proposal where we want to use available home funds as well as housing successor funds. I think to try to get another Santa Fe Commons type project off the ground. So the city would like to commit this financing to help with either eligible pre-development costs on a large multifamily project or to help with construction costs. This would start that capital stack for an eligible developer. And then by December as well, staff intend to come back to Council after public comment to get direction from Council on how to set the strategy for the next five years of PLHA funding. We anticipate having a little over a million dollars. So Council and other stakeholders will be able to set the focus areas of how that money should be deployed locally. Of course, one of those areas of focus could include new multifamily rental development. And then, lastly, with our city planner and others Council can always expect a presentation or workshop on progress on to the programs that are mentioned, which is called the annual performance report for your housing element.

Thank you Alexis with that Council, as we conclude the presentation, we want to allow time. Both for the public, but also for council to weigh in with any comments questions. This is an introductory presentation. We covered a lot there as Alexis mentioned every spring we come forward with the housing production numbers from the prior year. So we'll continue to do that. But this is only the 1st conversation. We'll be coming back with a number of policies and different things that we discussed today. for council feedback and implementation. Some of it requires commitment of city funds, others are changes to development policies, but really the intent is to, how do we kind of close that gap again? I've heard it referenced a few times as we're behind on arena, we're not the only jurisdiction that's behind, but what can we do that makes sense for Tulare to help us show some real progress and some really neat programs that really help incentivize some of the projects that we're not seeing, right? different kinds of housing and things of that sort. So with that, we'll conclude our presentation and open it up for general feedback on the housing plan, on the implementation programs we reviewed, and also additional policies and programs that you'd like staff to look into or questions you may have about particular policies.

Okay, thank you, staff. I think with that, that way I don't miss this opportunities is to open this up to public comment. Is there anyone in chambers who'd like to comment on the progress report on housing element housing plan implementation? Good evening. Welcome. Yes, you may approach the microphone.

Good evening, everyone. I really do appreciate this space. I'm a 23 year housing professional and I've been in the city of Tulare. I've been raised here. I've worked in several states, some landlord states and some tenant states. I have a really good outlook on what we can do to be creative about generating more housing for affordable housing for individual populations. One population that was not mentioned was transitioning, transitional age youth coming out of foster care. I love the idea of ADUs. However, if you take the broader space and you say, how can we move the RHNA numbers? What you could do is just kind of like Sagala, Council Member Sagala stated, think outside the box. I work for Asparanet and they are a transitional age youth nonprofit organization that's been around for a while. They're all statewide. um and we we get our funding for our particular population from child welfare services so that money is is preset right so it's not a voucher it's not a voucher it's private funding Right, we were going to go into acquisition to purchase property to build like a four or six plus for our population, but if we took a if we took a spot of land and we said. What does West care need what is champions need what is a spare net need and pull those individuals to the table to say what funding sources, do you have. To get this property built and maybe you take four units and you take four units and you take another four units well, then you have a 12 unit property with three different nonprofit agencies that are actually active on one parcel of land. We would need some additional funding, because you know you know infrastructure is a bear right getting something up and off the ground is hard to do. putting the monies together. But if you have your own individual funding that you can pull to support those units and extend residential tenancy, then you might move the needle as far as the arena is concerned. I was also a part of the San Joaquin Council Council of Governments when they did their regional housing trust fund as well. So I just wanna offer my services, my experience to the group and I can leave a card with the secretary here if somebody wants to reach out to me and I really appreciate your time and it's just something to think about.

If I may, real quick, and I apologize, I didn't capture your name when you came to the microphone.

I'm Julia Nelson, and I live on the west side of Tulare.

That's okay. Julia. So, Julia, thank you for your comments. Thank you for the coming up and providing comments to this. But yes, I just want to endorse, if you would give your cards to the clerk, and the clerk will share that information with council and staff, and we'll keep you engaged with the conversation.

Thank you.

And for clarification, and I don't mean to be, we have a city clerk. We don't have a secretary. So I just want to make that point.

Is anyone else in chambers wish to make comment? Madam Clerk, do we have anyone on the phone? Okay. Council members, briefly, I mean, that was a huge topic, but any other quick questions that we have?

Okay.

I had one on, on, I guess, slide number four, or I guess before, um, already talked about, uh, just different strategies on, um, let me see, just so you guys get back to number four. Right there in terms of, like, displacement protections. I know we talked about that. Was it the fair housing or something we did last time? That was part of the housing element. Our strategy, such as trying to protect. From rental increases that are beyond. Rational in terms of like, if you know, a law allows you to raise your rent by 5%, and you're raising it 15%. Are there any those types of protections that the Council can impose? In other words, not necessarily as far as rent control goes, but in regards to like. You know, you can't raise it more than 1 or 2 points beyond. What's allowed right? I mean, are there any, do you guys feel there's any of that type of need to protect housing and displacement of people? Because, I mean, not to compare it to the taco trucks, but as I talked about earlier as 1 of the reasons why the taco trucks want to get together. and kind of organize is because the gas stations or the parking lots or wherever, they're charging them 100% rental increase because they're doing well. But in terms of like housing, is that a strategy that can be used to keep people from being displaced?

That's an excellent question. So this program in particular is based on when we conducted the housing needs assessment, there was something called we had to look neighborhood by neighborhood at the relative risk of displacement. And so there's a lot of metrics that go into that, but essentially it identified historic West Tulare, the Southern part of downtown, historic East Tulare, and the Northern portion of South Tulare. So it's a pretty broad swath, but essentially it's older housing stock, right? Um, it's older housing stock and older neighborhoods. That perhaps if, uh, with new investment coming in, um, could these landlords perhaps utilize that as seen? Hey, here's an upswing in the market. maybe we will say we want new tenants and come up with a way to essentially, you know, have people be forced out. So really what this program focuses on is making sure that we have education and engagement with tenants. One of the things we've talked about as a In the department, the housing grants division is a really solid registry in terms of knowing kind of properties landlords can participate and have a role right and helping them with their own education and things they need to know as a landlord, but also with tenants and making sure we have robust tenant information and perhaps just making sure that we have things like. You know, just cause evictions or something that is it is baked in that. In other words, there is a process for landlords to evict folks and and everything's on the up and up, but making sure that we don't have these kind of situations where we have a wholesale change. Now we increase density. Let's say we do that. And so now investors come flocking in and find kind of excuses to flip properties. And it's a delicate balance. There's property rights that you have to be mindful of right on the landlord side, but there's also tenants rights. And so this is something that has come into place. We've seen it in other parts of the state much more so. One example from when I was working in Southern California, there was a place called Elysium Valley just outside Dodger Stadium. That was historically low-income, low-density, older housing stock. Well, when you have all these laws on the books from the state to increase density, you have developers coming in, buying out those parcels and building higher density units, but new housing stock rented at a higher rate and with very minimal protections for tenants. And so it's looking at doing that analysis and it's not a one size fits all. We're really gonna have to see what the need is and what makes sense. And that's a continued conversation that can come back to council.

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate what you're talking about. I was just talking more specifically about rentals, increased safeguards, right? I mean, like what could happen? I mean, I'm familiar where you're... I'm familiar with what you're talking about, otherwise known as Frogtown over in L.A., but those are a lot of single-family homes that are sometimes rented. So the idea is to try to keep people in their homes, and unreasonable rental increases is something that hopefully we might be able to explore down the road. But that was just one question on that particular topic.

i was just going to add for information of with recent federal policy that have been passed with state there have been rent control measures for example any of in the city of Tulare of projects that were built with low-income housing tax credit under LIHTC i can't have any sugar but thank you it's all good And I think staff is confirming that light tech, which is like Santa Fe Commons, and there are older projects in Tulare that you cannot raise the rent more than nine percent annual. So state law with under funding projects, certain provisions. The state law did pass other rent protections. Affordable housing was exempted out of some of those policies. They're happening, and I think part of what you had said, too, is there's perhaps Orders that city could take of rent control. But but if we have, or maybe if if we were to come in and we were using the city's money like home or other funds, would we be able to put in policies? And if i'm correct to staff a lot of time i'm not trying to answer at all, but I think a lot of times what also comes when we do that funding or work is like it's guidelines that go in that. and i think what you're asking is not just in the housing element but then program guidelines we'd have to work in the weeds not we're not saying we not speaking for council that we would or so forth i think just you're asking is is there element in those weeds and guidelines for that and to my understanding and if you're nodding is there is possibilities for that

Yeah, so I appreciate all the feedback from council and only notes. I I'll add to your point. I would, I would treat subsidized properties and private market properties very differently. Um, and if you're alluding to maybe a private privately, uh, owned and then rented units within town, there are minimum standards within California that subject folks to a certain annual. Like, year to year percentage increase that could go to rents. Then there's it usually is pretty open ended once there's a change in tenancy, right? There's a new tenant that comes in, which is why you could see some misgivings when it comes to landlords. You're looking at high rates of eviction in certain properties across your town. So. By and large, there are tools available if counts directions and others that staff can look into on the rent stabilization, if you will. But there are minimum standards already, which relating to fair housing, other education efforts, staff have to do a much better job in educating both property owners and renters in our community on just basic standards in that space. So and then we'll also better investigate the trends around rental evictions and even foreclosures on homes for that matter.

One last quick question I had just as anticipated actions and input if i'm right on one of the slides you had which was anticipated actions was a developer came in and have. Potentially 20% of set asides they that developer could get a buy right didn't and i'm going to say is that multi families that single family was a both.

I believe, actually, it's typically for our arena sites that we're including in our housing cycle, which we tend to, because we tend to overproduce single family, It ends up being our, I suppose if somebody came in and proposed affordable housing on our single family, it would apply as well. But typically the sites that they're concerned with are the arena inventory sites. And so if somebody proposes a 20% affordable project for for ownership. Or 60%, or I'm sorry, 20% of the units affordable to owners at 60% or 50% for rental. It is by right, whether it's single-family or multi-family, to answer your question.

So when you say it is, so anticipated actions, is that the state policy, or is that anticipated actions that the state is doing, or is that alternatives for us to consider?

No, the state has already required this, and so they're asking us to make it very explicit in our development code that we are complying with that state standard.

John Potter, Okay, I I didn't know that that had been implemented so so far projects, if you come in and you're going to build somewhere. John Potter, If you have 20% I don't mean to expand on this Council just so I think so, we understand this could very well be in front of us i'm going to build a hundred unit apartment complex. John Potter, And I think for the public, but if I do 20%, which is just 20 units. I can take that whole project and get a buy, right? Correct. And the reason it's, it's kind of a, if it's already policy is. I don't necessarily know by right for 20%, um, 20 units out of a 100, perhaps maybe 50% or so to get a buy, right? But okay. But that what you're saying, sorry, Mario, I'll shut up.

No, no, no. Actually, I'm glad you caught that because that was 1 of the points of contention back and forth with the state. Um, we already have state density, uh, bonus law. And we have several things already in state law that, to be quite frank, council, I think what we were experiencing quite a bit when we were going through the review cycle, the state couldn't believe that we were, I guess, as developer friendly as we were in terms of, you really allow these projects by right? And the reason that is, is because in other communities in the state, there's a lot of pushback, both from local community, perhaps city councils in those neighborhoods to try to find loopholes or ways to, um not be as uh you know to try to slow down the process if you will gum up the gears and um you know we've tried to kind of demonstrate to them that um to this council's credit and so really our community as a whole um generally speaking the story i've tried to tell hcd and the folks at sacramento is we're a community that believes housing should exist for for you know everyone in our community we're open to development and growth we're not trying to stop it we want to be thoughtful about it Um, but yes, if somebody were to come, in fact, what we have is a capacity issue. Um, we, we sing accolades on on the self helps and the other folks that we partner with for some of the projects. We just don't have enough of them here and we're enough developers are doing these projects and so. kind of the conversation with the state is we're trying to set these sites to be by right, and no, we don't require an additional level of architectural review, which I think is technically legal now at the state. But we we have all these things in place, and so they they're having us put this language explicitly to say, Hey, those sites you're counting on to meet arena. you're not going to all of a sudden come up with a different requirement for this developer. It's by right, correct? And some of that came out of, you might have been following the news, in some cities, they did what's called a floating overlay, where they said, hey, we have a base zoning for this, but we're also going to label this as one of our arena sites, and someone has the option to develop affordable housing on it. And so it's kind of a sneaky way to say, well, we're going to take credit for it, but we're not going to hold someone to it. And so I think the state's been having a lot of those back and forth with some of the other jurisdictions. And so they've kind of implemented this blanket policy that now has to apply for all cities, Reno sites.

Thank you. It's just this is going to be in front of us in the future. And just so when that happens, the public is aware of that process. So we're touching on it now. It's not going to be brand new when it happens. Sorry, I counsel any other comments or questions or we'll move forward. Do you Do need a, this is just receive a presentation and and chatter and input. So you don't need a formal action. That's okay. All right. Thank you. Staff and we'll move forward on our agenda item 9.4 designation of voting delegate and alternate for annual Cal cities conference. Melissa, you need us to designate a voting delegate and alternate

That's correct. So every year the annual conference has a general assembly where the council may or members of each, I guess, members of the League of California Cities would have the opportunity to vote on any resolutions that would be presented at that general assembly during the annual conference. So they need each member to designate a primary voting delegate and then two alternates. And this year we have three council members attending, Council Member Sagala, Council Member Thayer, and Council Member Medeiros. And so of those, we need to identify who is the primary and who are the alternates.

You're going, Dennis. I'm going. I never indicated that I was going. I didn't indicate I wasn't going, but I never indicated that I, I am too late now. Um, here we go. Can I, can you count cancel? Usually, you know, I find these.

That is my area must been looking at last year's so it's only council members to call it and council members there.

Okay. Yeah, not, I mean, I find them very helpful. And you learn a lot. But after eight years, I don't know that I would benefit to the point to where it would be worthwhile to the city for me to go. So I'm not planning on going. So I'd make a motion that Mr. Segal will be our voting member. And did you make the motion already?

We're going to have C. What?

She's the new council. She's the new .

All right. It gets on to me.

Okay. Yeah, make the motion. Okay. I'll make the motion that Mr. Sagala be our voting member, and if she attends, the alternate would be necessary.

Second. We have a motion and a second for Councilman Sagala to be the designated voting delegate, and Councilmember Serra's the alternate. All in favor? Aye.

Now, I guess I have a question. Do we need to take a position on this thing, on the resolution, or is it up to me?

the resolution is provided for your information if the council wanted to discuss that and and usually well why don't you review it and bring it back to Council if you think a recommendation needs to be made before the convention itself I know that it's going through a process right as well okay I would just wait to League of Cities is doing their analysis of it right yeah okay seeing as you're I'm sorry Mr Mayor but seeing as you're the primary and uh Terry is the secondary. The two of you can go over it, decide how you're going to.

Sure. We can share the red card or yellow card.

And then make the recommendation.

All right.

No problem.

Yep. Sounds good. We have a 4-0. Approve. Okay.

Okay.

John Potter, See Stephen Freddie one day when you guys are up here i'm curious at what time in the future it'll change from a gavel to a zapper. John Potter, Maybe get something from the police chief i'm just curious when that will happen on one day you both here City Council meetings. John Potter, All right, moving forward. All right. Item 10, future agenda items. None received. We will go to item 11, staff updates. Mr. Beck.

Thank you. Staff last weekend had a long weekend. We had the Thursday market. We had two amazing concerts on Friday and Saturday. So we're trying to rest back up for the next concerts. With that said, we do have our Kids Day event coming up Saturday, August 29th from 9 a.m. to 12 at Zumwalt Park. I hear there's a rumor that Chief Ott is going to be in the dunk tank along with Captain Guerrero and Richard Torres. So that is Saturday the 29th at Zumwalt Park from 9 to noon. So come and dunk Chief Ott.

Nothing to report, Mr. Miller.

I heard there was some interest in the international center interchange and when that will open up to traffic, it's supposed to open up by the end of this month, but the contractor isn't in a very big hurry to complete it. And apparently has limited options to speed them up at this point, since they're still within their allowable number of contract days. Um, also want to report that we had the construction kickoff meeting for the Tulare Dayton street improvement project today. So. It's coming, it's coming.

Can I see after council meeting to get some more info on that? Or maybe I can buzz you tomorrow.

Yes, on that. Great either. Thanks.

When when does the contractors allow what time expire?

I don't know that it had a set number or had a set. Contract completion date, but as they go through the construction period, additional days can be added due to, um, whether delays that type of thing. I, I'm not privy to the information on how many days have been added and what the final completion date is.

Well, as everybody else, there's a lot of frustrated people out there that, you know, we had this big ribbon cutting and, uh. yeah why is it closed is what they're saying i would direct them to contact caltrans christian lukens is the public information officer and uh caltrans district six that's kind of useless i can tell you when when you tell that to somebody they don't accept that very well yeah it's a caltrans project yeah nothing to report

I do have one quick item. Last council meeting, we had a presentation on Prop 64 with Tulare County Office of Ed, said that I was going to have an item on the agenda for this week. Did not happen, and it's because we did not receive the contract from the state. We did receive that today, and so next agenda, it should be on the agenda.

Nothing to report. Madam Clerk?

Nothing to report.

nothing to report nothing to report nothing further thank you uh getting ready for next week uh transfer everybody to the opening of the shelter so we're doing the last fixes and repairs and stuff that we need to get ready that's it nothing to report nothing to report another nightmare

and uh mr mondale before i give you the last word can i touch on a couple of things you're the mayor is um you know a couple weeks ago we had the passing of jerry salts one of taleri's uh center uh steve's i said say this right centurions yeah i think if i say that name right yes i heard over and of course um just been a a uh you know, long-time fixture of our community and of course, Bud Mount passing with that. So with that, as we close out the meeting, we'll just close out in recognition towards Jerry Saltz. And the last item I just wanted to say real quick, because I missed it earlier, was our Tulare Boys tenure back from the Cal Ripken World Series didn't come home with that championship this time, but they came home with wonderful stories and memories and worked very hard. So welcome back our Tulare Baseball Association. Good to have the safe trip. And it was wonderful to hear a lot of the boys' stories of the wonderful baseball games.

Mr. Mondale. No comments.

Hal Hallstein, Okay, so with that is, as we said, will what we're going to do real quick as i'll do a quick moment of silence and and memorial for Jerry salts and but now. Thank you. And with that, we'll go to item 12 recess to close session to discuss the following public employee performance evaluation per government code 54957.

Thanks for putting them in the next time. Tell us we'd have to.

We're reconvening as counsel, there is nothing to report from close session artillery city council meeting is adjourned.