City Council - Regular Meeting

I want to see legacy in the alternate.

Okay, Mayor, whenever you're ready, we do have a quorum in council chambers.

Okay, thank you for that. Okay, welcome everyone. We are going to get started. Let me know if you guys can hear me okay. Yes, we can hear you. Okay, great. Okay, so I'm going to just quickly explain, just say a little blurb that I have to read off because I'm joining via Zoom.

So Mayor, if you want to go ahead and call it to order, then you can call the meeting to order. Sorry.

Monday, April 20th by 48 p.m. So I will be participating remotely tonight under the just cause rules of the Brown Act as approved under Senate Bill 707. I will have my camera on at all times and understand that all votes will be taken via roll call.

And then there's a statement at the bottom of the script as well.

Okay. Okay. There are, oh, there are no individuals 18 years of age or older present in my room or at my remote location. Yeah. So I'm in my home office and I would just be here. So thank you for allowing me to participate by Zoom. I'm not feeling 100%. So I thought it'd be best if I stayed home and did this via Zoom. So I'm glad that we have that option. So we're going to go ahead and get started. Can we do roll call, please?

Okay. Council Member Pichet?

Present.

Council Member Morales? Vice Mayor Deanda? Yeah. And Mayor Stephens?

Here.

Thank you.

Okay. And then let's see. Let me ask Council Member Pichet if you can lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you for that. Sorry about that. I could not hear you guys. I think you were off your mic. So let's go ahead and get started. And our let me let me just make sure that I have my agenda here ready to go. Sorry about this, guys. This is the first time I'm actually running a meeting from my house. I'm a little behind. Okay. Okay, so we're going to start with Council business first policy framework for fiscal year 2026 to 27 budget development, can we have a staff report, please.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the Council, members of the public, staff. It's so wonderful to see so many people attending what is the beginning of our budget meetings. As we've said before, it is important to make sure that people participate in this process. We are not dealing with the money of the city, we are dealing with the money of the taxpayers and the ratepayers. So it is our role to be good stewards of those public funds. So today we have about 40 minutes to start the budget conversation. And it begins with ensuring that we staff have a good understanding of the framework that you want to use as we begin to crunch numbers. The intention is to have this direction plus other direction that is provided by the numbers that we have to use the month of May. to collect budgets from the various departments, make sure that we're meeting our goals so that we can present to you a budget in the month of June. We'll present it to you in two different occasions so that it is adopted by the end of the month of June so that we can comply with the state of California requirements that we have a balanced budget on July 1st. So today I will not be asking specific questions or directions on, for example, line items that actually will come much later. For now, what I want to make sure, though, is that we have a good understanding on the policy level direction, your policy vision behind the budget. So if I could start. There are two problem funds. We have the water fund and we have the general fund. The water fund is about $21 million underwater. That means we have a structural deficit of $21 million. This is, of course, in addition to the rate that we have to approved originally. I had shared with you my very naive idea to bring these back in December. Then the council pushed back and said, no, bring them in the fall. Well, we're bringing them to you in about a month because they're that important. At that point in time, I did not have an appreciation on how bad our deficit was in water. And now that we know, obviously, the sooner that we can get those rates to you, the better. So the policy direction is that we want to make sure that moving forward with the water fund, we eliminate the costs that are not covered by the water rate. In concept, our water fund is supposed to be an enterprise fund, meaning it pays for itself. In reality, that particular fund has not paid for itself since 2018. So for about eight years, we've been running in the red, not necessarily addressing the fact that it was no longer an enterprise fund. One of the things you're going to hear me say quite a bit during the budget processes, someone always pays. So when a fund, and it doesn't matter which one, when a fund is in the red, it means that the money is coming from somewhere or somebody always pays. So in this particular case, one would make the assumption that as we have been running into the red since 2018, that probably the general fund paid. So these two conversations are connected. Our general fund is in bad shape and it's not one thing, but a number of things. Almost like death by a thousand paper cuts in this particular case. Madame Clerk, could you go to the second to the next slide, please? So here is where I have basically asked you for in the waterfront two policy directions. The first one is moving forward. I eliminate the costs not covered by the new rate. Meaning if the new rate can only cover a $2 million operation, then I stay at that $2 million versus what we've been doing before, which is we just spend. Number two is that you want me to include the 20.7 deficit or loan in parentheses. It's not really a loan. We never took the steps necessary to make it into a loan, but it is a loan. And so need to pay that back to the general fund. So let me stop with the water fund. Those are the two policy level directions that I need from the council. If you disagree, then obviously we won't use these two policy pieces as our framework. If you want to change anything, this is the right time to do it so that when we bring numbers back to you, they reflect your general vision for the water fund conversation. And I'll stop there.

Okay, thank you for that, city manager. Okay, so let me check in with our council. Any questions or comments, discussion?

Yes, I have questions whenever.

Okay, go ahead, council member. I believe that's Morales, right? Go ahead.

So the two policy questions, which is the water fund, As we're looking at eliminating, what does that mean? What are the alternatives? Where does that put the city? Where does that put the residents? Where does that put the employees? On the general fund piece, on the second column, I do want to talk about the reserve percentage. Not necessarily because we still are uncertain about our finances. Do we absolutely need to be at the highest rate? Can we look at different options? If so, what does this mean? Previously, we created a five-year plan. Obviously, it may be invalid by now. But because we have so much uncertainty and it will have a direct impact on our employees, I look to look at different options for that. Again, not necessarily 20% maybe this year. Maybe that could be pushed out to next year. A few cities that I'm aware of, not a lot of cities have a 20%. So I'd like to look at that a little bit more.

So just to make sure I'm understanding, for the water fund, we currently have a 20% reserves. And what you're indicating, Councilwoman, is as we crunch numbers, we show some flexibility. Could you give me a sense of what that flexibility could be?

It could be anywhere from 10 to 15. I mean, the city of Hollister has a small budget in comparison. When you're looking at a 10% or 15% versus a 20%, that translates into a lot in terms of impact to our employees and our community in terms of what we do in terms of service. So I would like to see what those numbers are and the impacts. I think at the end of the day, when we're talking about numbers, you know, that translates to something, whether it be positions, services. We need, in order for us to make a sound decision, we need to understand the impact on the analysis and what that translates into.

Yes. So generally speaking, one of the rules that I have been using is 1 million equals to four full-time positions. So I want to be very transparent. That is what we're talking about here, is 1 million equals about, roughly depending on the position, but it's about FTEs. So let me come back to the reserves, if that's okay, under the general fund, because we have a similar conversation under the general fund, and I will try to persuade you away from the 15, the 10 to 15%. Obviously it's a policy decision and we will do as you wish, but I would like to provide some additional insight.

And city manager and council member Morales, can I just clarify, just make sure that we, that, we have the question really clear from Council Member Morales. Are you asking specifically about reserves for the Water Fund or for the General Fund or for both?

For both.

Okay. Any other questions, Council Member Morales?

I think if you're looking at Are you looking at the general fund asked right now and wanting questions or comments right now? Not yet.

I wanted to just provide an opportunity for you to ask questions about the water fund. Okay. I can continue if you want.

Let me check in with the other council members to see if there's other questions with the rest of the council, other questions from other council members. Council Member Pichet, any questions?

Mayor Mrakas, i'd like to hear more about the presentation before we ask question on okay and then vice mayor de anda any other any questions from you comment yeah yes, thank you mayor so for the general fun, I was wondering if we can put aside. Mayor Mrakas, money for Community land trust.

We can definitely do that. So in fact, what I like to do after the presentation is I definitely would like to get some direction from the council as to what are some of the priorities that you want to see in the budget. The budget document at the end of the day, it's a policy document. So one of the things that I like to say is a policy is nice and great, but it doesn't mean anything until you put it in the budget. Because without money, policies are just nice for, you know, interesting conversations, academic conversations. When you put money attached to an idea, now we have a program. Now we have deliverables and we have accountability. So let me add that. Okay. All right. So let me jump to the general fund. So the general fund is in green and the principles, the general direction that I would like to get from the council is that revenues equals predictable, consistent funds. So another way to look at it is predictable and consistent taxes. That means property taxes, sales taxes, hotel tax. These are the numbers that we know are coming, that we can, to some level of certainty, forecast. These are not surprises. These are not one-offs. This is not COVID or ARPA money. This is not a grant. This is not a loan. These are taxes. So I urge the council to provide direction that our revenues will equal our expenditures another way of saying the same thing is we will live within our means if we bring 50 million dollars in revenue that's what we spend 50 million and as as logical as that thought may be let me urge you to look at how we actually have been spending historically that is not how we've done it We spend what we spend, and then we swipe our credit card. I'm asking you to stop swiping credit cards. I'm asking you to allow me to balance the budget with only the revenues that we have, without going into reserves, without going into fund balances, without hoping and praying that we're going to get a grant. I'm trying to run the city like a business. And part of being a successful business is to live within your means. Also, that's the way that successful households manage their finances. You live within your means. Second, or number four. Yes, I would like to urge the council to protect the 20% reserve. And I think that our finance director is probably the most eloquent person to describe why this is important, especially now for Hollister. Ms. O'Connell.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council Members, Jessica O'Connell, Director of Finance, for the record. Thank you for allowing me to present on the reserves and how important reserves are to a city. The city reserve plays a crucial role in ensuring fiscal stability, protecting public services, and maintaining strong credit standing. While the City has already used approximately $4 million in reserves to support operations, continuing this practice presents significant risks. With current reserves near $11 million, roughly 20% of annual expenditures, further drawdowns would weaken the City's financial position and reduce flexibility to respond to emergencies. Key points. Budget reserves are designed for unexpected emergencies, recession impacts, and natural disasters, not day-to-day operational needs. Relying on reserves for reoccurring costs masks structural budget issues and delays necessary long-term financial solutions. The City is already on SMP credit watch with negative implications, reflecting serious concern from rating agencies. Continued reserve depletion increases the likelihood of a downgrade. A credit downgrade raises borrowing costs for future capital projects, placing greater financial burden on the city and its residents. Rebuilding reserves once drawn down is extremely difficult and often requires program cuts or new revenue sources over multiple years low reserves reduce the city's capacity to respond to economic shocks legal liabilities or unexpected cost pressures. Prolonged structural deficits and reserve depletion can trigger increased auditor scrutiny and negative attention from bond analysts. Maintaining reserves at or above recommended levels, typically in the state of California, is in the range of 15% to 25% of expenditures. This signals strong fiscal management and is essential to protecting the city's long-term stability. To maintain fiscal health, protect community services, and avoid further credit rating deterioration, the city must stop relying on reserves for operational expenses and take immediate steps to address the underlying structural imbalance. Thank you.

So council members, number one, let me emphasize, this is 100% policy direction, and it's completely up to this body to determine whether we stay at 20 or go somewhere else. Having said that, it is the administrators, the finance director, myself's duty to emphasize not only how important reserves are, but also to highlight our precarious situation. We know as of two weeks ago that our bonds for the redevelopment agency had gone from 2.5 to 5%, which means our credit card just got more expensive. We also know that two years ago, our sewer bonds increased in rates. We know we are not a credit worthy organization. Therefore, if a fire happens, if an earthquake happens, if an act of God of any sort happens, The only thing we have are the reserves. The idea that we're going to run to a lender and ask for money, not likely. And we are 100% accountable for being in the situation. We are late in our audits. Again, if anybody's to blame, it is the city manager's office. But it doesn't take away from the fact that we are not credit worthy. And for that reason, to the degree that we can is to urge you to protect the 20% reserve. Let me continue. Also would like your authorization to continue realigning the city. There are a number of efficiencies that I would like to put in place. There are more mergers that we could apply. There are management level positions that we could eliminate, but I will not go there unless of course you say it's okay to do that. We also want to make sure that the $3 million deficit that we have right now, $3.7 million deficit that we have right now is something that will be shown in the next budget, which means that I'm already taking from the top. Let me run that off to $4 million, which means that on day one, I'm already taking from the top $4 million in order for us to cover the deficit that we have as of June 30th of this year. Number seven, I'm asking to allocate anywhere between two to six million dollars for economic development initiatives. So any logical person would be saying, well, hold on a second. On the one hand, you're saying that you're cutting. And on the other hand, you're saying that you want to put money. So let me explain that. The city of Hollister has an expense problem. We spend more than what we bring. So, for example, in 23, we brought 60, we spent 59. That's good. In 24, we brought 54 and we spent 59 mil. That's not good. In 25, we brought 58 and we spent 59. And this year we brought 52 and we're expecting to spend 55. Again, we spend beyond our means. So I would like to include that as part of for all purposes and expenditure for the next year. That makes us poor. All right. So how do we change that? Well, we can cut and cut and cut. That's not the type of conversation that I want to have with the unions. That's not the type of conversation that I want to have with you. Every year bringing cuts. The only way to solve poverty is through money. The only difference between a poor person and a rich person is money. So economic development is how cities make money. That is how we're going to get out of this hole. This hole, we cannot cut everyone. We will not be able to provide services. And even when we talk about enterprise funds, there's only so much that we can expect from a community, especially when there are a significant number of low-income families. So economic development is how we start making money. But you can only make money if you invest money. It's not going to happen by us sitting around and thinking lovely thoughts about what we can do to attract businesses or to grow micro businesses on how to create workforce ladders and how to create living wages and the list goes on. These things happen when you invest. So I'm asking for a significant investment of anywhere between two to six million dollars. In addition to that, I'm also asking for $3 million to be spent on beautification of our city, whether it's our streets, whether it's our open land with lots of weeds and tumbleweeds going across the highway, whether it is our industrial area looking pretty outdated instead of with murals, instead of seeing flower pots, instead of seeing crosswalks that are actually visible. We have what we have. And what I'm asking is for funds so that we can intentionally work in beautifying our city. When you come into the city of Hollister, this past weekend I ended up with a bunch of hikers from the East Coast who were telling me that they were familiar with Pinnacles. It was a group of about six kids who were telling me how Pinnacles is lovely. And I kept saying, well, you pass Hollister. They said, no, we didn't. So unless you know, you don't know that you're passing Hollister. So we need to brand our city. We need to make it into a destination. We need to be a player in the regional area. We are next to one of the richest areas in the world. We're next to the Silicon Valley. We need to bring some of those funds. We need to be pretty. Number nine, this is more of an administrative request is that rescinding the resolution that you adopted in September in which you authorize $2.4 million loan from the sewer water. So from sewer to put the money into general fund. So then you would take it from general fund and start putting in all these little funds. Can I put the language on your table? It was well-intentioned. It was well-intentioned. The problem is we don't have audits. We don't have real numbers. So why would I want to take from a fund, put it in the general fund, and then make little loans to everybody else? It just seems overly complicated when we don't have real numbers. We may have to go there in a few years. We like to think that in about a year and a half, we'll start getting some of the audit work. And then we would know. But for now, I'm asking you to rescind that particular resolution. Again, administrative in nature, but important nevertheless. So let me stop. I've given you a lot. And so please ask questions.

So city manager Cortes, I'm thinking that let's just continue on. So I'm going to ask the council to just make note of their questions if they have questions on this slide. I think we just go through the rest of the slides and then we come back and then just ask questions afterwards.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

So the next slide, Madam Clerk. The next slide, it's basically the numbers of my narrative. These are the numbers that back up my narrative, indicating that our last audited year was 21-22. After that, we have not had audits. And again, we're working on it. In about a year and a half, we'll start getting some of those numbers. And in 23, 24, that's when we started having a baby deficit, bottom line deficit. And the reserves is something that we've been using throughout. That baby deficit in 23 became more significant in 24, and it doubled in 25. And I expect that if we do nothing, it will double next year, and then it will double again. If we do nothing, we are not being good fiduciary representatives of the people's monies. So these are the numbers. You also have a much more complicated Excel sheet that I put on the dais, which is more detailed, but this is the summary. The next slide. is where I also wanted to point out where I hope I can take the city to. So in 25-26, we're expecting a 3.6 million, actually it's 3.7, but 3.7 deficit. With the appropriate framework, with the hard decisions that need to be made this year, I would like to be at a neutral, meaning zero, it's balanced. Moving forward, as we proceed and we pursue aggressive economic development strategies where, for example, our hotels are full, not just one time during the year, but four times out of the year, eight times out of the year, then we will begin to see a positive trend in 27, continuing 28, and continuing in 29. I don't want to have, I don't want to present to you budgets that are negative, nor do I want to present budgets to you that are neutral, because that means we're not growing. We're not bringing businesses into our area. We're not helping our micro businesses grow. I would like to bring positive trends to you as we move forward. Next slide. All I tried to do here was to outline what I consider the predictable and constant funding. Again, these are taxes. It's property taxes. It's sales. It's franchise fees. It's interest, hotel tax, and so on. So again, just a reminder, I am not including grants. I'm not including special monies or anything like that. The next slides. Answer the question on how did we get here? So let me be very, very clear. There is no one entity that is responsible for getting us here. There were a number of factors. Salaries and wages are definitely one of them. Salaries and benefits are the biggest expense for any city. We are not different. We are not unique. We are not an aberration. That's what it costs to run cities. So we have obligations that we have had to fulfill with our unions. We have three unions. We have SCIU, we have police, we have fire. What we did is we went ahead and enlisted their COLAs since 2015, so 10 years worth of COLAs. It is important before you jump to conclusions is to make sure that you see that as in context. The next slide gives you the context of what San Benito County, Watsonville, and Gilroy were doing. So one could say that, yes, Gilroy is definitely more conservative with their funding. Their COLAs are 1.5. Yes, we can say that the city of Hollister and San Benito are not as conservative. This is not a judgment. This is not saying this is good or bad. These are just facts. These are the COLAs that the city has been approving in previous years. The next slide. shows you another big chunk of change that we use, the next one, which is health insurance. Health insurance is not cheap. So just to give you an example, whether it's mid-management, whether it's an executive, whether it's a confidential or HPOA or FHIR or SEIU, you're looking at anywhere between $3,000 and $3,800 if it's employee plus family. So these are high expenses. That's how it is in the state of California. Medical bills are expensive. This became an interesting exercise. We decided to minimize the amount of information here. We simply wanted to show you that, again, the city does spend a pretty penny making sure that we cover our employees. And in most cases, we cover them fully. And it is not something that employees are necessarily aware of, which brings me, I think, to the next slide. The next slide, what I try to do is to show you what the costs for positions are. And what I did is I used me, my position, as kind of the bottom. All of these other positions cost the city that much. Now, let me be very clear. This is not just salary. It's salary plus benefits, unfunded liabilities, incentives per MOUs required over time, recruitment incentives, et cetera. So these are the fully loaded costs. The city manager is the 34th best paid position in the city. And you have police, fire, non-represented. There's a bunch of individuals whose positions are expensive due to the not only salary, but also benefits, retirement, overtime, and so on. Now, the next slide, and I'll take a brief breath, the next slide is simply a comparison on how we compare to Gilroy and Watsonville. Again, we're all in the same general area. It's about 65. We're not spending more money than our neighbors. We're spending about the same. Having said that, Gilroy and Watsonville are much larger economies, and so they can afford more than we do. So when the question is, how do we spend money? Salaries and benefits. Can you go to the next slide because that's the consultants.

Oh, those are all the slides.

Oh, forgive me. I might have made a mistake then. We also looked at consultants and made sure that we knew the kind of funds that we had been spending on consultants. And it's been trending down. That's the good news. So I'm looking at the current year. We're at half. We expect to be at half of what we were last year. Last year, we were about 8.3%. This year, we're about 4.8%. on a high year like 22 we were at 15 mil so we do spend money on consultants and we spend a lot of money on salaries and we spend a lot of money on colas and we spend a lot of money on health benefits and retirement etc that's how business is conducted in the private in the public sector again i'm not judging that it's good or bad i'm not saying that people don't deserve the colas we live in california it's a very expensive state what i'm saying however is that I'm trying to live within our means. If we make $55 million, I would like to stay and spend not one penny more. And with that said, I think you probably have questions.

Okay. Thank you for that presentation. And so now I will check back in with Council. We started with some questions initially. Let me check back in. And I have a small a window on my computer where I can see who's like raising their hand or asking. So I'm just gonna go down the line and just check. So let me check first with Council Member Morales. Do you have any more questions? Ah, now I can see better. Okay, Council Member Morales, any further questions?

Yes, I'm wondering if we can get the that slide that talks about consultants, because that was one of my questions. So let me just start with So first, thank you for the presentation. I know that it was probably a lot of work and a lot of research. to you and Jessica. So first I want to start talking about the Hollister Union obligations. I just want to point that overall between on the average between 15 through 24, it was about a 7, 3.75% and a 4.3 and a 4.38%, slightly higher between 20 and 24, which is about the normal cola right if you look at the um cpi it's about three percent depending on the year some years they were bigger some years they were smaller but on average if you look at over the course of of the various years you're looking at about a three to four percent um wage increase um where i really had a couple of questions was the the um the positions. So my understanding of unfunded accrued liability was like your sick leave, your vacation, um, The recruitment cost, I'm not really sure how that's calculated. I know certain classifications, you know, it might cost $10,000 to recruit an individual, especially if they're in law enforcement. So I wanted if you can kind of go into your definition of the unfunded accrual liability, which includes the pension, how that's calculated. Are you looking at The overall cost so if somebody was here for 40 years or 30 years are you looking at the total cost of the retirement because that could be a million dollars. The required overtime and the recruitment and i'm wondering if we can get these separated by base versus total costs because it's very. I don't want to say misleading, but these are huge numbers and there's a lot of costs associated. If somebody were to go, and a lot of people do, go online, Transparent California, you can look up any single individual and look at the wage. Those numbers are not these numbers.

That's correct.

These are costs.

These are costs to the city. These are not salaries.

So I'll pause there for that, if you wouldn't mind just answering some of those questions before I move on.

Yes, and I'll ask Director O'Connell to give you the specifics.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales. Jessica O'Connell, Director of Finance, for the record. What you mentioned in the equation for the total cost, vacation, salary, that's compensated absences. UAL is the liability for PERS, so they're two different items. And so what's included in this calculation is the unfunded accrued liability that the city must pay every year. And we have a choice to pay it per pay period or once a year. And it's preferable to pay it once a year because the cost is less. But I believe there were some past situations where it was missed. And so they pay it per pay period for the city of Hollister. Hope that answers your question.

So I guess my point is if you were to look at somebody with a base salary and these numbers, you're talking about anywhere from a 30 to $100,000 difference

It actually, the longer you've been a member of CalPERS, the more money we spend on your retirement. So PEPRA folks are cheaper than classic. So in fact, let me use me since that way we don't have confidentiality issues here. If I were a classic member, it probably wouldn't be that amount.

I'm PEPRA, so I am cheaper.

So I guess I'm asking in order for us to, because I guess I'm, let me just say this very clearly and maybe we can ask, you know, because I think if I were anybody in the community, I would want to know who's making $700,000, right, a year in the city of Hollister. I'm wondering if we can get a little kind of go in depth into some of these codes without violating confidentiality and or we can get you know somebody to some of the yeah I'd like to know like specially fire maybe police to talk about because we're also talking about required overtime when it's required or mandatory overtime our employees don't have a choice you have to do that so I'll give an example. In certain jurisdictions, especially 24-7 facilities, you have mandatory overtime. People want to instead go home and rest. So I want to understand these numbers a little bit better because these numbers are huge. And I think our community also wants an explanation of what these numbers mean. If you were to ask people in my workplace and where I work, they would gladly say I'd rather have a day off than to have mandatory overtime because some haven't had, they've had mandatory overtime for over six years. So I think an explanation would be best. A discrepancy of 100, the difference between the base and what somebody makes is significant. Like a management analyst, the base rate is, what, $40, $50 an hour?

Around, right? I don't know hourly. I can tell you what's a year, so it's about 130.

So to go from 130 to 400, because you have a management analyst here, to go from 130 to $408,000 in required overtime, that that begs for me the question what is those what is so required of the individual to have to work almost three point five percent right like so much of overtime that it's jumping your base salary from 130 to 408 that's so in this particular case actually it's not overtime um it is uh calpers so these numbers came from an excel sheet that shows per person

all 179 employees, exactly how much we cost. So I'm more than happy to make that available to you. We can put it online if you want. I mean, I don't know to what degree the public has the right to know those levels of details, but I believe we're in government and we don't have private lives and it's okay to put things in websites. So these numbers came from an Excel sheet where we can show exactly how much each of these positions costs The public has the right to know. I agree.

And I think if we... And I want to talk about kind of mandatory overtime and what does that mean and what does that translate? Because it goes to being able to hire additional folks to relieve folks to also drive down the cost. So when I'm thinking back... police, fire, maybe public works. When there's things that occur outside of our control, we don't have control of when people have to respond, right? To a fire, to the flooding, to something else. These are expenses that we have to incur. I don't think it's fair to say somebody's making $300,000 because they were required to respond to a crisis or required to respond to an emergency. And thus, we're Basically, I don't want to make the community feel like we're blaming our employees for us to have these, you know, the salaries that we have. Some of these are a response to a lot of the situations that have occurred over the last couple of years.

Oh, let me clarify, Councilwoman, not at all. I don't think that our salaries... are the reason why we didn't submit audits. I don't think our salaries have anything to do with the fact that my predecessors balanced the budget by using reserves and fund balances. So the accounting decisions that folks made have nothing to do with people's salaries. I do not place a judgment or an opinion as to what the salaries should or shouldn't be. These are facts. These numbers came from an Excel sheet. I don't place an opinion as to whether this is good or bad. This is, however, the cost of conducting business. So when people say, ay, pobrecitos, we should help so and so, please understand that there's a cost associated with it. The good news for me is I just basically drive the car, right? But it is my obligation to give you the data. This is what positions cost, not what they make. These are not salaries. I don't make $333. This is how much I cost. And when you make decisions about budgetary programming, for example, Please understand that it's not just the salary. It's everything else that comes attached to that salary. It is the fact that in certain areas, we hire someone for a whole year, year and a half before that person is able to do that job. It is expensive to hire folks in government. I worked in government for 40 years. I'm a proud government person. I was a union member for half of that. So again, there's no judgment here. It is what it is. This is the data.

Okay, thank you. No, I understand that. I think I just want to make sure that it's very clear and transparent what these things mean because a lot of people don't understand. They don't understand what classic means or PEPPER means or unfunded liability or that even though you're not you don't have your your you know sick time or your vacation time you still carry that unfunded liability that's what that means it doesn't mean like they have it it just means that that's when they separate from the city it will have to be paid out not that they're getting it right now every single year um i want to talk a little bit about the resolution resentment because when we were having the audits previous city manager said we cannot have negative balances that it was as a result of our audits that it was brought to their to the city's attention that we had negative balances in order for us to rectify that we needed to move money from one account to have the rest of the accounts be made be made whole so that you have appropriate accounting principles from not having and moving and carrying over negative balances year after year So now we're hearing some, I'm hearing something different now. So this was, again, as a result of our audits and having so many negative balances being carried over from year to year, now we're going to be sending, can you, can you? Yes, Director O'Connell will explain.

good evening uh council member morales jessica o'connell director of finance for the record um i understand and yes um you know jumping right in and and taking a look at hollister's financial passed and without audits. I'm hesitant to go ahead and put this resolution into place, but I almost want to table this and maybe discuss it with the current auditor and see what he recommends or suggests, being that there are several other funds that are in the negative standing since this resolution was put to the dais. And I, you know, I can get back to you with more answers. But I really don't have any clarification at this point in time.

Okay, and then I also wanted to two to $6 million for economic development, for initiatives and staffing, and then $3 million for beautification. If we look at either a $5 to $9 million investment, which is the range for both, depending on what number you use, whether it's 52 or $60 million, that's almost 10% of our budget for beautification and for economic development. While I understand the economic development driver, that's 10% of our overall budget, which is huge. I think the other comment I want to make was, Not knowing what the plan is, that's a significant investment. Without a plan, while we have a lot of economic uncertainties, while we still don't have our finances audited, while we still don't know how much money we have and potentially impacts to the community and impact to the employees. Community equals services, right? Translates to services. The people that provide the services are employees. So if we are not able to provide services to our community through our employees, You can have a beautiful town, but if people get into an accident or if the water pipe breaks because of our infrastructure, Hollister is kind of outside. You have to intentionally want to come to Hollister. 10% of our overall budget during these uncertain times is a significant investment. Significant. without a plan. So that's, you know. And then lastly, I'll just say, you know, I understand 20%. I try to look up. I'd like this information. How many cities out of the 482 cities in California, how many of them have 20% based on just basic search? It says 82 out of 482 cities have a general fund reserve of at least 17%. Don't know if that's accurate or not, but I would like information. What I do know is that only certain cities have a 20%, and those are cities like Mountain View or Los Altos, and they have a lot of money. So while I understand preserving and defending the 20% number in the reserves, Without the financial security and understanding what we have and what we're going to find out later, because that's what we do know is we've been uncovering a lot of things over a period of time, that's a significant investment in reserve without having a lot of uncertainty. So if we're not bringing in revenue and our costs are exceeding, The amount of money is less every year. If we're putting the maximum away, that's less money that we have to spend every year. That translates into services, that translates into employees. So at the end of the day, unless we have a skeleton for the city to operate and maybe economic development, what are the services that the city is going to provide? So I'll just end there.

Okay. Thank you, Council Member Morales. I'm going to just go down the line from what I can see in my screen. So I'm going to go to Council Member Fichet. Questions or comments?

Okay. Yeah. So the city manager gave us some accounting. Can we make this available to the public? Okay. Is there any way that this can be shown on screen anytime soon?

Oh, sure. We can put it on the website. You know, one step that has worked very well for me in previous cities, Director O'Connell, is we actually create a tab in our website that is dedicated only for budgetary actions and items. So if we could create that, if we had OpenGov, that's what it would be. We don't have OpenGov. I don't know if Tyler has the ability to do that, because that could be something that we can easily include. We have given that information to our three unions, by the way.

Okay.

And, and can I can I just clarify councilmember fish a and city manager what document did you just show can just maybe name the title of it but, but also, I think surely. You know, adding any any adding any public document to our public website seems appropriate, but can you just highlight what that document was.

It's called the 10 years cash position by fund fiscal year 2017 to 2026. And actually, I would like to ask our IT department to lead on that if we can make sure to create a space in our website called, I don't know, fiscal year 26-27 budget, and we can add to it.

Okay, thank you. Go ahead, Councilmember Bichet.

Okay, so we've gone through quite a bit, right? We've talked about public safety, police and fire, the service employee, international union, public works. And the reason I'm looking at that document specifically is not just because it's on the dias, but it's pretty stark. Between 2021 and 2023, our revenues went up and our expenses jumped significantly. So I like the public to be able to see that because they would be able to.

We're going to show it in the slide because that one is.

Those numbers. Well, we have a simplified version.

Yes.

That one. Okay, because when it comes to businesses, it's, it's, it's complicated sometimes, right? Where it's been complicated for 16 months, and it hasn't uncomplicated itself the whole time I've been here, at least. But your revenues minus your expenses equal your owner's equity. When you look at our revenues, and you subtract out our expenses, we just don't really have anything left over but negatives. And when I look at specifically what we started with, which was the water, it sounds like the water, the water that's coming out of your tap when you turn it on, clean water comes out, right? That's what we're talking about. Hasn't functioned as an enterprise fund since 2018. And so can you redefine an enterprise fund for us

So an enterprise fund is supposed to be an enterprise that is self-sustaining, meaning that it brings revenues equal to its expenditures and then some. Usually a rate would have several components. personnel, O&M, debt, CIP, administration, reserves. Those are the six components of just your standard rate. When that rate is not capturing those six components, you'll have a deficit.

Okay, because that one fund is, by your estimation, $21 million in the red, meaning we have a deficit of...

of this green year, 26.4.

And since 2018, we haven't really done much about it until, what was it, a month ago when we begrudgingly, we didn't want to raise the water rates. It would be awesome if we could just leave them alone. But the cost for us to obtain water, to condition it and deliver it has gone up significantly. costs have gone up significantly since COVID. The value of the dollar has gone down. What do you mean, Rudy? How does the value of the dollar go down? When you put more dollars into the economy, where does the value of the dollars, where does it get its value, that newly printed money? from your pocketbooks, all of that new money dilutes the value of the dollar. So it takes that many more dollars to do anything. And that includes create a public service like clean water. So since 2018, we didn't take action and we're not running that enterprise fund like an enterprise fund. How many years has it been since 2018?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

That's just one fund, but that's the net net. We're $21 million in the red due to inaction of the leadership of this town. So that's on us. I'm going to put it on us. The ones that are up here right now, people said I was crazy for running for this position. I'm starting to figure out why. So we're 21 million, and that's just water. We can't beat up on police and fire because, let's face it, they keep us safe. They see red asphalt. They see things that create PTSD. It's a very uncomfortable position. They signed up for it, I know, and they're paid for that. At the same time, it doesn't look like we're spending that much more. Everybody's about 65%. What I'm kind of getting at, and I don't really have questions, I'm just gonna make the statement, your town needs to run like a business. The revenues minus the expenses, we've got to figure out how to make some kind of owner's equity. And what I mean by owner's equity is we gotta have something to show for it at the end of the day. We gotta have something in the general fund. It's time for us to eat some top ramen with some hot dogs in it, go back to our college days, drink our own water out of the tap. And every once in a while when we wanna splurge, we can throw a hard boiled egg in there. So that's kind of where I'm coming from. When it comes to like social, you know, endeavors, I'm very progressive. But when it comes to fiscal things, I'm way conservative. And I'm very, very, very certain that we need to get fiscally conservative. So I've heard the previous city manager explain because I've gone to enough. I sat right where you're sitting. I sat at home where our mayor is right now, not feeling so good. I heard him say certain decisions, not a good idea. It's not a good idea to do this or that. And I'm not going to bag on the last council. They made the best decisions they could based on the information that they had. We haven't passed an audit. It looks like five, six years. We just passed. What was it? 2019, 2020. We got four more to go. How can you make sound decisions if you don't have sound numbers? So I'm not going to go beat on the last council, but. I've heard just about enough, and it really is high time that we tighten our bootstraps. We're all in this together. And I do actually have one question. If we don't do what I'm thinking that we need to do in light of all this information, what happens next?

Okay, so let's look at the numbers for a second.

The credit rating is going down.

Yeah, it's already down.

Standard and poor.

Yes.

We don't look that great. We're probably not going to have any money in a rainy day fund if we have another Loma Prieta, another 1989. We all came together, by the way. I don't know if you guys remember that. Miller, the beer company, gave out free bottled water and you could get it for free. They just gave it to you. It was kind of cool, but we all came together. But if we don't have any money in a rainy day fund, And our credit rating is not looking that good. What happens to the city ultimately? Are we talking chapter 11, 13?

Just to try to put it in the most simple terms here, we are no different than a household. What happens in a household where you make $1,000 a month, but you spend $1,500? Sooner or later, you have to file for bankruptcy because there are so many credit cards that you can swipe and there's so much money that you can take a 0% discount because you got it in the mail. I've been there. But the reality is this. You can only do for so long. At a certain time, you're just going to run out of money, run out of credit cards, run out of promotions, and you have to file for bankruptcy. I'm not saying that the city is at that point right now. But your question is, if we do nothing, Sure, if we do nothing, we'll probably have to go through bankruptcy. And at that point, we walk away from all of our obligations. We will have no obligations with the unions, no obligations with the county, no obligations with anybody. The only things that we get to continue paying is debt. So yeah, that would be a very bad day.

Okay. Well, it's really uncomfortable in here right now. I understand that. But between 21 and, well, basically the end of 22 to 23, our expenses went up drastically from $37,000 to nearly $60,000. Without losing... too many employees or any at all, how do we get from that 22, late 22 to mid 23, that 37 to 59? How do we get from that 59 back to 37? I know the money, it doesn't go as far as it used to. It lost 30%, 40% of its value. The dollar, everything just costs more. That's what happens, right? Everything just costs more. The cost of every good from water to everything costs more and honestly i'm surprised we're at 65% because we have to pay our police, we have to pay our firefighters. Because other municipalities will pay them and we need somebody to scrape us off the road, because we can't figure out how to go between 156 and California to five through through a roundabout we have to really just have to slow down with that but. How do we, is it easy, even possible to get from the nearly $60,000 in expenditures back down to like something reasonable, like a 40 or 45 million?

It is possible. It is painful. It is possible. And again, council members, there are different types of city managers out there. My brand is what it is. I make hard decisions. People don't hire me because I'm nice or they like me. They hire me because I make hard decisions. So in this particular case, yes, I mean, can we get you there? Of course we can get you there. But please understand that levels of service will suffer. We will have to minimize. We'll have to mitigate to the degree that we can. Is it possible? Of course it's possible. It's going to hurt, but it is possible.

Okay, it's going to hurt a little bit more than just some rotten top ramen. Okay, that's all I have.

Okay. Thank you, Council Member Pache. Vice Mayor DeAnda, questions, comments, please.

Yeah, I just have one quick question. So when it comes to the economic development plan that you have, Do you have a strategic plan in place or will you have a strategic plan in place? And for how many years and when will we have that?

We have a vision and I've shared with you, it's right behind me. This is Matt. I introduced it maybe about three meetings ago. We have the opportunities. you actually have one, two, three, four, five, five districts with its own identity, with its own composition, its own brand that would have potentially five different marquee events. Let's start with the events because it's easy. We already have one in the downtown. We have one event, the 4th of July. we need more of that one because when we meet with with the hotels what they said to us was we are only sold out one weekend one week out of 52 weeks in the year there's only one week oh There's only one week in which our hotels have no vacancy, and that is the 4th of July. Love it or hate it, the point is that that is the one time that in our city our hotels are sold out. If economic development is what you want, that's a beautiful thing. We want our hotels sold out. The same way that they're sold out, our restaurants are probably busy, and so are our bars.

So I've said it before, it's not one rally, it's five, it's four, it's eight, it's 10.

The more events that we do, the more economic development we bring, the more taxes we bring. We want people to come to our town on weekends and leave. That way they don't impact our parks, they don't impact our streets, they don't impact our schools. So being a tourist destination is a good thing. And this is not new. We're not inventing anything. There are plenty of cities that have very, very solid and profitable economic development strategies that are solely based on being a destination. Again, no impact Monday through Thursday. And yes, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you do have people in town and people complain about parking, et cetera. So that's just one example. Another example is the types of businesses. So one thing we know for a fact, this here is micro business heaven. There's so much business going on in the informal economy in the West Side. And there are many reasons for it. But the point is, if we're going to do a business incubator, if we're going to get into a partnership with Amazon, they've actually had those conversations with us. They want to help micro businesses to use Amazon more effectively. So that's low-hanging fruit. Now, it doesn't mean that it's for the entire city, and it could be. We also have our airport. The stuff that's happening in that airport is exciting. The technology that is being experimented on at that airport is amazing stuff. That's how you know you're in the Silicon Valley. Those are the things that are going to get us from poor to rich. It is not taxation. And cutting, yeah, sure, I can cut. But that's only going to get you so far. my our airport director said to me once we have a revenue problem amen to that we have a revenue problem that only economic development can solve unless you're going to be taxing people left and right but i don't think that that's the solution so we have a vision What we need now is community input. So one of the values that we use for economic development in the city moving forward is nothing for them without them. So if we're going to do something at the airport, we will engage the airport. Folks, if we're doing something in San Benito Avenue, we will engage the merchants. If it's the west side, we will engage la gente. Hay que saber qué es lo que ellos quieren para poder tener actividades y programas que de verdad tengan un impacto en esas familias. So nothing for them without them. That's where the plan is going to come in. All we have is a general sense, and then we're going to let the community, not consultants, the community guide the actual steps to implement those activities. So one of the models that we would like to use, for example, is, you know how we pay millions of dollars to consultants? And yet, when we engage the community in public forums, we don't pay them. We pay the consultants from Sacramento and Los Angeles, but we don't pay the people in this community who give us, in reality, better feedback. So part of economic development is let's start treating people with respect. If they're subject matter experts, they should get paid.

Okay. Thank you for that, City Manager and Councilmember DeAnda. Anything else? I mean, Vice Mayor DeAnda, anything else?

Mayor Stevens.

Go ahead, Councilmember Resendez. Thank you. Can I just say one quick thing?

You can say whatever you'd like.

You're the mayor. Thank you. I'm just going to change what I just said. I just want to officially say, because I know that you arrived a little bit late, and I just wanted to quickly congratulate you on finishing your doctorate program. So I'm going to call you Dr. Resendez, and I want to just ask everybody to just quickly indulge me in congratulating our council member for completing his doctorate program recently, and he is officially Dr. Roland Resendez. So, I mean, a quick round of applause. It'll be great. And then for the rest of the meeting, I will call you council member.

I did not know you were going to say that or else I would not have let you.

I was going to say it earlier, however.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you all.

Dr. Resendez, please proceed with your comment or question.

Thank you so very much. I really appreciate that. I do have some questions. First off, thank you everybody for being here tonight. Thank you to the staff for the very thorough presentation. I do see that we have legal here, so I do have like just a couple of questions for them, if that's okay, Ms. Thompson. I did get here a little bit late, I apologize. As far as procedure, we're going to allow the public to speak after this item, are we not?

Yes.

Thank you. Because I want to hear from the public. I always want to hear from the public. So I want to make sure that we're including them in this conversation, obviously. Oh, the question about the salaries, I know who's making $700,000 in this city because I asked that question before I came here. And I was kind of blown away by that, to be honest with you. So I did ask that question. So I thought the point that was brought up about like transparency Ms. Thompson, can we put that information out so the public can know who's making what? I've heard this word about breaking confidentiality and whatnot. Are we breaking confidentiality by saying this person who works for the city is making $700,000 a year?

Well, that information is already... That information is available publicly already on covered or on a transparent California and that, so the city provides that information to transparent California every year. So, and it is by name. So it has the person's name, their position and all their salary and benefits. It doesn't have all of the costs that city manager Cortez talked about, but it does have.

That's a wonderful point. And again, we have. that right, you as a council member can ask for that information. And Dr. Roland Resendez did ask for that before this meeting, so I can come prepared because I was pretty blown away by that. I'll be honest. I just think it's really important to get that information out there. And we also have to point out like we're getting this information from you. We always get the information from staff. We got it from the city manager in front of you. We're getting it from you guys now. So it's not solely us up here making this decision, but we're leaning on our staff members to get that. And I also want to point out that when I saw this, I did ask that we provide this to the unions as soon as we got this information. You answered that question. Thank you. I think it was Council Member Pache that brought that up. So thank you for providing that with our partners, the unions. My other question was, oh, as far as, again, logistics, we're not adopting or approving anything up here tonight. Ms. Thompson, that's going to happen with the budget approval. We're just getting a presentation. She's going to hear feedback from us, kind of get a feel of where we're at, and then she'll come back on June 30th when we adopt the budget, and that's when we make the decision to move forward with these decisions or not. And we can always change it up until that point, correct?

That's right. And city manager and the finance director just asking for your general direction on specific topics. Thank you.

So I just want to ease the tension in the room. That's what Council Member Poche said, which I loved your words, by the way. I love how you spoke tonight. Thank you for that. We're not adopting anything here tonight. We do this every year. And I remember this room being filled last year with employees, and it was the same exact presentation from the gentleman who was sitting there before you. And I remember that number, $4 million in debt. So I just want to kind of just like ease the tension in the room and just talk in facts, be realistic here, what we have to do as policymakers, as city council members, and just be honest with one another. I also want to point out, and I don't want to make it about me because I'm not a me person. Everybody that knows me, I'm a we person. I'm all about the community. I'm all about partnering. I'm not trying to grandstand, but I am very vocal. I am a fierce advocate for our community and our partners because I'm from here. I love Hollister. And I want to point out, and I just thought about this, looking at this, that I got to look at it again. I voted against the budget, not last year when the new mayor and the new council were up here. I voted for it. But I voted against the budget the other two years. And I don't have a problem blaming the Old City Council, Council Member Poche, because it was them that overspent. It was them that put us into a deficit. It wasn't this council. It was the old council. And I voted against the budget and I was screaming fire the entire time because... Anybody that knows numbers, anybody that has any fiscal responsibility or sense like you do would have seen this coming. I like how you said you're also very, I don't know, aligned with progressive issues and fiscally conservative because that defines me too and my position since I've been here. So I will point that out. Again, not to make it about me, but the other thing is, if we can just put up that slide that Council Member Pache put up, because it doesn't show all the history, and I just noticed it sitting up here. I think it goes back to 2000. God, I don't remember. There we go. That one right there. So when you guys take a look at this, this is pretty alarming to me. um in 2016 2017 we were spending 24 million 25 million the next year 29 million the next year 31 million the next year but we were still we weren't in the yellow we weren't in the deficit we weren't overspending 30 37 was the last year i'm gonna say it that ignacio velasquez and the old council was up here when mayor mia casey was elected, we went from $37 million to $59 million spending. After that, because it doesn't show you all of the back, so you guys have to look at this. Then it went to $59 million, $59 million, and when Mayor Roxanne Stevens, Council Member Dr. Roland Roussin, is that sitting up here in front of you, Councilwoman Deanda, Councilmember Rudy Pache were here, and they adopted the last budget. It went from 59 million the previous year to 55 million. And we had the conversation, the same exact conversation that we're having now, and we asked for your help then. Those of you that were here remember that. We asked for your help to partner with us. And the union did help us. They did work with us. They did partner with us. They took no raises last year. So I feel like we're having the same conversation again. And that's just the reality of what we're looking at when we have these numbers in front of us. I'm being very frank and very honest about that. So I just had those thoughts, but I do have some more. So give me one minute, please. When we look at overtime, the biggest overtime expense, again, we take very good care. If you want to go back to the fully loaded positions with our public safety, that is making them the highest amount of salaries here. I just want to say we take very good care and we take very serious. I'm a teacher. I serve the students in my classroom, in our community. My number one priority is safety. Safety, safety, safety. We take care of the citizens of Hollister and we take very good care of our police and fire. So when we talk about overtime, I've said this publicly, I am concerned. I am concerned about the amount of overtime in the fire department every single year. And I'm looking to partner with our partners at the union on how we can address that because it does come back year after year after year, about $3 million over budget. That's also something we should talk about. next uh the rescindment of the resolution again we're not rescinding a resolution tonight the city manager sitting here and she's looking to hear what direction we'd like to go but i do have that question that councilmember morales brought up as well so if you can director o'connell is it yes director o'connell please get back to us with that so we have um a clear direction on is that going to get us in trouble or not because that is information we received last year when you can.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

I'm just reading my notes. Thank you for bearing with me.

The policy about The 20% in the rating fund, that is not negotiable for me. I'll be very honest. Again, I'm fiscally conservative. That is for emergencies. That is for another Loma Prieta. When our community needs us to step up, we have to have that money in the savings so that we can... Again, ensure that they're taken care of. Our families, our friends, our neighbors, our kids. We have to have that 20% put away. Not negotiable for me. I'll be very honest with you. It doesn't make sense to lower our savings account just to spend more like the previous mayor and council did in the past because that's going to lead us to more problems long term and we don't want to ever be in that position. um i don't like how it was framed about blaming employees by councilmember morales that's never the intention i am a union president for the teachers i stand with the unions i understand that the employees don't get all of the information sometimes but i'm not here to point fingers and blame employees i'm here to ask for partnerships to strengthen our bond with them so that we can get through this together and but i gladly will point uh bad decisions from not this council but the council that was here previously uh oh the fact that we keep so we're looking at data right 65 65 i don't think it's fair for us to look at that data and compare us to gilroy or watsonville um when we don't know what the revenues look like it's just not painting an accurate picture if we're gonna make that depiction, then we need to know what the revenues look like. But I don't work for, I don't work for Gilroy. I don't work for Wattsville. I work for the people of Hollister. And that's who I'm focused on. So I don't even know why we're talking about that. I guess I kind of understand, but it just really doesn't paint the whole picture when we don't have the These numbers the revenues right and I do not like when people up here comparison Santa Clara county because we don't have that kind of money either let's be very realistic. Those are my only thoughts for right now, but it does come down to the spending, it was out of control during 2223 2324 and. I feel like we're just having the same conversation. Again, it's a hard, uncomfortable conversation, but I'm looking forward to working through this together in partnership with the community and our employees. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Dr. Resendez. And then I will just take the opportunity to make a few quick comments, and then I'm going to go to public comment. comment um we've gone over our what we had originally scheduled an hour but i think this is a very important conversation i'm glad that we all have the opportunity to be able to voice uh our uh questions as well as our opinions so i'm just gonna just say the bottom line i said this last year um i've said this in various meetings i've worked a lot um With our local business owners with our local just business community in general and other communities and just basically talked about. We have to be able to afford this, we have to be able to afford this, I mean that has to be our mantra like so whatever it is that we do we can't use the standard of does somebody deserve should we. You know prioritize this over that should we sure I mean, I think all I think that. in the best of times, we want to be able to reward everyone and give people what they deserve, what they need. At the end of the day, we have to come back to the standard of, can we afford this? So I want to keep this in mind. And last year when we were making some really difficult decisions, I asked our staff, our community to work with us on this because it is, not an easy situation to be in and there's so many difficult decisions that we have to make um and uh we need to do that again um i also just want to go back to this idea of putting the full costs of a position as being misleading i want to say that it is in fact the opposite when all we put is what A salary is that is misleading because anytime you hire someone, whether it's in the public or private sector for that matter. There are other costs associated with hiring that person unless you are in a very, very strict and direct fee for service. Other than that kind of a relationship, there are always other costs. And so when people look at a salary and then look at us and say, you have millions of millions of dollars and the salaries equal this amount. explain why we are having all these issues. I think it's because having only salary information is very misleading. Let's be very clear with the public what positions actually cost so that when we are making decisions, there is a clear understanding about what we're talking about. So let's not mislead the public and only offer salary information. I also want to make the point about levels of service. We always want to be concerned about that. However, there are other ways to be more efficient and save money. And I appreciate City Manager Ana Cortez's approach to problem solving. because there are other ways to be more efficient than simply cutting services. So let's not fall into this trap of we will automatically cut services so that we can save money. When we streamline our processes, when we look at our systems and find inefficiencies, When we are looking at our budgets and finding hidden costs that are unnecessary, we then save money. So it is not a simple, we have to cut service in order to save money. We look for inefficiencies. We look for ways to streamline so that we are more efficient and more effective. And so we will be doing that. And our city manager has been on that hunt since day one. I'm really glad to hear our new director of finance, Ms. O'Connell. She has the same approach. And I think that's how we continue to look at how we make Hollister more efficient. and find cost savings in that way so that we are a tight run city that can provide the maximum amount of services because we are very efficient. So there may be some impacts to service. However, there are so many other ways for us to save money. So let's not just automatically assume that our level of services will go down. Let's look for all of the other efficiencies. We'll look for ways to streamline so that we can provide the maximum amount of service that we can provide. So I just wanted to put that out there. I want to go to public comment And then I'll make some final comments. However, I want to thank the staff for the hard work to get us here. know that we've made some difficult decisions in the last fiscal year. We have some more difficult decisions, but we knew that what was happening last year was not the end of these difficult decisions because many of the bits of information that we needed to fully understand the big picture about our finance depended on what we were doing with our audits as well as re-examining and doing a really, really solid deep dive into our finances. And that is, in fact, what we're doing now. And as we learn more information, we will become more fiscally responsible and more efficient as we move forward because we have some solid bits of information. So I want to thank the staff for all their hard work in getting us to this place so that we continue to have really good information as we move forward through these difficult decisions. Okay. Dr. Resendiz, we'll put questions.

I was going to let you finish, but I don't know if you can see me. I did have one little question that you reminded me of before we go to public comment, if that's okay.

Okay, so I was finishing up my comments, so go ahead with your quick question, and then we'll go to public comment.

I have a quick question too, Mayor, once Dr. Resendez.

Was that Councilmember Morales?

Yes.

Okay, so Dr. Resendez, and then we'll go to Councilmember Morales. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. Director O'Connell, as terms of the retirement, so that does get a little bit confusing, and I forget what it's called. The new one is PEPRA. What was the old one? Classified?

Classic.

Classic. Thank you. In terms of retirement, let's say... I'm just using this as an example. The $700,000 employees is a classic. I would assume they are. That's why their salary is so high. When they retire, if we're looking at total costs, I know that number will go down somewhat. But their... essentially the the reason we went away from classic we went to pepra was because it was bankrupting calpers right because you essentially retire employees at 100 of their salary and they're not even working anymore so we were getting bankrupt kelpers was getting bankrupt so we had to move away from that model but let's assume that the 700 000 employee is a classic employee and they retire what does that cost look like to the citizens of Hollister and to us now because we're carrying part of that cost. I'm just curious about that.

I will have to get that figure for you. I don't have it on the top of my head, but you're absolutely right.

Okay. And the mayor, you reminded me of that because when we're looking at costs, I think, like you said, it's really disingenuine to just talk about salaries when there's other costs associated with that. And I was just, I had meant to ask that and I don't know why I didn't. So thank you so much for that.

Okay. Thank you, Dr. Ascendance. Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

No, thank you. I don't disagree with the presentation or the strategy or what council members up here have said. No disagreement whatsoever. We do have to be conservative in terms of what we bring in is what we should spend, but we're talking about values and priorities. So I want to make that clear. I think my comment wasn't about, you know, the employee salaries and not being transparent. My comment was when you look at a number, there are costs, right? So an employee, depending on when they started, could carry, right? I'll speak for myself. I have 1,400 hours of vacation. I have $1,300. My contract's very different because I don't have limits. Other contracts are very different. You're talking about CalPERS. There's a bill right now, now it's second year, which may be passed, AB 1383. It's called the Firefighters Bill, which will then look at costs in terms of retirement. Very different. These are state decisions. They're not local municipality decisions. The city of Hollister will not have, if the bill passes, they're going to have to buy by what the state passes with 1836, right? And we are going to have to be, we're going to have to pay those costs because that's what the law is. I I just I want to say this and I actually was wondering if we can have you know the the fire captain speak on it, if possible, we entered into an agreement with the county on fire services. The city of hollister picked up those that additional costs. And there was also restrictions on hiring that impacted over time. Potentially. Can we have a little bit more information on that in terms of like the contracts that we have with the county, the impact to, you know, either police or fire? Um, I don't I don't know if the chief is here.

I I can answer that question, Councilwoman, if that's okay. Yeah. So a couple of things. Let me start with CalPERS. I have already provided direction to the HR department to find out how we can exit. We can leave CalPERS. CalPERS is not required. There are many cities in California that are no longer CalPERS cities because it's breaking the bank. Now, this is not going to happen tomorrow. This is not going to happen overnight. It's probably going to be expensive. But just for the sake of argument, I would encourage you, regardless of who the city manager is, that you seek to leave CalPERS. It's just too expensive for a small community like this. Now, as for the contracts with the county, I am in conversations, we are in conversations with the fire union, formal and informal. because I've made an informal proposal, which is to bring the staffing levels to 100%. We right now do not have 100% in the fire department. But in order to get to that, I also need to bring the overtime from $3 million to a quarter of a million dollars. Maybe it's a quarter plus another 100,000, plus minus. Point is, it's not $3 million. So this is not to say that people are being fraudulent by working overtime. This is not to say that people are making stuff up to work overtime. It is not. People have to work in the fire department overtime because we're not fully staffed. To a certain degree, it's a very simple equation. So my to-send is, okay, then let's get to the staffing level that would not require $3 million in overtime. What I cannot have and I will not have in my budget that I present to you is fully staffed departments with $3 million of overtime. If I present that to you, frankly, you should fire me.

And I think that just goes to the point, the mayor's point, if I can, Mayor, streamlining, restructuring, looking at efficient ways. I want to hear and see and have all of that information and factual information. Again, and the faith that our partners are going to partner with us to ensure that we do that and provide the quality service that we have. Thank you. Yeah.

yeah and then i'll just make one final point that i forgot on my and then i am going to move to public comment i apologize for this lengthy discussion apologize to the public but i just want to make a quick comment about our reserves percentage so let me just be really really clear about this this we're talking about basic math and we talk about what 20 percent means for a city of hollister The reason that a small city that has a very small budget has a little bit larger percentage is, in fact, because we start with the smaller pot of money. So when you have a pot that's this big and you talk about 20%, then it's about this much. If we cut it to 15%, it's this much. If you are in a wealthier municipality like San Jose, for example, like Menlo, they have budgets that are this large. I don't know if you can see my hands, but 15% or 17% of that is about here. And for us, it's like a difference between this much and that much. So when you have a, when you start with a smaller amount, you really need a little bit higher percentage because the actual dollar amount, when you enter into a, an emergency or are crucial and we don't we are not starting with a large amount so 20 of our budget is uh is pennies when you compare it to like 15 of a san jose of a menlo of even a santa cruz for that matter so i just want us to keep that in mind because i I'm good with looking at averages of all the cities, but ultimately we have to consider what does that 20% represent? And when you start with a small number, comparatively small number, then 20% is a relatively small number. So let's just keep that in mind as we make the decision moving forward about reserves. Okay, having said that, I'm going to stop there this time for reals and i'm gonna uh go to public comment uh city clerk can um can you um uh get let me know who the first speaker is please yes mayor stevens we currently have two speakers so if you do have a public comment carter that you want to turn in if you could go ahead and do it for this item our first speaker is andres to be followed by frank garcia

Good evening, council. First, I would like to say it is very distasteful, shameful to attack other city councils, other majors from that bench. It's distasteful. It's just wrong. I love how the new doctor talks in third person. Isn't that Even, right? It's distasteful, it's embarrassing that we have elected officials attacking other people that are not even present here. It's shameful. What else can you expect? I have to agree with Council Member Morales. The presentation regarding the budget was misleading. It was unethical. It was just plain and wrong. You forget to say, and I know Council Member Resendez was so excited to say, who's the person who's making $700,000 here in the city? Well, that person has been paying retirement for the past 35 years. That person has sacrificed his life, has saved lives over the past 35 years. It's embarrassing that we're portraying all these salaries as just people making $300,000. Poor position of the city manager, the least compensated position here in the city, making only $300,000 a year. We have a city manager making $300,000 a year, fully funded, with the worst trust record, the worst trust record that any city can have. I would say that employee, that funded position is very expensive. We're paying a significant amount of money to someone who has the worst trust record ever. Makes no sense. I'm not talking here just because I'm talking. I actually have a degree in economics and an MBA. I'm not here pretending to be someone with a degree in Latin American studies. So let us think that. What's going to back up the city is the amount of lawsuits that are gonna come in. For wrongful terminations, because this is what the city manager is known for, wrongful terminations. I'm not discussing here, you know, I'm all for efficiencies, improvements, and improving the quality of life of City of Hollister. I've been a resident for the past 25 years. I pay my taxes here. I'm actually a member of this community. I'm not someone here coming in for the weekend just to see what's happening here. This is my town. This is the town that saw me grew up, that I've been paying taxes for. And I'm not going to let someone just come in here and destroy it. Thank you.

Thank you, Andres. Next speaker, please.

The next speaker is Frank Garcia to be followed by Dave Brigantino.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. My name is Frank Garcia. I'm a city employee. speaking on behalf of seiu members i understand the city is facing financial challenges i'm not here to debate that however i do want to respectfully ask you that you look at the entire picture that's being presented tonight We're seeing comparisons to other agencies along with discussions around CPI and COLA, as well as selected data points. While this information can be helpful, it also can be misleading if not presented in full context. It's important to consider total compensation, including rising costs like health insurance, not just base salaries. We're also seeing information presented in a way that combines different types of increases, including CPI-based COLA adjustments that are capped and negotiated salary increases as if they are the same when they are not. It's equally important to evaluate trends consistently over time. rather than focusing on isolated years that may not reflect the full reality. My concern is that the way this information is being presented may not fully reflect the experience of employees. I understand the financial constraints the city is facing and I understand the intent behind the presentation. However, I respectfully ask before any decisions are made, you take a step back and ensure the full picture is being presented. Thank you and have a great night.

The next speaker is Dave Brigantino, to be followed by Joe Tenasha.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council.

Thank you for letting me say something. I really came here to speak on another item, but this one caught my attention, so I thought I'd say something. I'm in the real estate business, mostly in the ag real estate here in San Diego County lifetime, or a whole lifetime. Over that time period, we brought in a lot of companies, went out and solicited companies from Salinas Valley and wherever and brought them over here. And it doesn't happen easy. You have to go out and solicit them. And there's companies we lost because of planning departments here, mostly counting. But some of these were... City involved city we had opportunity to have dull player many hundreds of employees Kendall Jackson wanted to spend most of $75,000,000 here in winery this is going back many years, but there are opportunities that we missed because mostly playing departments run about a town. My brother Vince with True Leaf in San Juan Bautista recently wanted to expand their plant, but they ran out of so much regulations in San Juan. They went to Monterey County, set up over there, and they're happy. We had a window company want to come to the city of Hollister. A few years ago, 300 employees. I couldn't even get a meeting with the mayor. They wanted to sit down with the mayor. Couldn't get him. And they left. They went to Madera. We recently had a large distribution company want to come, something like Amazon. Not a lot of employees, but a big company. We couldn't even bring them to Hollister because we're closed down, basically, for business. Any industrial, you can't even put an application in. More recently and right now, actually, we have a little small AI company looking for a site. But again, we're stuck. I have to bring them to Santa Clara County and go with some other counties. San Bernardino County is basically closed. We have a terrible reputation, too, at our planning department. You go out in the real world, you say San Bernardino County, they say forget it. These businesses talk to each other. We're not even on the radar. We're not even on the radar screen. So agritourism is a great opportunity. We just came from Lodi. Wineries and people all over the county having a great time. It's a good business. San Diego County has the same opportunity. So the regulations here, when you want to go pull a barn permit, it's just overwhelming to get through the planning department. So I would suggest re-examining those planning departments and try and make it easier to attract some companies. Yeah. Anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brigantino. I appreciate your time.

The next speaker is Joe Tenasha, to be followed by Carol Lenore.

Hello, Joe Tenasha. I'm a local downtown businessman, which probably most of the time you don't hear that from me. this city is very hard to do business in and it's you guys have built houses you've done this you've done that but you never put any money away as long as you're building houses it's like being on drugs you got money you don't build them you don't have money and what haven't you done and i don't care this city council you're blamed too you haven't made it viable for businesses to survive. You can't even run the city like a business. How in the hell are you going to be able to tell a business what to do? Yet you guys continuously try to tell us what we need and what we don't need and how much we got to spend. That's all it is. It's just money. So why would I do anything? I've had many opportunities to do more. Yet you guys don't even look at your own plans for roads and everything else to see how you're going to keep these people in town rather than driving by my ranch every day going someplace else to work and spend the money. I think all you guys got a first car at one time. It might not have been a new car, even if it was. Man, you cleaned the inside of it. You cleaned the outside of it. You fixed it up. You did everything. That's just like the city. Staff, got a great staff. Without great leadership, it means nothing. If you don't have people that know and they don't want to take advice, they don't clean the weeds when they're small, they clean the weeds when they're big. Which one costs more? That's just matter of fact, common sense. But there is no common sense out there. And there hasn't been for a long time. I've been asking for over 10 years to get some garbage dumpsters taken care of. Been promised by the city public works department to get it taken care of. You know what we've gotten taken care of in over 10 years? Zero. Everybody uses my building to park their garbage cans. I think Rudy's seen it. But I mean, that's what you guys are dealing with. You guys need to change the attitude and allow us to make money so we can spend money and the people here spend their money here. And that's not happening. It's busy from five to seven. That's it in the evening. And you're lucky if it's busy on the weekend. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Shanasha. Next speaker, please.

The next speaker is Carol Lenore to be followed by Timothy Pearson. And Ms. Lenore, just so you're aware, our timer is not working on Zoom, so you'll hear the beep when it goes off.

Thank you. That's okay. I don't need that long. I just wanted to tune in here to say that I absolutely agree with everything Andrea said. Everything. He really hit it right to the heart of the issue. uh wanted to thank him for those comments and uh really appreciate if you would heed some of that there are many of us out here that agree with everything he said thank you thank you miss lenore next speaker okay the next speaker is going to be natalie day mr pearson is going to speak later go ahead miss day yes we can hear you go ahead

This day. Looks like we lost her. So those are our next speaker is going to be Neil.

Okay, go ahead, Neil.

I've been here for, since 1990. I don't know why you need to continue to campaign against the previous administration, but it's kind of old and doesn't make me feel good about listening to you at any level. So I wish you'd just stop. If you could do that, then I'll just continue to say what a jerk you are and have no problems just like you with that smirky smile on your face. Okay, so I heard some good things about what you said. I used to work at the Stanford Human Genome Center and test labs my entire life, and I commuted. I was one of the 70% of this community that commutes. We're probably like the worst community around by far. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, As someone who has set up test labs medical test labs. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, i've never heard anybody speak the language of how to locate here what we need so there's no building format, you know how big of a building, do you need what kind of air H back, do you need. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, etc, all those things are standard items in the Bay area and. There's one good tech company here, Technova, who sort of grew up with Silicon Valley. So Silicon Valley is obviously AI. That's the latest buzzword and computers and all this other stuff. We have a nice robotics lab at the high school. Robotics also means automated weed control. There's an awesome automated weed control company in Sunnyvale. Why aren't they located here? Right. So they do. vision on all the weeds at the different stages of development. Same thing with the plants. And then you can use a variety of tools, spray, laser, whatever. And that company has deployed robots in the Salinas Valley. Why they're not here is beyond me. those type of people exist in this community that could work at that company and or similar companies. So for me, the attitude that I hear on this bench is not one that says, Hey, we're open for business. Um, you know, you said a economic zone or whatever you said on the West side of the city. But for me, as somebody in biotech for 40 years, uh, Dave Kuntz, You know, we need cookie cutter open space and or existing buildings. Dave Kuntz, And the current people that make things make it in the Silicon Valley.

Karen Hollweg, Okay, our next speaker is natalie. Natalie Day. Natalie Day. Go ahead and stay. Karen Hollweg, If you want to try unmuting.

how's that okay good evening madam mayor and doctor and other members of the council um in listening to the last hour and a half i see that you folks have a lot to discuss and i am only here to remind you of one thing that cannot be uh removed from the budget and that would be the contract with

It looks like we may have lost your sound. Ms. Day.

SNP bus, I would imagine. I think she comes to talk about the SNP bus.

Okay, so Natalie, this is Mary Stevens. I know Natalie and some of the people that are part of that. I will make a plug for that when I make my comments because there is some issues with your audio. I'm going to check with our city clerk to see if there's any other speakers.

No, those are all the speakers for this item.

Okay, so I'm going to close the public comments section of this item and bring it back to the dais and get final questions, comments, and then let's, we can then move on to direction to our manager, city manager. Let's start with Councilmember Morales, any last questions, comments?

Hey, I just want to commend the mayor for remembering Edwards Deming and the Kaizen and continuous improvement. Everybody that's in this, I mean, we're all in this together, right? Every employee of the city, everybody who loves this town, anybody who's crazy enough to get up here and do what we're all doing. can find efficiencies everywhere we look. There's efficiency that can be found. It can be small, but when you add them all up, it can become something actually quite large. And we're actually looking for some pretty big numbers because we are literally 21 just with water in the hole. So I just want to remind us all that that is huge. But on the other hand, it's not like picking up pennies and stepping over dimes. There's this crazy guy, Tony Robbins, who always talks about living a life of abundance. and you know i don't remember what numbers they are in the um the staff reporting was five and six you know that the uh five to nine million dollars for economic development and beautiful beautification and quality of life projects this town is awesome we have so much cool stuff that we can do we have an awesome wine trail we are a gateway if not we used to be the gateway to the pinnacles um a couple of our speakers joe tanasha and uh neil pointed out ag businesses around there's this international forum for agricultural robotics it's called fira so i think it's forum international robotics agricultural. But either way, that is all of the cool robotics that are coming out of the tech sectors and going into ag. And it's not just weeding, but it's just getting more out of this great, beautiful sun and earth that we have all around us. So if It ever comes to a point where we have to turn our beautiful farmland into roads or houses. Maybe with technology, we can get more out of the land. But there's I, I really just want to say there's there's. Something good is going to happen. We can get back to that 2223. we can I hope you guys look at that slide between those years we can we can lean out and we can put some money back into the bank. I personally would like to see some of those economic development initiatives. I'd love to see a sports complex for the kids, a place where we can all go swimming. We can all go shoot some hoops indoors if it's raining outside or it's just too windy. Heck, Larry Bird didn't like to shoot when it was windy. He'd go to the gym. We can't exactly do that. But I'd love to see a couple of basketball courts. I'd love to see some volleyball. I'd love to see a second story track that's corked. Maybe it's a quarter of a mile. That's what I'd love to see. But in the meantime, we can do other cool stuff too. And I'm really motivated by this four event timeline we've got going on the west side. My gut's telling me I can bust out my Pendletons and my Dixons and just button the top button and leave the other ones not buttoned at all and do a cool car show on the west side. Who knows? Can we do a two-day car show? Can we bust it? I don't know. Can we do something with the county? Revis comes down all fire and brimstone saying, hey, you and the county need to work better together. We've got the fire contract done. So there's one thing, right? We've got something on the board. Maybe we can do a car show out at Bellotto and we can split it. We can have people camp out. We can do some bonfires, hang out, and we can call it a zoot suit car show. Back in the day, Lou Diamond Phillips was in this awesome movie called La Bamba, El Teatro de Campesino. We're going to change the name of Union Road from Cesar Chavez to Campesino. What was it again? Avenida de Campesino? Dude, Lou Diamond Phillips was the coolest guy around when I was a little kid. In 1986, it was a rad audio track. Dude, it was a beautiful movie. Maybe we can do something with that whole thing and celebrate that on the south side. I'm really digging what you're putting down, but I'm also feeling what Council Member Morales was saying. Let's get our ducks in a row. Let's get some nickels to rub together. Let's keep as many services as we possibly can. Let's get fiscally conservative and then let's start splurging. Let's live that Robbins approach, that Tony Robbins live a life of abundance. In the near term, hot dogs and ramen for a few more months. And then I feel like we can get some nickels to rub together because we get that revenues up, the expenses down. We reversed that trend that occurred between 2021 and 2022. um we bump down those uh bump up the revenues bump down the expenses we have more left over in the general fund which is effectively owner's equity i'm really encouraged actually i'm pumped and i'm encouraged and i think if we do it together we can totally do it it's literally going to take us working together so let's do it okay thank you council member pache vice mayor uh deanda last minute questions or comments

She said no.

Go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you, Mayor. So first off, again, thank you for all of your hard work. Thank you to our hardworking employees for coming out here tonight. Please reach out to us. We do listen to you guys. We really do. So let's continue the conversation. I feel pretty optimistic about what I'm hearing. This council, this mayor has been solution focused. So I'm really optimistic about that. I think we make a great team. We all bring our own flavor to the Kool-Aid up here. I'll be very honest with you. I've been here the longest. People tend to know me for who I am, what I'm about. But we have a great mayor and a great council sitting up here. We had a wonderful city manager before. This city manager that told us the same thing We had to eat ramen like and hot dogs to use council member Pache's analogy and we're still here again this year So we are gonna have to tighten our belt I think and we're going to have to do that again So I appreciate your guys's partnership over the years to work with us to make sure that we get through these tough times and And I said it last year too. I'm sincere when I ask you that and so is Mayor Stevens. So thank you guys. Politics is politics, folks. It's nasty here in town. If we've learned anything since I've been here, in the eight years that I've been here, we've learned that building more houses does not bring us money. Look at where it's gotten us. Look at the impacts that it's had on our schools, our kids, our parks, our roads. We cannot keep building houses, and we do not want to become LA, San Jose. I mean, we have what we have, and we need to really work hard to preserve that. We've learned that, and I'm going to continue to fight for that. I'm going to continue to advocate for that. I will put forth facts no matter what anybody says for me not to do that. And the fact of the matter is, I'll be very honest with you, the politicians that get elected up here using money from people that want to come and build houses do not vote in your favor. Spread the word. They lie. They've lied in the past. They'll lie in the future. And I just don't like that. I'll be honest with you. I don't like that at all. So I will continue to be vocal about that. And yeah, it's the old mayor that bankrupted the city with the people that you guys voted out last time in the election. So thank you to the people of Hollister. Vote. It's important. Reach out to us. It's important. Show up. It's important. And I look forward to continuing to partner with you all in the coming years. Thanks. Bye.

Okay, so thank you for those comments. So I'm going to try to provide a summary and city manager Cortez, I do want to ensure that we give you some direction. So I'm going to try to summarize this. So here are my thoughts. And then I think because we're just giving direction, we won't need a motion. We'll do a thumbs up on different directions. So I'm looking at Jennifer Thompson, city attorney. Tell me if I'm on the right track there.

Our city clerk.

OK, thank you.

It did. It did have in the staff report action on each of the items listed. So and that's why we did this as a special meeting as opposed to a study session. So I'll let the Council decide how they want to give that direction.

And we're talking about the ones listed on the Water Fund and General Fund list, right? Those are the list.

Yes, I believe they were eight of them.

OK, so I'm good. This is this is my what my thoughts are. um because we aren't making a final decision i think what what i would like to see from my council from the rest of my the council is a thumbs up on the request from our city manager with uh the report back is in addition to what um this um miss o'connell uh fiscal director or director of finance by the way but i'm sorry um Director of Finance Jennifer McConnell said about getting some more information about the resolution request. I think that's okay for us to wait on that one so let's wait on that one get some more information, we can make some more. We can have some more discussion about that at the next meeting, but I do think that the request from our city manager are reasonable in that we want to work as closely towards. living within our means is absolutely possible with an eye on investing in economic development now having said that um because we've gotten to know you better uh city manager cortez we know that you will come back with some good information about what each of those will mean and so um I think we should not compromise on the 20% reserves. I think we should stick to that. Going back to what I said earlier about the basic math problem, when you have a lot of money, 15% is a lot more than 20% of a little bit of money. So let's stick to that. But we can also look at what those numbers actually look like and make a final decision about that. Then I think that in terms of water fund, I think it has to pay for itself. So bringing back information as listed so that we can get there. Covering the $3 million deficits, I think that's important. Some information, I think because the range of the investment is all the way from $2 to $6 million, I think having a little bit more information, a city manager will be helpful in making that decision. Um, because we, we, we obviously want to invest and we also want to make sure that we know what, what it is that we're spending those investment dollars on. So if we can get a little bit more specific, so if we have 2 million, what is that looking like? What are we paying for? If we go all the way to the higher number, um, which I think is 6 million, it might be 9 million. Honestly, I, I, I'm looking at these numbers a little bit differently. I think, I think, uh, There's two sets of numbers related to the investment. So anyway, within those, what do we pay for if we have $2 million? What can we pay for if we have the higher number? And then resending the resolution again we're going to get more information about that so i'm i'm thinking that if I can get a thumbs up that we give direction that she moved forward with that and then come back with detailed information about each bullet, so that we have a way to make a final decision, the next time. Let me check in with Council any thoughts about that or or are we okay with just doing a thumbs up thumbs down.

Mayor, so you kind of did a bundle. I'm wondering, can we just go through, like, number 1 because I think there's agreement on most of them. So, number 1, I think you're going to get can we just go through 1 through 8 and say, thumbs up thumbs down. Or come back with more information, because I think it will be very clear. It'll be on the record. You'll hear from all of us instead of doing a high level.

Okay. So let's do the walk. Okay. I'm okay with that. Let's let's do this quickly because I do want to. stop and take a quick little break and then move on with our agenda um so i was hoping to do this quicker but i'm okay with doing that so on the water fund number one thumbs up do you mind if i just read them out in the order that's on the list that way a little bit cleaner okay wants to speak thank you can we all just have an opportunity to chime in before we move forward Sure.

Thanks. I'm not opposed to that. What I do want to point out, Mayor, is that there was some very rich discussion here. And I don't know if everything on this list is something I don't want anything to be left out. I think that we have a video of this. Mayor Mrakas, I think that we do need consensus, so we can move forward with that, but I would like for when we come when you come back city manager that you take into consideration everything that was said by us by the public. Mayor Mrakas, Because I feel like we're going to miss something does that make sense mayor. yes okay i just don't want to come back saying oh well you said yes to one through nine but then you know we talked about here it was never it was never placed on the table for consensus or something so i think that's i think that's to my point dr sendez that um

with more detail so that it aligns with some of the comments and the feedback that we've given. So then I think we can make a more informed decision. So thank you for that clarification. But yes, agreement with that. Okay, go ahead, city clerk, Jennifer.

Okay, first one is limit general fund expenses to predictable, consistent sources. Okay. Um, it looks like five on that one protect the 20% general fund reserve.

So comment on this one, I asked for more information to look at what other cities have. Our 20% was a relatively small number. But again, as it stands, I vote no, because I think we don't need to do 20%. We can do 15.

And just so you're aware, Ralph, I do have that included in the minutes as well, that request. Okay. Third one is return with additional information regarding rescinding resolution 2025-127 authorizing $2.4 million loan from fund 661 to various funds through the general fund.

Okay, wait a second.

So it's returning with additional information on it. Right. Number four is explore potential departmental realignments to eliminate redundancies, reduce excessive costs, overtime consultants, et cetera, secure new partnerships and or gain efficiency. Okay. For those at home, those have all been consensus so far. Number five, return with additional information regarding proposed allocation of two to six million dollars for economic development initiatives and staffing and that additional information, including such as what will be possible at the different levels of funding.

just want to add on this one we're talking the two to six million dollars um we're talking six to 24 if we're looking at five and six we're looking at 12 to 36 people um that's what that those dollars translates to adding to our deficit so unless i see a plan then i'm voting now okay Okay.

Is that a thumbs up? Thumbs up, yes. That is consensus. That was number five, yes. Yeah, and that is consensus. It is still three, too. Number six, allocate $3 million for beautification and quality of life projects. Okay. And that looks like three, two with, uh, Stevens rescind us and Deanda in support of it, um, cover 3 million, uh, and from cover $3 million fiscal year, 2020, 2025, 26 general fund deficit with fiscal year, 2026, 27 revenues. Okay, looks like all are in support of that presenting new number eight presenting new water rates in the fiscal year 2026 27 budget to include general fund repayments over several years. And all are in support of that. Thank you all. I'll make sure all that's included in the minutes. Thank you so much. Okay.

Great question. Again, we're providing you direction. Nothing is final until we adopt the budget. We can always get the information back and we can always vote differently at budget time, right?

All you're doing is allowing us, meaning the city manager's office.

Let me be very clear about that with the public, the newspapers, the employees that we have until June 30th.

June 30th.

To adopt the final budget.

Exactly. So, for example, you've requested different scenarios for economic development. It's entirely possible that you say, no, we don't like any of them. Or you may say we love them all. Again, that's TBD.

Perfect. Thank you.

Okay. okay so i think you got directed directions i'm gonna just do a quick um um question to our i don't know if we're doing city manager or city attorney either one of you do we have anything to report out on our previous closed session and just a reminder that was an exposure litigation one case on april 6th anything to report out

I was not in attendance, so I can't report out on that.

Nothing to report out.

Nothing to report. Okay. With that, then I'm going to, I'm going to ask that we take a quick break. I'm going to say 5 minutes everyone. So I'm going to, I'm going to go on mute 5 minutes and then we will jump right in to special orders of the day.

Is Jennifer?

City Clerk, are you there?

yeah exactly mayor stevens i think you're looking for us yeah can we just get everybody back in the room so we can get going again yeah i'll go i'll go get them okay thank you

Okay, so let's go ahead and get started again, everybody. I'm hoping everybody can still hear me, me figure out where we're at on the agenda.

We're starting where we left off.

Mayor, we're still waiting on a quorum in the council members. So give me just a moment to locate the other council members.

One of the best things the council has done to hire a committee is put this 30 of us. No, it's somebody that's willing to do something. Oh, yeah. Have you put on your shoes? Everyone's bald and doesn't do shit. He does.

Mayor Stevens, we do have a quorum in council chambers. We're just waiting, Council Member Paget.

OK, let's go ahead and get started. Our next item.

OK, we're going to go ahead and get started for those of you who are in council chambers. She wants more. Give me just a second.

We'll make a meeting.

We've got real problems right now.

OK, Mayor Stevens, you can go ahead and begin.

Okay, thank you for indulging me in that quick little, I just needed a minute to grab some water and clear my throat. Okay, so we're going to move on to special orders of the day, California Cities Week Proclamation. So tonight we're recognizing California Cities Week celebrated April 19th through April 25th, 2026. This week highlights the important role cities play in providing the essential services that support our daily lives and keep our community strong. Since California's earliest cities were incorporated in 1850, local governments have been responsible for delivering critical service such as public safety, emergency response, water and sewer utilities, parks and recreation, road maintenance, housing, and economic development. Today, more than 80% of Californians live in cities and towns dependent upon those municipal services every day. California Cities Week is an opportunity to recognize the dedication of local government in serving residents with transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. It also encourages community members to learn more about how local governments work and to become actively engaged in shaping the future of our city. On behalf of the City Council, I am proud to proclaim April 19 through April 25, 2026 as California Cities Week in the City of Hollister and encourage all residents to take part in learning about and supporting the vital role of our local government. So very, very important message and I am really proud that Hollister is a very engaged, very supportive community. It's really, really great to see how many people are following what's happening in local government and I hope to see that continue. City Clerk, do we have anybody here that's representing this week at this California Cities Week Proclamation and would they like to say a few brief words?

Mayor, this was actually as a request by Council Member Morales. So there isn't a member of the public care for specific Council Member Morales.

Would you like to say a few words on this before we go to public public input?

I just want to recognize the California League of Cities. They do a lot of work on behalf of the cities to make sure that there's local control representing cities in both legislation, advocacy and analysis to make sure that we have the most up to date information for us to make sound decisions. So thank you, Mayor and City Council for this proclamation.

Thank you for bringing this for Councilmember Morales. This is a really important thing and thank you for your comments. I concur the League of Cities is very, very crucial in getting information that we sorely need. So thank you for that. OK, so now we're going to move into the public comment section. This is a time for anybody in the audience to speak on any item on the not on the agenda and within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Council. Speaker cards are available in the lobby. and are to be completed and given to the city clerk before speaking. When the city clerk calls your name, please come to the podium, state your name and city for the records, and speak to the city council. If you are joining via Zoom, please click on the bottom of your screen and raise your hand. If you're joining Zoom using a cell phone, please press asterisk nine. Each speaker will be limited to three minutes with a maximum of 30 minutes per subject. Please note the city law prohibits the city council from discussing or taking action on any item not on the agenda. City clerk, do we have any public comment?

Yes, Mayor. We currently have looks like five speakers for this. Our first speaker is Andres to be followed by Judy Ganson.

I'm here again, you know, to speak with you and hopefully, you know, perhaps you might know, you know, go to one ear and go to the other one, hopefully not. But I'm very concerned of what's going on recently with hiring practices done here in the city of Hollister. I think the public is owe an explanation as to why if we are in a budget crisis or crisis of public opinion. I don't know what it is. You know, nowadays it just goes back and forth. Hopefully we still have a city attorney. Please keep us on retainer. But I'm concerned as to why our positions within the city made public through different channels that the hiring HR system that the City of Hollister has? Why are positions being channeled through companies allegedly owned by the city manager? Why are we doing this? That's one point. My second point is, going back to the ramen and hot dogs that you mentioned, Consul Picha, I urge you to tell the people who are going to be affected by the actions of the city manager, eat ramen and hot dogs, and think what they're gonna say to you when you say that to them. Let me tell you something. You guys wanna talk about balance sheet and P&L. Well, when you have a shortfall in your P&L, and you don't have enough EBITDA to even operate as a business, There is no dividends to pay off. There are no parties. There are no events. There are no hiring from Hawaii, although I'm not sure which island. I don't have an issue with Hawaii. I love going to Hawaii. But to me, California has quality people. Hollister has quality talent. Why are we hiring people from Hawaii and Washington? Why? To me, it makes no sense. Why even today do we have a director of finance just four weeks after the city manager was hired? How is it possible that within four weeks, an individual can just come in and start like if it was, and I'm only alleging pre-selected bias. Positions, government positions are merit-based. When you are going, you're jumping into these type of issues, it becomes a legality. And I'm glad that the city attorney is here today listening to this. I'm not sure for how long. I'm glad that we still have a city clerk. I don't know for how long. Do we still have a planning department? Do we still have employees within the city to provide services? So think about that. Think why are we hiring for Hawaii and Washington? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Andres. Next speaker, please.

The next speaker is Judy Ganson to be followed by John Coulter. Judy Ganson. Our next speaker is John Coulter to be followed by Megan Range.

Hello, thank you for listening to me today. I just want to say that never thought that the building department and planning department would actually function right but they do and after anna cortez in a short amount of time have made that it runs beautifully you i can walk in the door someone's there to help me right away i don't get any bs from anything i'll give you a good example i um Doing ADUs, it would take six to eight months just to go through planning. You know how long it took on the last one I did? Two weeks. Two weeks. That's the difference. That's efficiency. People don't like when, oh, it's threatening the positions and all this stuff. But you know what? Results are what counts. And I'm seeing results. So I would encourage you to back what she has in mind and see where it goes because I never thought I would see this building department be great. It's perfect. I love it. None of this stuff they said, oh, it's not going to work. Right. Oh, you know, the people in this and that they know what they're doing and all that. No, now they know what they're doing before they didn't. So I just wanted to say that and thank Anna for what she's done.

Thank you, Mr. Coulter next speaker.

The next speaker is Megan range to be followed by Timothy Pearson.

Hello council, not tippy toes, council member and staff. My name is Megan Range. I just came tonight to introduce myself. I am the new government relations rep for PG&E. You probably worked with Jasmine. I feel like I'm a letdown to everyone who worked with Jasmine, but I'll try my best. I am happy to answer questions, although I'm pretty new, so I'm better on one-on-one. I already am working with Leah to get something on your books. I will reach out to everybody individually. City Clerk has my contact information. You'll all have it in your inboxes by tomorrow. i just wanted you to know i'm new i'm in town and if you need me i'll be harassing you all that's it any questions okay thank you thank you miss range and welcome next speaker the next speaker is timothy pearson to be followed by julio noriega

Good evening Mayor Stevens and city council members as well as residents. My name is Timothy Pearson and my wife and I started raising a family here almost 15 years ago in Hollister. A little bit on us. My wife PTO volunteer time there, Girl Scouts, FFA, Ag Boosters Board. Myself, volunteer coach, active at a couple non-profits that raise money for students. and generally we've engaged back into the community we've grown to love in almost 15 years we've lived here however i'm here today involving a serious matter that was i believe a serious overreach by the hollister police department animal control division specifically um i'd like to ask the city to issue an order of staying next stay of execution as well as a um to drop a dangerous dog charge that was brought on our two dogs. We had two family pets with zero prior histories of aggression or incident escape the backyard. And in the process of under an hour, came across a couple of neighborhood cats that didn't end well for the cats, which we are extremely sorry that it happened. We made restitution with the cat owners. However, when we went through the process, we thought we were going to be hearing whether our dogs did an unprovoked attack. And when we had the hearing at the police department, they basically had our dogs paid out to be trained killers to go after cats. And that's as far from the truth as possible. So for a combined 10 years, our dogs would be had as rescues since they were puppies. have lived peacefully in the community without a single prior incident involving aggression, bites, or complaints. The situation was isolated and a very unfortunate event, all instinctive based out of reactive trigger of a dog wanting to chase something that runs. That's simply all it was. Now, we had submitted sworn statements from three kennels, 20-year experienced dog trainer, as well as seven or eight sworn statements from neighbors and community members that basically backed it up. The dogs are not aggressive. They're family dogs. They're friendly. The trainer said that they would be open or trainable if we were going to do a cat avoidance type of training. But the thing is, the police department went straight to death. And there's other cases out here that that prove otherwise, that there's other measures than going in and killing two girls' dogs that they've had since they were six and nine. And again, the cat owners... Thanks for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Pearson. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Julio Noriega.

Hello, Council.

Julio Noriega. I want to thank you guys very much for finally hiring somebody very experienced. Anna Cortez, she's really doing her job. She comes with a lot of experience. Morales, what you spoke last time was beautiful. The city is going to a bad direction. You want to make a change. Thank you so much for that. For a while there, I thought you guys were in cahoots with the zero growth. I don't feel that way anymore. Thank you very much. Joe Tenacia, you nailed it. We need more commercial growth. A lot of people, a lot of companies have come and talked to me and they start making plans. They come and talk to planning and building and then they disappear. They're just gone. A lot of missed opportunities. Mr. Bergantino, you nailed it. You are so correct. Anna, we gotta fix that. That's your number 102 job. We want commercial companies to come and thrive. We got enough houses. And John, yes, I was building an ADU. It took eight months to pass planning, almost two years to get a permit. This time, it took 14 days to pass to planning. Thank you, Anna Cortez. That's normal. It feels so good to just have standard protocol in place. Thank you, gentlemen. And again, thank you very much for hiring a person that comes with so much experience and she brings a lot of people with great experience. So good to work with people like that. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Noriega. Any other speakers? Those are all the public speakers for this item. okay great thank you so i'm we're going to move on then to the consent agenda do any members of the council have any brief questions or comments on any items on the consent on the consent agenda okay not seen any um okay so i'm going to move to public comment any speaker cards on uh consent items there are no speaker cards for any of the consent agenda items okay thank you so let me get back to the um Council, can I get a motion on consent agenda?

I move to approve.

Second.

So can we do a roll call vote?

Yes. Council Member Pichet?

Aye.

Council Member Resendez?

Aye.

Council Member Morales? Yes. Vice Mayor Deanda? Yes. And Mayor Stephens?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0. Thank you.

OK. Thank you. So let's move on to our next item, public hearing item number 9.1. a resolution adopting the 2040 General Plan and Climate Action Plan. Can we get a staff report, please?

Madam Mayor, members of the Council, members of the community staff, Mr. Wall, Director of Planning and Parks Department, will give the report.

All right, for sake of expediency, I'm going to present all six items together, and then we'll move through the public hearings one by one. So first tonight, I will be asking council to adopt the 2040 general plan and the climate action plan.

I'm sorry, let me just clarify. When you say the all six items, can you clarify what the six items are?

9.1 through 9.6.

Okay, so I just want to, I just want to, Check in with their clerk. Are we okay to do a presentation on all of them and then go one by one? Because I have to do public comment on each one. Can I do public comment on all of them?

This is what we worked out with staff to make it cleaner for the council and for the public to just hear it all together. And then we'll make sure we have six individual public hearings.

Okay, great. Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Wall. Sorry about that.

Of course, so tonight, the 2040 general plan and climate action plan, or together known as the 2026 general plan update. These plans have been publicly available on the Hollister 2040 dot org website throughout the process. All required public review steps have been completed an addendum to the certified was prepared and the draft general plan remains consistent. The Planning Commission held its hearing on March 26 and recommended approval of both plans. Tonight's action will finalize the updated General Plan and Climate Action Plan, completing the multi-year update process that began in 2020, allowing staff to begin implementation. Staff does recommend that you approve the resolution adopting the 2040 General Plan. For 9.2, This is the Council will hold a public hearing in consideration of adopting the city of Hollister's 6 cycle housing element for 2023 through 2031 along with the associated rezones required for the state certification. The sixth cycle housing element outlines how Hollister will plan for its assigned housing units across all income levels. This document does not require the city to build housing, but it does require to zone sufficient land, adopt clear objective standards and allow housing to be developed. As of March, 2026 planning commission meeting, the commission recommended approval of the housing element and staff agrees and recommends adoption. for 9.3. We are presenting an ordinance to repeal and replace the City's official zoning map to ensure full consistency with the newly updated 2040 General Plan. If you'd like more information on that, basically there's three major changes. First, residential zoning abbreviations are updated. Second, the R2, R4-20 and all PZ overlay districts are eliminated. And then third, existing planned developments will each be given a specific PD designation tied to their project number. This makes it easier for staff and property owners to locate their applicable approvals. This updated zoning map has also been built into our new GIS layers, giving the community parcel-specific access to both zoning and general plan information for the first time. Staff recommends that council hold public hearing and introduce the ordinance approving zoning ordinance amendment 2026-2. 4.9.4, our fourth item, ZOA 2026-1, updates several chapters of the zoning ordinance to implement the six cycle housing element. These changes align our zoning with required housing densities, add the new R-MH mobile home park district, and update residential mixed use and commercial standards. The amendment also removes the outdated and subjective design language and consolidates all design requirements into a new chapter 17.30, along with creating a single set of open space standards for all housing types. Staff recommends introducing the ordinance to meet state housing element compliance. For 9.5, tonight's fifth item, ZOA 2025-4, updates and reorganizes our permitting and procedures to make zoning ordinance clearer, more consistent, and aligned with state law. It replaces the old administration chapters which fully updates sections covered permitting processes, appeals, general plan, and zoning amendments, site and architectural review, and ministerial housing review. One key improvement is establishing a consistent 10-day appeal period for all applicable permits, eliminating confusion in the current code. Staff recommends introducing the ordinance. Last 9.6 for tonight's final planning item. We are asking the Council to adopt the objective design standards for multifamily and residential mixed use project in the downtown mixed use district. State housing laws now require cities to rely on clear, measurable design standards rather than subjective review. for qualifying housing projects these standards give hollister a consistent objective way to review design while maintaining local control over building form pedestrian orientation compatibility with our historic downtown staff recommends adopting the resolution thank you mayor and city council we are available for questions that you may have okay thank you mr wall um can i um

Okay, so let me check in with staff on how we're going to do questions. So I want to ask our city council members to ask questions or give comments. Should I have them ask anything on all of them one at a time or go one item by one item?

It is Council how you want to handle it if you want to take it all now, or if you want to do it before proceeding each.

Public okay i'd rather go i'd rather have anybody asked questions or give comment on all of them, all together, then come back and do public comment and motions on each item. So let's go ahead and go with that um so let me, let me start with a council member Morales any comments or questions on any of those. I believe it's six items.

First, I want to say thank you for getting this done in record time. I think to the gentleman here, we're seeing movement, which we appreciate. I did read all of the public comments. I'm wondering how is this integrated into the general plan? Are we going to talk about each individual item and then the public comment so that we can discuss? I'll just start there.

Okay, so I do have Erica Frazier, who is acting senior planner with us. And she has been part of the planning process from for quite a long time. So I know that at the last planning meeting, many of these comments were part of that agenda and discussed at that meeting, these these, just from briefly looking at them before the meeting, a lot of these were at that meeting.

I'm sorry, Miss Frazier, Mayor Stevens, can we just quickly check in with legal and make sure that the way that we proceed is legal? If that's okay, we have her here. And then if we could just go again, one more time, be very specific, very clear about the process, because it's something that we haven't done before. Is that okay, Mayor?

Yeah, well, I mean, I did ask that question.

I was assuming that she would be part of then maybe I just need a little bit more clarity on how we're going to move forward.

if that's okay so what jennifer what city clerk woodworth described is perfectly legal so the there will be a separate public hearing for each of the items and during that public hearing is when you'll hear your public comment um but when when council asks their questions and makes their comments doesn't have to be within each of the individual public hearings got it thank you okay thank you sorry to interrupt okay okay

I'm going to go back to Council Member Morales. So did you go ahead? I think we I think you had other questions.

Uh, so I'm, I can just go through the, the comments and okay. So, policy L, you 14.1 union road, special pen planning area. Um, that there was a problem with the policy as drafted. Uh, it says that the, the draft policy, uh, provides no timeline, no initiation trigger, no responsible agency, no funding source, no completion date. Um, other inconsistencies, uh, were policies. I'll use 6.1 union road and Meridian. And I can just hand these over to you if it makes it easy. I'm not sure what the easiest way to do it, but it's the public comments. And then I got another question about, can we do more commercial versus housing to plan for that? And I know that this was already a very long process, but I am interested in hearing the responses to the written comments and then the public comments that we're going to get in a little bit. So I'm happy to hand these over or just read through them one by one, whatever you prefer.

okay um i can say that many of the comments that we are have received tonight were also at the planning commission meeting and ultimately the planning commission did recommend approval as proposed for the general plan there was a separate uh recommendation for the housing element and then the zoning map which relates to a particular commercial property but for the most part they chose to move forward with the general plan as proposed

Can you then summarize the outcome of some of these concerns?

So I'm not the Union Road specific plan. It's my I wasn't working on the general plan, so I can just give very basic information. It's my understanding that that was identified as needing a specific plan, and it's up to the property owners to fund it. so they would hopefully come together create a specific plan which would then guide the growth of that area as well as services to the area such as infrastructure sewer water etc and they would ultimately be responsible for it and it would be on their timeline Um. For some of the other items where there are some concerns about some of the goals and policies. Staff hasn't shared that concern, but again we can talk about it more if you'd like to. And then again we have our commercial property, and I believe he's here tonight. But the planning Commission did recommend that that site get removed from both the housing element, and then reason to general commercial to allow the project that we currently have in planning to proceed as as a commercial development. Um, with the question on. Can we get more commercial? The housing element has been designed the way the housing element has been designed. We are required to build, and I could be. I could have the end numbers wrong, but a little over 4,100. um houses within this cycle element we're supposed to plan for it and that's how the housing element has been developed there is some wiggle room because we had to plan for more than that number and so that's why you see the no concern with the rezone of the quick quack parcel because it wouldn't hurt our housing element numbers at this time now as the future Moves forward and more people maybe request commercial development where we've designated for housing. It could become a concern later. We just don't know at this point, but we have to over plan for housing to meet our arena numbers.

If if I could also add, so I was here for the planning Commission meeting in which we had many numbers of the members of the community speaking to various issues. Some are doable and some are not. So, for example, the request for a specific zoning for 1 specific parcel unfortunately can't do that. But just to give you a perfect example on how. the economic development plan comes in right so let's let's just make some assumptions that we go forward with development on the west side and let's just also say that the community provides feedback so that on that corridor which right now is mixed use and we have had a couple of economic development experts As in, for example, the economic development director from the city of East Palo Alto who brought IKEA to East Palo Alto, that level of expertise saying, no, you can't do mixed use. And these are the reasons. So there are a number of areas that we're going to have to come back to you with for further conversation. In an ideal world, this would have been a conversation three years ago. So by the time that we're here, we can actually move forward. We asked for a little bit of trust in this case that we will come back with some of the major issues. Um, yes, of course you should verify. Um, but unfortunately we're not at the point of, of properly honoring every single comment in the manner that it probably should.

Okay. Just so thank you for that. Um, comments on the, um, north gateway district on ship Chappelle road. Um,

Do you remember the so north gateway is the one mixed use district where we aren't going to require mixed use, you can be commercial you can be residential you can be both if you want, so we have allowed for flexibility in the north gateway unlike the other. mixed use zoning districts, where you are either all residential or your mixed use but you're not commercial under the zoning designation that we've established.

So is that because they're for farm worker housing?

Oh, I'm not. I'm not aware of that one, then.

This is from Joe Tenascio. And add this over to you if you'd like. Yeah. And I'll just keep while you're looking at this one, I'll move move forward. Also, industrial use for Hillcrest Road. I don't know if you remember that one.

yeah it's the ready mix right always been industrial it's always been commercial it's never been anything but so i think in the general plan they want to change it to something different versus the industrial

I think that makes, no, that's why I'm asking.

So we can go ahead and revisit this as well. And, you know, I do apologize. We do have two of our planners went out on a workers' comp at the same time. Things happen. So that's not an excuse, but, you know, we have to submit. This document is a perfect no, far from it. Should we have more information and details? Yes, we should. However, we're not stopping. We need to submit to the state, and we need to revisit a number of areas in light of the fact that now we actually have a policy framework, which we didn't do. We didn't have when we first started this process, and that was a reflection on

um the lack of experience by our former staff members okay so I think Hillcrest view it was always industrial now it's being changed if you want to get back to me later on that one we can get back on that one and the public comment I hear have here about the farmworker housing

The general plan is the guiding policy as well as the housing element. It's our guiding policy, but it's not forever, right? People can request a general plan amendment or rezone, or whatever the case may be, and it gives the Council the purview under our procedures, which is they have to come to you and request initiation, and you get to make the determination. is this good for the city or not and then we go from there so farm worker housing is definitely yes we need more of it for sure so if i have a proposal in front of me we can then begin the process to hopefully get the projects that make sense community approved

No, I appreciate that. I just want to remind for those of you that are new that some of these projects have been on hold for a long time, five years or so. And with that is the dollars that come with it, right? So if projects are on hold for a long time, they may or may not be able to move forward. So I just want folks to be cognizant of that for those projects that have been on queue for a very long time that we take consideration. Because we told them we're not going to do anything. We're going to put everything on hold. We're going to get this done. We moved forward. We had a lot of delays. We weren't done until now, really. So I just want to make sure that we just take that into consideration.

COB, Bethany Collins, There are a number of projects, we are aware of that have been put on pause because of the general plan work, and so those are our priorities moving forward, they have been in line, the longest and we'll make sure that they are moving forward. COB, Bethany Collins, If this were to be adopted, so that we can process them and get them on their way.

And another factor that of course is important, we didn't have this month ago, is the stipulated judgment with HCD. In fact, that was finally executed, I believe, last week. So we're definitely now on the hook for affordable housing, which we welcome. We want to see more affordable housing. We want to partner with developers who are interested in meeting us where we need to be. So again, this is a message that I think it is a narrative that is important to straightened up. The city wants more housing. We want more affordable housing. We want more workforce housing. We need a place where your city manager can actually own a home, for example. We don't have that right now. And that is even though I'm highly paid. So that only tells you how our teachers, how our nurses, how our public servants, the type of challenges that they have.

Policy NRC 3.8.

John Pimentel, While she's looking that up over the last two weeks we've met with many of these project managers, developers, and come up with solutions for these projects. The other thing with the zoning map is think of it like a checkerboard in a way. So we have to meet those rena numbers. So some of these moves to match that twenty forty general plan had to be made. I think as we catch discussion items like you're having, we can address those on a one by one basis and look at those projects. So I I think that's the one you're speaking of. That's the issue there is we have to meet that housing number, and that's why that was moved to that area. Although we can address that, I believe, looking at it closely.

Okay. And then the the last one is policy. L. You five point five as well.

I think that's that one faster. the first one, the NRC, what was it? What was the NRC one?

3.8. 3.8.

And that's zero emission requirement, and so. This is entirely up to you. It goes along with our other policies that we have. So the climate action plan. So if you if what we could do is, if it becomes a problem, we can come back and discuss it. We obviously don't. I don't have any projects of this size in the queue for now, so it wouldn't affect anyone that we have currently. But we could, if it a project comes in, and we observe it as a barrier to development, we can come back and discuss it. If you'd like to do so, then

And the only reason and the PG&E lady left, but historically we've had issues with at least our business community with getting waiting for PG&E. Yes. And not enough electricity to a lot of the federal guidelines. And, you know, I'll talk about that later with 3CE have now been pulled back. So the rebates and some of the credits are no longer there. And now some of our local agencies are pulling back that that funding as well um and so i think there's just going to be some obstacles because of of the current climate really and our ability to just be able to provide the infrastructure to support the policy i love the policy by the way i think in a perfect world that would be the goal i'm just looking at can we even can we support it and right now the answer is no based on everything

we do have a problem with PG&E. It has been a barrier to certain projects where it's been delayed significantly. We have several industrial projects that were delayed because they couldn't get power. So I yes, that's very true. We do have that problem. um we can have we can start conversations again with PG&E we had started them back when we were receiving many applications I think with the general plan we've slowed down a little bit um people are waiting to see what what happens and so I can't in a perfect world tell you does this work or not work considering the current climate because we just don't have any of those applications in right now

So I just like that to be reviewed, because if we do get one, this is going to be a barrier, and people look at what are the rules? What is the infrastructure before the invest? And now that we are kind of shifting the reputation and the trust in the city of Hollister with planning, hopefully that will change. But but that's just another barrier that we definitely don't want to have out there saying you're oops, even if you want to build it, we don't have the infrastructure for it. So I don't want to make that another barrier for economic development.

And I'm always one of which anyone is free to email planning, call us, whatever you need to do. And if people are identifying something as a barrier, we want to know because that's the only way I can help you. If I don't know it's a barrier, I can't. read minds and I don't have a magic eight ball in front of me so um in in many cases things that maybe do sound like a good idea end up being a hindrance later on and so always communicate with planning so that we can have that discussion there are some things I just can't change if it's a state law I can't wave my wand and make it go away but for the most part we want to work with everyone because we do want to see different housing types within the city we do want to see more commercial development we've identified it as a goal for us for many years now

Mm hmm. Well, I think I'm saying right now that this policy and our C 3.8 right now could be a barrier. So we might want to revise that so that we don't have it. Um, just because we as a stance right now and probably in the future or the next four years or five years, I don't think that's going to change.

So we could take that one back because, or we can come back with that one, I should say, because I don't want it to interfere. I don't want us to make a decision today where we either take it away or change the square footage and it interferes with the climate action plan that we've established or the addendum or anything else. So it should be a much more thoughtful researched answer for you so that we don't get into trouble with any of our other policy documents. But I can mark that down and for sure we will study that one. Okay.

And then LU 5.5.

Okay, okay, thank you for that Councilmember Morales. I mean, I just wanna just remind, especially the public that, because we've had several conversations about this, that we need to get this completed. There's always going to be room to come back and make amendments, and this may be one of those areas where we want to relook at it, but if we make any decisions tonight that further delay the process, then we will be creating those delays that we're trying to eliminate. So let's move forward with this, and then we can spend more time delving more into this topic, because I think it's an important point, Councilmember. And then obviously it sounds like we need more information on this anyway, but we can always come back with any kind of adjustments to policy and to the general plan. Okay, thank you for that. Council Member Pichet, questions or comments?

I want to just ask that question. So if something is zoned a certain way under the new general plan, something like on Hillcrest, that's always been a ready mix. It's always been an auger. It's always been a rockery. If we're... You know, under the gun and we needed to potentially use that as a residential. That can always be changed four times a year, we can revisit this every quarter that can can that be changed.

So there's a there's a important to note is that even if I change the zoning designation of a particular property today, you get to continue under our nonconforming use chapter of the of the zoning ordinance. And there is some state law for that, too. So if I have a property and they have a single family house, and I change them to, I don't know, industrial, let's say they can continue to be that single family house. They can repair it. They can maintain it. If it burns down, they can rebuild it. We don't have a requirement for elimination of the use in a burn down. Some cities do. We don't. And so they can they can remain that nonconforming use. um if we decided it was a problem and we wanted to rezone it or change the general plan land use we can do that obviously a rezone there's no limitations on the number of reasons a year general plan amendments there's only four but i can wrap many together at once bundle them so i could bundle 20 and bring it to you as one one package if i wanted to i could bundle a hundred it's just i can only do it four times a year okay

So Council Member Pichet, members of the Council, one exercise that the city did not engage in, which is unfortunate, was to have a visioning process with the Council. There are very, very few policy superpowers that are as important as land use. And the opportunity to truly discuss with you your vision for the city is not something, unfortunately, that we do very well in local government, but it is an exercise that is necessary. And once the dust settles with HCD, I would encourage us to have a discussion about what is it that you envision in this city? Because, and again, not that you're gonna change anything overnight, but it starts by having a vision. Not too long ago, I had the opportunity to meet the former mayor for Santa Clara. He served in the late 70s, early 80s. His daughter is right now the mayor in Santa Clara. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he basically said to me, Anna, why do you think Santa Clara looks the way that it does? Because we planned for it. We did the zoning in a certain way so that we didn't know that there was such thing as a personal computer back then. But we hoped, we hoped that technology was going to be such and that Santa Clara would be strategically located. They got that right. So that opportunity we haven't had just yet. It will come.

okay counselor anything else yes thank you go ahead um and to you know those who are like you know i need to house some of my workers some of them are seasonal some of them are here all year some of them are here part of the year uh some of them come and go if they can't do 30 units on a case-by-case basis can we look at that project and make some concessions or some variances

again um the way the zoning is set up is it's a certain density and if a project came to us that made absolute sense for the community we will come to you and ask you Well, you get the final decision whether you get to make the decision on that one. But we will come to you and ask you if it's okay. And then you will say yes, we like it, move it forward. And then we would move through the process as as required. There are with the new zoning ordinance amendments for the permitting chapters, we have codified ministerial review. So that's also available to affordable housing projects and other projects, which makes the process go much faster, as long as they meet the zoning. But there is that incentive for them where if they are Affordable of a certain nature, if they meet 1 of the state laws that we have requiring ministerial review, they do get to move through the process much faster. It becomes much cheaper for them.

Okay, so basically our back kind of. We're over a barrel a little bit. We're tardy. We're submitting the paper a little bit late. We might get dinged that a plus paper. Maybe it's a B plus. Maybe it's a C. Who knows? But we really, we're going to need to move forward at some point in time. And on all of these case-by-case basis, I mean, Joe Tonasha put together a great, we've read these two, by the way. Christopher Pito. I understand that he wants to do a commercial project on 156 coming into town over across the street from the dollar tree or street. Yeah, we need to balance having commercial properties, and I really feel like coming into town. It really should be businesses on those big wide roads. People really should be pulling into businesses all the way up through there until they get to the new Starbucks on the west side. And then they see people's houses and we're, okay, we should probably slow down because people haul the mail. And I'm not talking USPS, I'm talking people just trying to get home. Not like the goofy who's really upset in the traffic videos, but like somebody who you would actually like to see when they come home, like mom and dad. so yeah i'd like to see commercial projects all along 156 like all that san felipe california 25 um if it's mixed use yeah i'd like to see maybe a couple of houses in there maybe an apartment um but this can be changed four times a year okay and we can make that we don't have to make people stressed out like they were like we're gonna feel like retribution the city's gonna make i i can't do what i want with my property and i can't house my people

We're here to see success.

What we're not what we're not trying to do is just take everyone's request and accept it right now. Some of which we can't do because of our numbers. But we also don't want to we want to thoughtfully plan for how we want to move forward and give you that opportunity to discuss these projects as they come forward. um on a sidebar don't forget every year we have to bring the general plan annual progress report back to you um so then we would be doing it on this general plan every year so you get the opportunity to see how we are actually doing with each of our goals and policies we've been doing it on the 2005 but that is very out of date um so it hasn't been i think as meaningful as it should be but it's always in every year it is just a discussion that staff has with you so you can see where we're headed which policies are proving problematic, which ones are wonderful, which ones we have complete.

Okay. So we're going to submit the paper. It might be tardy. It might be a little bit late. We might not get the A plus. We might get a B minus. We might get a C plus, but we're going to submit it. Yeah. But then we're going to get a progress report.

Yes.

And then four times a year, we can get some extra credit and we can see where we're at and we can make some course corrections. Correct. Sounds good to me. Sounds good to me. That's all I have.

Thank you, Council Member Bichet. Vice Mayor DeAnda,

You know, I think I'm going to pause. I might have something to say, but I just haven't. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Dr. Resendez, go ahead.

No questions, Mayor Stephens. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. So let's go ahead then. And yeah, I don't have any, I don't have any questions either. I'm just going to do a quick thank you. I want to re, I think I want to rephrase Council Member Pichet's I'll comment about being tardy. I think we're following our timeline, so I'm glad about that. We had some delays, but it's really great to see this moving forward. And thank you to all the staff for really hard, a lot of hard work on this, and for the Council just staying diligent on pushing this forward. And it's good to know that this is a living, breathing document that we will revisit frequently so that we can make updates as needed. So let's go then item by item, and I'm going to open the public hearing for item 9.1, a resolution adopting the 2040 general plan and climate action plan. Any speaker cards on this one?

Yes, Mary Stevens. Our first speaker is James Dassel to be followed by Dane Brigantino.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council and Ms. Cortez. My name is James Dassel. I'm the owner of three parcels located in the southern portion of the city just south of the high school football field, which are currently proposed to be designated as high density residential under the new general plan. I'm speaking tonight to respectfully ask that you revise that designation to a low or medium density residential. This request is about ensuring what gets built is appropriate for the location and consistent with the surrounding community. Right now the proposed high density designation creates a sharp and immediate jump in density and community character compared to the existing neighborhood. That kind of abrupt transition doesn't really reflect good planning. It creates compatibility issues, community concern, and ultimately makes projects harder to deliver. Um, if we leave it in a high density, it would create the opportunity for a 6 story, uh, building overlooking the high school taller than the stadium. Where our local kids and athletes and at sporting venues, um, are participating at the high school. Um, a low density designation on the other hand, still allows for meaningful, uh, housing production, helping the city meet their arena numbers. But in a way that's better aligned with existing character of the area, both East and South, and a more realistic opportunity, given the current infrastructure and access. I want to emphasize that if the high density designation remains, it's very unlikely that any projects will actually take place on these parcels and then require additional changes, whether rezoning or general plan amendments. That creates delay and uncertainty and costs for both the property owner and the city. So the opportunity to get it right is right now. I mean, I know you guys had mentioned that there's an opportunity to change, but This one's kind of a no-brainer in my opinion. Low to medium density achieves the city's housing goals while ensuring development is feasible, compatible, and actually gets built by taking into account the beautiful character of this part of town. I mean, it is a gateway, and I'd like to see it done in a manner that's aesthetically pleasing to the residents. So at the end of the day, the general plan should not just affect where growth is desired, but where it makes sense. And for these parcels, a lower designation is the right fit. So I respectfully ask for your support. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Daschle. Next speaker, please.

The next speaker is Dane Brigantino to be followed by Michael Brigantino.

Good evening, everyone. Dave Brigantino. The issue we have, and you've been all prepped with the information, is a specific plan area for the Union Road. So, you know, the history is just kind of, I don't know where it actually started from the original general plan and survived through everything. up to this point, and we've been trying to get your attention on this, but it's a large area. It represents about 20% of the whole general plan, this specific plan area, Union Road, which represented, I think there's probably a dozen a dozen landowners in there or better. And so you're basically asking the people from all walks of life that have no planning experience to go make a plan, to get together and understand for this young lady, we're supposed to pay for this plan? We're supposed to pay for it, fund it. You know, some are farmers, some want to develop, some don't. It just seems very efficient, if you want to say, inefficient. Yeah, if we wanted to get along with Joe Tanasha, how are we going to get a plan together? You know, luckily we do get along with Joe, but, you know, with a big group of people like that, it's going to be impossible. so um it's taking you six years you got here okay there's there's a 2040 is the end of this cycle for this general plan right only 16 years left so by the time we get a group together making a a specific plan we'll be lucky to get it done and then what are the chances if we actually get a plan together and bring it to you guys that you're going to adopt it you're not going to adopt it you're going to critique it and change it and you know and i like the casino we're going to put in you know so um i think you should scrap the the uh specific plan, you already have zoning designations there already, and let it evolve because it's going to take time to develop all these pieces. One guy's going to do it, the other guy might not do it for 30 years. So my son has offered some language to be simple, to change the general plan that we can live with. and anyway i'll let him take it from here but i sure appreciate your consideration on this because otherwise we're going to be left in limbo trying to put something together it's effectively a a moratorium on all this land that in that in that area and the the general plan should have covered us in the beginning it should have It's a plan. It's a plan to make a plan of the future. Kind of general plan is that I don't know. It's your money's worth.

Thank you, Mr. Green. You know, next speaker.

Our next speaker is Michael Brigantino to be followed by Carson Clower.

Good evening, City Council, Ms. Cortez. Yeah, to follow up on that policy, Policy LU 14.1 was Union Road's special planning area is to require a specific plan before any development can occur. So I guess To bring this from the beginning, we've been kind of waiting since 2020. You know, it's been six years. You know, we've been told this whole time, you know, just wait till the, you know, general plan is done, then you can submit something. You know, I don't know how much the general plan costs. I'm sure it wasn't cheap. The EIR, you know, covers the build out of Union Road. So the environmental work has already been done. So requiring a second document that essentially the city's already funded doesn't make any sense. know of the planning areas the only two that you have this precondition is union road and meridian street all the other ones can develop you know in parallel with a specific plan while union road and meridian have to have a specific plan done ahead of time so um i would ask that you revise you know allow development consistent with the adopted general plan designations to proceed and run any specific uh plan work in parallel not as a precondition and then i have a couple other comments one is on policy lu 5.5 so it's regional distribution center buffer a thousand feet from any housing schools or daycare so unfortunately this whole this whole industrial area has houses scattered everywhere so if you If you require a 1,000-foot buffer for any regional distribution centers, you're not going to have any. Reason is I sent you guys maps of all the houses. You would probably have one or two parcels that you could fit a regional distribution center without being within this 1,000-foot buffer. So I'd ask... that that get removed or at least amended. And that's something, you know, when you have when you're close to houses in your development, you go through CEQA. I mean, it's a long process. You know, they you know, they look at noise, air mitigation, setback screening. So that will be covered. And if there's if it's next to a house, you know, people have the option to come and comment. So anyways, I'd ask that that that also get removed. And then lastly, policy NRC 3.8 requires zero emissions for operations and fleet for commercial and industrial projects over 10,000 square feet. So I know you can amend it, but the problem is you're never going to get applications if people see that language. So you're never going to know which developers pass up. You know, we get calls from industrial users all the time. And so, you know, we're competing against Gilroy, Salinas, nearby areas that don't have that language. So I'd ask that you strike that also.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Bring it to you. Yeah. And can I just check in with the city clerk? I can't see the timer from me here. So thank you, Dr. Resendez for that. Cause yeah, I was waiting to hear that so that I can move on to the next speaker.

Yeah. The timer is not currently ticking down on zoom. So that's why we don't have it showing.

So, okay. Thank you for that.

Sorry about that. Our last speaker is Carson Clower. Okay.

Thank you. Carson Clower. I am a registered lobbyist with the city of Halster. And city manager Cortez said something earlier that kind of caught my eye, which was for you, with you. And I think that this process has followed that for a number of years, even as it went back and forth. Tonight, I don't feel that way. I'm honestly pretty disappointed. And when it started, I was actually upset about how this went, that for five years, you've been working on it. people have been working on it and there's not even a real presentation on this tonight six items that are going to change the future of the city for the next 15 years and really probably the next like 40 because general plans tend to work off of the previous document and you don't have a presentation tonight on it but i understand maybe the city doesn't have anybody who actually can fully present this in the way that they did two weeks ago a month ago five years ago But you have consultants that you paid a lot of money for who could have been here to present this. They were here at the planning commission meeting. And when we say that the things that were in the, this was presented at the planning commission meeting, comments were made. If you're tuning in for the first time because you're a normal person who doesn't come to the planning commission meetings, you don't know any of that because there was no presentation. Even if you have to accept it the way it is, the presentation should have been made. Now, you can come back and change things. It's not easy. I believe you need four votes. Whereas tonight you need three. You got to be able to get to the meetings, which is not that easy. If you have something that does not comply with your zoning, it's not that simple to get it to a planning commission meeting. You're going to have to fight and fight to get that on an agenda with staff saying, no, don't do it planning commission. And sometimes the planning commission says, no staff, we want to do it anyways, but it's not simple. It doesn't happen right away. If you have a nonconforming use, sure, you can continue the use, but you can't expand it. If you're a business and you're doing a great job and you want to expand your business, you can't expand it if you're nonconforming. Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Probably depends on the situation. But if you don't change the zoning for a business that's doing well, they can't expand. I believe this exact site that was mentioned like two years ago came with a project they wanted to do, and I don't think they were allowed to do it. I had a specific request. I don't know. I'm not even going to bring it up because I sent in a letter for the Planning Commission. I made the comment there. I don't know. It didn't get put in the packet for that. I don't know if it's in the packet for this because there's no presentation. Adopt this. You have to. I mean, it's the right thing to do, but how this went down, not great. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Clower.

Any other speakers?

Yes. One more. Joe Tanasha.

My name's been mentioned enough tonight, I better come up here and defend myself. I was going to talk about my letter, but after what I've heard here, I think my letter to you guys speaks for itself about trying to do something. But I've been involved in every general plan that we had here, 2023, 2024, public comment, written comment. Got to this deal here. You guys on bad advice just kicked the general plan out. This tonight is the first time I've heard, oh yeah, you can change it four times a year. You can make multiple changes. The same thing I talked about with a couple of you. Don't kick it out. Put a red flag and a stop on the things that you have a problem with and move on with the rest. So everything gets changed around. That's great. Yeah, I can come back. Every time I come back, It's 7,000, 8,000. You're going to have to spend 8,000 to take that through the planning department and get it through to make a change. A nonconforming use, your property gets rezoned. Yeah, you're right. It can stay as ag. But if I go to do something and put something up for ag, they don't let me do that without spending extra money. to go to the planning commission and the city council because you're now non-conforming because you're overlaying zone, even though you pay taxes for ag. So all of a sudden, where you don't have to have a permit, you go in and get a permit to put a small building up, they're gonna say, oh, well, you gotta get a conditional use permit, which is another seven or $8,000. Maybe money grows on trees. I've been around planning departments for a long time. Everybody thinks that the guy doing it has all this money because they're in business. It doesn't work that way. But what does work is a system when you're coming here commenting, working with the general plan to get it done, so you can save money. I'll point blank say that. So I can save money because it gets done here without me spending a bundle out of my pocket. Instead, I hear about how much it's going to cost everybody. When you take it back, you make it sound simple, but I got to agree with you. With Clower and Brigantino, it's not simple. A specific plan? I got to get along with these guys to build an outhouse? Come on. These specific plans need to go out. I gave the city a great plan right next door with commercial 20% affordable housing. What did they do? They didn't even give me a rebate. They took my plan, didn't even look at it, and kept my money. And here I am again. Unbelievable. I'm sorry.

Thank you for this item.

Okay. Thank you for that. So I'm going to close the public hearing on my laptop system, nine 15, um, bring it back to the council for any last minute questions or comments and, um, for an action. Go ahead.

Dr.

Thank you i'm hearing an ECHO are we good okay um so thank you to all the speakers that came out, thanks to my colleagues, thank you to the staff working so diligently on getting this to the finish line. But here's the thing we. entered into stipulation with the state. I don't understand why people are asking us to change it. If they're complaining about us taking so long, and then they're asking us to change it, which is going to take even more longer, get us in trouble with the state even longer, it just doesn't make sense to me. Let's talk about the property owners that came up here, the Brigatinos, the Clowers, the Dassels. Thank you guys for coming over here, but we need to partner with you moving forward. You're not going to pay for the specific plan. that you're going to sell your land to a developer that's going to come to our community, change the look, the feel of our community, not just for your families, but for the Hernandez's, the Smith's, the blacks that did not have the luxury to sit up here as a city councilman, step down and become a lobbyist. I do appreciate you saying that you're a lobbyist when you came here, Mr. Clower. But we represent everybody, including you in this community. And we want to partner with everybody, including you. But just because you have to pay a little bit more money or the price of your property is going to go down because you have to do a specific plan to make our community more livable, more walkable, more bikeable, more eco-friendly. I'm sorry, but what about the people that don't have the luxury to come up here or to sit up here or to understand all of these complexities that you do have? We have to work for everybody here. After the general plan is adopted tonight, reach out to us. None of you have ever reached out to me. And I think it's interesting that we've got one council member up here that all of a sudden becomes a planning expert and is pointing out all of these policies in the book, in the general plan, and wanting them changed last minute. I appreciate that you said you were a lobbyist, but keep in mind, when we have conversations with lobbyists, we have an ethical obligation to make mention of that before you vote on something. I don't think everybody always does that. This general plan needs to be adopted, not just for the farming community, but for the people that voted to rescind the general plan that was pushed through by the developers and the previous mayor. stop monkeying around with it, adopt the general plan, and then let's grow forward together in a responsible, respectable, equitable manner for the people of the entire community, including your families. I truly, sincerely mean that. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Resendez. Other comments or questions?

go ahead council member Morales um so I guess I'll just respond to say thank you for the comments that were um very my opinion well written the comments I brought up were in writing to all of us I think we all have them in front of me I just went one one by one um and we all have it in front of us so I did read them all. It's my job to read them all and provide. I know that folks have been waiting for years. I've only been in office for five years and they've come to city council meetings to share their frustration. We i'm on three see i've been on three see for several years and we talked about the issue for years and we actually wrote to when Congresswoman so law firm was here she we the city, the city manager talked about the issues with pg&e she wrote a letter on our behalf. To see if she can help move the issue with PG&E that's how I know about it. And so I haven't nobody reached out to me I haven't reached out I haven't talked to anybody i'm just reading the emails that were sent to all of us. I do, however, feel that it is. I know that we are in a situation with the state. It does not feel good not to have any options, not to say, please change this. This is just continuing to cost our community money, frustration, time delays. We are kind of tying their hands in terms of what they can do with their property and their money, really. I mean, because they are going to have to spend a lot of money in order for them to move forward. And they haven't had a pleasant experience, at least in the five years that I have been here in terms of how things move along. So communities plus traded. They don't have any assurances that anything that they did recommend, whether it's acceptable or not, will even move forward. I've heard on other occasions members come in and say, I've spent, you know, 10, $20,000, the city promised this, and then the city didn't follow through with their commitment. So I don't know if we have any options, if we can extend anything to people that have been on cue for a very long time that spent money. I can tell you this, it does not feel good not to have any options, not to write things that are clearly like the issue with the zero emissions. That is something we are not going to do. That is not something we are not going to be able to do in the next four or five years. It is just I'm wondering if there's any options and if we can explore any of them.

So for the folks who have spoken about monies that probably should be reimbursed, government charges for a cost recovery using a cost recovery model. That is, if I spend energy, supplies, etc then of course i charge the community but if i haven't done it then the reality is that there's a refund to be to be had we've already started to reimburse folks i want to say maybe by the end of february so if individuals out there who feel that their Requests or their project was mishandled by the former community development department. Please reach out to us. We've already provided. In fact, we have a member of the community right here was probably our 1st recipient of our refund policy. So we do have it out there. we will examine closely what needs to be refunded uh you know i just heard that probably we have a customer who is not quite satisfied just yet uh you know if you don't ask you won't receive right so yes we definitely have that um and then there is a recognition that a more um a more community engaged a process was probably necessary. I go back to the statement that I made about the zoning conversation, which you didn't have. So if we didn't have it with you, we can pretty much assume we didn't have it with the community. And so I do want to reassure though, there were statements made about how difficult this is. No, it will not be difficult. We are improving processes. I don't believe in bureaucracy. I don't believe in red tape. And neither do the directors who are now responsible for this process. Mr. Wall is here. And I think that we are together going to figure out a process that will be quick, that will be inclusive, and that will lead to changes in the general plan that actually make sense. We recognize we are where we are. We have what we have. And we also know that this community serves better than that.

Okay. Thank you for that. Okay, anything else Councilmember Morales?

No, thank you. And thank you for thank you for that information. At least it helps me.

Okay, thank you. Okay, any last minute quick?

Mayor Stephens.

Go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you. I just want to remind the community that you did have an opportunity to weigh in. You can't say that you were just here. You just got here. You didn't this and that. You were part of the old council that adopted the general plan that was referended by the public, and you did change it with the old council. And some of those changes are still in this general plan. I just want to be clear with the public so that we're not politicizing and trying to play any sides here. This is a general plan that does include some of the input that you and my colleagues gave during that time as well. We can pull up the videos if you like. You know, I'm very good at that. Pull up the videos and we can talk about that as well. But you did have input. Point of order. I have input. Okay.

Where we're going with this.

I'm just coming off of that. Let's not be. Sorry about that.

All the rules here. Okay.

And not a lot of size things.

Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to interject. So. With these comments.

Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you. Council member Morales, did you have a last minute comment to make?

I do. I really want there to be professionalism and for us to follow the rules when it comes to here and really tired of the attacks. It's exhausting. We're here to do business. And I like for the chair to help us make sure that we're getting business done.

Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. So we're going to move on. I'm going to just check in with council member Bichet and vice mayor Deonda for any last minute questions or comments.

Okay. So we've been talking. basically since 530 about running the city like a business. We're going to have decorum. We're going to have comportment. We're going to behave ourselves in a way that businesses should run. We're going to be efficient. And you know what? I find myself up here in this place where I thought everything was so black and white when I was sitting on that side. I was over there at the lectern, and I was like, oh, it's going to be just, why don't they just do this or do that? And I find myself sitting up here and I am like, it's such a shade of gray, every single thing. The people who have land want to have control over how they use it. I mean, they came into it through hard work and determination from either their ancestors or themselves, you know, their own efforts. So literally everybody that we, I'm sure we all read all of these because they were emailed to us and then they were plopped down on our desk and some of us I'm sure we all read them. So I agree with the Tinashe's and the Dassault's and the Brigantino's and the Clower's. I agree with Resendez when he says that we need to balance all of these things out. I even agree with. Give me one second. oh mr pito christopher when he says you know i'd kind of like a commercial concern along 156 or 4th street like i believe that when you're coming into town and it's a big wide road you see a dollar general like you should be have you should have commercial concerns on that road maybe behind it have some houses um but we need to have a better plan and you know I'm going to just say this. When they IPO'd Facebook or whatever they're calling it, meta now, the big catchphrase that Zuckerberg can't duck the zuck, right, as they say, What did he say when he IPO'd? Done is better than perfect. Are we getting a C grade? I don't know, bless you, but we're not getting an A grade, that's for sure. And you're not gonna make everybody happy. I would like to see less fees for any of the folks that have been waiting six years, five years, four years. If it's the amount of time that it takes one to get through high school, That's twice as long as it really should ever take. And I'm really encouraged when people come up here and say, you know, something that used to take two years is now taking two weeks. That's what I would love. We've got what we've got. If you think about it, the referendum was going to slow everything down that we were trying to achieve last year and kind of feel so tired and I feel haggard, but I feel like we've got something that's not perfect. It's probably not even great. It might be a C plus, but we need to move something forward because up until now, we've gotten some slaps on the wrist. And, you know, luckily, they landed in a place where we have a soft spot, which is the underserved, the underprivileged, the folks that don't have as many nickels to rub together. And we're going to set aside some $300,000 to get some low-income housing, which is something all of us can agree on. We got lucky. We're not always going to get lucky. And we are... Mayor Mrakas, A little behind there was the referendum to the mayor's point. Mayor Mrakas, But we need to move forward with something because we can't turn in no paper, because not only are we going to not get a good grade at all, we might not get we might actually get fined so it's all I have.

Okay, thank you. Mayor Mrakas, Any last minute comments.

No, not on this item, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Okay, so I'm happy that we are at this point, finally, because it has been through a lot of blood, sweat and tears for several years, including having a general plan that was almost passed a few years ago. And although I think Council Member Boucher is right, we are not going to please everybody all the time with this plan. However, it is a culmination of a lot of back and forth, including comments from the entire community. There's always going to be people that certain specific sections of the general plan does not benefit them. However, there's always opportunities to look at things on a case by case, as well as to make amendments as needed. So I'm happy that we are able to finalize this plan tonight. That's my hope. And then we can move on with the city business on all the other issues, including addressing individual concerns and making amendments as needed. So with that, I'm going to ask for a motion on this item.

Mayor Stephens, I'll move to adopt 9.1, resolution adopting the 2040 general plan and the climate action plan. Can I get a second?

I'll second.

Roll call vote.

Council Member Pache.

Aye.

Council Member Resendez. Aye. Council Member Morales. Vice Mayor De Anda. Yes. And Mayor Stephens.

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Okay, thank you. So we're going to go on to 9.2. And I'm going to first ask for public comment on this one.

Are we taking public comment on every item then? Oh, yeah.

Public hearing. Sorry, I'm opening public hearing on item 9.2. Do we have any speaker cards on this one?

Yes, Chris pedo.

Good evening. My name is Chris Pito. I'd like to thank the Mayor, Council, City Manager, and everybody for being here tonight. I have a prepared statement, but based on what's happened, I think it's better if I read one little bit and then get into some some detail. So I submitted a letter to the clerk earlier that we would like to of the council to consider planning commission resolution number 2026-3 to remove APN 052-090-045 from the housing element specifically amend apex appendix page F75 for RZ-W-8 by amending attachment 1 and attachment 2. I'm a commercial retail developer. It's all I do. I was brought to Hollister because I represent several Fortune 500 and top of chain regional brands, and there was a desire to do a development in the city of Hollister. uh i believe in kind of free market they're the ones who look at where their models need to go dictate the places the locations and that's how i came to the city of hollister it's been about a year since i've been working here we do have a planning application that's in we've been given direction by people in management positions on how to process we were told initially that at this point we would be under construction and obviously that hasn't happened I can tell you that there have been some frustrations from my tenant standpoints and I did have 1 tenant who decided to pass on the location. I have subsequently talked to them and they will be identifying another location in town at a later date to come into. So there is some momentum that's here. there has been a change in the tone and tenor in the last little bit and sometimes i'm the person that calls sometimes it's the tenants that calls the consultants that call and it's been a frustrating process we hope that this works i'm available to answer questions but what this is is this really is serving as a proof of life development for this area to show that retail can go and development begets other development i have had some residential developers reach out to me looking at vertical uh Mixed use developments and for the types of uses that's very challenging and the locations don't work and there have been problems. But I do think that you will see some growth coming in and I will think do you believe you're going to see some other applications and because I've seen with my tenants, the site plans kicking around. So, I appreciate it. I'll be available. I do think that what the city manager said with the visionary meetings are helpful. I have participated in those to get roundtables from. Groups and can make ourselves available if necessary. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Peter. Other speakers?

Those are the only speakers for this item.

Okay, I'm going to close the public hearing at 935 on this item and bring it back to the council. Any questions or comments on this item?

Mayor.

Go ahead, Dr. Resendez.

Thank you. And I just want to disclose, I've spoken to Mr. Pito several times before this, and I have told him and expressed him the same sentiment that I expressed to the landowners here. We have to get through this hurdle. We're going to prioritize your project. We're going to prioritize talking to everybody else. So thank you for coming out. Thank you for speaking. And we look forward to partnering with you in the future.

Okay. Thank you. Other comments, questions? Okay, not seeing any. Can I get I'm calling for a motion on this item 9.2.

Mayor, I will move to adopt 9.2 resolution adopting a general plan amendment repealing the fifth cycle housing element and adopting the Hollister six cycle 2023 2031 housing element in compliance with state law.

Awesome. Thank you. And then roll call vote, please.

Council Member Pache. Aye. Council Member Resendez. Aye. Council Member Morales. Vice Mayor Deanda. Yes. Mayor Stephens.

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Okay. Thank you. So we're going to move on. Let me make sure I'm on the right number. Sorry about that. 9.3, an ordinance repealing the existing city of Houser zoning map and replacing with a new zoning map consistent with the 2040 general plan. Any questions or comments from City Council members? I'm not seeing any. I'm going to open the public hearing. Any speaker cards on this one?

Yes, one speaker, Chris Pito.

I thank you, um, just for the record again, we would like to, uh, have the council consider, uh, the letter that we, the, the recommendation from the planning commission, uh, removing 082026-02, which is APN 052-09-045. and as an opportunity site from the housing element and to designate the parcel as general commercial. We've met with the city several times regarding these items and the zoning designation, the buffers, and there have been discussions with several parties at the city as to the use and ultimately having a general commercial development here will allow us to proceed. I'm available for any questions. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Peto. Other speakers?

There are no other speakers.

Okay. So I'm going to close the public hearing at this time. and check in with the council again. Any last minute questions or comments on this item? Can I get a motion on this item?

Mayor Stephens, I'll move to adopt 9.3, an ordinance repealing the existing City of Hollister zoning map and replacing with a new zoning map consistent with the 2040 general plan. Okay, thank you. DOA 26-2.

Thank you. A second, please.

All seconds.

Roll call vote.

Council Member Pichet?

Aye.

Council Member Resendez? Aye. Council Member Morales? Vice Mayor De Anda? Yes. And Mayor Stephens?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Okay, thank you. So we're going to move on. 9.4. Wait, did we just do that? Sorry. 9.5, right?

No, 9.4. You're correct. Sorry.

Okay. Why does that look exactly the same as the previous one? Okay. An ordinance approving the amendments to the zoning ordinance related to implementation of the goals and policies of the city's sixth cycle housing element, ZOA 2026-1. Any quick questions or comments from the council? Not seeing any, I'm going to move to public hearing. Any speaker cards on this item?

There are no speakers for this item.

Okay, so I'm closing public hearing. Back to the council, any last minute questions or comments? Okay, not seeing any, can I get a motion?

Mayor, I'll move to adopt 9.4, an ordinance approving amendments to the zoning ordinance related to implementation of the goals and policies of the city's six cycle housing element, ZOA 2026-1. Okay, thank you for that.

Second, please.

I'll second.

Roll call vote.

Councilmember Pichet?

Aye.

Councilmember Resendez? Aye. Councilmember Morales? Vice Mayor Deanda? Yes. And Mayor Stephens?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Okay, so 9.5, an ordinance approving phase three of the comprehensive zoning ordinance amendments related to permits and procedures, ZOA 2025-4. Any questions or comments from the council? Not seeing any. Move to public hearings. We'll open the public hearing. Any speaker cards on this item?

There are no speakers on this item.

Okay, so close the public hearing. So any last minute questions or comments from the council? Not seen any. So can I get a motion on this item?

Mayor, I move to adopt 9.5, item number 9.5, an ordinance approving phase three of the comprehensive zoning ordinance amendments related to the permits and procedures, ZOA 2025-4.

Can I get a second?

I'll second.

Roll call vote.

Council Member Pichet? Aye. Council Member Resendez? Aye. Council Member Morales? Vice Mayor Deanda? Yes. And Mayor Stephens?

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

Okay. Item 9.6, resolution adopting the objective design standards for multifamily and residential mixed-use development projects within the downtown mixed-use DMU zoning district. Any questions or comments from the council? Okay, not seeing any. I'm going to open the public hearing now. Do we have any speaker cards on this item?

No speakers.

Okay, so I'll close the public hearing. Back to the council. Any last minute questions or comments? Okay, not seeing any. So can I get a motion on this item?

Mayor, I'll move to adopt item 9.6, a resolution adopting the objective design standards for multifamily and residential mixed-use development projects within the downtown mixed-use DMU zoning district.

Okay, thank you for that. Can I get a second from someone?

I'll second. Roll call vote.

Council Member Pache.

Aye.

Council Member Resendez. Aye. Council Member Morales. Vice Mayor Deanda. Yes. And Mayor Stephens.

Yes.

Motion passes 5-0.

okay well thank you for that and congratulations to everyone for getting past this is an incredible milestone passing the housing element the general plan and all the other little detailed items related to those this has been a long awaited finish line so congratulations to everybody and thank you to staff for working so hard and for sticking it out with us Okay, so we're going to move on to item 10.1, council business renaming city park and city avenue. Staff report, please.

Super quick. Members of the council, Madam Mayor, members of the public. So the winner is in. After conducting several community engagement activities, the community has selected for the park, formerly known as Cesar Chavez Park, the Si Se Puede Park, And for the avenue formerly known as Avenida Cesar Chavez, it is now Camino Campesino.

Nice. Thank you for that. And that's my report. Okay, great. Thank you for that. And then, do we have a name for the city park?

Yeah, no, she might have not. So, Madam Mayor, for the park is Si Se Puede Park.

Oh, did I miss that? I'm so sorry. I think I might have missed that. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I obviously zoned out for a second. So, thank you for that. So, we're moving forward with those names. Do we need to do anything with this? Let me check in. Are we just doing a motion, regular motion on this as always?

There's no motion or action needed. According to the policy the council adopted at the last meeting, it allows the city manager to move forward with the naming, but this was just one that you had asked the staff to bring back just for your information.

Okay, and then public comment on this one?

There are no public comments for this item.

Okay, thank you. Okay. Well, good. Good job on that. I really love that practice of going out to the public and doing some community outreach and getting feedback so that I really appreciate that. So thanks for that. So let's move on to informational reports. 11.1 committee committee assignments um so any council members that have anything to report on the ad hocs any standing committee or other uh reports um so let me go i'm just going to go down the road start with a council member morales thank you ma'am um so 3ce

We had a meeting today. Yes, today. Thank you. Um, where we talked about the, um, battery. So the 3ce allocated, um, 1.5M dollars. It is now the obligation or submission of applications was 5.7M. Um, the Council took action to honor all the completed applications and um and then move to go to the future which is right what was 3.5 total but what was the uh the name of the future battery storage oh uh three So the future for battery storage, instead of just having the storage people's home, so we had a lot of public comment there's. A lot of applications for batteries there's a lot of interest and. Remote virtual power plant so we're moving towards virtual power plant and our city manager has a seat on policy, so they will be doing onboarding with you, it is a fascinating committee you'll learn a lot about. Everything related to energy. um for integrated waste management we've had a couple meetings on the budget that our um vendor we're at that point where we need to do an rfp um they've hired a consultant to to look at how the rfp is done and they did a request for information to see if there's any other potential vendors which there are and they came forth saying that they're happy to do the business um i think something that we are looking at is the joint powers agreement um it is mostly an advisory body at this point but really everything that we do there has to come to city council to be approved so i've asked for integrated waste management if there are reports or approvals that they come here and do that versus just being put on the consent agenda because this body is responsible for those decisions. It isn't the appointed body. So really other than events and things that that body really isn't functional in any way. The other thing I think I'd like this body to consider as those things come here to city council, the budget does expand on a lot of different areas, including legislation. But I think we really, we are, the city contributes the most, and I really want to make sure that the city's needs are met. How the positions that are identified by integrated waste management, how are they supporting the city, not only just supporting the county for all the county's priorities, that the city, who is the largest investor, really that we look at what our priorities are and those things are fulfilled. Um, I've had several issues with, um, community members doing their own cleanups and. I'm not sure whether we have support or not. Um, we've had support, but I'd like to make sure that, um, the city of Hollister 1 gets our needs met. And if there are going to be positions that we have more of a voice in terms of the direction, the policy direction and priorities of integrated waste management, not that it because the county oversees that department. So. that it not be swallowed up by the county that we as contributors um you know have more of a say and have more of a benefit in terms of what that office does there is um it's a word space because they're not really they don't take direction by the county they don't take direction by the city cities and so they're kind of like a standalone island um that's why we want to make sure that the joint power agreement um that's really reviewed because right now nobody has authority over that department and thank you city manager for meeting with them and getting an understanding of what that looks like but you'll see the budget being uh will be sent to you here for review and approval and i really like to make sure that we allocate the appropriate time to make sure we go through it to make sure that the city's interests are taken care of and then of course we have earth day april 25th

Yes, this Saturday. Thank you for that.

I will not be there, so if we can have a city representative there.

I will be popping in, so I will be there, and anybody else who would love to join me, I would love to see you there, but I will be popping in for a little bit. Yeah. Last year was a great event. It was really fun, a lot of fun things, some raffles. Some of the kids won some things with their little... uh scavenger hut that was really cute so yeah i invite everybody to be there um anything else council member morales no thank you okay and council council member fishet anything to report no i stood in as an alternate for that 3ce battery storage um

Mayor Mrakas, Meeting and the Association of Monterey Bay Area governments was cancelled for April just due to lack of agenda items so.

Mayor Mrakas, Okay, or nothing to report okay great, thank you for that. Mayor Mrakas, Vice Mayor de Anda anything to report or. Okay, Dr. Resendez, anything to report?

Thank you, Mayor. So I attended COG this week. Wait, no, last week, sorry. Last week, yes. With the mayor. And essentially what COG accomplished is that they adopted a new alternate to study for the expansion of Highway 25. I'm looking at Mr. Tanasha. He's shaking his head yes. So we have got a new alternate to begin to study for the expansion of Highway 25. That alternate and again nothing's finalized it's just something that this is how government works people it's just something that we're looking at to expand highway 25 to a four-lane highway we had to do that um i think it's pretty much a straight shot if i'm not mistaken lots of public uh attendance which I was very thankful for to have them there, to have their input. And they've been involved the entire way. So lots of good things, in my opinion, are moving forward. However... when you go back and you add something uh it does stall the timeline a little bit we're also wrote a letter to the state to start contesting i would say them increasing the price of building highway 25 because of the vmts the vehicle miles traveled which has really hurt our community because we're a bedroom community Councilmember Morales reminded me of Earth Day. That was brought up at COG. They're going to be providing free public transportation from Hollister to San Juan Bautista for Earth Day. Go! So that would be maybe something that we should consider. because we really need to start using our public transportation a little bit more. But I thought that was really cool. And then on top of that, we learned from Caltrans. The other thing, all of Caltrans was there. They did fabulous. We had a room full of people. Caltrans was there. The meeting ran very great. And they told us that in the meantime, while they're doing the environmental back reports they're looking at all the work they need to do to expand highway 25 which is a high priority for the current directors on cog they're going to be improving the highway the current highway with safety measures i told them that i think they really need to advertise that as to not confuse the people the public and they've done a really good job caltrans has done a really good job lately of putting information out there again it's going to be a slow process we work for government and it's going to be a slow process but they did that because of a safety study that came back which they did not want to disclose the data to me by the way that requires them to implement safety measures all the way from 101 all the way to town so there will be doing little things here and I understand the public gets frustrated about how long it's taking and whatnot but Yeah, that concludes my report. Thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you for that report. I was also going to report on COG. Thank you for doing that for me. I will just add that the thing that is exciting, even though it is very slow, is that we have a design that it appears we have general consensus on. with COG and that is a really important thing as we move forward. And that is based on lots of feedback from the community. Again, going back to the comment I made earlier that we're not going to be able to please everybody. Somebody will always be affected in a way that doesn't benefit them. However, There was a lot of outreach to the public, and I agree with Dr. Resendez in terms of Caltrans doing a really good job in continuing to get community feedback and the community's engagement and participation. It's been great. And then the other last thing about that is you can go on the COG website. They're going to continue to add updates. as things are coming along along Highway 25. So the safety measures, those are a direct result, I can just say, from community outcry about some of the accidents, including fatalities on 25. And it's because of that, that this is happening, that those safety measures, that work around safety is happening in government time pretty quickly. More to come on that. The other report that I have is on LAVCO. LAVCO, we appointed a new community alternate, Barry Katz, and I just want to thank him for throwing his hat in the ring and being willing to participate. It's so crucial for us to have the public participate. We shouldn't just have representatives from city councils or from Board of Supervisors, but it's great to have those community members participate. So thank you, Mr. Katz, for being the alternate. It's a very important position. We also heard a presentation from representatives of the high school, including the superintendent, about a prospective second high school in the future. how LAFCO's role will be in that in terms of determining the land use and identifying issues related to that. So that was just an informational presentation. It was very informative. More to come on that. That was LAFCO. And then I would just, my last report, had a meeting with a representative from Amazon. And as city manager Cortez mentioned earlier, this idea of supporting micro businesses came directly from that meeting. It's an exciting thing to consider. So we're gonna move forward with them on that, this conversation about how we can uplift and partner with Amazon to uplift local, very small businesses So more to come on that. But one of the things that was really, really exciting about that meeting is their eagerness to see what economic development strategies we have and in what ways they can support us in that, including participating in community efforts, like community improvement, community events. So we're going to continue to have those conversations with Amazon. More to come on that later. Okay, so that concludes my report. Mayor, I got one thing. Okay.

Oh, Councilmember Bichette, go ahead.

Whenever we do these reports, I think about my official positions, but I forgot that I had a meeting with the superintendent of the high school district, Mr. Tenenbaum and Carson Clower about their desire to on Buena Vista, the north side, which is just outside our sphere, to um they were talking about enrollment numbers all of the kids coming through from k through eight um coming through the ranks and the necessity of just basically how much we've grown in the last 20 25 years from 25 000 to 45 plus or so thousand that we've got in hollister and the need for an additional high school and They were talking about how the main high school would be the primary hub, the secondary or satellite school would effectively use the facilities as far as the athletics. And, you know, they just kind of filled me in on a few things. So just wanted to call that out. Thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you for that. OK, so I'm going to turn it over to our city manager on a Cortez for her report.

Mayors sorry, sorry I skipped.

You had an item on I'm I skipped right over that and it was my own item. So I want us to. Bring the item. I'm sorry like I'm running out of my breath a little bit. Sorry about that. On the business advisory Commission, I just want to have a quick discussion with all of you and see if there's any need for updates, so I just want to bring that back so can I get a thumbs up from everyone on bringing that okay good, thank you for that now city managers report, thank you.

Mayor members of the Council, it is 10pm if it's Okay, I would like to send you a written email of my report.

Thank you. I'm completely OK with that. And we do have to ask everyone if they're OK going a little bit past if we do go past for thank you. So thank you for that. So I think does anybody does anybody have any quick question on any of the items that are on there? We have like one minute till 10. OK, not seeing any. OK, so I think we're good. So thank you for that option. And then hopefully next meeting, we won't have as many questions. long items to discuss so but thank you all for your patience good meeting tonight and thank you for indulging me while i'm trying to get over whatever it is i'm trying i'm trying to get um uh this was super helpful for me and for all of you too so you wouldn't get sick um so i will adjourn now officially at 10 o'clock p.m so get home good night thank you everyone

I'm really excited.

Oh, I feel