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

Agenda item A, study session roll call. Councilmember DuPont? Tao?

Present.

Harris?

Present.

Smith?

Present.

Zhong?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Boyle? Here. And Mayor Serrato. Agenda item B, study session. B1, study session joint powers authority concept to fund critical infrastructure for Virginia Smith Trust development project.

Excellent. All right, good afternoon, council members. Thank you for coming so early this evening, or late afternoon, I should say. We have a unique opportunity today, which is to talk about a development project that you should be familiar with. It's the VST, Virginia Smith Trust Development Project that the council previously had pledged annexation are brought into the city. We've been working on various levels of entitlements. Most recently, some tentative maps that will be coming later to you as final maps at some point. There have also been other agreements that have been executed, environmental documents. But we're here today to really talk about the mechanics of making this development project work. And so the city has a long history of land-based financing. And I know in your packet, I provided you a copy of policy 829, which talks about security, using land for security to issue debt. And then the debt is used to finance public improvements. And so we're going to talk today about a unique approach that could be done. As I noted in the admin report, the city does have a couple of different programs we're already enrolled in, which are also options that other developers could consider. There's the skip and the bold programs. Those are things that the council supported in the past. Neither one of which have been used so far, but they are eligible that are out there. So there's many different ways that financing can be done, but this is a unique one today. And so we're happy to provide the opportunity to kind of get feedback, get this idea out, and share it with you. So I'm gonna invite a very distinguished guest, Dr. Steve Teigen. You recognize him from being elected for various reasons, but also being involved in the BST project. And he'll kind of lead you to the next speaker here.

Thank you City Manager, Mr. McBride. Thank you Mayor Pro Tem and Council Members for having us here this afternoon. As you know, Steve Teach in Merced County Superintendent of Schools and Executive Director for the Virginia Smith Trust. And so what we are about is to try to get our property in a best position to market it and develop it. My board has been concerned about from the very outset 10 years ago when I stepped into the role was we don't wanna sell the property to somebody that's gonna sit on it for 10 to 15 more years until the value of that property becomes so great that it'll be easy to build. They aren't willing to wait that long. and they don't want someone else to end up raking in all the profits off a piece of property that was donated actually not by Virginia but by the Packard Foundation as part of the deal where we gave all of Virginia's land to the USC system. So back on point, today we're here to talk about a particular financing structure for CFDs that's different than what you've done before. It requires a joint powers arrangement between MCOE and the city of Merced. And that joint power agreement kicks things off and allows us to levy a CFD on the property that will help us pay for the amenities on the property as well as a future school. And that's why MCOE is involved in the CFD process. Because I'm not the expert in this, I brought along the expert with me today, Adam Bauer, who is the president and CEO of Fieldman Rollup, a firm that specializes in creating CFDs and marketing geo bonds for school districts. I've known Adam for about 20, well, actually 19 years now. I met him when I was working in Los Banos and we were, We just passed a bond and we're beginning to build Pacheco High School. And we had a successful rollout then, and I've leaned on Adam several times over the last 19 years to help with other financing projects, including financing for taking over the downtown mondo building our professional development center which is re-engaged downtown i'm sure you're all aware of that so adam's been a key supporter for me with his expertise and so i'm going to let him walk you through the slideshow and then if you have questions about vst our marketing plan or school plan happy to answer those as well adam it's all yours great

And thank you for the very nice introduction and just a little more background. Our firm that specializes in this type of financing, we do about 50% of the transactions in the state of California, which is the biggest. We do about 75% in New Mexico. We've got 100% in Hawaii. So those are some of the areas that we spend a lot of time focusing on. but when we were looking at this project one of the things that really stood out was to really create something that was customized for this project and also to help all the agencies in this community and that's why we came up with the joint powers authority structure which I'll explain in a moment. But what we laid out here are just some general steps is the first thing to do is establish a joint powers authority and essentially that allows the government entities involved to delegate and have that JPA be the agency that forms and eventually finances for these programs. What we've looked at here is Merced, the city, but also the Board of Education and maybe even like the K-12 school districts within the area. But so far we've focused on the Office of Ed and the city of Merced. Once the JPA is in place, we can then look to form a community facilities district. Community facilities districts have been done in the region, but also when there's a reference of SCIP and BOLD, that's what those are doing. Those are JPAs that then form the CFDs within them. In this case, with the JPA, you'd be able to maintain more control, set protections for taxpayers, but also set up programs that work well for funding your facilities. So when you do a CFD, you have a resolution of attention, then no less than 30, but no more than 60 days, you have a public hearing, the resolution of formation, and then that following meeting, you have the second reading of the ordinance. So it's a several step process. Our firm will help map that out and work with all parties on. Now once the JPA is formed though it's not the city or MCOE that's doing that, it's the JPA that's doing that. So the steps that the city would be taking they would do the JPA. Now the JPA would likely have you know some members on it, they would be participating but it would not be the city council as a whole that'd be actually going through the formation process just like the two others that were referenced here. So you have a JPA that we formed in this scenario. You'd have CFDs that are formed and then it just sits because we need a certain amount of development to be able to sell bonds. What we wouldn't want to happen is that we sell bonds in the very front end of this. It doesn't develop for 10 or 15 years and then we have a situation where we're behind and we have debt service but we have no revenue to pay for it. So what's very typical is for a number of years, this project would not have any bonds sold on it, but when it eventually gets to that point where there's enough development to support that, that's when you get to the bond sale phase. So that's why we broke it up into three phases. We want to make sure there's the JPA portion, the formation of a CFD portion, and then the later bond sale portion down the road. And so what are the infrastructure needs in the area? From your perspective, they're very obvious. I have a lot of them listed there. But one of the things that the Office of Ed has talked about doing is setting up a charter school that the two K-12 in the region would kind of work with. and Dr. Teaching get more into details of the logistics of that. But then for the city perspective, we've gotten a list of facilities, but we have transportation, sewer collection, water fees, and treatment plant fees. And those are all a portion of what can be funded. I think one thing that's important to note is it's very rare that a community facilities district would be able to fund 100%, especially in this region. This region has not had as high of what we call an effective tax rate as some other areas. So if you go to Riverside County, San Bernardino, or Orange County, all those areas start off with an effect that you take all the taxes on the property, you divide it by the base home price, so no fixing it up, just base home, that is gonna be 2%. this area would be very unlikely to support that high. So that's the highest range, kind of the lowest range is your 1%, right? That's where you just have the county amount on there. That 1% is within the 2% total. So you have the county 1% plus all the charges, but as a whole, the 2% is the highest that some regions look to. We recognize that this area would not be supportive of that high. It'd really damage home sales. So when I say we can't fund all that's why is we wanna only fund the amount that can be supported property tax bill before it was too grave a burden for homeowners. And that's one of the things that the GAP allows for is to let the entities involved set some maximums in there to make sure that you're not overburdening taxpayers. And so we try to do here is establish some tiers to that. So this presentation was created before we, and even now when we don't fully have the full effective tax rate that we can target. So we did was we set up, let's make sure we can fund some tier one improvements. And then if we had capacity, we'd look to fund tier two, because we're looking at a number of different effective tax rates. So within that tier one, we focus on a charter school and transportation facilities. And these can be changed. This is just the analysis that we looked at today. Tier two, we looked at sewer, water and treatment plant. And so those would be funded to the extent that we can support that under the tax rate that determines on price points and also what the community would support as far as taxes. So here we just kind of list some of the obligations of the JPA and debt obligations. One thing to make sure it's clear is when the JPA does issue bonds, it's the CFD that has an obligation to repay those bonds, not the city, not Office of Ed, or not even the JPA. It's the CFD that would do that. But I think I've really hit a lot of the points here when I was getting into some of the more details on the other sides. So one of the things we were thinking about is, is this done frequently? First of all, the two referenced before, those operate through JPAs, the bold and the skip. But then those who have chosen to customize it and make it more tailored to the communities, we just listed a few. And this is not an exhaustive list. This was just a quick search of our network saying kind of where have others done this? And we pulled all these up here of agencies that have done them. And there's quite a bit more out there. We're actually working with another one down in San Diego. We started this one and that one at the same time. That one's been moving a little bit quicker than this. That one that JPA has actually formed. We just formed a CFD last month. So another example of Bonzel and Rainbow Water District would be another good example that's really current. So why does any agency look at doing CFDs? And we've kind of listed all the different parties that benefit here. The Office of Ed or CIDI, you can fund much needed infrastructure, assist with development. I think that's generally what the city has looked to do by setting up those other programs is when a developer were to ask, you could consider using those. At times it can be used to fund funding gaps. It's bond financing. I think that's something that's really important here. And it's more of a benefit to some of the other parties in a moment. But these bonds, just like a Citi or an Office of Ed debt, can be sold as tax exempt to investors. So investors who buy these bonds, these are large amounts, they're typically in the highest tax bracket. So that's 37 and I think and a half percent. Then those taxpayers are also likely in the highest state tax bracket as well, 12.3. So those taxpayers, for any traditional investment that they buy, they're paying about 49% income taxes on that marginal income they make. If they buy tax exempt bonds, they don't have to pay any taxes on that. And so that's one reason why these tax rates, or I'm sorry, these interest rates are so low on these, is because these investors can get that benefit of not paying taxes on it. So another thing that can be done with CFD financing is we can create an ongoing revenue stream. Investors recognize some of the limitations of these bonds. I've told you the JPA is not responsible for it, the city is not responsible for it, the Office of Ed is not responsible for it, it's only the CFD that's responsible for it. And so investors say, look, if we're gonna invest in something like that, we need some level of cushion between the revenue and the principal and interest payments. And that percentage is typically 10%. So if there's some delinquencies, if there's tax bills didn't get milled out correctly, whatever it is, those investors have that cushion. These CFDs can be set up so that 10% flows to help the entities involved as far as we call that pay as you go facilities. So that's how the local government agencies can benefit from this. And the other one that benefits from this are developers. Developers get better marketability for their projects. They get to oftentimes have a lower price point because their cost is lower because their cost to carry is lower. And they get some of their infrastructure reimbursed to them. So that hits on that second bullet point there as well. Another thing that's very helpful for developers, if they were to go out to borrow, they don't get that tax exempt benefit. They have to pay whatever rate it is for that market. And many of these developers are set up as LLCs and have a very high cost of borrowing. It's not unheard of to hear somewhere between 12 and 15% for them to be able to build a project. When we sell these bonds, we are around five and a half or less percent. So a much lower interest rate. Another thing that's very helpful for developers is if they were to take out a loan, they have to show that full value of the loan on their books. So Lennar, DR Horton, these Wall Street listed firms, if they were to just take out a loan, they're showing that whole loan on their books. When they have a CFD on a property, they're likely showing the short-term liability where they expect to be responsible for paying the taxes on their books, but they're likely not showing the full amount of debt from that CFD. That opens up any number of possibilities. One, their share price might trade higher. Two, they might be able to qualify for some other type of financing. Any number of things, that full obligation is not typically on their books. So I know oftentimes we don't care about the developers or we care about them, we want them to be successful, but how it impacts them. But I think it's important for you to understand as we're looking at these types of things, why developers are coming to you and why you have negotiating room. If we need something out of this, we can ask for it because we know that developers are getting substantial benefit by having these types of financings in place and they can only get access to that through you. They can't do this on their own without government entities. So homeowners, how do they benefit from this? Homeowners oftentimes will get newer infrastructure sooner. That's certainly a positive. This other one is interesting. It's actually been modified a bit over the summer. I do not have it modified here. But traditional thought was homeowners would get a lower home price because there's a special tax on a property. That's true sometimes now. What happens sometimes is a developer will choose to put more amenities in a project and try to maintain the home prices. And what's really kind of confusing right now is those projects are all doing better. So when you read the national builder magazines, they say projects with more amenities and actually some higher taxes on them are performing better than projects that don't. And the homeowners are really valuing having this community services, whatever it is that these communities all have, trail system, that sort of thing. And so you don't always see lower prices right now. You see lower prices or more amenities. That's why I've modified this for most future presentations. which is really hard to absorb when all we hear about in the news is affordability, right? I think you can't, if the news is on for five minutes, you're hearing affordability. But in the cases of all the publications that I'm reading from the builders, having these CFDs or these types of things, depending on the state, has actually made those projects perform better than others. Another thing that homeowners I think find very attractive is absent those of us who have a 3% mortgage, you typically hold on your house for seven years. So when a homeowner sees a tax and they say it's gonna be 30 years, they likely are factoring in that they're not gonna be paying back that full amount. So they're using the facility and they're benefiting from it and they're certainly paying for it during that period of time. But once they sell that home, just like when a developer sells the property, they're no longer the ones repaying that property tax bill. So that's how a homeowner benefits. And that's all three parties benefit, kind of walk through some of the items that are. One thing I think is really interesting is in schools, there's a Prop 39 that was passed. And what that allowed was for the school district geo bond threshold to go from 66.67% approval down to 55% approval. And what the legislature at the time thought was, well, all the areas that have CFDs, they're not gonna, those homeowners are not gonna support this because they're gonna see that they're already paying a bunch of taxes. And so they're not gonna support future geo bonds. So they created something called a school facility improvement district where you can carve out those properties. Then we started doing surveys and testing communities and areas where CFDs were, had higher level support for public infrastructure than those without. So you kind of have to step back. They're paying more, but they have newer facilities. They can see what their money's being spent on. So there's very few SFIDs actually done, even though Prop 39 statute allows for it. That's just another sign that homeowners have embraced. There's certainly be some that complain. They'll say, I have all these different line items on my tax bills. But when you look at the aggregate, homeowners have accepted this as long as the burden is not intolerable. So when we look at some of the processes for forming these, this is for the CFD formation side of it, the landowner would petition. So typically we have 100% support for these. I've had one instance where the landowner accidentally voted no. We called him up from the school board meeting. He came running down and changed his vote. But other than that, one instance, I have a unanimous support yes for these. Then we have a resolution of intention. You have a CFG report that shows what's gonna be funded from this. That's meant for some transparency. You then have that public hearing. Remember, there can't be less than 30, but more than 60 days between items two and four, and we would help you set all that up. And then you have your ordinance, and then you pause, you come back for your bond sale down the road, or in this case, probably multiple bond sales. So what we did here is I talked about, now it seems like a while ago, but I talked about tier one, tier two funding. Tier one, the charter school, and also transportation facilities. And so you said if we wanted to fund, just make sure we funded as much of those as we could. And if we jump to this second to far left there, we have a 1.5% effective tax rate. So you have your one, in Merced, it's about 1.05 just for your base items on a percentage basis. And then you have some other add-ons on there, but if you just went to 1.5, including this JPA CFD, you'd build a fund about 46.5 million in what we call tier one type facilities. And then we'd have, I'm sorry, 37 million in tier one, 9.5 in tier two, leaving tier two $49 million unfunded. So then we said, okay, if the burden could be more than 1.5, what about 1.6? You can see there we get to funding 66.5, unfunded 29, and then fund at 1.7, which we think that is the max for the area. And that would be 86.6 and then unfunded 9.1 million. So this is what we call a sensitivity analysis. As this moves along further, there'll be some more kind of research on this. It would likely be somewhere in this range of what could be funded from this. So I think that's my last slide. Certainly happy to answer any questions.

All right, thank you, sir, for the presentation questions. Councilor Smith.

Let me try that again for the folks at home. Thank you for the presentation. So I guess my first question is always you know the threshold one. Do we have to do a JPA? So I want to make sure I understand. It wouldn't make sense just for the city high level oversimplification annex all the property form a CFD or a CRD and assess a tax and then use that money to build the infrastructure. You're arguing that what we want to do is assess the fees to generate the income so we can pay debt service on bonds of the JPA issues and we can't do that without forming the JPA?

The JPA allows for the Office of Ed and the city to work together on this. A city could certainly form its own CFD and fund its own infrastructure. And there is a way where the city could form a CFD and many other government entities could partner with them. For whatever reason, the legislation does not allow for an Office of Ed to do that. And so for these two entities to work together, a JPA structure would be needed. I got you.

Okay. Go ahead, please. It's the county office issue is the problem.

Okay. Is there, so taking the city's perspective, but I think, you know, we want to see VST be built out and be successful. And I agree with Dr. Tijan. We want to see it built out in a timeframe that matters. Um, We also wanna see the same thing happen for the other developments that are slated for Lake Road. Is there a way to do, to form a JPA in such a way that even if other adjoining landowners and developers are not involved, that they can still benefit from the infrastructure that's laid down by this project?

Yeah, so I just mentioned to you that Bonzel Rainbow one, and that was a board member asked that same question. And so yes, you can absolutely set it up so you can have more than one property developments within that. The trick to be careful there is when we do the foundational formation documents to make them more general. Like the one we just did in San Diego was very specific. Rainbow gets this and the school gets this. You wouldn't wanna do that with a broad set of developments. You'd wanna say there's a structure in place and then each time a development comes, we're gonna figure out some of the details. Then in that scenario, yes.

Okay. Maybe I missed it. You talk about phasing and in phase one would be the construction of a charter school followed by the construction of infrastructure. Did I get that right?

We, phasing maybe, I should use the term tier. Because phasing is implying there's a schedule to it. I'm trying to apply a priority. And so the city facilities get funded one way or the other. They either get funded through the CFD, JPA, or they'd get funded by the developer paying them. the charter school would only, there's no levy mechanism to collect for the charter school. So it'd only get funded through this program. So we made that as a tier one, along with the transportation. But phasing would be the developers have an obligation to pay as they pull permits along the way, they would still have that obligation. So the... I think the phasing would be very similar to you, whether this was in place or not.

Well, I'm certainly not an engineer, but it would seem to me that you need infrastructure in place to have a school. They're almost happening in parallel.

Yeah, but if the school is being built and the developers would have had to pay their fees along the way to provide for that. So that is an obligation, whether CFD is in place or not, whether charter school is not.

this case is the only developer the developers associated with vst yes okay mr bauer you mentioned the time lag between the institution of the fees and the issuing of the bonds do you have i know it's hard to forecast but do you have any sense for how long that might be

So we've seen it, I don't like to not be direct. It's all about the development and what takes place in the next few years. I've seen it take 15 years. I've seen some actually die, like 30 years goes by, they never developed. There was one of those up in the Castaic area. But I think what's typical is you get a CFD formed and within three to five years, you'd have your first series of bonds. Now that series of bonds could be any different portion of the property. It might just be like 5% got developed, so we just sell a small series of bonds. But I think three to five years where you really see that type of activity. What you want is, here's a more direct way to answer that question. California has about 35 CFD bond deals done a year that are not refundings and things like that. Those transactions have about 75% of their permits issued and about 50% closed to individual homeowners. Now this project is very large, so it's likely to get broken up to like seven or eight different improvement areas within CFDs, but for like one or so improvement areas, when you see about 60% of the permits pulled, it's really time to start talking about selling bonds and that. Okay.

I just real quickly as an attorney, I appreciate what the answer is. It depends. I completely understand. I'll just share with you, you know, my lens on this presentation is covered by four years I spent on our local school district board where I sat on a JPA um three districts together had formed in 2006 to generate funding for a school on the north side and by the time i had come along the the cfd had been in existence for maybe 18 years and everybody who had been involved with the formation had passed on either because of retired or because they actually had passed on. And it was just a mess. So I guess in the concern box, I'm sure the attorneys can handle this stuff, but making sure there's some longevity and organizational stability to this, because we really don't know. And we want these houses to be built in this decade, but JPA has to survive for the long term because we can't, like I said, we can't forecast conditions. As we kind of develop an explorers idea, that's the kind of thing that I'd like to see. But again, also as a former school board member, I can't tell you how excited I would be to see a school built on the north side and the benefits to the city, I think would be just as significant as to the office of ed. So I think this is an interesting idea, assuming it can be done in a way that we handle this longevity issue and the infrastructure benefits adjoining landowners as much as those in VST to the extent possible.

thank you i'll yield to my colleagues any additional any questions from any members of the council all right jennifer i'll follow in this we will now open public comment for this agenda item mayor we don't have any registered speakers for this item okay calling out If anyone would like to speak, now's the time you have to fill out a green request to speak form, which is back in the, yeah. It's a lawful order from our police chief. Yeah, fill out the request to speak form. Thank you chief. Mr. Opinski, if you fill out the form, All right, Jennifer, no one online?

No, Mayor.

Okay.

All right, if you wish to speak on this item, please submit your request to speak form now. Okay. All right. Yes, sir. All right, Mr. Opinski. Three minutes, sir. Is it okay to speak? Yeah, go ahead, three minutes. Greg, I'm sorry? Yes, you got three minutes. Say everything you need to say, and then if there are any questions, we'll wait for you to finish speaking, and then we'll take all the questions down, and we'll do our best to deal with them after you're done talking. Sure, sure.

Thank you. Okay, my name's Greg Opinski. I have a property adjacent to VST, would be on the west side of Lake Road. Just basic question, this is really new to me. One question, is this like Melrose? I hear the term Melrose bonds. Is that, I was looking at this gentleman. Is that basically what we're talking about? Is that a typical... Is that what this amounts to? Essentially Melrose taxes for generating funds to do development? I can't do a question. We'll get all your questions and then once you're done, we'll answer all of them. Okay. So that was one question. Really the crux of my question would be, you know, we're all, you know, everyone's excited to develop out by the UC. We're essentially all competitors. I would just ask that, you know, whatever, if this is, you know, obviously some of the major infrastructure, trunk lines, roadways, those sorts of things, if something like this is done, that it's done, you know, fairly, or we would have an opportunity to participate or something to where, You know, no one gets, you know, is essentially given a leg up over somebody else. If there's a way to do this where, you know, it's just that's all I ask that it's fair for everybody and that the needs let's say of myself and Sid who's to the north of me, VST, potentially whoever else is nearby that were part of the conversation I guess is all they would ask for this again this is new to me but that's it I'm just hoping that something like this wouldn't give you know one entity a leg up over anybody else so that's that was my question yes sir okay are Jennifer any additional speakers that's all we have mayor okay I will close the speaker registration for this agenda item

bring it back to council for the discussion. If first question is maybe we can handle it too. Mr. Pencey's question was about Mello-Roos and how this relates to or compares with Mello-Roos.

Yes sir. So Mello-Roos Act is what establishes the ability to form community facilities districts. So they are one and the same.

And then, yeah, the second point too, I think really an important point too, and I think we have to be fair. We can't play favorites, certainly, especially on a project like this. And with all the different people around the UC and all the AB 3312 properties, I think, yeah, really important for us to be able to be a fair broker, to work with everybody, but also too, people have to be ready to go as well too. That's a big part of it too, who's got their ducks in a row most.

Mr. Mayor, I think that VST's position has always been as kind of the leader in moving the development forward out there. We're happy to have other folks succeed. worry about competition, but we want it to be fair as well. We've invested a lot of money in our planning and in the development. And so fairness includes financial participation in anything that goes on that's gonna be shared. That's our perspective.

No, it's certainly the more successful and the better your project is, then the more valuable the other projects are as well too. So it definitely, you know, the more successful one project is, it certainly benefits the other projects as well. Mr. Brown.

Thank you, Mayor. Really good questions, really good conversation from everybody here attending tonight. So I'm going to start with something a little bit abstract and then try to make this work for everybody. We have examples in effect today of CFDs for debt service where bonds have been issued for public infrastructure and it's a process that has worked. I mentioned earlier we have the admin policy 829 which kind of sets some guidelines. Part of that is kind of this rate and so you heard it tonight earlier today about what's the maximum rate. I think the maximum rate that we have in the policy I think is two percent and Venus can correct if I'm wrong. So it's fundamentally like you have to make sure that this works from a market standpoint. So we brought this tonight to you because this is a unique opportunity, a different approach to using the CFD. Other development projects, however, could look at the other ones we already have available to them and maybe that's a different option. And so they all accomplish the same type of thing. It's just a different mechanism to get there. I would just add one thing too with regards to CFDs. Very often you're asked to work on or take action on a maintenance CFD. And so the maintenance CFD is really about services we perform, whether it be street lighting, landscape maintenance, park maintenance, there's often a public safety component as well. So it's a CFD, but it's a separate type of CFD. They're for ongoing services. And so all development projects that we process of the scale and magnitude have to form or have to come into our maintenance CFD. The financing CFD for public infrastructure is really separate, unique, and not required. There are developments that have occurred in the community where the infrastructure is financed by the builder. They're not seeking debt, they're putting it in. that cost is usually passed on through the cost of the land or the house. So it's just a different approach to how it's done. So I don't know if that complicates things or confiscates or makes it worse, but that's how those things work. As far as equity and improvements, we do have things that are out there that are designed to kind of account for this. You have a policy for line oversizing for water and for sewer. You've got policies that if someone puts a line in there's a mechanism to get that developer repaid over a period of time. We've got fee programs that are set up where you're paying for infrastructure whether it be water or sewer through a fee component. We have a public facility finance mechanism, which you have an item on your normal agenda tonight that reimburse for things that are outside the control of the developer. So those are all kind of intended to kind of create the guide rails so that what's equitable is applied and what's not comes up through a different process. Having said all that, each development project still has its own specific improvements perhaps that are required as a condition of the environmental document that may need to be specific to them. So those are kind of the way these are addressed. It is set up to be fair in a way that makes sense, but those are the pieces that kind of frame the whole conversation.

Thank you, sir.

Anybody else? All right, seeing no additional requests to speak. Gentlemen, anything else from you?

Dr. Tiji. When it comes to equity forming CFDs in particular, I think one thing is important for the council to consider is the size of projects. So there's been some developers that say, I have a 10 unit project. I want you to form a CFD on it. The economies of scale with that are horrible. It'd be really bad for the taxpayer. And so when you're thinking about setting up a program, what are the minimum standards for that program? Dr. Cheech.

Last couple quick comments. So a sense of urgency is always in me. I Understand where you're coming from completely councilmember Smith the The challenge that we face at VST is that this is a large project with quite a bit of expense. And as developers have approached us and done their pro formas on it, they're not really willing to move forward until they see that a CFD really is in place. It's just too big for them to take on the kind of debt that's gonna be incurred to build the roads and Kemp's Parkway and put in the infrastructure that needs to happen and then supply amenities, which is part of our project that makes it a unique thing in Merced. And so until we have a CFD in place, my marketing, is not very effective. And I've heard that from two of the master developers that we've gone dancing with, and they've left us at the dance and I had to find my own way home. And so we really need to get the CFD process started and moving forward to really get a good shot at a master developer who's willing to invest in this project. So that's final comment.

Thank you. Councilor Smith.

Can I just ask either for Dr. Tijan or Mr. McBride sort of what are next steps in moving this idea forward after today's discussion?

A couple of things. It doesn't require your action, but we do have a deposit reimbursement agreement with the BST project for the maintenance side of things, which we're going to proceed forward with and move on. With regard to this covering potential issuance of debt for infrastructure, I'm not hearing where there's a lot of, no, we should not do this tonight. But having said that, in your packet that we provided for you before tonight's meeting, We did have some draft items. We had the draft GPA document, a couple other documents. And so we just want to get those out there for your review. We can certainly move now that we've had this conversation to get those finalized, working with our legal team and our finance office to bring them forward for implementation.

I don't know if there needs to be a vote. I mean, I... I would be in favor of having another discussion about this with maybe a closer look at like the details. And like the 30 to 60 day timeframe. Speaking for myself.

Okay, information only tonight, obviously, but certainly we can come back. There, all right, anybody else? Okay, seeing no additional requests to speak, that concludes our study session. We have roughly 10 minutes and then we'll take a closed session at 5 p.m., thank you. Session to order.

Okay, agenda item C, closed session roll call. Councilmember Dupont?

Present.

Tao?

Present.

Harris?

Present.

Smith?

Present.

Zhang?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Boyle? Here. And Mayor Serrato?

Here.

Okay, agenda item D, closed session. Council will go into closed session, discuss items D1 and D2. And Mayor, we have no registered speakers for this item.

Okay. Thank you, Jennifer. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I want to welcome everybody to the July 20th of the Merced City Council. We're scheduled to have an invocation from Omar Gonzalez from Lifeline CDC. I don't know if I see Omar here. Fortunately, we have Ms. Maggie Lemos. Maggie's volunteered to do the invocation for us. So thank you, Maggie, for pinch hitting. We really appreciate it. So everybody could please stand. And then after that, Council Member Smith will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Alrighty, dear Heavenly Father, thank you, thank you for letting us all gather here tonight and thank you for our leaders and God, I just pray that you just give them wisdom and your guidance to guide our city to just to lead us in the right direction and make whatever changes need to be made and give them your wisdom. In your heavenly name I pray, amen.

Thank you, Council Member Smith. Thank you, Maggie, really appreciate it.

Okay, agenda item F, roll call. Council Member Dupont.

Present.

Tao.

Present.

Harris.

Present.

Smith.

Present. I'm here.

Mayor Pro Tem Boyle. Here. And Mayor Serrato. Here. Mayor, I'd like to remind the audience that if they wish to address the city council, they may submit a green request to speak in one of the following ways. Complete a green request to speak card available at the back of the council chamber and submit it to the deputy city clerk before the item is called, preferably before the meeting begins. Scan the QR code corresponding to your preferred language, English, Hmong, or Spanish, located behind the seats in the council chamber and follow the instructions. Submitted requests to speak online by visiting publiccomment.cityofmerced.gov and individuals participating virtually by phone must provide a valid phone number so staff can identify the caller during the meeting. Please be patient as this new process and there may be some disruptions or issues. Staff will do their best to ensure everyone gets an opportunity to speak. And additionally, citizens can submit public comment to the city council electronically no later than 1 p.m. on the day of the meeting. Comments received before the deadline will be sent to the city council and will be part of the record and will be mentioned as part of the written petitions and communications portion of the agenda and will be posted on the city's website. Material may be emailed to cityclerk at cityofmerced.gov, and any correspondence received after 1 p.m. will be distributed to the City Council and retained for the official record. Also, for those audience members who wish to have Spanish or Hmong translation services, please let our interpreters know. If you are participating virtually by phone, please indicate that as you register to speak.

Hola, buenas noches, good evening. Me llamo Mirna Zarate, soy intérprete en español. Si culpa me ayuda, voy a estar aquí sentada. Muchas gracias.

Thank you, Mirna.

.

In accordance with government code 54952.3, it is hereby announced that the city council sits either simultaneously or serially as a public financing and economic development authority, parking authority, and or successor agency to the redevelopment agency. City council members receive a monthly stipend of $500 by charter for sitting as a city council, and the mayor receives an additional $100 each month as part of the adopted budget and resolution 2024-78. The public financing and economic development authority, parking authority and successor agency to the redevelopment agency received no compensation. Agenda item G, report out of closed session.

There is no report out of closed session.

Agenda item H, written petitions and communications. Mayor of the clerk's office received emails from Heidi Rivera, Strong Towns Merced, and Curtis Thomas regarding public comments. An email from Ashley Marie Suarez regarding agenda item J4. An email also from Ashley Marie Suarez regarding agenda item K1. And an email from Curtis Thomas regarding agenda item L5. The emails were received by the 1 p.m. deadline. They were sent to council and posted on the city's website. Any emails received after the 1 p.m. deadline will be sent to council. Agenda item I, public comment. Members of the public who wish to speak on any matter not listed on the agenda may speak during this portion of the meeting and will be allotted three minutes. The mayor may propose a further limit to the time available for all speakers at the discretion of the city council in order to accommodate as many speakers as possible. State law prohibits the City Council from acting at this meeting on any matter raised during the public comment period and members of the public who wish to speak on a matter that is listed on the agenda will be called upon to speak during the discussion of that item. And Mayor, I currently have, looks like I have one, two, three, four, five, six in-person speakers and one by phone, but she has not connected yet.

Thank you, Jennifer. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll now open general public comment for our public comment session for non-agendized items. Jennifer, if you could call the registered remote speakers and then the in-person speakers.

So Mayor, it looks like Daisy Ramos has not connected on the phone call yet. Would you like to go to just in-person at the moment?

Yeah, we can go to in-person and then if she connects, we'll come back to her later.

Okay. If I can get Karthik Prasad to the podium, Vincent Trammell, Auggie Freeman, Cindy Ramos, Arturo Martinez, and Marcus Arellano to the podium, please.

Mr. Prasad.

All righty. Good evening, everyone. My name is Karthik Prasad here on behalf of Congressman Adam Gray, who is currently in D.C. as House is in session this week. And it's going to be a very, very busy week as we round things out in preparation for the August district work period. And that's also going to be incredibly busy. But. This week, the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill will be voted on. And the Congressman offered an amendment that emphasizes that the Bureau of Reclamation collaborates with the South of Delta Transferred Work Operators, Water Service and Repayment Contractors to push for technological improvements that would modernize the water allocation process. The Congressman also introduced five amendments to the fiscal year 27 National Defense Authorization Act to streamline the naturalization process for military personnel and veterans. These amendments would engage all agencies to ensure the naturalization process moves smoothly. It would require the DOD to coordinate with the VA and Department of Homeland Security and provide them with a list of individuals who have expressed interest in naturalizing. It would also require the VA to include the Department of Homeland Security naturalization processing resources on Military OneSource, which is already an existing 24-hour non-medical counseling website. Additionally, it would authorize military judge advocate generals to provide immigration support for military personnel and require immigration services to provide a virtual video in online materials that is included as part of the TAPS program. These amendments would ensure that veterans and military personnel who fought for our country can obtain citizenship in a way that's a lot more streamlined than the current kind of obtuse process. The Congressman also co-sponsored the Family Act, which would guarantee up to 12 weeks of partial income for workers who have taken leave for serious medical and family events and led multiple letters, including a letter that expressed opposition to the administration's recent decision not to renew the USMCA, signed onto a letter to Secretary Rollins to strengthen and expand the food purchasing programs and procurement capabilities for American grown specialty crops and co-led a letter to Speaker Johnson with 23 co-signers calling for $15 billion in relief funding for specialty crop growers. And finally, the Congressman also signed on to a letter to the Department of Transportation regarding California's transportation funding and the Federal Motor Carriage Safety Administration's final rule restricting non-domiciled commercial driver's license and expresses opposition to the Department of Transportation's withholding of $160 million in fiscal year 27 National Highway Performance Program funds. So it's already been a very busy session for the house. It's only gonna get busier as the week goes on. As always if there are any members of the public, members of the council, anyone, anybody knows who's got some issue with the federal government or any federal agencies, send them our way. We're happy to help. Have a great day. Thank you, Mr. Persaud. I appreciate it as always.

Ms. Freeman.

Mayor.

Good evening.

Good evening. Good evening, Mayor, council members, Chief Stanfield. Chief Wilson and members of our Merced community. My name is Aggie Freeman. I'm a community leader and advisor here on behalf of the Merced PD Canine Association to invite our city community to be part of something that celebrates courage, gratitude, and the very best of Merced. Every day while most of us are heading to work, taking our children on vacation, or simply enjoying our lives, there are police handlers and beside them loyal canine partners who are prepared to run toward danger when everyone else is running away. These remarkable dogs serve because of the absolute trust in their handlers and an unwavering loyalty that never asks for recognition. They search for missing children, track dangerous suspects, locate critical evidence, and stand between danger and the people of Merced. They are silent heroes, but every hero canine eventually retires. When a Merced Police canine retires, the work may be over, but the need for medical care may be just beginning. Like many retired first responders, these dogs often face ongoing medical needs from years of service. Their handlers become their caregivers, and together they begin a new chapter. We believe those canine who have faithfully served and protected our community deserve to be protected in return. That is why I'm so excited to invite everyone to the inaugural Paws on Patrol Fun Run and Dog Walk on Saturday, October 17th at 9 a.m. at Lake Yosemite. Sign-ups are open and Chief, we have about 40 or 50, between 40 and 50 registrations. This is a fundraiser for retired canine healthcare. Sponsors are invited to participate. Whether you enroll to walk, run, push a stroller, or simply come cheer, your participation will provide healthcare to our retired police canine. Every registration is a way of saying thank you for their service. You can register early during National Night Out on Tuesday, August 4th at Applegate Park. where Merced canines will be on hand. I encourage you to stop by, meet these incredible teams, shake a handler's hand, and maybe even meet one of Merced's four-legged heroes. Once you do, you'll understand why this fun round matters. Merced has always been a community that steps forward when there is a need. We support our veterans. We support our police and fire. Now we have an opportunity to support our canine partners who have served faithfully beside them. We invite our city council to join us and ask you to spread the word among your districts. On October 17th, let's fill Yosemite with families, children, runners, walkers, and neighbors because heroes don't stop deserving the care they have earned. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Ms. Freeman. Next speaker, Mr. Trammell.

Thank you, Mayor. Hello, City Council, Mayor. I'm here to set forth an idea for the high speed rail. I know that it's not on the agenda tonight, but I know there's a lot of pressure from the last meeting that we had. So anyway, Mayor, members of the City Council, Planning Commission, this proposal for historical Merced Gold Belt Transportation Landing Hub. Dear members of the City Council and Planning Commission, I am writing a... to present a visionary plan for the future of Merced, one that centers on historical preservation and ecological innovation as a high-speed rail brings new opportunities to our region. Merced must stand as the central hub for the Gold Belt. Our goal is to establish a landing that serves as an ecosystem of beauty and information directly connecting travelers from the high-speed rail to Mariposa and to the Yosemite Valley. By emphasizing our historical roots and focusing on ecological growth, we can create an arrival experience that is both enriching and memorable. The Stagecoach Private Transport Service will be the vital transportation link, providing seamless distribution and ensuring that Merced remains the center of our historical venture. This strategic positioning not only supports the local economy, but enhances the entire traveler experience. Thank you for your consideration. And I look forward to discussing this with you in the very near future. Thank you, Mr. Trim.

All right, thank you, sir. We'll follow up. Ms. Ramos.

Good evening, Mayor and council members.

Cindy Ramos. We'll do a little better for you.

Okay.

There you go. How's that?

Yes.

You can pull the microphone down a little bit too.

Okay. Good evening mayor and council members Cindy Ramos. Tonight I come to the meeting to talk about a flyer that I received in the mail it's from the city of Merced and it's titled let's talk Merced. It went to 1,500 residents and I was one of the lucky residents in District 5 to receive it. There was a couple things on this flyer that was concerning to me. One is the 1.3 million shortfall and the federal fire grants that are ending. So I have questions and I was wondering if you could direct me to the correct city personnel that I could talk to about the questions that I have on those two items. That's all I have.

Okay.

Yeah, we can't have a back and forth now, but you have pretty much every city department head along the back row right there. So yeah, we can reach out to you. I got your number too. So you can text me directly or else. Maybe Jennifer would be a good place to start. She's our public information officer. She just raised her hand back there. I would start with her and then you got everybody you need along the back. Yeah, finance too, Venus. She's got the pink suit on.

Okay, thank you, Mayor.

Mr. Martinez. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Arturo Martinez, Jr. I wear many hats in this community, but tonight I'm here as the resident of Merced. Usually I come before this council to advocate for affordable housing and for building a smart city. Tonight, however, I must turn my attention to public health and federal accountability. Merced County has confirmed its first case this year of cyclosporiasis. The infection was not acquired locally. Fresno County has also confirmed the case. California officials say our state is not experiencing the unusual increase reported elsewhere. This is not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to pay attention. Cyclosporiasis is an intestinal illness caused by a parasite called cyclospora. It is usually spread through contaminated food or water and can cause severe diarrhea, stomach pain, and exhaustion. Since May 1st, the CDC has received reports of more than 1,600 confirmed cases across 34 states with more than 5,100 additional cases under review. This is unfolding after federal cost-cutting effort known as DOGE, short for Department of Government Efficiency. Under that effort, the Department of Health and Human Services announced plans to reduce its workforce from approximately 82,000 employees to 62,000. Cyclospora reporting and FoodNet also became optional, although the CDC says other systems continue monitoring it. I want to be precise. The cuts did not create this parasite, and we can approve that they delayed this investigation. But the public deserves to know whether fewer scientists, inspectors, laboratory workers, and public health professionals have left us less prepared to find a threat, trace contaminated food, and warn families quickly. That is not responsible efficiency. It transfers risk from Washington onto local health departments, health care providers, and families. I respectfully ask this council to place a resolution or formal letter on a future agenda calling on federal officials to restore food safety and disease surveillance capacity and publicly explain how staffing reductions have affected outbreak response. Merced cannot rebuild its agencies alone, but our city can demand accountability before the next public health threat reaches more families. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Arellano. Good evening, mayor, city council and city staff. My name is Marcus Arellano, the board chair of Treehouse Tutoring, an educational nonprofit in Merced. And I'd like to thank the city for their support of our loft family literacy program or literacy opportunities for family time. This was a six month cohort for 15 families that ran from February to July. And we just had our final session this last weekend. This program was based on a very simple idea that the most important literacy advocate in a child's life is not from their school. It's not from their tutoring center. It's in their home. It's their parents or their caregivers. And so instead of focusing on intervention or on pulling children out of class, we focus on teaching parents strategies to create more consistent and effective literacy opportunities in the home. The thing we always tell parents is that you don't have to teach a child how to read. What you want to do is teach a child to love books. If you teach a child to love books, they're going to want to learn how to read. This program was very effective and we're very happy to be able to submit a report later this week. But I did want to mention a few of the anecdotes from our parents that they had reported in our final survey. One of those is from a parent who had mentioned that he had a very reluctant reader who was neurodivergent and would oftentimes disrupt family reading time. But after utilizing some of the strategies taught in this program, he was very surprised when for the first time ever, his son asked to read a book again and the next morning quoted every single thing that the very hungry caterpillar had ate that week and then came into the tutoring center telling us because he was so excited as well. Another parent had mentioned how they had started to use some of the strategies to be able to pair the books they were reading to be able to pair their lived experience with what they read on the page. And they're very excited that this week they're gonna be reading the very, or sorry, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? in preparation for the zoo's reopening. And one final parent had mentioned they did not realize how curious and creative their two-year-old could be. They had always viewed reading as an action you do to a child, as opposed to a process you can participate with your family in the creation of. So thank you again for funding and sponsoring this initial pilot program. many of our parents have also mentioned one thing i was very surprised about the most beneficial thing to them was not the books or the activities it was a network of parents who were struggling with the same difficulties they were and they would like a continuation in some form of this program whether it's loft part two or even just parent cafes in cooperation with another organization so they can keep maintaining these networks of families that they've been able to build up thank you very much for supporting literacy merced no thank you for You guys can cheer.

All right. Jennifer, anyone else?

I do have five more speakers. Blanca Ojeda, Lyria Rodriguez, Angela Matthews, Corey Croson, and Ingrid Brostrom. OK. And Mayor, we still haven't had Daisy connect yet. OK.

All right, Blanc, I think you were first. Welcome Ms. Ojeda.

Good evening council members. I live in District 3 and so I'm up here today not just as a resident of the City of Merced but also as a community organizer with Faith in the Valley and as part of our Community Alliance for Sustainable Economy. I'm here today to support keeping the high-speed rail in downtown Merced as planned and promised. Keeping the high-speed rail in downtown Merced as planned and promised protects jobs, honors past investment, and ensures the community fully shares in the benefits of the high-speed rail. Originally the high-speed rail was going to be located in downtown and state law SB 198 specifically calls for a station to be constructed in downtown Merced. Most people are not familiar with this law and we believe our community needs more education around it. the state nor the high-speed rail authority, they cannot threaten to skip Merced as again SB 198 states that the station must be constructed in downtown Merced. The current proposed plan violates this law and as usual gives the Central Valley crumbs as it completely leaves out a stop in Sacramento. We ask our city to be firm when it comes to negotiations with the high-speed rail And we're happy to help with outreach and education on this aspect. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All right, next speaker.

Good afternoon, City Council members. My name is Libby Rodriguez and I live in District 6. I'm a student with faith in the Valley and a third year student at UC Merced and a part of the Community Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. The proposal of moving the train station down south of Merced under the premise that it'll be more affordable for the general public of Merced is false. Dear city council members, the high speed rail authority is selling you on a lie, a lie that only a few will benefit from. You promised that our high speed rail station would be built under the premise that it would be built downtown, a vision and utopia that'll directly impact the actual community of Merced. Guiding people, tourists, and families to the mom and pop shops that make our city. Guiding prosperities to the people of Merced. On the contrary, the high speed rail, if built down south, where not even a lizard can find a drop of water, will take away the direct wealth that will and should hit Merced community members. but instead private companies and private investors will benefit from it. Do not go back on your word, city council members. Have the high speed rail station be built downtown where it belongs.

Thank you. All right, next speaker. Ms. Matthews, welcome.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Good evening, city council members. My name is Angela Matthews, and I am a volunteer with Faith in the Valley, a community member and a part of the Community Alliance for Sustainable Economies, CASE, by acronym here in Merced. So I am here today to support other community members and local businesses by keeping the high speed rail in downtown Merced as planned and promised. Keeping this high-speed rail in downtown Merced is planned and promised, projects jobs, honors past investments by the state, and ensures community fully shares in the benefits of this high-speed rail. As many of you know, this revised proposal will cut Merced from being a connector, and a quick example of this without being too long-winded is if you wanted to get to our state capital, Sacramento, you would have to go down all the way to Madera, instead of Merced to get all the way to Sacramento or the Bay, which is quite a long round trip. But the HSRA also eliminates the downtown Merced Station from the plan, which the legislator required pursuant to State Senate Bill 198 in 2022. The plan assumes moving along with the Merced Station from downtown to Southwest. So Merced and scaling back the project significantly However, the requirements of the California legislature have not changed since 2022, and the Legislative Analyst's Office has raised this concern with the state legislator as a challenge to its authority. The current approach to community outreach is a little bit illogical, and partnerships with local CBOs should be considered when evaluating what is best for the city and its residents. For too long, local leaders have allowed for residents to be breadcrumbs along, by the state because it's getting something that is better than nothing so my message to all of you is our community deserves transparency meaningful engagement and the full economic opportunities that were promised so please choose a future that invests in the heart of merced and not leaves it behind thank you thank you all right next speaker

Hello, Mayor and city council members. My name is Corey Croson and I live in District 4. I am a volunteer with Faith in the Valley. I'm also the district chairperson for UDW, which represents IHSS home care providers. The proposed changes to the high speed rail will impact our economy. And I'm a resident and an IHSS home care provider and easy access to the high speed rail can mean life or death for IHSS clients who need care in the Bay or down south. And we shouldn't delay this project any longer and we should be investing in Merced by building a station in downtown. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker.

Good evening, members of the council. My name is Ingrid Brostrom. I'm the program director for climate and the rural economy at the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. My colleague, Dr. Paula Mehta, has previously talked at this council about a recent study that we conducted at the UC Merced Labor Center on the preferences of local Merced residents on high-speed rail. I wanted to share more relevant information from this survey based on the city's recent conversations about the location of the station. First, only a quarter of residents were fully aware of the high-speed rail project. This indicates a significant need to engage more residents in the conversation. Secondly, over 60% of respondents indicated that they would likely or probably use the high-speed rail system. I wanted to note that these findings were based on surveys collected near the census tract, nearest the proposed downtown station. It is not clear how moving the station may impact the likelihood of local residents using the system. Third, 78% of respondents indicated that they wanted to see retail stores and also 78% wanted to see restaurants around the station. This was the highest of all the possible choices. 64% ranked pedestrian walking paths to the station as very important. And 67% indicated that they would like to see tourism and local business activity as a benefit of the high speed rail station. I understand that current state law requires a downtown station in Merced, but that there are conversations about moving the station. The results that I shared and others that you can find on our survey should advance the conversation on some of the factors the council should consider about the preferences of local residents when assessing the most beneficial station location for Merced.

Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer, any additional speakers?

That's all we have, Mayor. And just note that Daisy still did not connect for the telephone while speaking.

There'll be other opportunities. We'll be here every twice a month. All right. That closes the public speaker portion and we'll move on to agenda item J, which is our consent calendar.

Agenda item J, consent calendar.

Any members of the council have any items they would like to see pulled for separate consideration?

I request that J 12 be moved for a staff presentation of the item.

Okay. All right. So J 12, that's our, the Merced Tulare disaster recovery MOU. Anyone else from the council? I would like to pull J four. J four. It's SB 244 analysis. All right. Anybody else from the council? Jennifer, anything from the public? we do um i thought we had we had an email in regards to j4 correct i don't believe we have a speaker and it's not indicating that we have a speaker for j4 okay all right there's an email for that and then counselor zhong is pulling in as well so all right so we're pulling uh agenda items j4 and j12 discussion or motion with respect to the balance motion second

Okay, I have a motion by Councilmember Harris and a second by Mayor Pro Tem Boyle. The motion will include agenda item J2, adoption of resolution 2026-43, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Merced, California, declaring its intention to vacate a portion of Canal Street between Main 17th Street and West 16th Street, vacation 26-43. setting time and place for public hearing. And agenda item J3, adoption of resolution 2026-42, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Merced, California, declaring its intention to vacate the 20 foot wide public utility easement located on a portion of vacated K Street south of 7th Street in the city of Merced, approximately 1,145 square feet, vacation number 25-0001, and setting time and place for public hearing. Mayor and council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, Jennifer. All right, on to J4, Council Member Xiong, this is your request to pull. This is our SB 244 analysis and among other items. Council Member Xiong.

Yeah, I just want to follow up on some of the items that were brought up on the email. So I guess the, so for, with regards to some of the questions, I guess the first thing is, will the land use element of the general plan be updated?

Thank you for the questions, Leah Brown, senior planner. So the SB 244 analysis is consistent with our land use chapter of the general plan. We had previously adopted an SB 244, but because we are undergoing a housing element we're looking at that again later tonight, it opens up the SB 244. So we went ahead and did the analysis and there were no significant changes from the SB 244 that was there before. And so because of that, we are simply asking for an adoption tonight.

Awesome, and then I think there's some language with regards to the islands or the French communities So if we look at let's say unincorporated community number 14 It talks about under the water table it reads the city of Merced provides domestic water to a portion of unincorporated community number 14 through its combined network of 19 active wells 23 deep well pumps and 500 miles of pipeline Is there a number that we could substitute with that portion? Because it doesn't give me a clear understanding of how the community is impacted with water. Are we looking at 50% of the homes there are connected?

I don't have that number in particular. It does indicate that there are 77 parcels in area 14. I don't have the whole, actually I might have a whole report with me, hang on. So it's number 14?

Yes, but the language is repeated throughout multiple of the unincorporated communities.

Good evening. So if we're looking at the numbers, what we would want to look to is look at the out of bounds service agreements and what type of water is being provided. And we can get that information to you if you're interested at a later time.

Awesome. And then I think if we look at probably the last one here, it's number 19. under the water table, it mentions that this community is not served by water district and the residents get water through a private well. But then when we look at the service deficiency, it mentions that the city provides domestic water and the supply sufficient. And again, this language is, it appears to be copied from above as well. So I wasn't sure if we're missing some information with regards to some of these communities.

So most of the communities are served by their own private wells. We do have a number of out of boundary service agreements throughout the city. It's been quite some time and it was in my former life in water that I remember helping to kind of get some of these parcels in with water but it is an expensive situation for them to connect to city water because they are outside of the city i would have to do some more research to give you an exact number but there were very few additions most of them are on private wells

And then I guess the last item I would bring up here is my understanding SB 244, it mentions that cities and counties are to review and update one or more of its elements in the general plan to include data analysis, goals, and implementation measures with regards to unincorporated islands, fringe, or legacy communities. In this analysis, I don't see any of the goals and implementation. I'm assuming that's coming in a different document. Is that how this works?

So I would assume that would be part of our general plan update as we move further into that. So this is specifically to incorporate into our land use element is simply a report on the status as is today, most of which are private wells, septic systems. And so there is a mechanism that they could add in, but it also would be at your direction if we were to and I know we've studied some of the ducks the disadvantaged unincorporated communities over the past year and it would maybe a direction that you want to undertake annexations of some of those but again that would be a council direction and I do believe there was an admin report regarding that probably within the last year just about those areas that are out there.

And one more thing to remember with this SB 244, this is really an update. So we do have an existing 244. This is an update to that. So it is still consistent with the general plan and the land use that was opened up back then. And that's why we don't have to go into the land use now.

And again, just kind of making sure I understand the goals and implementation measures, those are in a different document.

So when you adopt your SB 244, right? Yes, you would open up the land use component of that. However, this is an update version of the 244, which is still consistent with those policies. So we do not have to open up the land use component of it. That's what we're looking at. So what you're doing is what you're looking at is in a document and updating certain aspects of that 244. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Anything else? Any questions from council? Jennifer, anything for the public on this?

We did not receive any registered speakers for this.

Thank you. Bring it back to council for discussion and or a motion.

Motion.

Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Harris and a second by Council Member DuPont. The motion will include the adoption of Resolution 2026-45, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Merced, California, adopting the SB 244 analysis and environmental review number 26-0077, categorical exemption. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. Okay, and the motion passes with Council Member Zhang voting no.

Right, thank you, Jennifer.

on to j12 merced to larry the last disaster recovery mou councilman smith well thank you mr mayor and while mr benioff prepares himself i understand staff is facing a deadline with regard to item l1 depending on how council votes are we good now okay just want to make sure i wasn't delaying things for people so mr benioff thank you for your time um I thought the concept of a Membranum of Understanding with the City of Tulare so we can assist each other in the case of emergency was a novel concept. I just wanted the community to have a chance to hear you say a few words about what you're proposing.

Sure. Jeff Benioff, Director of Information Technology. So what you have before you tonight is an MOU between the city of Merced and the city of Tulare for a disaster recovery site partnership. So that is a technology partnership between the two cities. So if we have a large-scale disaster that's going to affect the city and potentially outside the city, we can restore our technology services in their city. And if also if they have a a failure of services in their city, they can restore services in our city. It's a mechanism that allows both agencies to have additional levels of service for technology recovery and has a very reduced cost because we're kind of sharing facilities, we're sharing our infrastructure, we're sharing the availability of our resources if we need to declare a disaster and have an event occur that requires restoral services that are outside of our city boundaries. And so why pick Tulare? Or why would they pick us? So there's a couple reasons why. The city of Tulare and the city of Merced, we know each other. We have very similar technology infrastructures. A lot of the technology that we have are duplicated across our agencies. So in this MOU also includes the opportunity for staff assistance, so they can assist us in recovery they know the technology already because they're operating that same technology we're operating and vice versa and the other one is more of a rule of thumb from a technology disaster recovery perspective it is recommended to have a redundant solution that is approximately 100 miles away as a rule of thumb city of Tulare is 99.9 miles away

Any request for funding appropriation at this time?

So there's no funding appropriation at this time. We'll bring forward if there's additional funding appropriations. This is to set the framework to do the memorandum of understanding to set the framework so we can start forward moving down that process.

Thank you, Mr. Benioff. Okay, thank you, Mr. Benioff. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Any questions for Mr. Benioff? Jennifer, anything for the public?

We don't have any registered speakers for this item, Mayor.

All right, thank you. Back to council, further discussion or motion? Move to approve. Second. Smith-Dupont.

Okay, I have a motion by Councilmember Smith and a second by Councilmember DuPont. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. Okay, and the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, Jennifer. On to agenda item K, our public hearings.

Okay, agenda item K, public hearing. K1, adoption of a resolution approving a statutory exemption amending the housing element of the general plan and introducing a zoning ordinance amendment to complete the regional housing needs allocation requirements for compliance with the state housing laws.

Thank you. Leah, whenever you're comfortable.

Thank you. Good evening. Leah Brown again, senior planner. Tonight you have before you the multi-jurisdictional housing element. It's been a long time coming and we have a few actions here before you tonight. I'll try to summarize and not spend too much time on the things that I know you know. So the purpose of the housing element is one chapter or element of the city's general plan. It's updated on an eight year cycle. It is a comprehensive assessment of current and future housing needs for all residents in the city of Merced. The primary focus of the housing element is to ensure decent, safe, sanitary, and affordable housing for current and future residents, including those with special needs. Since 1969, California law has required that all cities and counties demonstrate how they'll meet the housing needs of everyone in the community. The state forecasts the need for housing based on population projections, and then each region must show how it will accommodate that need. So California requirements for housing. We have to have an adequate sites inventory, which is an inventory of land suitable for residential development that could accommodate the county's regional housing needs allocation. You know it, RHNA. Let's keep using that acronym RHNA. We had to analyze constraints and barriers, goals, policies, and implementation programs, other analysis policies and goals to meet the community housing needs and to comply with state housing law. So let's break it down. What is RHNA? RHNA is the state mandated process that quantifies the housing needs for each jurisdiction. It helps communities plan for smart, sustainable growth. The state is involved by using demographic trends and projections on growth to set regional housing targets. The role of MCAG is to distribute the state assigned housing needs across Merced County jurisdictions. They help to develop the RHNA methodology and consultant with HCD and the communities involved. The final output shows housing allocations divided into four income categories. Very low, which signifies 30 to 50% of the average median income. Low, 50 to 80% of the average median income. Moderate, which is 80 to 120% of the average median income. And above moderate is 120% or more of the AMI. AMI, there's a very large spreadsheet that has the average median income for households across California. And it's broken down by county and it's broken down by the number of residents in a household. So in Merced County, for a family of four, very low income would be $41,000 per year and less. low income would be 65,000 or less, moderate is 98,000 or less, and above moderate would be over 98,000. So in the city of Merced, we were tasked with this many units for our regional housing needs assessment. If you were to get a calculator, that number is 10,517 units across the various income categories. And what this means is that we have to be zoned appropriately to accommodate this many units. Also note that it is 5,000 units more than the previous housing element that was adopted in 2016. A little background, the city of Merced last adopted and submitted our housing element in 2016, which was found in compliance with the state housing and community development department, otherwise known as HCD. The six cycle housing element represents the timeframe of January 31, 2024 through January 31, 2032. This must be adopted by city council and submitted to HCD. On June 17th, 2026, our planning commission approved resolution 4181 recommending that city council adopt the housing element, the attached zoning ordinance amendment and the environmental review. So I have a breakdown of actions that have been taken on the housing element since 2022. Yes, we've been at it since 2022. Back in October, we presented an administration report to city council on the concept of the multi-jurisdictional housing element. In December, Council adopted authorized participation in the multi-jurisdictional housing element effort and a cost-sharing agreement with the communities across the divisions. In August of 2023, the council approved resolution 2023-63, the multi-jurisdictional housing element agreement between the county, Atwater, Dos Palos, Gustine, Livingston, Los Banos, and the city of Merced. We also approved the SB 244 analysis. We commissioned that, so to speak. In August of that year, we held two workshops about the multi-jurisdictional housing element, explaining the process and what we were going to be doing. One was in the evening, and one was on a Saturday to accommodate the most people. And most of Saturday was done in Spanish, thanks to our Spanish interpreter on staff. So thank you, Francisco. In 2024, we started talking about the proposed rezoning and that was done in a workshop on January 17th. By May, we had enough information to present the first draft of the housing element. So this particular six cycle housing element, we knew going into it that we were gonna have a lot of back and forth with HCD. HCD typically, spends about seven rounds of back and forth between a community before they find their housing element in compliance. So our first draft was submitted. Before that, of course, we had to have our public review time. And the very first public review was 30 days. And so it was from May 13th to June 12th, 2024. and then we submitted. During that 30 day review period, we had an admin report that went to council May 20th, where we talked about the public review period and the process, and that we were within that first draft ability for the public to make comments. In June 2024, we had an admin report on consent where we approved a professional service agreement. You approved a professional service agreement with Rincon for the multi-jurisdictional housing element and environmental review services. So we had the the cost-sharing agreement but after looking at the items provided we felt like we needed a little bit more ump for the City of Merced and so you agreed to put more dollars towards public outreach and engagement so that was very helpful in at the end of 2024. Okay, that brings us back to 2025 here. So in January, we had a study session and that was a joint study session between the planning commission and city council to discuss the rezones that were necessary to meet that 10,517 unit number for RHNA. January 23rd, we had a housing element programs workshop. Programs are an essential part of your housing element. It's how you're going to accomplish the most for your people, the programs that will be implemented throughout the course of that planning cycle, all the way through to 2032. In February, the Planning Commission heard and recommended rezones of 27 parcels and three recommended for denial. February 18th, the Council was presented with a report where we talked about the updates to the multi-jurisdictional housing element, the activities related to public input, and we reviewed the programs once again. April, we had our second draft, second draft submitted to the public for their comments. At this time, every time we revised the housing element to go back to HCD, it required a seven day turnaround. So seven day public comment period, then there was a, 10 days where the city had to incorporate those comments into the element and then again resubmit to HCD. Now HCD was also on a timeframe. They were allowed 90 days for their first review of the housing element and then every subsequent housing element they were allowed 60 days. At the end of that review, they would submit a very lengthy commentary on things that we needed to work on, make adjustments to programs that we needed to make a little bit more meaty with deliverables. In April 21, we had a second reading of the, oh, I'm sorry, also in April was the rezones. The rezone ordinance was first presented to you. And so then the very next meeting was the second reading of the ordinance 2577 regarding the rezones for RHNA and as you know an ordinance requires a first reading and then a second reading and then 30 days later it becomes in effect. So in September, we submitted our third draft. Public review period went from September 26 to October 3. And then in December, we submitted a fourth draft. The public review actually went from December 22 to January 9. And that was at the request of Leadership Council who brought to mind that it was the holidays and they needed a little bit extra time to make comments. So we went ahead and extended to January. which brings me to the 2026 actions. And actually I do see an error on here because in January, 2026 is when we resubmitted because our public comment period didn't end until that later date, which I think was the 9th. So in any case, we submitted in January and it was really an interesting period of time for us because at that point we were so close to the point of getting that golden ticket is what they call it. The golden ticket email where HCD blesses the work that's been done and agrees that it's in substantial compliance. So our consultant went ahead and was working with HCD so closely that we were able to get a technical advice meeting. And we were able to slip that in before the 60 days was up. And so we met with HCD. They showed us a few things that we needed to adjust to make it through to compliance. And then we submitted a fifth proposal. draft before the fourth one was completely analyzed. And so we submitted that fifth draft. It was right at the beginning of March. Our public review period was from March 5th to March 12th. And on March 17th, we got that golden ticket email from the state. However, it took a minute to look at the content of it to see if that's really what they meant. And so we had a consultation with our consultants and HCD to say, hey, is this it? And so I wanna read to you what this statement says. This is the letter. The revised draft element, including revisions and minor modifications meets the statutory requirements that were described in HCD's December 8th, 2025 review. However, the housing element cannot be found in substantial compliance until the city has completed the necessary rezones, see below, that'll be the next slide, to accommodate the RHNA. The housing element will substantially comply with state housing law when all necessary rezoning and the element are adopted and submitted to and approved by HCD in accordance with government code 65585. So again, I was a little hesitant, but it goes back to the rezones. And I was thinking, how is it because we've already rezoned? Well, what they needed was some specific language. And because our consultant has gone through this process many times, and they've reviewed the code many times, this was the language that HCD was looking for. And so this is where we come up with a zoning ordinance amendment 26-0001 to add this into the rezone And this is very specific language that is straight from state code. These rezones are to permit owner occupied and rental multifamily uses by right for development in which 20% or more of the units are affordable to lower income households by right means approval without discretionary review. are to permit the development of at least 16 units per site. They're to establish a minimum density of 20 units per acre and a maximum density of at least 24 units per acre for all rezone sites to accommodate lower income RHNA and they are to ensure that either a at least 50 percent of the shortfall of low and very low income regional housing needs can be accommodated on sites designated for exclusively residential uses or B, if accommodating more than 50% of the low and very low income regional housing needs on sites designated for mixed uses, all sites designated for mixed uses must allow 100% residential use and require that residential uses occupy at least 50% of the floor area in a mixed use project. All right, which brings us to programs. Programs have been extensively reviewed and approved by you. We had workshops, we had council meetings, we had planning commission, and these were the programs that you approved. Now I've just put the titles on here because there are pages and pages of background to all of this. And over the course of these reviews, HCD would come back and they would ask for more deliverables. So the programs themselves are the same, but the actions that we have to take to make it happen are a little bit more substantive with due dates and such. So programs include regional collaboration, adequate sites for RHNA and monitoring of no net loss. Anything with an asterisk is purely state law and there's specific language behind that. By right approval, replacement housing, accessory dwelling units, zoning code amendments. facilitating affordable housing development, preservation of at-risk housing, housing preservation and rehabilitation, lower income and special needs housing, farm worker housing, water and sewer service, community and economic development, fair housing outreach and enforcement. Now, over the course of the past few years, we've had a lot of comments back and forth from the public asking for various programs. I'm sure you've heard many of them at council asking for different things. It doesn't mean that that can't happen. It's just not wrapped up into the housing element. So if you wish to undertake So if you have some different version of a program that is perfectly within your right, you can even stop it now and want to add it into the housing element. But I caution you because at this point, the state has found our housing element to be in compliance with that zoning ordinance amendment. So it would behoove us to understand that the state is finding us in compliance. in addition to this, it just might not be within the housing element. Okay, CEQA. So we did have a general plan EIR addendum that was adopted in 2025. And that included the rezones. And then because it's taken this much time to get back to you, we added on an environmental review 260068, which is statutorily exempt from CEQA because of section 15162, because we had that addendum from 2025. Any future development on those rezone sites would require CEQA review. And it is consistent with the general plan to adopt a resolution amending the general plan for the six cycle multi-jurisdictional housing element and adopt the housing element to be incorporated into the city's comprehensive general plan update. It is the one element within the general plan that must receive state approval to be found and compliant and to be adopted. So the timeline, so tonight our ask is that you adopt the general plan amendment to the housing element. Here the first reading of the zoning ordinance amendment for the rezoned sites, arena sites. In a couple weeks, the second reading of the zoning ordinance amendment will come back to you. And 30 days after that, after approvals, the zoning ordinance would be in effect. And then we would be pending HCD's final letter of compliance, which we could expect based upon the information presented. So those would be our recommendations. Questions?

Thank you, Leah. Any questions for Ms. Brown? Jennifer, anything from the public?

We do have two that are on by phone. Okay. Do you want us to pause? Okay. Do you want us to, did you want to go ahead and open the public hearing?

Yeah, we'll open the public hearing. And we'll open public hearing and we'll take public comment for this agenda item. First, the remote on the phone and then.

So we'll have Ashley Marie Suarez and Daisy Ramos. We'll call, we'll have Ashley Marie Suarez join first.

Thank you, Jennifer. All right.

What do we call it?

Beginning good stories. Jokes. Watch the World Cup. That was good.

I think we should just go.

Yeah. So Mayor, it looks like we have a technology disruption. So we may need to do a recess for that. So we do have, I do have a yellow card that's in your drawer. Initial matter before. Oh, hold on. Ashley, are you there?

We have a soccer theme.

Okay, Mayor, we're going to need to take a recess. If you could please read the yellow card for the record.

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, respect to the World Cup that ended yesterday, we have a yellow card We're experiencing a technical issue affecting online public access, public comment capability or accessibility services for this meeting. Pursuant to government code section 54953E2 of the Brown Act, the council must pause the meeting if members of the public participating remotely are unable to observe the proceedings or participate in real time. The time is now 7.07. We will reconvene no later than, do you guys have a recommendation? We can say no later than, any thoughts?

No later than 8.07. Okay.

We're going to be no later than 8.07 unless the issue is resolved sooner. We're going to resolve the issue as soon as possible. And hopefully we'll reconvene much sooner than that. No action will be taken during this period. Accordingly, I'm declaring the meeting in recess and will return as soon as possible. Instructs me to gavel it as well.

Technology is wonderful. Thank you.

Affecting online public access, public comment capability or accessibility services has been resolved. The time is now 719. I am reconvening the meeting. We will resume the agenda at the point where the interruption occurred. Any member of the public participating remotely who is unable to observe or provide comment during the disruption will be provided an opportunity to do so before the council takes action on the affected item. We will now proceed.

So go ahead and have Ashley Marie Suarez speak.

All right, thank you, Jennifer. All right, Ashley Marie.

good evening leadership council and the public interest law project have submitted a handful of comment letters addressed to the planning commission city council city staff and legal counsel as well as the california department of housing and community development we recently sent a letter on thursday july 16th with attached copies of previous letters dating back to 2024. all outlining concerns residents we work alongside have uplifted regarding the draft process As an initial matter before adoption of this eight-year housing plan, the city should bring back and adopt the zoning ordinance amendment to meet the statutory requirements HCD has shared with the city. We understand that the city intends to introduce the zoning ordinance amendment today and bring it back for future adoption. But as HCD has indicated, the zoning ordinance amendment must be done before the city adopts its housing element. Rather than adopt an out-of-compliance housing element, the city should first adopt the zoning ordinance amendment and then adopt the housing element. The housing element must further be strengthened by incorporating tenant protections and improving existing ordinances that affect the development of affordable housing. Meaningful changes must be made to existing programs to ensure that the city complies with the housing element law, combats discrimination, affirmatively furthers fair housing, overcomes patterns of segregation, and fosters inclusive communities free from barriers that restrict access to opportunity based on protected characteristics. Further revisions must include the following. One, amend the Reno unit production plans increase in the fees, increase the percentage of affordable housing units required to be built concurrently with market rate housing and expand the program beyond recent annexations to include infill development. Two, establish a tenant relocation assistance program. Three, assist local nonprofit partners to expand their capacity to provide housing related legal assistance and representation to residents regardless of immigration status. and four, collaborate with the district attorney and local nonprofit partners to establish an eviction protection program. By voting to adopt the housing element as is, the city misses a critical opportunity to commit to protecting the vulnerable communities. We look forward to continue to work with city council members and staff to improve the housing element and better adjust community priorities. Thank you for your time.

Thank you Ashley. Jennifer next speaker.

Okay we'll have Daisy Ramos.

All right, Ms. Ramos.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Daisy Ramos. I want to thank the community advocates including Leadership Council and the Public Interest Law Project for bringing forward the importance of tenant protection, accountability, and stronger housing policies. A strong housing element is not only creating more housing, it is also about ensuring existing housing is safe, habitable, and supported by transparent systems. My family experienced homelessness after I raised concerns regarding my former housing conditions and the coordination between the housing authority, code enforcement, and the building department. I have documentation raising concerns about the permitting and inspection process, including changes to permit records. I'm not here to place blame. I'm asking for stronger oversight, transparency, and accountability so residents can trust that housing concerns are taken seriously and reviewed properly. I support efforts to include tenant protections, eviction prevention resources, relocation assistance, and access to housing-related legal support. As Northside moves forward with the housing element, I ask that protecting renters and ensuring safe housing remain a priority. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Jennifer, any other remote speakers?

We don't have any more speakers, Mayor.

Okay. Are there any additional in-person speakers?

We didn't receive any other registered speakers.

If you wish to speak on this item, please submit your request to speak now. All right, seeing no takers, Jennifer, please close the speaker registration for this agenda item.

Okay.

That will close the public hearing. We'll bring it back to council for additional discussion and action. Any questions from council for Leah or else a discussion, comments, or a motion?

Motion.

All right, we have a motion from Council Member Harris.

Second.

Second from Mayor Pro Tem Boyle. Any discussion pending motion? All right, Jennifer will call for the vote.

I have a motion by Councilmember Harris and a second by Mayor Pro Tem Boyle. The motion will include the adoption of Resolution 2026-44, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Merced, California, adopting General Plan Amendment Number 24-06, amending the housing element of the General Plan and Environmental Review Number 26-0068, statutory exemption. and the introduction of ordinance 2594, an ordinance of the city council, the city of Merced, California, emitting ordinance number 2577, and adopting environmental review number 26-0068, statutory exemption. Mayor and council, please cast your votes. Okay, the motion passes with council member Zhang voting no.

All right, thank you, Jennifer. On to our action items. Okay.

Agenda item L, action items L1, approval to submit census tract 06047001801 for the Opportunity Zone 2.0 submission form to the Governor's Office of Business Development.

Thank you. Ms. Williams. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. As a recap of the last meeting, the Opportunity Zone program has been extended with the new term beginning January 1st of next year. Local jurisdictions were given until July 25th to nominate tracts. However, that date has been moved up to today, July 20th at 1159. With the updated timeline, we have submitted the three tracts approved by council and have prepared the submission for the Northeast tract pending this item's approval. The purpose of the Opportunity Zone program is to reward long-term capital that generates sustained economic growth for underserved areas. It is a federal tax incentive program, meaning no grants or local tax revenue is involved. The zone recommendations are highly competitive as only 25% of the identified tracts will be designated. At the last meeting, the question was raised as to how tracts were identified. This was evaluated by the federal government and based on median family income and poverty rates. While the tax incentive program is specific to the area, these zones can create opportunities for the whole community through job creation, improved infrastructure, economic growth, developed infill, reinvestment opportunities, housing, encouraged private capital, and project creation outside of the intended tract. Another question that was raised was regarding the effectiveness of its first term, while we have not received historical information to merced specifically. It was evaluated that multifamily rentals workforce housing mixed use development reuse commercial infill and larger investments worked in its first term. With that in mind, we now see the expansion of available tracks outside of the last terms designation and this graphic the line areas where the prior terms tracks compared to the available tracks in green this term. And through this process, we also worked with many consultants and participated in those GO-Biz webinars. In these discussions, it was established that activity should be centered on housing and commercial development. Tracks should also be near market ready to attract private investment within the 10-year allocated term. They also stress the importance of local knowledge of investment and infrastructure, and that will be recognized in our application. Consultants also identified the following three-part tests when identifying the next track. For the community test, does the area need investment to diversify the economy? Does the area have a reasonable chance of attracting the necessary capital in the market test? And for the policy tests, are our local policies conductive to development? And with this in mind, staff and consultants have identified the competitive advantage, the site opportunity and community need that this track can provide. First off, it aligns with the priorities of the governor's office and the California Jobs First program. It specifically supports the clean economy, education and skilled workforce, high tech, housing and life science sectors through both the planned development and the university. With the inclusion of UC Merced, the track remains competitive and is in a position to attract additional investment required. Public investment is evident along Bellevue Road through our water infrastructure improvements and utility improvements. As stated in an earlier slide, development opportunities and specifically shovel-ready sites are a major priority. Through the planned development south of the UC, housing, commercial and school sites are already planned and approved. However, with the increase in infrastructure, interested developers have remained hesitant to invest as the projected returns and expenses do not pencil under current market conditions. This will be the same challenge for other developments annexations currently under review in this area. Lastly, infrastructure development was identified as a city goal and priority in this year's approved budget and was also listed as a priority in our general plan through language supporting UC Merced and Northeast development. So in conclusion, the Northeast track not only exceeds the criteria established by GOPIS, but its designation would help to stimulate development by addressing the increasing cost of infrastructure that has made developers more reluctant to proceed with new projects. And with that, are there any questions?

Any questions for Ms. Williams? Or Jennifer, do we have any public comment on this item?

Mayor, we don't have any registered speakers for this item.

Okay, would anybody like to speak on this item? So please submit your request to speak now. Okay, seeing none, we will close the speaker registration for this agenda item, bring it back to council for additional questions, discussion, or a motion. Council Member Smith.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Ms. Williams. I think we're here having a second conversation about this opportunity zone in the Northeast because I was not all the way there to yes two weeks ago. I've since had a chance to sit down with Ms. Williams and Mr. Quintero to learn more about their vision for this tract. And I think they pointed out something that should have been obvious to me. This is not so much about G Street between Yosemite and Bellevue, it's about Lake Road. between Yosemite and Bellevue and I think what we saw in our study session earlier that the ambitious developments that we see between Yosemite and UC Merced are struggling to find a footing financially infrastructure-wise and otherwise so you know for that reason I think there's a rationale for approving this Opportunity Zone in the Northeast that I didn't see two weeks ago and I support doing so now

All right, thank you, sir. Additional comments, discussion, or a motion? Move to approve.

Second.

I have a motion by Council Member Smith and a second by Council Member Harris. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes with Council Member Zhang voting no.

Thank you, Jennifer. All right, thank you, Amanda. You got a couple hours to go run to the... We're under the computer right now. All right, L2.

Okay, agenda item L2, acceptance of the addendum to the City of Merced speed study speed limits for selected segments on North Merced, or North Bear Creek Drive, Manchinette Drive and Olive Avenue.

Sorry, thank you, Mr. Jordan. Good evening, Mayor, council, community. Daryl Jordan, your city engineer. As you may recall, the city is required by law to perform an engineering and traffic study, speed zone study every seven years if we wish to continue to use radar for speed enforcement, according to the California Vehicle Code. At the December 15th, 2025 meeting, council approved the traffic study and requested that three segments be analyzed further. These included the segments of North Bear Creek Drive between M Street and G Street, Manchinette Drive between Yosemite Avenue and Mercy Avenue, and Olive Avenue between R Street and M Street. The consultant has evaluated the three segments as requested and provided an addendum to the original traffic study. After evaluation, JLB concluded that the existing speed limits for those segments should remain unchanged. Justification was based on roadway conditions to drivers and safety of vulnerable pedestrian group and basically our in-house community out there. Staff recommends approving the amendments to the 2025 engineering and traffic surveys performed by JLB traffic engineering to accept the findings and keep the above reference three streets segments unchanged as currently codified in ordinance 2584. I'm here to answer any questions. Questions for our city engineer?

Okay, we'll open public comment for this item. Jennifer, anything for the public?

We do not have any registered speakers for this item.

All right, if anybody would like to be heard on this item, please submit your request to speak form now. All right, seeing none, we'll close the speaker registration for this agenda item, bring it back to council for additional discussion, questions, or a motion. Darrell, I wanna thank you. I wanna thank council too for getting down in the weeds on this thing and pushing back on some of the recommended increases. I think everybody coming together and pushing back a little bit. and sending the consultant back to rethink some of this worked out because speeding and traffic safety is a top concern in our community. Councilor Smith.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think council with the consultant, Mr. Jordan, you know, there were those three segments that didn't pass the eye test and I appreciate the city finding the resources to go back and restudy them. I think we ended up in the right place.

Yeah, we drive this town every day and you see where the issues are. All right, anything else? Okay, additional comments, discussion, or a motion? Move to accept the addendum. Is there a second?

Second. Okay, I have a motion by Councilmember Smith and a second by Mayor Pro Tem Boyle. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously.

All right, Darrell wisely saying right where he's at for L3. Thank you, Mayor and Council.

Agenda item L3, selection of eligible roadway and safety projects and adoption of a resolution authorizing the city manager to file the Regional Service Transportation Program, RSTP, exchange fund claim in the amount of $1,374,632 for fiscal year 2526.

Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mayor. The Regional Surface Transportation Program, which she just reported on, is a portion of the Federal Safety Loot Act, providing for revenues and allocations to local agencies. Merced County Associations of Governments, which we call MCAG here, has received authorization from Caltrans, providing for funds distribution in a two-tiered process. The city of Merced's exchange funds apportionment claim for fiscal year 2526 will be $1,374,632. This exchange will then allow these funds to be spent on local projects and rehabilitation activities in accordance with the requirements of section 182.6 of the streets and highways code. The R Street Olive to Northwood project has almost completed design and is being prepared to bid soon. The project consists of adding a secondary left turn lane on R Street, going north and turning west on Olive Avenue, a new multi-use path, bike lanes, storm drainage, and road resurfacing. It is recommended that the 2025-26 allocation be allocated to this specific project. The project meets the guidelines for road classifications necessary to be eligible for funding purposes. Staff is seeking council approval on the recommended project to utilize the RSTP exchange funds per the requirements of the RSTP claim form agreement. Once the project is listed on the RSTP claim, the city is obligated to complete the project or return the unspent exchange funds to the MCAC organization. On the overhead tonight is a preliminary layout of the dual left lanes as you can see before you There were four alternatives that were studied by our consultant for this. We believe this is the best of those four options This option will reduce our level of service or actually increase our level of service from an F to an E level it will reduce the wait time in that intersection by a 17 second phase cycle, which may not seem like a lot, 17 seconds, but in lieu of all of the phases rotating through that intersection, that's quite a bit of time. So it will actually flush all of the left turn movements now through this configuration instead of having some lag and not flush through the intersection and decrease the amount of time that the traffic has to wait for the next phase signal. It also maintains the connection through the businesses at the bottom of the throat there as you see they can still turn left and right or two lefts from each direction into the businesses there. The other alternatives that would reduce the or improve the level of service extended a single lane all the way through that intersection and did not allow the left turns to occur anymore which I think would be disadvantaged for our businesses. So I think this is the best option for both our businesses and for our large morning traffic going through that intersection to reduce the travel time. I'm here to answer any questions that council may have.

Questions for city engineer. Could you give us some details about the multi-use, multi-use path?

It's not really depicted in this configuration here, but the new sidewalks that will be on both sides, we are taking some of the width out of each of those to make the geometry work, but you'll see also there are now bike lanes on both sides that will be labeled and striped for a safer for the bicycles and pedestrians through the entire intersection there. So that's the gist of the improvements for those improvements, but we can come back with further detail if you'd like to see on how those will be configured. This is basically the traffic configuration.

And that left turn, which would give the left turn coming northbound on R, any safety concerns with that, with the southbound traffic and kind of either they're looking at their face to face with the cars making a left turn onto Olivewood.

The striping across the intersection will route those people through the proper lane. So I don't foresee any safety issues with this configuration. Also that inside left turn lane will have enough room to make a U-turn if need be, but you shouldn't have to, if you needed a left, you should have made it earlier in that configuration. But if somehow you forgot to make the left, you can still make a U-turn and get back to where you want to go.

Additional questions for Mr. Jordan? I will take public comment on this agenda item. Jennifer, any requests to speak?

We did not receive any registered speakers for this item.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, if you wanna speak on this item, please submit your requests now. Okay, again, seeing no one standing up, we'll close the speaker registration for this agenda item, bring it back to council for discussion, additional questions and action.

Motion.

Okay, a motion from Councilmember Harris. Is there a second? Second. Okay, second from Councilmember DuPont. Any discussion? Seeing none, call for the vote.

We have a motion by Councilmember Harris and a second by Councilmember DuPont. The motion will include the adoption of Resolution 2026-41, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Merced, California, authorizing the city manager to file the Regional Surface Transportation Program, RSTP Exchange Funds claim for fiscal year 2526. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously.

Thank you, Council. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Darrell. Really good project. L4.

Okay, agenda item L4, approval of public facilities impact fee credit slash reimbursement agreement with Stonefield Home Inc. for improvements on M Street and M Street Circle.

Okay, Joe, before we begin. Mr. Mayor, I need to recuse myself from this item because Stonefield is a client of my firm, although not me. Go for it. Councilor DuPont.

I need to recuse myself from this item as Stonefield is a client of my firm, not my client.

Mr. Cardoza, whenever you're ready, sir.

Good afternoon, members of the council, Joe Cardoza, city surveyor. Tonight before you, you have a item for a public facilities impact fee credit and reimbursement agreement with Stonefield Homes for the restriping of the M Street Circle. As you can see in the diagram here, The M Street Circle is only constructed at this point on the east side and it's a two-lane road. It does have multiple stop signs and pedestrian crosswalks. With the additional subdivisions of the Bellevue Ranch, we felt it's necessary to have the rest of the circle striped and make it all one way. We have determined that the restriping of the M street circle does meet the public facilities impact facilities plan by expanding infrastructure improvements and accommodate the new and the current growth and future residents. This will also impact or assist with the future fire station 56, I believe it is. And the current transit, parking structure on the east side. And the next slide is what the, what it would look like.

No.

So as you can see in the diagram, we would add a one way direction for the circle and it would be two lanes. It would increase the flow of traffic and it would also provide some more pedestrian safety and we would remove all the stop signs. So we've talked, we've contacted the developer. The developer has agreed to restripe the city's portion, which is the East side. They will pay for their westerly portion. And so we can get this one project, uh, completed at one time.

So I'll take any questions. Okay. Any questions from Mr. Cardozo?

Can you point out where the crosswalks are currently or in the new design?

So they would, here's one here. We put one here. There's one here. So it'd be on Mandeville, M Street, Stephanie Drive, Fremark, and again on M Streets. and then Bancroft. So the only crossings that would cross the circle is Stephanie Drive, M Street in both directions and Mandeville.

Okay. So at those points that you just indicated, pedestrian could be crossing into the circle. Yes. And from Mandeville, that looks like three lanes of traffic they'll be crossing. Is that correct?

it'll be two lanes with some turn pockets.

Yeah.

Okay. And then the speed limit coming through the circle would be maintained as through M Street, just right below the circle as well.

I'm not sure what the speed limit for M Street circle is, to be honest with you.

Okay. I mean, my initial concern with this is just that we're one, the circle is a transit hub in which we have parking and for folks to catch the bus. And we're also encouraging people to cross a roundabout of multiple lanes. And my initial thoughts of this is that that doesn't sound very safe to me. Um,

So we've looked at it as far as staff, we feel that it does provide, it's actually improves the safety for the pedestrians because now there's traffic is only moving in one direction instead of moving in multiple directions. And it also adds a safety factor for vehicles and pedestrians.

are you able to do the same thing in terms of unidirectional flow and traffic plus include the stop signs? We can definitely look at it. All right. That's all I have now.

Thank you.

Did you say there's going to be no stop signs at all on the circle?

That's correct.

Okay. Thank you.

And the design, we're not finalizing the design or anything. That can come back to us for, if we want to give input, you guys can look into it and run with it. Today is just essentially the developer pays for it. And then we got to, instead of us, ordinarily we'd pay for it, but the developer's doing it. And then we take it back out of the developer fees.

yes so this is part of the public impact facility fees okay the developer would pay for the construction and it would be a reimbursement fee credits or a cash reimbursement

So essentially work we'd ordinarily do comes out of the, go ahead.

Yes, if city council doesn't approve this, then the city would have to create a project and we would have to go out to bid and we would have to construct this, at least our portion. So we'd go out to public bid. In this case, the developer has given us the price. We feel it's a fair price to do the work. They're actually adding some more striping. They're adding some delineators for vehicles and pedestrians. So it does add the pedestrian safety factor and just signage and striping.

Okay. And then if we went out to bid, how much longer would that take? How much more expensive would it be?

it would probably take an additional four months. Easily minimum four months.

Okay. Yeah.

In terms of cost, how would the, the cost would definitely be a lot higher than it's hard to say, but I mean, we would anticipate the cost would be a lot more. We have a price that we feel is fair from the developer. And that's why we're, we're requesting council to approve this. We do feel it's a fair price. And this is the design that the city engineering department did approve and

And then it's more potentially with more development comes in that we could add additional, depending on how the transit stations use, depending on other factors as well, additional develop, but we could add more safety features down the road, potentially stop signs, other traffic calming measures if necessary. If necessary, yes. Thank you, sir. Mayor Pro Tempura.

so if this is if this is approved tonight would council have a say in the design at a later date i would have to defer that to our city engineer

Councilman Jean, we would not have any more input on this specific design, but as this develops with a potential fire station and other enhancements, more enhancements can be added to this safety factors down the road. So we can provide more as this develops. At this point though, this would be the design that we would place today. Okay, I understand. Thank you.

Would it be possible to have it come back to council again? If Councilman Jean, is there any additions you'd like to see or anything like that? It's being a district.

I think my personal thoughts right now is that I would like to defer this conversation and speak with our city engineer because I do have concerns with again crossing two lanes of traffic in a roundabout without any sort of dedicated protection for pedestrians. It just doesn't sit easy with me, so.

Okay.

What if we, Councilman Darrell, what if we approved tonight, Councilmember Zong, throw it to you too, we approved and with the direction that Councilmember Zong and anyone else would work with City Engineer potentially on any concerns. And essentially we approve it and then you guys would work on it, come back, for final design. What do you think of that?

would be that we'd be glad to work with council on that and as you can imagine as the center of that actually develops depending on what goes in there there are going to be additional enhancements for example if the fire station goes in there you're going to see more flashing beacons safety mechanisms as that rig comes out and gets back onto the circle you're going to see a lot more than what's there now or if the transit center again there'll be more enhancement placed at that time because then pedestrians will have a reason to actually cross the circle right now there's no reason to even cross this there's no There's no destination there at the moment.

Yeah. And I definitely understand that. And if I'm not mistaken, the fire station was supposed to be proposed with a park as well. And so it's going to encourage more use for pedestrians to cross into the circle.

Exactly. And you'll have full access to that design before we do anything with that. Yeah.

So I'm open to speaking with city attorney, city engineer working on this. After it's proposed, after it's approved today.

Okay. Would anyone like to assist Councilor Rajong with that or else we're happy to have you engineering professionals go in it. That'd be great. Let the wise people come back with some good idea.

Okay.

That'd be my suggestion. We, you know, obviously this is, this area's in a lot of flux. Council Member Zhang, that being your district in particular, you know, it's an important thing to be concerned about, bring the concerns of your neighborhood, but you had to essentially approve, entertain a motion to approve with council direction that Council Member Zhang and anyone else seeing, I don't think I'm seeing anybody else jumping up. but Councilor Jean, work with you, Daryl or Joe and come back, what do you think, 30, 60, 90, or come back whenever you guys prefer, but within a certain time period with any potential improvements as well.

Glad to.

Okay. So motion. Is there a second? Second.

Mayor?

Yes.

Public comment? I don't think we asked for a public comment. I don't have it closed yet.

I'm sorry if I didn't.

We don't have anybody, but I just wanted to put on record.

Any public comment for this item? Okay, seeing none, I apologize for that. And we'll close now the public comment portion. Thank you, so we'll call for the vote.

So was it Harris and Zhang?

Zhang motion, Harris second.

Okay, I have a motion by Councilmember Zhang and a second by Councilmember Harris. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. Okay, the motion passes with Councilmember DuPont and Smith recusing themselves.

Thank you, Jennifer. All right, we're gonna look forward to some good designs. L5 Mr. Richer will allow council members DuPont and Smith to return and we'll take up agenda item L5.

Okay agenda item L5 adoption of an urgency ordinance establishing a temporary moratorium on food trucks and fixed locations pursuant to California government code section 65858.

Good evening Mayor, Council Members. I'm here to talk about a temporary moratorium and zoning ordinance amendment to the Merced Municipal Code Chapter 20.44.020. The Planning Commission had given me direction to bring this before city council so this is going to be a review of the municipal code and specific for food trucks and fixed locations and to assess whether the ordinance adequately addresses the modern operational practices of the way we are using our food trucks and locations and to identify whether we wish to continue to allow them to be used downtown and in commercial and industrial zoning districts So some background, since the approval of this ordinance, 36 food truck entitlements have been approved. During that time, 28 single use trucks have been approved and eight with multi-use locations. When we started to dive in and look at the analysis, what we discovered was there was actually a very high concentration in the downtown areas. and in the central city areas, which started to bring concerns of potential nuisances, maybe some traffic, parking and pedestrian and potential litter issues. So again, 18 out of those 34 locations are concentrated within a 2.5 mile radius near downtown and only three permitted locations north of 24th Street within a 10 mile radius. So as you get downtown, you can see that there's a much more heavier concentration of food trucks. So the current ordinance doesn't sufficiently address the potential of distribution for the operational impacts of our food trucks. Again, like I said, some of those operational impacts could be parking, litter, spacing, and then an overall cumulative impacts. The other thing that the ordinance doesn't identify is do these food trucks have to be electric or can they be gas operated? So those are certain things that need to be looked at and analyzed So here's the map of the downtown area and as you can see where you see those dots that's where there are entitlements for the food trucks and For purposes of this moratorium, CEQA is not gonna be considered and the future amendments that would be made to this potential ordinance would be consistent with the general plan. So the recommendation is approve resolution, establish a temporary moratorium, and then direct staff to prepare a comprehensive ordinance. Is there any questions?

All right, questions for Mr. Ruscha. Councilor DuPont.

Thank you, Mayor. You had, can you go back to the slide with the analysis? How was this analysis conducted of distribution operational impacts? Was that just things that were potentialities of impacts?

So no analysis has been completed at this time. What we're saying is we would need to look at these type of as analysis is to make sure that what we're doing is sufficient for the ordinance. So some of the potential issues could be the littering, spacing, you know pedestrian because when you do have food trucks and if they're concentrated like they are you're going to have a higher volume of traffic whether it's foot traffic pedestrian traffic parking and things of that nature so no specific analysis on parking pedestrian vehicle traffic litter spacing and those cumulative impacts have been done No no at this time what ended up what planning commission asks is from what the commissioners were telling me that they were hearing concerns of food trucks so they asked staff to prepare a analysis of the way the food trucks are now and then come to planning city council and ask the city council would like to give us direction to provide a moratorium and then do a deeper dive on analysis to start looking at things like distance from food trucks and distribution.

So this policy change came at the direction of Planning Commission to staff?

Yes, the Planning Commission asked us to bring the potential of policy change to City Council.

Okay, no further questions at this point. Councilmember Harris.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. In your opinion, Is this an urgency issue?

So there are things to consider when we're looking at the downtown area. One of the things that I would say would be important for us to question would be as the downtown area continues to grow and you look at it at an economic standpoint and you have restaurants paying high prices for rent, where food trucks are not paying the same rental prices, that would be a concern that I would wanna look at. The other part is with such a high concentration, aesthetically, is that something that we would like our downtown to begin to look like? And that's up for city council's determination. The one thing that I would say is the distribution does at least make me raise an eyebrow.

The question is really about urgency and what makes us want to do this now versus. step back and take a look at it, according to your option C, which is directing the staff to study and return with proposed amendments. Because in your presentation, you say that the recommendation is to approve the moratorium and amend the municipal code but. on the agenda it gives us the option and it doesn't really have a staff recommendation in there i'm reflexively against restricting trade and the issue about what the brick and mortar restaurants affect or the food trucks effect on that is a is a issue that i don't believe justifies an urgency ordinance or temporary moratorium. You said there were 36 applications and 26, if I'm remembering, 26 single use and eight multi. How many of those have actually been built? I understand there's a number that have been approved but have not actually been fulfilled.

right i don't have that number of the entitlements but the potential there is for them to still be constructed or used that way and i think maybe that's something to as if we if directed one of the things that we would look at is you know how long do we want to let this entitlement sit there without it being used that's a good question on all aspects of of conditional use and other things is how long do you get to delay before you actually

break ground. Like I said, I don't like the restriction of trade or business. My suggestion would be to use option C and direct staff to do a real analysis and study in return with proposed amendments that looks at all the issues.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Smith.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. O'Shea. Do you have a sense off the top of your head how many new applications for food truck permits are in the queue?

Since this was even came out, at least three, I believe came in to our office, three or four. Any additional requests for permits from pop-up vendors? Just food trucks right now. And it's just been in the downtown area still. On average, how long does it take to review it? food truck permit? If it's a site plan, it should only take like two to three months. If it's a use permit, four or five months. Okay.

So I mean, it sounds like holding aside the merits of the policy question, there may not be any urgency because the normal flow of these three applications is still two to four month timeline. Is that fair? That would be fair. Yes.

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Additional questions? Okay, we'll open public comment for this agenda item.

Mayor, we do have one speaker by phone, Curtis Thomas.

Mr. Thomas, can you hear us?

Hi, I paused the meeting so as not to confuse myself. Can you guys hear me okay?

Yes, we can. Loud and clear.

Oh, dear. Not sure if I'm being heard.

Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead.

Okay, so I can tell that I'm being heard. I just can't hear you guys. Okay, I wanted to urge this council to not grant the urgency ordinance. Right now, those sites that are downtown are basically just vacant asphalt. They're not serving any purpose for the city. They're not serving any purpose for anybody. They're not even being used for parking. I would much rather see those sites be put to some kind of use As to the restaurateurs downtown that are leasing buildings, they made a free market choice to lease those buildings. That's the free market. I've heard from this council many times that we don't interfere with the free market. And I'd like the council to stick to its guns on this. Thanks, bye.

Thank you, sir. Jennifer, are there any additional speakers?

We don't have any other registered speakers for this item.

Okay, if anyone else would like to speak on this item, please submit your request to speak now. Okay, seeing no additional speakers, Jennifer, please close the speaker registration for this agenda item. We will turn to council for additional questions, discussion, and action. Council Member DuPont.

Thank you, Mayor. So minus the merits of this issue, there's an issue that we need to nip right in the butt. And that's the issue of planning commission directing staff to complete actions. I do not believe one planning commission has the authority to direct staff to take an action. One in which is we've now created a presentation for this urgency ordinance and we've actually drafted an urgency ordinance before coming to council and asking council if we even want to move forward with this policy change. I think that's wholly outside of the realm of planning commission's authority. Planning commission is not appointed to create policy for this city. They're created to maybe recommend issues to the city council, but to direct staff on issues that We have not analyzed, we have not taken into account. I've never received a complaint from a brick and mortar and I'm not the end all be all, but if this was a urgency matter, I would feel like I would get a lot of calls from brick and mortars downtown saying we need to do something with this ordinance. The urgency piece is an issue to me. A moratorium is an issue to me because I do not see in which the construct of how we bring ordinances and amendments to ordinances to this dais and moratoriums and urgency ordinances, we ourselves have to engage in rules with C-7. So I think the procedure in which this was brought to the council and the way in which it was presented to the council, not issue a staff, but planning commission directing staff to do work to bring this to the council is wholly outside of their authority. As to the merits, I do not hear that there's an urgency for a moratorium. I believe Mr. Roche talked about the time in which to review an application does not lend to the nature of an urgency ordinance for a moratorium. So I'm not in support both procedurally on this issue as well as on the merits of this issue. Councilor Smith.

Thank you. I mean, I'd like to speak to the threshold question of whether we should consider the item, but maybe I should ask City Attorney Cornwell if he's had a chance to do any analysis on this issue of a subordinate commission or board. Basically sending a certified question to Council.

Thank you, Mayor and City Council. First of all, the item has to come to my office for review and approval to make the agenda. So to that extent, yes, I reviewed it and I approved it. The rationale in which I approved it comes from the city charter 708, which allows the Planning Commission to review, to make a recommendation after hearing a public hearing on March 20th or 26th, they held a public hearing and they made such a recommendation. What I'm hearing from the dais is the issue of whether the recommendation went too far with preparing the ordinance for consideration. That honestly, I did not consider whether it should be a recommendation without an ordinance or recommendation with the document for council's consideration. So I'll listen to the discussion and we can keep that in mind in future matters. But I will say that planning commission making recommendations to this body is a charter action. City charter action.

Yes, I mean, here's my take is that on the threshold question of whether council should consider this item, I think this time we should. I said that for practical reasons, we've kind of challenged planning and parks commissions to dig in, to assert themselves and decide issues in front of them. We've had issues on appeal from planning commission where we were left with a factual and procedural mess because their first instinct was to punt to us. So I almost applaud the initiative. I agree with the city attorney. I kind of wish it would maybe happen a different way, but I can, we can look at this as like a teaching moment for all of us. And maybe it's a conversation that we have to have. I think I would have liked to have seen a formal recommendation to consider the issue from planning commission. Cause Mr. O'Shea is right. I mean, if they're seeing 36 of these applications in a short period of time, we're not necessarily watching every planning commission meeting. And of course we can't be there. So, I mean, I appreciate them, you know, setting up a signal flare. I think somewhere along the way, we got off the rails with an urgency ordinance and a draft ordinance. Just heard the city attorney say that this recommendation was made on March 26th. So we're now four months away and we only have three of these in the queue. I don't think there's any urgency. I think we can take this and not approve the draft ordinance, but we can decide whether or not we wanna ask staff as a council to look into this issue and come back and report to us. or a committee, appropriate committee and see if the council or the council body wants to take further action. And we probably also owe it to planning commission to think about what the procedure we would appreciate seeing in the future looks like, although maybe at a separate meeting.

I think it illustrates a larger issue. We've discussed this at various times, in particular our goals and priority sessions on how to better activate our boards and commissions. Each one's different, each one's unique. I think the technique for best utilizing them and activating them in a way that empowers them and works, because we need to simultaneously empower, but then provide direction so we can work in sync with our boards and commissions is an important issue. I think it raises that question. I think it's certainly an issue that's come up time and time again, how to best empower and activate and get in sync with our boards and commissions. And I think certainly illustrates that issue. I think we've done, had some successes for sure, but I think there's certainly there's improvements to be made. Council Member Harris.

Thank you, just for clarification the 36 applications that's the time that the. program started wasn't it correct, which was what date roughly.

I apologize, I don't have that information on me.

It's been a number of years. Yeah. So this is not all of a sudden a rash of applications coming. I agree with Councilmember DuPont on the methodology of the commission. They're there to deal with applications that come before them, approve, deny, modify. Policy is the domain of this council. And they certainly have input, but that input is through the council, not to the council. So if they think there's too many food trucks, deny an application, let it go through an appeal process, have the reasons for it, and we'll deal with it up here. But no matter what their concerns are, it should come to us and not in this method. I don't see what other options we have since it is for us now, but to take one of these options. Are there any other options we have, city attorney?

Council can vote no to the entire item.

To the whole thing? Yeah. Consider that my motion.

All right. Is that as a motion? Yes, sir. Okay. We're going to have, we still have a couple speakers in the queue, but is there a second to that motion? Okay. Not at this time. I'll second. Okay. We have a motion and a second pending discussion. Thank you, mayor.

I do want to bring up a, agenda and procedural issue that we have that we should take a look at. Mayor Tim Boyle brought to my attention, I do not want to take claim for this great find, but plan commission does not have an agendized item to bring forward recommendations for policy items or items to be considered at a other planning commission meeting for example council meetings the mayor at the end of the meeting says do you have any items for the next meeting or that you want to bring forth to the council This was brought forward in Planning Commission comments. Take a look at Planning Commission meeting minutes. This was brought forward by Vice Chair Greggans in Planning Commission comments. That is not a section in which you can bring forth, and it specifically states the Brown Act does not allow discussion or action by the legislative body under this section. This was agendized via discussion and action taken in that section. So that is a procedural issue that we need to make sure we are taking care of as well. We get items up here from Planning Commission like Councilmember Smith was saying that we need to make sure procedurally was taken correctly as well. I do not believe this even got to us in the correct procedural manner either, like I stated earlier. So with that, yeah, I just can't support this on both sides. Okay. Council Member Smith.

Well, I think the conversation has kind of gone away from this, but I just want to Point out that I think the planning commission was not in a position in our ordinance to deny an application and see what we decided to do because the ordinance to council member Harris's point, it's already decided the question. Only one food truck shall be allowed per developed site. Our ordinance allows food trucks to be on consecutive parcels after parcel after parcel. So, I mean, they probably did not have grounds to deny it and see what happens. And that's actually one of the complaints that we've had about some of the lower decisions we've had to grapple with. So look, I'm gonna take the magnanimous route and step back and say, I think there was a failure of the system and we owe some support to our planning commission, even though everything I'm hearing from my colleagues, I agree with, and I'm gonna vote no as well for those reasons. But I think we can figure out a way to take their input and their feedback in the appropriate manner. Thank you, sir.

Additional comments?

Okay.

Yes, Council Member Her.

Thank you. And I agree there should be a method and we should explore that for them at their meeting to kick anything up to the council for consideration. years ago when I was on that council, we actually discussed that whole item about could we take other things into consideration? Could we have open discussion? And apparently it never changed because that's the same item that when I was there, just what did you do last week? who did you meet with and it never went beyond that so that's that's a limitation that needs to be addressed we need to have that input you know it's valuable input from all our commissions so we need to give them the opportunity to do that but again we brought up councilmember dupont brought up the giving staff direction item and i think that's an important item that isn't done directly by commissions, but done by council. So the missing part is a way for them to bring issues to us. And we should probably find a way to do that for all the commissions. Thank you.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. How do we have our commissions? How do we give them a pipeline to us in an efficient, smart, productive way? Be it a report every year, a couple of times a year, be it in the form of an informational item or something else where they have the power as a body to communicate with us in that way. Mayor Pro Temboa.

They have our emails. We appoint them. They have a line to us every minute of the day if they wanted to. we make it very easy or if they have our phone numbers but i think this this conversation we have highlighted some things that we need to look at procedurally but going back to what the actual agenda item is um i think there's a motion a second i don't even know if we have open public comment for it either so mr mcbride yeah we did public

Thank you Mayor. This is a really good conversation and I heard a few things that stood out. I heard someone mention through the council not to the council and so I'm going to ask the council a question and see how you might like us to proceed with this. We've established that the commission does have a role in some policy recommendations but my question for you is would you feel more comfortable if the council generated the issues you want them to look at and it came back from the commission to the council for your consideration and that would be through you not to you. I think that would meet that intent and I think as council member Boyle just mentioned you've got direct line of communication and there's an issue that's of significance to them and reports to them they can report to you independently and then you have council c7 policies which kind of dictate how you take things on If you want an issue for them to address, you could direct it back to them. They can consider it and bring it back. I just want to throw that out and see if that mechanism or that process could work for you.

All right, additional comments, discussion, or we'll call for the vote. Councilor Harris.

Thank you, Mayor, to Mayor Pro Tem Boyle's point. They do have the email access to us, but if I get an email, it's not from the commission. It's from one person. I'd rather it come from the commission that has already discussed an item or something and sends it up to us as a commission item.

Okay.

Anybody else? Councilor Smith and City Attorney Cornwell.

Do you wanna go ahead?

Wow, that was an admission.

We're getting far afield, I guess two things. One, we have a hard time sometimes staffing our boards and commissions. And one of the biggest complaints I hear is that people serve and they feel like it's a waste of their time. So I think we need to be cautious about what we say, and I think it would be a good thing for the whole system in City Hall if we had a way for our subordinate boards and commissions to provide their feedback from their experience serving on our board or our commission. I'll put a pin in that and just say, I think we were promised standing committee meetings after July 1, and this seems like a good topic for the Ethics and Governance Committee of Council to discuss and report back. And I'd like to see that to the extent that I can make that request.

Additional comments? Casey Nunjeff will call for the question.

So just for clarification on the motion is to not move forward with the urgency ordinance, correct? correct okay so yes yes so yes means no okay perfect the motion is to deny right okay all right i have a motion by council member harris any second by council member zhong mayor and council please cast your votes okay the motion passes unanimously thank you Okay, agenda item L6, consider the adoption of the 2636 parks, recreation and open space master plan as presented to guide park development, operation, maintenance and capital investment priorities and standards.

thank you mr jensen good evening mr mayor council and residents of merced christopher jensen parks and community services director here before you this evening to discuss one of the priority projects that we've had for the past couple of years it's tradition that municipal governments adopt park recreation and open space master plans to help guide park zoning, future planning, recreation programming, and use of open space. These components are often a part of the general plan update or new general plans. In this case, the current parks rec open space master plan for the city of Merced is about 20 years old. Typically you don't want them further out than 10 years because there's so many changes and trends community priorities and staffing that they tend to start collecting dust relatively quickly after that 10 year period. So we moved forward with the council goal and priority a couple of years ago to seek out funding, to support the development of a new pros master plan. That funding was acquired about two years ago. A consultant was hired and the city staff kicked off the park master plan update process. little bit about the the foundational uh intention here is to make sure that we're playing on purpose that was the theme that we came up with with our planning committee and commissioners the goal is to establish a long-term vision for park development guiding resource allocation ensuring effective community engagement and to foster a sense of place We took a multi-pronged approach to developing the plan with our community. We first sought out community wisdom holders or individuals that, or long-term residents of Merced, investors of Merced, community organizations in our neighborhoods. and from that developed community focus groups that they coordinated. These organizations represented cultural groups, community-based organizations, real estate professionals, public health professionals, senior citizens, youth organizations, and other nonprofits. From these community wisdom holders, we hosted 12 community focus groups. Those focus groups consisted of not only members of these groups you see here, but also general community members that were invited by these groups to participate in their specific discussion. One point I wanna make clear is staff did not participate in the vast majority of these focus groups. We left that to our consultant and the wisdom holders to facilitate those meetings. From those meetings, we took high level priorities that came about or overarching priorities. And we positioned ourselves to ask community residents for their input to help us prioritize them and make sure that they were of interest to the community to focus on. We had over 500 individual engagements through various pop-ups and events in the first year that the plan was implemented, the assessment process was implemented. From those 500 plus engagements, we had almost 1400 community comments that were received. And we hosted a community open house at the conclusion of our assessment process to share the results of that with our community under one roof. And that was held at our senior community center. Many of you had taken the opportunity or had the opportunity to visit and share your voice as well. From that year work, we came up with four overarching priorities and these aren't in and of themselves a goal or an objective, but rather a priority that we want to focus all of our goals and objectives under for the foreseeable future if this plan is adopted. They're identified as pillars for our plan, which would hold up all the work that your staff carries out over the next five to 10 years. And they include infrastructure and maintenance, which represents existing and future physical environments in the community. Connected community representing the importance of being informed by residents and the department providing residents with services and information as well. safety inclusion representing providing welcoming, inclusive and safe services for all, and resource stewardship, which represents the importance of strategic use of human financial resources. The plan is very in-depth. We have over 30 individual strategic objectives from the plan out of these four priorities. What we wanted to do tonight is just highlight some of the key points in various pillars to give you an idea of what types of work is called for and then give you an infographic to reflect what that work might look like in examples. So here for infrastructure and maintenance, we're looking at enhancing the existing aging park amenities with modern amenities. Many of your parks outside of a couple of recently developed parks, they have about 30-year-old infrastructure, irrigation, backflow valves, restrooms, playgrounds, playground surfaces, walking paths or the lack thereof. They don't keep up with today's standards or public interest. So we wanted to enhance the existing aging park amenities. Developing a comprehensive maintenance management plan. This is for both the parks operation side and the park maintenance side. We do our best to work with our public works partners and oversee the facility and park maintenance that's carried out. making sure that we have a maintenance management plan that coincides with one another and meets the community's interest is vitally important. Another example is to position Merced Regional Sports Complex as a revenue generating regional asset. This has been a major capital investment by this council over the past several years. We wanna make sure that the operation of this amenity in our park system is covering its costs. So what could some of these examples actually look like? For infrastructure and maintenance, conducting a comprehensive park assessment inventory to prioritize any enhancements that we take on in our aging system with modern amenities, including things such as water stations, lighting and ada walking pass so just for an example here food for thought this is a representation of a walking path added along 25th street which would connect residents to kittyland and merced applegate zoo amenities which this council has recently invested in both Community connection is the next pillar that was prioritized. This represents the importance of being informed by residents as the department provides them with services. And this is back and forth. It's not just hearing from residents, but it's also making sure that we're speaking to residents and advertising what we have going on, regardless if it's a project or a program. Some examples in this pillar would be enhancing internal and external communication about department activities, events and services, considering public private partnerships to assist in the identification of new indoor rec facility opportunities, relocations and parkland acquisition opportunities and development standards, development of operating standard procedures for recreation program operations. So again, both internal and external work being done here. What could that look like? We've heard for the past several years about Community Partners interest to expand programming. We've had some preliminary conversations. There seems to be some interest in support in expanding after-school support through some of our community-based Partnerships and that may coincide with our need to develop Parkland that's been dedicated already, but the city lacks the resources to build out fully and meet the community's interests. Another area for consideration as a pillar is safety and inclusion you guys probably hear as a Council about this core priority area more than any. Safety inclusion represents of providing welcoming inclusive and safe services for all that includes our spaces that are made available to the Community some examples of this is to enhance current and future parks. and facilities with sustainable design that encourage safety, create accessibility for users of all ages and abilities. We just accepted a grant a number of years ago and implemented that grant to fund the development of two playgrounds in Merced at Merced Regional Sports Complex or CP42. And recently, many of you attended the groundbreaking at General Vang Pao Park for developing Aletha June Playground. Those two playgrounds are specifically with this in mind, developing accessible and safe spaces that are inclusionary. The second item here is increasing safety measures in parks that may include lighting, additional amenities, or a park ranger program. Just an example of what that might look like. Here you see a rendering of McNamara Park with both collaboration between Merced Police Department, Parks and Community Services staff and community partners that may have resources the city does not to address some of our behavioral health issues that we see and unfortunately make our parks often unsafe for frequent visitors. Resource and stewardship is the fourth pillar. This represents the importance of strategic use of human and financial resources. Some examples include evaluating and updating developer impact fees, which this city has already started taking on, looking at practices and policies to ensure adequate equitable and financially responsible funding for future parks and recreation facilities pursue and secure funding to advance the design construction operations and maintenance of unfunded park projects What does that look like? Well, this is a rendering put together of our recently held General Vang Pao Park groundbreaking. The goal is not to just break ground on projects, but also see them through development to their completion. There's a lot of community interest and willingness to support these initiatives. And we wanna make sure that we put ourselves in a position specific professional development area with both our staff and advancing community stewardship opportunities to advance the design, construction, operation and maintenance of unfunded park projects in our system. In addition, just for context, the original Community Park 42 site plan is in our office in Parks and Community Services office downstairs. It's been on the wall since 2008. So it's really important to understand that just because parks master plans identify capital improvement projects, it's not always available to develop, but it's really good to have a plan when funding does become available. So some of the CIP priority projects that came about as a result of our community planning efforts, our replaced McNamara soccer turf field. This is a very expensive initiative. It's probably one of our most utilized park spaces in the city of Merced. It has a turf that has about a 10 to 12 year lifespan that's operating on borrowed time right now. The second priority, looking at completing Merced Regional Sports Complex. Again, significant undertaking of several years in the making. It is an amazing facility. We're excited to open in the near future, but still requires some additional resources to complete development. We talked about Bellevue Ranch earlier and M Circle. We did break ground on General Vangpao Park, but we still have three to four undeveloped park sites in that community. We talked about Applegate Park as a potential capital improvement option. Looking at aging infrastructure and updating it to current standards. Right now we have no walkway from P to R Street and we have two highly utilized regional assets in Kitty Land and Applegate Zoo. We also talked about the potential of public-private partnerships and leveraging community organizations' needs and interests to help develop some of our undeveloped parkland. So a potential priority project could be looking to relocate Boys and Girls Club to a venue such as Alfarada Park. Ferens Park is one of our major parks that does not have full site plans or complete development yet. It doesn't meet community park standards such as restrooms or a drinking fountain. It's over seven acres and doesn't have a refillable water station. Revitalizing the Nittany U Sports Complex, which is often overlooked park amenity, but highly utilized year round by our sports programs. Bear Creek, it goes without saying how valuable that is to our community. Hundreds of people utilize that for free open and space and recreation daily. South Merced alternate transportation connectivity. This is a little bit overarching with some of the other plans going on in the city, looking at potentially leveraging resurfacing or expansion of mission as an opportunity to get an east and west connection from South Merced to Campus Parkway. And one of the main pro forma items that were called for in the development of the CP 42 full build out concept with the north being included was the inclusion of an indoor reservable facility. Each pillar consists of several corresponding individual actions. There's 35 in total. Of those 35 actions, 15 are identified as high priority with the remaining actions positioned for implementation as staffing funding and partnership opportunities become available. Many of the recommendations require limited direct financial investment, but will involve meaningful staff time coordination and policy development by this body. The strategic action plan is not intended to commit the city to completing every action immediately, Instead, it establishes a shared direction and framework that can be used during annual budgeting, capital planning, grant development, and departmental work plan preparation. Timelines, responsible teams, and specific implementation measures can be defined or refined following Council's direction moving forward. So there's a lot going on with this planning effort it's taken us about a year and a half to bring back for your consideration. A lot of Community involvement has gone into this there's a couple of external factors driving this to this evening, one being our contract with 110% and katie. KTUA who took on this work on our behalf and also our funding partner in Central Valley Opportunity Fund so being mindful of that we wanted to bring this to you this evening as a potential action item so for your consideration is the adoption of this plan a couple of alternatives before you are to modify this action refer back to staff for reconsideration of any specific items or to continue to a future council meeting.

All right. Thank you, Director Jensen. And thank you to everybody else who helped in the preparation of this plan. All right. First, we'll go to Council for questions. Councilor Harris.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Director Jensen. I don't have any questions. I just wanted to commend you for a really good presentation in which we could have a magic wand and just make all that happen tomorrow.

Absolutely.

match one you could um open up your checkbook that's all right any other questions that was good counselor Smith Thank You mr. mayor thank your director Jensen we had a lot of work presentation highlights a lot of a lot of direction I think we all want to be in, a lot of aspirations. I thought it was interesting that your AI tool put Merced down by Delano, but other than that, I thought it was very helpful. Not reflecting your presentation, I did want to ask you a couple questions about some issues in the, I guess, draft master plan. I think some language is unclear, but words matter. And if this is gonna be a council blueprint for actions that we take for the next 10 years, wanna have a conversation. There's a language in the report that reads as if we are basically building a human services unit within parks and rec department. And it's not just one line. um there's language in multiple places where the parks and rec department is going to be coordinating with the county to transition unhoused individuals into supportive housing there's multiple passages about the parks and rec department basically having public health staff to review indicators of community public health to inform programming you don't have any public health employees in department now right now So, I mean, I've always been a voice for keeping cities and our city focused on what we do. And, you know, this just seems to me like language to expand the scope of responsibility for parks and rec in the city is being dropped here in an item we're considering L6 at 8.45 PM. In addition to the report being almost 60 pages. So maybe just give you a chance to respond to those observations. I mean, what are we talking about here? Nobody's disputing that unhoused individuals unfortunately are using parks for things they're not supposed to be doing. And it's reducing the value of the park to our community. It's the part where parks and rec staff are now basically the county health agency is supposed to be doing. Maybe speak to that.

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Smith. I wanna kind of pull Chief Stanfield in on this a little bit. His staff have coordinated since I've been with the city anyhow, a community outreach coalition. Our staff got involved with that at its inception because of the volume of people that were using parks for housing, temporary space for housing, and limiting the parks utility for other residents. Part of that effort is what's spoken to in this PROS plan, which is coordinating people that have the expertise that our staff do not, but they do not have the insights of where people are living in our park system. So really we're wanting to be the eyes and ears of the community, the stewards that have been asked to care for these amenities and take that responsibility seriously in the plan. So as opposed to providing housing or coordinating the care, it's more about providing the insights to those that offer those services of where those that need it most may be.

Okay.

know you were looking to achieve to jump in or or no um if you want to expand a little bit on the community outreach efforts of the pd and our participation yeah i think we look at this as a as a big grand scheme of things right the parks are important to us are important to this council and the safety of the parks is something we all have to address but it goes beyond uniformed personnel responding to parks so you know currently we lock the parks at night and we make sure the bathrooms are clear and We have some time and effort put into maintaining the integrity of our infrastructure when it comes to the restrooms at the parks, but I think we can look at better ways to be more efficient with our city dollars than spending a uniformed academy trained police officers to do what I think is in the presentation as like a park ranger program, or we can have non sworn civilian staff patrolling our parks that have access to our community outreach team that meets monthly. They can have access to who's who in the zoo, so to speak, when it comes to who's around for public health and their county resources, what knowledge is available for housing assistance and shelter assistance, mental health assistance. It should not necessarily fall on a parks and rec staff. I mean, I started my career in parks and rec working summer programs at Roosevelt Park. So I know what it's like to work in the parks and have to deal with that. So I think when we look at a collective approach to how can we make our park safer, there's a lot that comes in there, including technology from our camera systems, but I think we could produce a comprehensive approach program that kind of sits somewhere in between Parks and Rec staff and the police department and kind of rests somewhere in between, if I'm saying all that right. And then Director Jensen and I, or my predecessor and his can decide who's gonna oversee the program. But I think it should rest kind of somewhere in between them.

And if I could just piggyback, I think some of the initiatives that Chief Stanfield spoke to, the opening and closing of public restrooms, the installation of security cameras, even our staff's attendance at those community outreach meetings. Those were all driven by the desire to do something about the situation. Not that we're the experts, but we do need to be part of the solution to that issue. That's interfering with the operation of our park system.

Yeah. I mean, I completely agree with that and everything that you said, director Jensen and chief Stanfield said, I agree with, I think my, My issue is with the incredibly broad non-specific way it's phrased in the master plan. I mean, my concern is kind of more the way we're making this change, right? I mean, how do you quietly move a significant policy change through a bureaucracy? First it's on the spreadsheet, then it's on the slide, then it's on the master plan, right? I don't understand how from the master plan Parks and Rec is gonna get in the business of, doing these very important things that we need to happen to make our parks safer and to get people in the supportive services that they need. And I agree with the chief, it doesn't necessarily need to fall on sworn officers, but this is some sweeping language that's gonna drive decisions for 10 years. I think it needs to be clarified a little bit better, even if it's aspirational, what it is we're talking about.

Understood. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I do want to just follow up on the request for information about the public health indicators. Yeah, please. Yeah, just for edification. So when we offer programming, what we're trying to do is not just offer programming from staff's perspective of what may be important, but also what trends are telling us there may be in gaps of service to our community. Just as a quick example, over the last two years we've implemented the challenger, or now it's called the Special Olympics version of all of our sports programs. We were seeing a significant lack of representation from our special needs population in recreation. Many of them may have physical barriers to participation in traditional sports, but still have that need for recreation. just as a loose example that's a really quick project that we took on looking at public health information of who's actually participating, whose health is suffering as a result of not participating, and what can we do to increase that participation. I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Sir.

Additional questions? We'll turn to public comment. We'll open public comment for this agenda item. Jennifer, do we have any speakers?

Mayor, we do have one by phone, but they're not connected. Okay. And we did have two in person, but they have left.

Okay. With the person who's not connected, is there a way we can follow up or...

I don't think I have a way to like reach out to them. There is an option that when they register that they can have a call.

So they register but they didn't call.

They're just not on the phone.

Got it.

Yeah.

Okay. But the system's working properly.

It is, yes.

Don't pull out the second yellow card would be a red card, right? All right, okay, from the public, would anybody like to be heard on this item? Parks and Recreation Open Space Master Plan. Okay, seeing no speakers, Jennifer, if we could please close the speaker registration for this agenda item, and we'll bring it back to council for discussion and a motion. My colleagues, any additional questions for Director Jensen? Any comments or motion?

Oh, Mayor looks like she is now connecting the caller. Okay, we can reopen.

Because we're going if you could hold that for a second, and we'll reopen public comment.

Since she's already registered, she'll be able to speak. It's just closing out the registration going forward, so she should be able to. I'm just waiting for it to connect all the way. If you want, we can go with Council Member Zhang if you had a comment.

Did you have a question, Council Member Zhang, or discussion or comment? More comments than questions. Okay. Well, I should wait then.

I don't know how long it'll take for it to connect.

Any luck?

Still says connecting. Okay.

All right. We'll proceed then. We'll close the public comment period. And then if she connects, we can reopen. I'll let you know. Yes. Thank you. All right. So we'll proceed with council discussion. And Council Member Jean.

First off, Chris, thank you to you and your team for getting together this master park plan. It's been a long time coming. A few things to note here. I appreciate the park classifications. I think it really provides an outlook of what we should expect from our parks. That being said, I would love to see a little bit more details in here with regards to the park standards. I know you mentioned before with regards to Ferens Park, how it doesn't have a restroom, it doesn't have water station. I think it'll be good to be clear which type of parks should have those things. I do see community parks having restrooms, water stations aren't mentioned in here, lights aren't mentioned in here. I personally would like to see a number of trash bins that should be available at each classification. I would love to see shade structures and lights as part of the park standards for each of these classifications. And then just another note with regards to community connection. I was recently talking to a resident and they brought up the idea of community gardens and edible landscaping. I think that would be a great way to involve community in the stewardship of the parks.

Thank you, sir. Additional comments, discussion, or a motion?

Mayor, the speaker is now connected.

All right, so we open public comment for this agenda item. Jennifer.

Hold on. I think she's, oh, it says in menu. Oh, there we go. Okay, hold on. Let me get her. This will be Crystal Ramos.

Okay. All right, Ms. Ramos, whenever you're ready of three minutes.

Hello.

Hello, good evening.

Hello.

Yes, hello, good evening. Yes, we can hear you, Crystal.

Hello.

Yes, hello. Can you hear me now?

Yes, good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Crystal Ramos.

Good evening, Crystal.

Perfect, my apologies. This is my first time doing an over the phone.

No worries.

What would you like the council to know? My apologies, this is my first time doing an over the phone. yeah so i would like to say i am a program manager at youth leadership institute i oversee the program youth united who have dedicated time and research into looking at the mercedes park system youth united has visited many parks in the city and have noted the need for ongoing maintenance for parks as well as standardizing park structures and amenities when parks go up they should follow a standard a lot of the time we see parks they do not follow a same vision this parks master plan is a step is the right step in the direction of having a long-term hand in creating a great park system our community deserves however we believe our young people have input that still needs to be considered and we hope the city council will continue to work alongside the community to refine this master plan thank you all right thank you

Okay, Jennifer, anyone else?

That was it, Mayor.

All right, thank you. I will close the speaker registration for this agenda item back to council for discussion. Council Member DuPont.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chris, for all the work that you've done on this, to your team, to all the community members that also participate in this process. You know, there's a lot of information in this PROS Master Plan. One of the questions I have is, you know, this is the first time we're seeing this as a council. I see some alternatives. Is there any suggestions or ways in which to maybe dive into this a little bit further because this will set kind of the future of how we're looking at our parks?

Yeah, absolutely. I think, first of all, my apologies for bringing this so suddenly to council. We do try to work through our commission as planning to bring things to council preliminary through their review. We've struggled the past couple of months with a quorum in order to do that. I met with Mr. McBride before getting this on the agenda with consideration of our funders, our timeline for that and our consultants timeline, we did wanna get this to you as soon as possible. However, I think that our partners that are involved at this point, as you've heard, including some of the youth organizations would like us to potentially extend the adoption of this. And if this council's interested in doing so as well, we could take this to our parks, Recreation and Parks Commission this month or in August and in that between this time and and the next City Council meeting potentially have a study session with council members or at least those that were involved in the initial discussions about the pros plan which I think at that time was considered the parks subcommittee so if we wanted to look at something like that we could do that if the city attorney and city manager were able to

work with our office to arrange that with this body okay so that could be another alternative to our decision tonight correct thank you additional discussion or motion

I'll just say for one thing, I think it, the big ticket, big priorities, it seems pretty spot on in terms of those, you know, the sports complex, McNamara turf, uh, the Bellevue ranch parks, Farrens, Applegate, all those hits, all those, those are, those are, those are pretty dead on, but those are also extremely expensive. This is, I started adding up all the money here. That's probably a hundred million dollars easy just to, to do all this. So, um,

yeah big uh big items definitely the big priorities but at the same time you know given the funding constraints as we all know um you know not not all of that's going to be feasible for sure customer smith take a shot at a motion hearing the room um i agree with councilmember dupont my initial reaction when i opened this item this weekend was wow for the first time i have to think about our parks master plan and there's probably 100 pages here so for that reason in addition to some requests for some clarification from myself and Council Member Zhang and I think some others. I'd make a motion to table the approval of the plan for 60 days to give staff and the consultant a chance to maybe tighten up some language floated by the Parks Commission one more time and then come back with further information and us having some more time with it to reconsider adoption at that time.

Second. All right, motion second, additional discussion? All right, call for the vote.

Okay, I have a motion by Council Member Smith and a second by Council Member DuPont. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you, Jennifer. On to our business items, M1.

Okay, agenda item M, business. M1, adoption of a resolution creating an ad hoc committee for the review, scoring, and recommending proposals for the fiscal year 26-27 community funding and to appoint three members of the city council to said ad hoc committee.

Thank you, Jennifer. Presentation.

Yes.

give us one second mayor trying to get the powerpoint up no problem um

all right good evening city council sarah management um sarah canister city management analyst staff would like to request city council to establish an ad hoc committee to review score and recommend non-profit proposals for the fiscal year 2627 community funding On June 1st, 2026, City Council allocated $30,000 for the community funding for fiscal year 26-27. On June 18th, the fiscal year 26-27 community funding request for proposal was advertised on the city's bid opportunities webpage and the Merced County Times. The deadline to submit proposals was July 9th. Historically, the City Council Budget Subcommittee would review, score, and select the proposals that would receive community funding. Resolution 2026-12, passed by City Council at its February 17th, 2026 meeting, dissolved several City Council subcommittees, including the Budget Subcommittee. The subject matter for the dissolved subcommittees were reallocated per City Council Policy C-8. Just a quick review of the policy C8 as it pertains to the ad hoc committees. City council can request the creation of an ad hoc committee with no more than three city council meetings. City council members, the ad hoc committees will serve in an advisory capacity and it provides recommendations to the main city council body. And then after the committee has selected the recommendations, a final report will be presented to city council. The review and recommendation process for community funding proposals. There were 14 proposals received by the July 9th deadline. City manager staff can provide copies of all proposals to each ad hoc committee member to review and score on an individual basis. The individual review process is expected to take up to two weeks. After the individual review process is complete, one ad hoc committee meeting will be scheduled to discuss the scores and select proposals for recommendation to the city council. The city manager staff will present the ad hoc committee's recommendations to city council at the next available city council meeting following the ad hoc committee meeting. Tonight, we're asking to approve the resolution 2026-46 to create an ad hoc committee to review score and recommend, excuse me, proposals to receive the fiscal year 2627 community funding. This resolution includes a sunset date of October 30th, 2026 for the ad hoc committee. We're also asking city council to appoint three members to the fiscal year 2627 community ad hoc committee.

Questions? Thank you, Ms. Knust. Questions from council?

Okay.

Jennifer, anything from public?

We don't have any registered speakers for this item.

Okay. Would anybody like to be heard on this item? Okay. Seeing none, we'll close the speaker registration for this item. Sounds good. Yeah, in the past we've done this a variety of ways. Way back the city manager, within the city manager's authority, you just made the, looked at the council allocated money, the city manager took all the proposals and then allocated the funding within the city manager's authority. We've done it where the ad hoc brings a recommendation to the full council and also the ad hoc gives a recommendation to the city manager and the city manager has the final authority. So, a variety of different ways. I think I've served on this a variety of times in the past too. It's a good experience. I think it's rewarding and a decent amount of work, but, you know, with Mayor Procter and Boyle and Council Member Jean, I think three of us the last couple of years I've done it and appreciate all your work on it. I think we've worked well as a group, but I'm certainly open to anybody who's willing to participate. I'm willing to do it personally, but I'd certainly step out of the way if anybody else would prefer, I'd have the opportunity. All right, who wants to do it?

Councilor Jean, who wants to sign up for more work? Well, just a question with regards to the ad hoc committee here. Don't we have a standing budget committee?

My understanding was that was dissolved with the resolution 2026-12.

I think it was budget.

I have a snippet from that resolution here on the PowerPoint.

To the next page of that resolution, that's where it is.

the current council subcommittees, which wouldn't be the ad hocs, the current council standing committees. This is a request, obviously a different request to create an ad hoc.

I mean, I could have swore we had a standing budget committee

We have a finance economic development standing committee, but the budget subcommittee was separate from that in the past. And so just this budget subcommittee was who historically has reviewed the proposals, not the finance slash economic, which still does exist.

Understood. Yeah. So I guess to my point is, would this be under their scope rather than having an ad hoc?

I mean, it could be, I think it's a decision for us. Yeah, it's up to us. Staff's requested we do an ad hoc, but we could certainly do that too. The only difference it would be, yeah, it'd be a standing committee and then it'd be a, that would be an additional open meeting. If we did it this way, it's a, you know, it's a, yeah, it's an ad hoc private meeting. And then all the work that's done there comes before the full council and open session. Councilor Harris.

Thank you, Mayor. This looks like no more than two meetings. I think it's perfect for an ad hoc and a volunteer for one of the spots.

If I may, please. There's no regular set schedule for the standing committees. And so at this point, I don't know when the finance slash economic development standing committee would meet. I can bring that to a standing committee to present this, but I'm not sure what that timeframe is. And we did not want to wait on awarding these proposals because that would decrease the amount of time that the nonprofits would have for programming. Sure.

Got a year to spend the funds. Okay, Mayor Pro Tem Boyle.

Thank you. So I was on the budget subcommittee with the Mayor and Councilmember Xiong for a few years and I will say we actually got it done in one meeting. So it's a very quick thing to get done. I'm fine with doing the ad hoc because it is a quick process. And we also present it back to the council. So I don't mind sitting on it again, if someone else wants to is a great process. I enjoyed it the last few years, seeing all the proposals. So I'll just that's just my two cents.

Okay.

All right. I'm happy to do it too. But I would certainly step aside if anybody else would. All right, if anybody else would like to be involved. Do it again.

I'm willing to sit it out. My first thoughts were with regards to trying to utilize the standing committee first, rather than jumping into an ad hoc. But I understand the urgency of trying to get the funding out. So I could support us doing an ad hoc committee here. But generally speaking, I think we should start utilizing our standing committee.

We can do that for next year.

All right, entertain a motion. Councilor Zong, if you wanna make the motion and include yourself, you're welcome to. If you wanna include me, you're welcome to as well.

I'll make the motion to include Councilor Smith, Mayor Pro Tem Boyles, and Council Member, oh, Mayor Serrata. I think it was.

Mayor Boyle-Serrata. Mayor Boyle-Serrata.

All right.

I have a motion by Council Member Zhang and a second by Council Member Harris. The motion will include the adoption of Resolution 2026-46, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Merced, California, creating an ad hoc committee for the review, scoring, and recommendation of proposals for the fiscal year 26-27 community funding. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. Okay, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

And was voted no. All right, back to our boards and commission's appointments.

Okay, agenda item M2, annual appointments to the Arts and Culture Advisory Commission District 1, 5, and 6.

Okay, M2, Arts and Culture Advisory Commission 1, 5, and 6. Jennifer, anything from the public on this before we start discussing?

I do have one speaker, but they're not connected yet.

Anybody from the public like to be heard on this? Okay, we'll close public comment, but then if the speaker's connected, then we'll revisit at some point. All right, District 1, Councilor DuPont.

I would like to appoint Elizabeth Wolfrey to the Arts and Cultural Commission. District 5.

Mayor Pro Tem Boyle.

Thank you. I'll appoint Noel Chandler.

Okay, District 6, Council Member Xiong, Tammy Tran, who we appointed, Tommy Tran, who we appointed at the last meeting, withdrew his interest, and now we have two additional interested parties. I would like to appoint Chris Carter. Okay. All right, so we have Elizabeth Wolfrey, Noel Chandler, and Christopher Carter. Motion.

Second.

Make motion and second call for the vote. But pending that, Jennifer, able to connect or no?

It still says not connected yet.

All right, we'll proceed.

Okay, I have a motion by Councilmember Dupont and a second by Councilmember Harris. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. Okay, the motion passes unanimously.

All right, M3, Building Housing Board of Appeals.

Okay, agenda item M3, annual appointments to the Building and Housing Board of Appeals for one seat.

Jennifer, anything from the public on this?

We do not have any registered speakers for this.

Would anybody like to be heard on this item? In case you know, we'll bring it back to council. And Jennifer, to clarify, we have one seat available?

Technically, we have two seats. One seat requires them to be a professional or a registered professional in the field. So meaning they have to be a contractor, inspector of things of that nature. We didn't get any applications for that. So tonight is just for one seat, just for... a regular person to be on it, yeah.

So one seat with a special qualifications, this seat open to anyone essentially? Correct. Got it. Okay, we have Alberto Estrada, Alberto Escobedo, Amanda Estrada, Sabrina Bong, and then Christopher Carter, who was just appointed to the Arts and Cultural Advisory Commission. All right, any thoughts from council?

I will say if you guys want to go out for more applications, this board doesn't meet very often, only when the occasion arises. So they haven't met in about a year because they haven't had an item to discuss. So there is time to go out for more applications if necessary.

Okay. Yeah. I would request that it would stay open. I appointed a man of strata to another Commission previous appointment Spring and bong serves on other Commission's as well. We just appointed Chris Carter.

So I think we should keep it open Do we know when the next meeting is there anything set it's just they just meet whenever they it's just whenever an issue comes up and they need to oversee, okay, I

All right, additional thoughts, keep it open or else make an appointment. What about Alberto Escobedo? Was he previously?

I think he was appointed to another boarding commission at the last meeting. Got it.

He was.

Okay.

All right. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Additional discussion.

Was the motion by Councilmember DuPont?

DuPont, seconded by Zhang to leave it open and continue the recruitment.

I have a motion by Council Member Dupont and a second by Council Member Zhang. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously.

Okay, thank you, Jennifer. M4.

Okay, agenda item M4, annual appointments to the Recreation and Parks Commission for District 4.

Thank you. One spot, two applications, Marcus Arellano, Lynn Stapp. Do we have anything from the public?

We do not have any registered speakers for this item.

Okay, anybody like to be heard on this item? Okay, seeing none, we'll close the speaker registration and we'll turn it over to Council Member Smith.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I had a chance to talk with Mr. Arellano since the last meeting and I'll move to appoint him to the Recreation and Parks Commission. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, I have a motion by Council Member Smith and a second by Council Member Harris. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. Council Member Smith.

Council Member Smith. Council Member Smith, yes or no on your motion.

And the motion passes unanimously.

All right.

Okay.

It's a cold move to make a motion and then vote no. Or abstain.

Agenda item M5, annual appointments to the Regional Airport Authority for two seats.

Okay.

Two seats and then one applicant, Amos Munford?

Yes.

All right, discussion from council. First Jennifer, anything from the public?

We don't have any registered speakers for this item.

Anybody like to be heard on this item? Okay, seeing none. So a couple of yawns, but no takers. Back to council, discussion or motion? Amos Munford IV appeared to be our only applicant. Is there a motion to appoint Mr. Munford?

So moved.

Okay, is there a second? I'll second. Call for the question, Jennifer.

Okay, I have a motion by Council Member Harris and a second by Council Member Zhang. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously.

M6.

Agenda item M6, annual appointments to the Tax Transparency Commission for District 4.

Thank you, Jennifer. Anything on this item from the public?

We do not have any registered speakers for this item.

Would anybody like to be heard on this item? Okay, so now we'll close the speaker registration for this agenda item. Attorney Council Member Smith, Eric Chu's term's expired, appear to be no eligible applications, and the staff recommendation is to continue recruitment.

I have a call in to Ms. Lynn Stapp, who is the other applicant for Recreation and Parks. I didn't get a chance to hear back from her for a meeting. So I think we can leave it open for further applications, but I'll also be following up with her to see if she's interested in this one.

Sounds good. Our staff recommendation is continued recruitment. Is there a motion to that effect? So moved. Is there a second? Second.

Okay, I have a motion by Councilmember Smith and a second by Councilmember DuPont. Mayor and Council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously.

All right. On to M7.

Okay, agenda item M7. Reconsideration of the District 2 appointment to the Planning Commission.