City Council - Regular Meeting

Been from closed session. There is nothing to report out, so we will adjourn the special meeting at 06:01PM. And at this time, I would like to call to order the Elk Grove City Council regular meeting. Today is Wednesday, May 13, and the time is 06:01PM. Clerk.

Thank you, mayor. This meeting of the Elk Grove City Council is recorded with closed captioning. The recording will be cable cast on Metro Cable Channel fourteen, a local government affairs channel on the Comcast and DirecTV U verse cable systems. The recording will also be video streamed at metro14live.seccounty.gov. Tonight's meeting replays will be on Friday, May 15 at 1PM and Monday, May 18, also at 1PM on Metro Channel fourteen.

Once posted, the recordings of this and previous meetings can be viewed on demand at the 3w's.elkgrove.gov or youtube.com/metrocablefourteen. For members of the participating audience who may have personal electronic devices, please place them on silent mode when during the meeting or on mute when you are not speaking. Dale Grove City Council welcomes, appreciates, and encourages participation in the city council meeting. City Council requests that you limit your presentation to three minutes per person so at all present will have time to participate. City Council reserves the right to reasonably limit the total time for public comment on any particular notice agenda item as it may deem necessary.

Pursuant to resolution number 20 number 2021Dash154. No individual speaker concerning public comment may address the city council for more than three minutes. If you wish to address the council during the meeting, please complete a blue speaker card which can be found at the back of the chamber and provide it to assistant city clerk Brenda Haggard prior to consideration of the agenda item. With that mayor, I'll be moving into the roll call and starting out for the roll call, I will start with council member Robles. Present. Council member Spies. Present. Council Member Brewer. Present. Vice Mayor Suen. Here. And Mayor Singh Allen. Here. Got all five.

Thank you. Next up is our land acknowledgement. To assist will be our vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. We honor, respect, and acknowledge Elk Grove's first inhabitants, the Plains Miwok, who lived as sovereign caretakers of this land and these waterways since time immemorial. We commemorate and advocate for their descendants, the Wilton Rancheria Tribe, the only federally recognized tribe in Sacramento County, who endure because of their bravery, resiliency, and determination of their ancestors, tribal members, and leaders.

Thank you. Next up is our pledge of allegiance, and I would like to call forward Jay Shah with troop two eighty eight to help lead us this evening. Please rise if you're able.

I pledge oops. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, young man. Alright. At this time, please join us for a brief moment of silence. Alright. Thank you. Next up is our approval of the agenda. May I get a motion?

So moved. Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Next item, please.

Under section three, our closed session, there are no closed session items on the regular agenda, which will advance us to section four, our presentations and announcements, and that first item being item 4.1, proclamations recommending May 2026 as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Alright. Thank you. I have the honor of reading this, and we are going to be honoring three people this evening. So we will start with first the dynamic duo, Cynthia Ong Lam and Jonathan Lam. If you would

please come forward. Proclamation

for Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, May 2026. Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander AANHPI encompasses many ethnic groups with diverse backgrounds, histories, languages, and cultures. AANHPI Heritage Month celebrates the collective accomplishments of these communities and whereas the AAN HPI community continues strong traditions educating future generations of a shared heritage, promoting friendship, communication, community service, engagement, and involvement while fostering intergenerational leadership and securing rights and access to equal opportunities to create a fairer and more just society for all. And whereas Jonathan Lam, an accomplished entrepreneur and boats boat swing how do you say that?

Boat swing, mate.

What he just said? And the US Coast Guard reserves has dedicated over thirty years to the food and hospitality industry, ultimately blending his diverse experiences in aviation, military service, and culinary arts to establish Skyport Restaurant and Bar. And whereas Cynthia Ong Lam, through her transition from the world of pharmacy to the food industry, has successfully bridged the gap between health care and the culinary arts, utilizing her background in wellness to nourish the community, and whereas together, Cynthia and Jonathan co founded the award winning Pegasus Bakery and Cafe in 2016, a cornerstone of the local economy recognized as the 2023 business of the year, where they continue to foster community growth in Elk Grove through their steadfast commitment to quality, cultural diversity, and exceptional guest experience. Now therefore be it resolved that the city council of the city of Elk Grove hereby affirms and proclaims May 2026 as Asian American, native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the city of Elk Grove and recognize Cynthia Ong Lam and Jonathan Lam for their outstanding contributions, steadfast commitment to Elk Grove's economic and continued community support signed this day, 05/13/2026. Jonathan and Cynthia.

Thank you. The floor is yours. Would you like to say something?

Yes. Thank you everyone for your support. We are here to build a restaurant and not just a restaurant. It's more like a community service. We want to build a place to connect people with culture, story, and food instead of conflict, hate, or even war.

If you notice our logo in Skyport is anchor and a wing. Means that we always need to have anchor in life, God, family, and community. And the wing is means that these generations, you have their own direction and fly high but don't forget where you came from. Elk Grove is our community. I myself, my child, and everyone love this community here. We're looking forward to build more great things with you guys.

Congratulations to you Thank you so much. Would you like to say anything?

I agree with whatever all of what Jonathan has said and more. We really feel welcome here because originally we were from the Bay Area, but we moved here over fifteen years ago and it has been such a tremendous welcoming feeling to be here, to be surrounded by people who care about each other. So we want to continue that because we definitely need it in this world.

Thank you to you both.

Yes.

We'll come down and present this to you.

Thank you, everyone. We'll continue our service with our heart, service from the heart, and a lot of us are immigrant, but we call this home away from home. Elk Grove is our forever home now.

Thank you.

And

for those of you who haven't tried Pegasus Bakery or Skyport, please do so. Amazing food, the restaurant, the hospitality, everything. It's just quite wonderful. We just celebrated your official grand opening, this past weekend, so congratulations once again. Alright.

Next up is let's see. I'd like to call forward Monica Patel In continuation of our our Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I'm gonna skip the above two identical whereases and go straight to yours. So whereas Monica Patel, a longtime resident of Elk Grove and vice president at BMO Bank, has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to public service through her leadership on numerous boards, including the Elk Grove Chamber of Commerce, where she consistently advocates for women in business and mentors emerging leaders. And whereas drawing upon her Fijian heritage and global perspective, Monica serves as a vital bridge for the multicultural community, utilizing her collaborative leadership style and passion for inclusion to ensure that the voices of diverse and often overlooked populations are elevated and represented within, the community. Now therefore be it resolved that the city council of the city of Elk Grove hereby affirms and proclaims May 2026 as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the city of Elk Grove and recognizes Monica Patel for her outstanding contributions, unwavering dedication, and commitment to uplifting her community.

Congratulations, Monica or Sydney. What should I call you? I

do have a few words to say, but I'm going to call two very important community leaders to the podium, if I may. Please. Mayor Bobby Singh Allen, Vice Mayor Darren, Council members Kevin, Rod and Sergio. Haven't missed anybody, right? Thank you for this proclamation in recognition of Pacific Islander Heritage Month and for selecting me to accept it.

It's a tremendous honor. Again, thank you. This recognition means so much not just for me as a Fijian Pacific Islander in Elk Grove, but especially because it comes at such a timely moment for our community. Fijians make up a very large population of Pacific Islanders here in Elk Grove. Fijians include Indian Fijians, native Fijians and Ratumans too.

We have just established the Fijian Association of Sacramento Region, also known as FASR, and I am incredibly proud to accept this on behalf of our growing and united community. FASR was created to bring together the many Fijian based organizations in our region, mostly here in Elk Grove because many of us choose to live here and there's no surprise why. Through collaboration, we aim to support one another, promote each other's efforts, essentially serve as extra pair of hands and honoring our heritage, building community and empowering our generations. I'm proud to introduce some of our board members here with me tonight. These are the real leaders who have been shaping our community.

Suresh Prakash, he's our Vice President. He is the President of USA Sanathin Sports and Cultural Association. Many of you know, Fujian soccer is huge in our culture and our boys proudly, the USA team, proudly brought home the Sanathen World Cup last year. And competing against teams thank you competing against teams from Australia, New Zealand, even Fiji and Canada. And next year they'll be defending the trophy, the championship trophy in Australia.

So he's responsible for that. This is Board Member Raj Nyker. He represents the Sangam community, which is a very, very prominent community, Fijian community here in the Sacramento region. And they've been serving for over thirty six years. And the Sangom community continues to lead in culture, service and most importantly education.

So I'm really proud to introduce the two of them to you. We're excited to continue building momentum and I would like to extend an invitation to all of you. It's in your inboxes today. I don't know if you've seen your emails but we're having our first event which is called Girmit Remembrance Day and it is to acknowledge and remember the Indians who arrived in Fiji on May 14, actually it was today, over one hundred and twenty, thirty years ago. So we're doing Ghirmit Remembrance Day this Friday, May 15 from six to 9PM at Summer Palace.

Mayor Bobby, I know you're going to be receiving an amazing award, so you are excused. You do not have to attend. Cat's out of the bag. But if you're available, that would be great council members. So thank you so much for this honor, Vinaka Bakalebu. Thank you.

Alright. Next up, we have a proclamation, item 4.2, in recognition of food waste and awareness month. Marie Mertz, would you please come forward? Assisting will be council member Sergio Robles. Sergio's got the Yes.

Thank you. Got it.

Yeah. Hi, Marie.

Hello, everyone.

Super happy to see you and excited to be presenting you this for Food Month's Awareness Month. So whereas food wasted food is significant environmental and public health issues on local, state, and national levels with an estimated 30 to 40% of the total national food supplied thrown away in landfills. And whereas there's an opportunity to recover, redirect edible food to nourish our Elk Grove community members who are experiencing food insecurity along with the estimated 22% of all Californian households according to the California Association of Food Bank. Whereas the city of Elk Grove has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to reducing food waste and addressing food insecurity through participating in the Capital Food Access Alliance, which has been actively building citywide capacity for recovering edible food since 2023. And whereas when food is no longer fit for human consumption, there's an opportunity to divert inedible food and food waste through the mandated organic collection program to reduce the emissions in landfills.

Whereas sources separation of food from trash edibles and inedibles to rich organic materials to produce recycling organic waste products, including compost, mulch, renewable energy, and electricity from the biomass conversions to promote an economy in alignment with the city climate action. Therefore, let it be resolved that the city of Elk Grove hereby affirms and proclaims May 2026 as food month food waste awareness month in the city of Elk Grove and encourages all residents and business to help reduce food waste to make the City Of Elk Grove more sustainable community. Signed this day, the 05/13/2026. I just wanted to say because I will give I will give you the floor right now, but I just wanted to say I was able to tour you actually providing foods for our community and actually utilizing edible food to provide that service. And it was amazing to see that.

And I just want to say thank you for all your hard work that you've been doing and pouring into the community. So, now let's the Well, floor is

I want to say thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. I just want you to visualize Monday is my day off and everybody that knows me, my happy place is in the beach. Happened to be San Francisco. So I was in the beach enjoying the view and I want you to see this story. This perfectly dressed gentleman is looking into the garbage next to me and I really thought maybe he's recycling and looking for something.

What broke my heart is that he was looking for food. When we think about trash, what is garbage to somebody else, it can be the food that can feed so many people facing food insecurity. Especially in this time, just think about it. You don't have to be homeless. You don't have to be unemployed.

You can be just a regular family with less income to buy you food. Food waste is a serious problem. We live in The United States Of America when we think that plentiful and the biggest production of food goes in here. But do we know that a lot of that is statistics, a lot of those numbers of food never reaches the people because we have so many programs or consequences of politics that food becomes not a priority. Every person deserves to eat, no matter what.

And actually, food is what makes us who we are. We all need food to survive. We all need food to celebrate. We all get together around food. So this proclamation, we've been doing this for the past three years, and I want to say thank you, thank you very much for continue doing that.

But remember what I mentioned, a piece of paper mentioning or declaring this is an incredible thing, But I mentioned that we needed action and we needed collaboration. We all need to participate. If we all do a little bit at a time, we can get somewhere. Together we can change the world. I'm not doing it alone, and I want to say thank you very much because City of Elk Grove has something to do with this.

There is thank you for the Capital Food Access Alliance and Food Abound. I have Kimberly and Mike that are an integral part of helping me to make my food recovery project more impactful. I just want to give you a little bit of statistics. We got a grant and with cost of that, the efforts that we've been doing for twelve years, now we can reach people three times a week. Our pilot program has demonstrated that we can change things a lot.

We have recovered in five months almost 12,000 pounds of food. We are feeding people three times a week, an average of 200 to 400 to 300 meals. So far we have more than 11,148 meals. We've been saving almost 115,000 pounds of food from my little kitchen on the past twelve years, giving it to a local farm to feed his chicken as a chicken feed. And I'm putting me in wonder why it's taking us so long to do this, but it's never too late.

I want to encourage other local businesses to try to do the same. If we all try to do buy less as a citizen, if you're not going to use it, can we give it to somebody else in need, especially there's vulnerable populations, our seniors are in high need. So I want to say thank you very much. And I just wanted that we think about food every time we see it with a different perspective. What we don't eat is somebody else's dinner. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Marie. Okay. Next up, four 0.3, our annual presentation by the Sacramento Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District. Hello, Steve.

Annual update and review of why mosquito control matters. So my name is Steve Ramos. I'm one of the assistant managers at the Sacramento Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District right down the street here in Elk Grove. Up and down the state of California, there's about 60 districts that are similar to us in size, and we are typically found around populated areas and agricultural areas helping, public health control mosquitoes and vectors that can transmit diseases. So we like to start out the presentation typically with our mission, which is to provide safe and effective economical mosquito control.

But really what that means is we want the folks in our communities to be able to enjoy their life, to stay in their backyard, have family barbecues, take long walks on the trails that are provided for them without getting bites or itching, or some folks are allergic to mosquitoes and just be able to enjoy the outdoors and all the opportunities that that provides. And even more importantly than that, we don't want anybody to get sick. Mosquitoes are extremely competent vectors of different diseases. West Nile virus is probably the most notable here in the area. It's been here for a while.

It's what we battle every year. And that's our main goal is to make sure that folks aren't getting sick from just the bite of a mosquito. So the presentation is really timely. Mosquito season is here. It's really just starting now, In May, we just had some really good rains. Now we have beautiful weather. The weather today was nice and warm. The last couple of days has been just gorgeous outside and mosquitoes love it because that rain has set down pots, buckets, things like you see here in slide. That's what mosquitoes need to breed. They need that stagnant water.

They will get a blood meal from a bird or a person. They find that stagnant water, they lay their eggs. It could be an egg graft that can contain 150 to 200 eggs. They hatch within five to ten days and then that cycle starts all over again and they're very hard to get rid of. And of course with all those mosquitoes and biting birds comes the threat of West Nile. West Nile is an avian disease. They bite the birds that are carrying the disease and then they've convectored it to people. So big concern for us. Another growing concern of course is more exotic diseases like dengue. We have some invasive mosquitoes that we're dealing with here now in the district.

And we'll talk about that in a few moments, but the concern for dengue continues to grow every year in this state as we have more travel related cases and some locally acquired cases that are popping up. So this slide just kind of gives you an overview of some of the sources that we deal with, some of the areas that mosquitoes are breeding. Sacramento Yolo District is kind of known as a rice district between this County and Yolo County. The areas produce about 40 to 50,000 acres of rice annually, which those are easy to understand. They're gonna breed mosquitoes.

They're very large. We know where they're at, we can treat them. They're not easy to treat, but at least we can find them easily. The other ones that you see here in this picture are a little more difficult. These are what exists a lot of times in spaces like Elk Grove, backyard green swimming pools, tire swings, bird baths, those things that people don't even think about to check. If it has water in it and it becomes warm and stagnant, it can produce mosquitoes very quickly and it can affect you and your neighbors and your neighborhood. So something that we like to get out there and say, hey, don't be afraid to dump those buckets over or take a rock around your backyard. I myself found a bucket in my own backyard. It was like shame on me. Shouldn't have done that, but I did dump it and get rid of it.

So our approach is five pronged. We use an integrated mosquito management approach to combat these little buggers. Number one is public information. It's getting the message out there. Like who are we? Some people when we do events, community events, they still don't even know that they have a vector control district that can serve them. So we wanna get our message out there and let people know we exist. We're in your community, reach out to us. We do that through community events. We do that through educational events where we go to schools and talk about our services.

You've seen our billboards I'm sure in our ads on TV as well as radio. We do other events too where we hand out mosquito repellent to folks like soccer players or youth soccer leagues or any of the areas that do baseball games. So we wanna get that repellent out there and let folks know we're here. Our surveillance program is where we go out and we actually test, for our mosquito pools. So we set traps throughout the entire district here in Elk Grove as well. And we have somebody who actually counts all of those mosquitoes that are caught in the night or even in a week. They sort them by sex, they sort them by species, and then they check them for West Nile virus and other diseases. We also test any dead birds that we find. So that's something else we ask the public to help us with is if they see a dead bird, call us. Believe it or not, we want it.

We wanna actually go check it and see if it died from West Nile virus or other natural causes. Biological control is another arm of what we do. And those are the mosquito fish. Those are really helpful for us and the community. We can put them in backyard swimming pools, we can put them in ponds. They're always hungry. They always wanna eat mosquito larvae and they can last throughout the year and sometimes many years controlling sources for us. And believe it or not, all those ponds you see on Bond Road at our facility are not growing mosquitoes, they're actually growing mosquito fish. And we're one of the biggest producers definitely in the state, if not the nation of mosquito fish. We also have an ecological management department that goes out and helps public and private landowners with mosquito issues.

So sometimes people just can't get water off of their property. Maybe it's too big or something has changed, they don't have heavy equipment. We can actually step in and help that too. So it's a physical control where we can actually help folks move water off their property and eliminate mosquito sources. And then the last arm, which is maybe the most important as well is control operations.

And this is a myriad of things. It could be from the boots on the ground, our staff that go out into the community, find those sources, treat those sources, educate folks about mosquitoes and mosquito behavior, all the way to our aerial division. So we have aerial division treatments that go out and treat larvicide, so a larvae on the water, adult control, all the way to drones. So we have drones that actually go out and treat sources that are dangerous or hard to get to for people. They're becoming more and more useful nowadays.

This is probably one of the most important slides to look at tonight. This is the city of Elk Grove and what we found in 2025. So through our surveillance program, you can see the red dots that are shown here are positive West Nile virus mosquito samples. So that means we trapped mosquitoes there, we tested them and out of a pool of fifty, fifty mosquitoes, one of them or multiple of them had West Nile virus. And that indicates to us we need to produce some sort of control there to lower the amount of mosquitoes within that area.

The yellow squares that you see within the city limits are dead birds that were either reported or that we found, we tested and also found were positive for West Nile virus, which also makes us change our responses there. We set more traps, we do more surveillance and we're trying to find out how bad it is in that area. And then right outside the city limits too, you can see North and South, there were a couple of other dead birds and mosquito samples. So we're always keeping an eye on this and trying to see how the year is going. For the state last year we had one hundred and thirteen human cases of West Nile virus, which is not good.

It is down from the really high year of 2023 where we had over four hundred, but still we don't like these numbers anywhere in the three digits at all. A big goose egg would be much better. And something we'd like to point out with this slide too is that CDC recognizes that West Nile virus is severely underreported. So for every neuroinvasive case of West Nile virus that's reported, it's estimated thirty to seventy cases go unreported. So that's where those potential cases show up there.

It could be a lot more people out there where they get summer flu or West Nile flu. They just don't feel good, they go home, But maybe they were out at a picnic and they had mosquito bites. But I try to remind people, it's okay to talk to your primary care doctor about West Nile virus and hey, maybe be tested for it, it's possible. Another emerging issue that we're dealing with now as well as in here in the city of Elk Grove is our invasive mosquitoes. So the main culprits are the two mosquitoes at the top of those pictures there, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus.

Aedes aegypti are definitely here. They have a little bit of a foothold in Elk Grove, a really good foothold in the district. So we discovered them first in 2019. They are really good at breeding in very small cryptic sources of water in your backyard. Something as small as a bottle cap. If it's holding water, they can lay eggs and actually breed in something that small. So it's really hard to detect these and treat them. Elk Grove has what we call a relatively small infestation, but that never stays that way for long unless we get on top of it now. So we are aggressively surveilling these, trying to find out exactly how bad the populations are and treating them. And then like we talked about, one of the main concerns is that one, they're just really aggressive daytime biters.

These guys don't wait until the sun goes down. They will bite you anytime of day or night. And they're super aggressive around your legs, ankles, so there's very bad bites. And then of course they are extremely competent vectors of dengue, chikungunya and Zika. Dengue showing up more and more in the state of California with locally acquired cases or excuse me, travel related cases. Last year we had one hundred and ninety three. Locally acquired which means someone who was here got bit by a mosquito, had not traveled anywhere and then acquired dengue. There were six cases last year, mostly in Southern California. So it is more and more of a growing concern. So to prevent this and kind of battle these mosquitoes, we're trying something new.

We tried it last year for the first time for our district and that's sterile insect technique, sterile males. The system or the technique's been around for a really long time, over sixty years like through with the medfly. But this is where we use male mosquitoes that we release into a neighborhood, which sounds ridiculous, but male mosquitoes don't have mouthparts. They cannot bite you. So they have no danger of causing disease or itches or bites. They can be a little bit annoying because they'll fly around folks, but they won't bite. What they're gonna do is they're gonna mate with a female mosquito. Once the female mosquito mates with that male, she'll only mate once. She won't mate with any other mosquitoes. And then her progeny from that point forward will not hatch until she is deceased.

So it can lower populations extremely quickly. We started a pilot program last year in South Natomas, a very small area. And all the areas around it that we were doing surveillance in had a continuous trend upwards of Aedes aegypti, even with our traditional control measures. However, the SIT area just nosedive, took an extreme downturn. We were able to control that population like we hadn't seen before. So this is very promising for us and we're going to continue to use it in other areas this year as well. So moving forward, we will expand SIT to other areas. We're gonna look at those areas that have high populations and continue to use it. We're always gonna be doing our surveillance and our control efforts. We definitely will explore more outreach opportunities.

So if you have an event that you'd like us to come out to, please reach out. Liz Maria Robles, just call her, our public information officer. She'll be out there really quick. We'd love to do that stuff. Of course, we encourage the public to report any day biting mosquitoes that really helps us know where the issues are at before we can be there sometimes. Drain water on your property, that's our main message. It helps us out and helps your neighbors out as well as yourself. And also go to our website, fightthebite.net. There's lots of good information there, but one that's really important for residents is that it is our notification system. So if you're curious about when we're spraying, where we're spraying, what we're spraying, and why are we spraying, if we are doing control measures, that system will actually notify you and let you know.

That way, if you don't wanna be in that area, you don't have to be. And we try to give as much notice as possible when we have these issues arise, we get out there and try to handle it as quickly as possible to notify the public at the same time. And so before I take any questions, also just wanna recognize Lynn Hawkins who is the City of Elk Grove board member is here in the audience with us tonight. So thank you for having him on our board. He's been an integral part of the board. Couple years I think he served maybe. Yeah. Just a few. But with that, are there any questions?

Thank you for your presentation. Any questions looking at the left? Seeing none. To the right, none.

Great. You're mosquito bites. Alright. You very much.

Thank you. Bye bye. Alright. Next up is item 4.4. Proclamation recognizing May 17 through the twenty third twenty twenty six as National Public Works Week. I'd like to call forward our public works director Jeff Warner and presenting will be our vice mayor.

Thank you, mayor. Well, there's a lot of reasons why our city is such a beautiful place and a lot of them can be subtle whether it's a street light that still works, clean streets, lack of potholes, all these great little things make our city such a beautiful place. So it's my honor to recognize these quiet heroes and Jeff, Mr. Werner's team here recognizing this proclamation of National Public Works Week, May 17 through the twenty third. Whereas the public works services provided in our community are an integral part of our citizens' everyday lives, and whereas the support of an understanding and informed citizenry is vital to the efficient operation of public work systems and programs such as fleet and facilities, recycling and waste, traffic, drainage and flood control, street maintenance, capital projects, real estate, engineering and construction.

And whereas the health, safety, welfare and the quality of life of the City Of Elk Grove residents greatly depends on these services and whereas the quality and effectiveness of these services as well as their planning, design and construction is vitally dependent upon the efforts and skills of public works employees And whereas the efficiency of the qualified and dedicated personnel who staff the Department of Public Works is influenced by the public's attitude and understanding of the importance of the work they perform. Now therefore be it resolved that the City Council of the City of Elk Grove hereby proclaims May 11 through Interesting. May 2026 as National Public Works Week in the City Of Elk Grove and urges Elk Grove residents and civic organizations to acquaint themselves with Elk Grove Public Works Services and programs. Congratulations, mister Werner. Well,

thank you Vice Mayor for the kind words and thank you to the entire city council for this proclamation. I also want to thank the city council, the city manager, and the community for your continued support for the public works services that we provide to the community. The city is a well run organization and is very financially strong as we all know. However, you still have choices to make and choices in terms of what to prioritize for our community and for the quality of life of our community. And you, backed by the community, continue to prioritize public works in the choices that you make.

It's the reason why we have an award winning pavement management program. It's the reason why we have amazing transportation facilities including streets and trails. It's the reason why we have great recycling waste services for our community, as well as all of the other maintenance and operations services and capital projects we deliver for the community. So, thank you very much for that. National Public Works Week is really about recognizing and acknowledging the the role public works plays in supporting the quality of life for our community but also it's about the people, the people that make it happen every single day.

And I'm really proud to be the public works director of an amazing team of qualified subject matter experts and individuals who work very hard every single day to make this community great. So thank you to my staff. Thank you to the community and the city council. And I also wanna plug next week is Big Truck Day out at It's District fifty six on an amazing event geared towards our our kindergarten age children. So come on out. We got new hours this year, 9AM. Drop off your your older kids and bring the little ones out and we have some amazing giveaways planned and a scavenger hunt and the opportunity to to see all of the public horse equipment and personnel that make it happen every single day. So, hope to see you all there. Thank you.

Kindergarten will fit right in. Thank you.

Thank you.

You're just taking pictures

of everything. You

guys are prepared. I don't wanna take a selfie.

Okay. Next up is item 4.5, proclamation and recognition of May. May is bike month. And this will be presented to our trails committee and assisting will be council member Kevin Spees.

Alrighty. Thank you, madam mayor. We'll wait for all the trails representatives to come up here. Alright. Thank you. It's good to see you this evening. Alright, May is bike month. May 2026. So May is National Bike Month promoted by the League of American Bicyclists and celebrated in communities from coast to coast since 1956. A chance to showcase the many benefits of bicycling and encourage more people of all ages and abilities to giving biking a try.

And since 2004, May is Bike Month has been celebrated across the Sacramento region, El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo, and Yuba Counties, and events are planned throughout the month to promote and encourage people to try bicycling for some of their trips. And whereas every day is a good day to choose riding a bike, but May is special because people want to get outside, enjoy our beautiful city in warmer weather, and enjoy Elk Grove's great trails and bike lanes for commuting, running errands, or recreation. And whereas a recent study found that when an individual replaces one car trip per day with a bike trip, that person reduces their carbon emissions from transportation by six, excuse me, by 67%. Just one small change in daily life which contributes to a healthier future for our nation and planet. And whereas since using a bike for transportation can help improve mental health, physical health, and air quality, Elk Grove residents should be encouraged to try active participation such as biking instead of a car.

And whereas celebrating May as bike month is simple. Go for a ride, sign up on the NorCal Go app, check with local cycling clubs or our local bicycle shops to find other people with which to ride or ride to District 56 for cycle your city day on May 14.

Tomorrow.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the city council of the city of Elk Grove hereby proclaims the month of May 2026 as May is bike month in Elk Grove. Accordingly, we encourage our citizens to join with their communities in participation of local and regional May activities. And I always know when summer's just about here, when we have the May is Bike Month presentation and the Fight the Bike presentation. That's when we know that summer's just about here.

And mosquitoes.

Yeah, the mosquitoes, right. So, please.

I've got my 2¢ to say after this. So thank you for recognizing me as bike month. We encourage biking in all aspects, recreation, errands, commuting to work, different categories. It's a great way to get around and it's a great way to stay off the road and enjoy our parks and highways and trails and all that good stuff. So I'll say my speech here in two minutes.

And I'd like to give a sincere shout out to all of you and the staff that make the trails committee work independent of that because we have a wonderful network of trails and things that people can get out and bike in. Things are becoming safer, the green lanes, that sort of stuff. But Kaylee, Kyle, all of them, the Kay ladies and Alyssa, They're absolutely fabulous to work with and when we did the ride the city event, I'm not stealing too much of your thunder, sorry. When we did the ride the city event, it was just absolutely fabulous to be around, you know, that your staff and to show them, you know what it is to get around in the city and that they have done an incredible job pinpointing and your GIS people now have destinations on the bike and ped map So you can easily find your way around town. So really appreciate what you guys do.

And then we've got a bunch of our biking friends in the audience if they would raise their hands.

Well, they can come up for the picture if you want them to come up with a picture.

Would love to

friends come up with a picture. Mark, did Mark?

Oh, I'll just say thank you very much for recognizing May's Bike Month and I'll echo Sharon's comments about we have the an awesome staff. Actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna speak on items not on the agenda for my two minutes in a in

a minute. Okay.

Come on biking buddies. Come on, bike friends. Anybody.

Alright. Next up, 4.6, our trails committee annual report.

Didn't need those twenty five years ago. Good eve good evening, mayor Singh Allen. Council members, thank you for having me. I'm Mark Mendenhall. I'm chair of the trails committee. Our committee was formed the year after incorporation in 2001. This is our twenty fifth year. This is our committee today. No changes from last year. We are all active, dedicated, and talented participants bringing in a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and wisdoms to the group.

Thank you for allowing us to continue to serve our city. This is what we do. We provide input and direction on CIP and planning projects, vision for future active transportation in our city. At our meetings, we review, development projects where a trail or other active transportation corridor is nearby. This year, we made recommendations for the La Z Boy Showroom, Sousa Sousa Dairy Rezone, Bilby Ridge, and the city's homeless shelter.

The city has a variety of initiatives underway, including safety data tracking, way finding, bike parking, safe streets, and climate action. We contribute our collective thoughts to this important projects. Active development projects related to trails completed this year include the Ryland Trail extension at Tegan Road. This long awaited connection allows trail access to the retail centers at Franklin And Laguna Boulevard for the entirety of the Northern Laguna neighborhoods. This new trail on the South Side of Elk Grove Creek at Laguna Springs Drive finishes a very nice loop trail near the state offices on Longleaf Drive and the Laguna Gateway retail centers.

Laguna Springs Drive was restriped from Laguna Palms Way to Elk Grove Boulevard to more clearly defined bike lanes and highlight conflict zones with familiar green accents. This court is a key North South bike route connecting our city. The existing Laguna Creek Trail from Lewis Stein Road along West Ogden Boulevard has been resurfaced with bike and pedestrian access points better defined in preparation for the extension of this trail over State 99 next year. The city is in progress on bike and lines lane stripe bike lanes striping on collector streets all around town. This better defines internal bike routes and most importantly has proven slow vehicle traffic within neighborhoods.

Better defined bike spaces creates a safer experience on two wheels. Keeping with the concept of safer bikeways where room permits, the city is inserted inserting separated bike lanes to provide a buffer between vehicles and cyclists. Studies have shown reducing the lane width even with just paint stripes reduces vehicle speeds. In this case, an improved perception of bicycle safety reduces stress levels for everyone. As development continues in the Southeast policy area, we are seeing a large and comprehensive expansion of our trail system.

These are just some of the connections so far. Surface repairs and restriping on several trails around town are underway. Tree roots, erosion, and wear and tear are being addressed. That's a good thing, And we are pleased that the city takes note and corrects these issues. These are the power Line and Lower Laguna Creek Trails.

The city placed major emphasis on finishing the Laguna Creek interregional trail system. I always grew up that one. Beginning at, some fifteen years ago stemming from an agreement with the East Lawn, to place a connector trail along Laguna Creek and over State Route 99. And now here we are, shovel ready to go. A new connector is due to forbidden construction this year, which will complete the outgrow side of the Laguna Creek to the existing trail at Lewiston and Big Horn.

Improvements along Bruceville Road are included. Red is existing trail both in Sacramento and Elk Grove. The new additions are in blue. The bid for the drainage service road and future trail west from the Camden Spur has been awarded, and construction will begin soon. This year is shown in blue with the new bridge targeted for next year over State Route 99 shown in green.

A project to extend the trail under the Waterman Bridge at Bond Road is moving forward with design and feasibility studies underway. This will create a grade separated connection to the now isolated trail segment in the Clark Farms and Tributary Point areas to the rest of the city trails. The trail is in, in the Elliott Springs development will also benefit, from this connection. We received and commented on other staff initiatives of importance to trails and active transportation. We created our minor CIP project recommendation log in 2019 to help staff prioritize small projects that have a big impact on trail usability.

I've included this slide each year hoping to chart our progress. It's been slow. Staff has reviewed the entire list. I've rearranged it by their decisions, which have five projects that appear doable, three babies, and a host of nos for various reasons. As we stated before, all of these recommendations have merit around making our city more bike friendly. Some were deemed not so minor, others just not worth the effort or expense at this time. We'll leave the list as is and add to it as ideas surface. Staff will be able to reference for future initiatives should direction occur. I've included this slide a few years. We are seeing some needed policy movement.

When it comes to real world, it's looking more like this. The explosion of e everything you can imagine has changed our world rapidly. Many challenges lie ahead in regulation, enforcement, and safety. For trails, the key are speed moderation, more courtesy, and a bunch of common sense. Staff has introduced our way finding program, which is initially focused on our four main trails in different parts of the city.

The plan includes on trail signage, maps, directions, and points of interest surrounding the trail corridors. I believe the future and successes of our trails and committee, lie in creating and formalizing a connected network of trails using low volume, less stressful streets. With future completion of the Laguna Creek Trail system and build out of the Southeast policy area, trails will have our basic frame policy area trails will have our basic framework of trails. We simply can't connect up trails through areas already built out. We do have some crossings over railroad tracks in State Route 99 to work on.

So here it is, more or less what we have. For simplicity, I've left left out Laguna West on Franklin. The concepts still apply. I've taken the East Side Of 99 as my example of what connections look like using residential streets. That's in magenta there.

They're already in these are already in place. We need to work on the best way to communicate the system. We can access key areas all over the city with this system. In this case, we get to Old Town from all directions, never using the boulevard, and these streets or alleys are already there. I've included more connections to the West State Route 99, to illustrate how this can literally connect the city effectively off boulevard.

There are many more interior routes to be shown. The areas highlighted represent major destinations for recreation, retail, and work. All can be accessed safely with the system. We need to con concentrate on f our efforts toward way finding using maps, signage, and online tools. That I believe is the best future for our city active transportation program.

So the last several years, I have led city staff and interest community members on bike rides to various parts of the city to showcase our many trails, parks, and community assets. Last year, we took a ride East Of State Route 99 showcasing what could be with one more railroad crossing. This year, we trekked around the West Side of State Route 99 to see how to get around town safely providing access to many retail and work destinations, view our future 99 over crossing, and visit new trails and and connections. Everybody had a great time or so they said. It was about it was about 14 miles.

So, there's a couple couple pictures of the group, on our ride. The one with the group is after, so everybody was still standing. The anti trash trash volunteer team continues to keep our trails, creeks, and roadways clean, twice monthly on Saturdays. Committee member and vice chair, Sharon Anderson, continues to organize this effort. We thank all the participants participants for their tireless work and dedication to keeping our city the best it can be.

Grants, federal, state, and regional are leveraged with city matching funds to advance trail priorities. Kaylee Lyons continues as our senior transportation manager. I think she's here over my right shoulder. To few further our cause. She's doing a great job for our city.

Thank you. Stuff for all of us to work on, safer bikeways, intersections, keeping our trails and open spaces safe for our residents, and getting it right the first time. I'm proud to live in in and be part of the city that cares about our residents and our and our facilities, keeping our trails clean and inviting as a priority in our growth. This is at Bridgeview Park along Whitelock Parkway, home of the giant acorn. If anybody knows about the giant acorn. Seems to be popular. So there you have it. That's our report for this year.

All right. Well, thank you. What an excellent report. Yeah. I'm going to look to the right. Any questions or comments? Nope?

Yes. I do. You know, I think I started coming to City Council meetings around 2011. And there were a lot of sometimes contentious conversations with city council and with the the trails committee particularly surrounding, you know, connectivity and some of those concerns and I I have to say, I have to thank you Mark and Mark and and Sharon for, you know, for all of these years to continue to be an advocate for our trails. You you had, a big vision back then.

It's sometimes been slow to to to achieve, and there have been some bumps and such along the way. But and I know there's a whole committee, you know, that that also, supports this, but I know that the three of you have been absolute stalwarts over the last, what was that, fifteen years since I've been watching. So, I wanna thank you for that. Miss Lyons, I appreciate you for, you know, I I I know when I'm talking to you, I know I can, I I there's a believer? You are a believer, and, I think that this is you know, these trails are a component of, of the great life that we we have here in Elk Grove.

And so and with that, one since you brought it up, I think one of the one of the groups that keep really good control on the on the beauty of our trails is the anti trash group and this is a certainly a good opportunity to to thank them for their service and and and their volunteerism and their devotion to it. They've they've been doing that now, gosh, like, every weekend for, like, six years now, it feels like. So, anyway, big thank you to to the trails committee because I think you're you're helping to advocate for a system that, people are really enjoying and I don't know that they fully appreciate the work and effort that you put into it. So, thank you very much.

Thank you. Councilmember Spies looking to the left. Any questions or comments? Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to echo those sentiments. Councilmember Spies, all of you have been involved for so long and you always reminded us as we were building out every subdivision, the importance of trails and the bike network and how any subdivision, how it was going to affect trails or if we incorporate something in there for the bike community. So I also want to thank you for all these years and you're seeing firsthand how long it takes that we admittedly things do happen slow. So it's not just bike trails, but a lot of the things we try to do.

So really appreciate your work because it takes that commitment and dedication for you to get things done. I want to call out what I saw on this slide. The the work that you did to demonstrate what needs to get built, the network that needs to get built to connect these places of interest, these senses of place. And I'm gonna ask staff to take note of that because I I think we should bring this back as part of a a like one CIP item, like, the whole the whole network. And and I would like to bring it back so we could talk about it at the appropriate time when we're when we're talking CIP and things.

But I think that would be I've never seen it communicated like that, what you what you drew on there and I think it'd be worthwhile for us to invest in that basic network. I think it'd be a great amenity for our city.

It it has to be. You know, it I rode San Francisco back in 2004 and they had a map that was specifically for bike. And it was very interesting. I mean, they actually had shaded colors of the bike routes depending on how steep the roads were. We don't have that issue here. But it was very interesting. And they had bikeways that used less stressful streets. And if you can imagine biking in San Francisco, I mean, sounds insane. But when you use the bike map and the secondary streets it's not so bad

yeah

it's not as good as here by any means but it you know but it is it is a beautiful city and that sort of thing so it is possible yeah and you know, my biking group, most of the folks that were here tonight, we ride those routes all the time. We never ride on the boulevards. Yeah. And we ride all over town.

Well, most of the time we're looking at it in in the spreadsheet format or these segments, right? And what you did there, think it speaks volumes. So thank you for doing that. I really do want us to take a look at how we can build that out. Thank you. Vice Mayor soon.

Yeah. If I may. So what Mark has presented is what exists today. So the connectivity he's showing is what people can do today utilizing our trails and the existing neighborhood connections to avoid the major arterials. So Kaylee has informed me that she's already working on a project that would create a map, the map that Mr.

Mendenhall is describing, that will show people how to do what he is already capable of doing himself, and he shows people through the bike rides daily. So the network that's proposed is already within our bike ped trails master plan, and many of those projects are in our capital improvement program, which you guys will see the draft of next council meeting. Those routes exist today, and we will be formalizing a map. Kaylee and her team will be formalizing a map to share with the community so they can take advantage of those routes as well.

So, not just the red but the magenta too, all the magenta. Okay.

Those exist today. Those are on street. Those are on street facilities, class two and three bike lanes that people can utilize away from the major boulevards or arterials that people can use to get to these destinations without having to cross major roads.

That's excellent. That's great to hear. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Great great work and when you do have that presentation, please reference this as well so we can correlate it. Of course, it may not be as obvious to the community. So, if you can bring it back to the update that we had this evening, that would be helpful. Yep. Yep.

Great. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you to the trails committee and all of our amazing volunteers. You do tremendous work really creating a high quality of life in our city. Thank And what you do is is very important. So thank you. Appreciate you being here tonight.

Thank you. Thank you.

Alright. Next up is item 4.7, our youth commission semiannual update.

Oh.

Great to see them all, man. I know. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Abbash Chaudhry, chair of the commission. Here with the commissioners to present the year's recap.

Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Kara Hughes. I'm the vice chair, and it has been an honor to serve as a vice chair of the Youth Commission. So for our year end review, we started with our Youth Commission retreat in August where we met our new commissioners. We then had our first event, which was the Mental Wellness Walk, which supports the youth's mental health and our continuing journey to do so.

We were delighted to have the mayor visit our February meeting and had a great discussion. In February, later on in the month, we had our college and career readiness event helping the youth with financial situations. Our family fun day had an excellent response once again, which was held this past April. And a few of our youth commissioners attended the California Youth Empowerment Commission Forum and had a great time there, learned a lot about expanding the youth commission and gaining more resources to do so. This year, we developed our social media outreach more than in years past, and our communications officer worked, very closely with the city's social media expert.

Currently, our food drive is going on right now. We have a bin just outside the chamber doors. So anyone that would like to donate still, the event ends this Friday, the fifteenth. And I will pass it on.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Femi Omotecho and I'm the advisor to the youth commission. The time has come again to say goodbye to to our seniors. We have three of them this year graduating. The first is Abbas. You want to step forward? Abbas is our chair. He's been on the commission for three years, and he'll be attending UC Merced this Okay? And his major is biological sciences and human with human emphasis. Right? Thanks. We're gonna miss you. Next is Kara. Kara Hughes.

Kara has been my right hand girl for the past two years, and she's our Vice Chair. She'll be attending certain hall breast imaging in international relations and diplomacy. When you become a diplomat, you take me along with him.

Wow. And

last but not the least is Andres. He's also been with the commission for two years. He's our current historian. He developed this PowerPoint for us. He'll be going to UC Santa Barbara and majoring in economics and accounting.

So

we have three open spots to be appointed, and that's just the presentation we have for you, but we'll appreciate if you take pictures with the seniors.

Excellent. Well, Thank you all for your hard work, And great to see where all of our graduating seniors are going. Great work. So you want us to come down? Is that Yes, please.

Yes. Okay.

Let's go. Congratulations,

seniors.

Alright. Next up is our public comment. I will officially open up the public comment opportunity. Oops. We'll start with Anthony Robertson senior followed by Valerie Scrubs.

Good evening, mayor and members of the city council. My name is pastor Anthony Robertson and I am here today as a faith and community champion for saving our legacy. An African Americans for smoke free safe places also known as the SOL Project. My wife and I have been a resident here at Elk Grove for over thirty years where we raised our families and now enjoy watching our grandchildren grow. Because of that, having a smoke free home matters deeply to me and my family.

As a faith leader, we believe every family deserves to live in a safe and healthy environment, including the air that they breathe inside their own homes. Unfortunately, many residents living in apartments and other multiunit housing communities are still exposed to secondhand smoke for from neighboring units and shared spaces. Even though our wonderful city has an A plus grade in so many wonderful things, According to the American Lung Association, Elk Grove currently has an F grade for smoke houses for smoke free housing protections. Smoke can travel through vents, hallways, windows, and walls impacting children, seniors, and residents with health conditions. We respectfully ask the city council to continue conversations with community members and the SLL project about healthier housing protection for Elk Grove families.

Thank you for your leadership and your commitment to our community.

Thank you. Next up is Valerie Scrubs Followed by Plachette Robertson.

Good evening, mayor and members of the council. My name is Valerie Scrubs and I represent Saving Our Legacy African Americans for Soak Free Safe Places known as the Soul Project. Our organization works to educate community, all communities about the harms of commercial tobacco, vaping, and second and third hand smoke. Exposure while promoting healthier spaces where families live, work, and play. One of our major priorities is smoke free multiunit housing because many residents are exposed to smoke even when they don't smoke themselves.

In apartments and other shared housing environments, smoke and vape aerosols can travel through ventilation systems, hallways, balconies, windows, and shared spaces affecting neighboring families without their consent. This exposure can impact respiratory health, heart health, and overall quality of life, especially for children who may crawl on the floor, seniors who may have vulnerable immune systems, residents with chronic illnesses, and even our pets. Families often tell us that they feel powerless when smoke drifts and enters into their home and they have nowhere else to go. Today this issue extends beyond cigarettes. Residents are also concerned about exposure from cigars, cannabis smoke, and vaping products.

Regardless of the source, families deserve the ability to breathe clean air in a space that they call their home. The Soul Project believes community engagement and partnership is essential to addressing these issues. We're not here to impose solutions. We're here to listen, to gather public input, to collaborate, and to help elevate community voices. We're especially concerned about the outgrowth currently having an F grade, from the American, Lung Association.

We believe, this presents an opportunity for meaningful dialogue and positive change. We came out tonight to introduce ourselves to you and we respectfully request opportunities to meet with you all to learn about your perspectives, your concerns within your districts, and to create strategies that can better protect families from secondhand and thirdhand smoke exposure in their homes. Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Valerie. Next up is Plachette Robertson followed by Mark Doty.

Good evening, mayor and members of the council. My name is Plichette Robertson and I also represent the Soul Project. For many families living in apartments and shared housing, smoke exposure is more than an inconvenience. Smoke can travel between units and impact residents who do not smoke including children and seniors. There's also growing concern about third hand smoke which is the toxic residue left behind on walls, carpets and surfaces after smoking or vaping occurs.

This concern with second hand and third hand smoke from vapes, cigarettes, cigars and marijuana needs to become high priority on the list and not thought of not being in important in many cases. The Soul Project, everyone deserves the ability to breathe clean air in their home. As the Soul Project is committed to work collaboratively with residents, faith leaders, housing partners and city leadership to better understand concerns and identify practical solutions for Elk Grove. We hope to have the opportunity to meet with council members and city staff to hear your perspectives as my colleague mentioned and discuss ways to strengthen protections for families living in multi unit housing. So when we reach out to you by email or calling your chief of staff, we hope you will respond with giving us an appointment to meet with you one on one.

Thank you so much for your time and service to the community.

Thank you, Plachette. Mark Doty.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Mark Doty, as you know, I'm on the trails committee. There's a couple things I want to talk about since I was dragged out to a council meeting. I might as well give you three minutes of a couple of thoughts. So, one and and they snuck out on me but Mark and Sharon have been on the trails committee for like twenty five years.

So, like, I've been on the trails committee fifteen years. It was 2011, mister Spieth, when I started causing a ruckus in the council meeting sometimes talking about trails and stuff when I first became a member of the trails committee in 2011, but they got, like, ten more years on me. So, anyway, totally awesome. I love having them on our committee. Couple things I wanted to talk about is and just thank our city staff. So the concert that's happening this weekend over at the Luke Bryan concert, there's a lot of chatter online about traffic and biking, and I throw some biking comments on there. And I don't know who

it was at the city,

but they've responded and created got got some bike parking available at the concert because I live over in that neighborhood, and I was gonna get tickets. I did not, but I would have biked there because we have trail right along Grant Line Road that takes you right there. I would encourage anyone that's going to the concert to ride their bike there. I think you will save yourself a lot of headache with traffic. I know our police department is all over it, but it is a small it it there's just gonna be logistic problems, I'm sure.

Ride your bike. I I would encourage you. And then also, as as you guys know, one of your colleagues, miss Kara Reddick over here, is gonna be leaving our city, going to the city of Lodi as their city manager. And I've known Kara for twenty ish years, and she is the reason I'm here because I would talk her ear off. This was, again, fifteen, eighteen years ago about the trails and so on.

And she works at the city, and she's like, you need to apply to be on the trails committee. You're so passionate about this. So Jason, you're gonna have big shoes to fill fell with with Kara. I know she's been here a long time, and I know she's got, like, think, I one more council meeting, but I just wanted to recognize her as well. So, and we'll, I'll still continue to see Kara.

We're friends from from church. And then lastly, in the last few seconds, wanted to just mention, and again, they're gone, but the youth commission, they're awesome. We're in good hands in the future, seeing those young 16, 17 year olds and what they're doing and where they'll be sitting in your seats or on my committee in the future. So anyway, that's that's all I wanted to point out. And I sure hope the concert is a success. I think it's a really cool event. Like, I wanted to go. I'm not a country music fan, but just because it's an event that doesn't come out real very often. So anyway, I hope that it goes very successfully mostly with the traffic and and, again, ride your bike there. So alright.

That's a thought. Ride the bike there. Alright. Thank you, sir. Next up is Lynn Wee followed by Mark Graham.

Good evening. So a person with vision into the future, and actually I'm referring to the trails committee, is someone who can see possibilities, trends, or changes ahead of time, whether through foresight, imagination, or deep insight. This trait is found in many historical figures, innovators, and thinkers who have shaped the world by anticipating needs, technologies, or societal shifts. I just want to continue to thank the members of the Trail Committee that have served so diligently and so long and hit so many roadblocks in trying to put prepare trails and connectivity. In 2006, 2007, when we were updating the zoning code, I really wanted to see bike racks within our retail centers and at that time was told that nobody rides their bikes.

So maybe I'm one of these thinkers or innovators that can foresee into the future. Maybe I belong on the trails committee, probably not because I've a big mouth. But you know what? It came forward again in 02/23/2012 when the trails committee recommended bike racks be into all the new retail centers. This was in 2012.

I've continued and earlier on wanted bike trails. So I think it just takes some patience because this is what I wrote one time. Elk Grove must become a friendlier walking and biking community. We need to have expanded trails and bike networks with separation from the roads when feasible. The city zoning ordinance also needs to be revised to require new development to provide a greater number of bike racks and bike lockers.

Promoting more walking and biking would also promote greater health benefits for our residents and help relieve vehicle congestion and improve air quality. One of the things that the trails committee has also been up against is that to get that trails in and get trails separated from the road has been a challenge because we've been required to only go through the grant processing. So I'm glad to see that we as we go through this grant processing procedures that now city is matching some funds. But I would even suggest now that we have Measure E that we look at it and we use more of our Measure E dollars to make this happen. It shouldn't have to be decades.

2012. So I commend our trails committee members that have been lasting through this whole length of time trying to promote a better community. And I can tell you, the trails can be used by anybody. It doesn't matter the color of your skin, your ability, whether you're and can't walk, you can use most of our trails with your other means of transportation, modes of transportation. We need to seriously consider this. And again, I applaud our trails committee members and thank you. And I hope when our new next overpass is they get the sign that dedicates that trail.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mark Graham. And Mark is our final speaker for public comment.

Good evening, mayor and council. Mark Graham, Elk Grove resident. I missed you at the last meeting, mayor. Alright, before I get started, I wanted to say regarding the new library. This is probably a decision that the county will make because it's a county library but certainly the city can have input and I want to say one thing, please build it as the current library with non toxic materials. As you walk up the stairs to the 2nd Floor of the library, there's a sign right there in front and it explains, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but it explains, we built this library of nontoxic materials. It is a health issue, so please do that. Alright. I'm once again asking the council to oppose HR twenty two eighty nine. This is the telecommunication industries bill in congress.

It I couldn't tell you exactly where it is right now, but it is dangerously close to being passed. It would strip away this city's legal and policy authority to make local telecommunication policy, such as ordinance nineteen-twenty 19, Vice Mayor Sue and you're the only person remaining from the council during 2018 and 2019. But as you remember, the council work and the staff worked very hard for nineteen months negotiating with AT and T, which wanted free rein and also listening to residents and put together something that's in the municipal code now that set up a permitting process so that the telecommunications companies, they can get enough permits and they can install enough antennas that we can all use our handy dandy phones, which we're all addicted to, or at least I am, but without sticking the things in front of people's homes. The city really accomplished something quite astounding. And I'm aware of one other city in California that did a better job, I would say, and that's Petaluma, where they just don't allow them in residential zones.

But I'm not aware of another city that that did as good a job as this city in keeping these things away from our homes. So if HR 2289 becomes a bill, I've sent you this every week since March 18, and I also sent you a model bill that's written by the National Call for Safe Technology. So my request is two things, Oppose HR twenty two eighty nine with Senator Padilla, Senator Schiff, Representative Matsui, and the leaders of both parties in the Congress, okay? The House of Representatives and the Senate. That's part one.

And the part two, the National Call for Safe Technology is a coalition of local grassroots organizations all across the country that meets, and they have put together a bill which they would like for somebody in Congress to introduce and sponsor and co sponsor, and that would it would basically it would protect state and local governments from having your power stripped away, which HR twenty two eighty nine would do. And it would protect people from having these great things stuffed right in front of our houses. You can't regulate on the basis of health effects even though it's a health hazard, but you can raise regulate on the basis of the aesthetic impact. The city decided in 2019 that you don't for your opinion of the aesthetics is you don't want these things up and down our residential streets. Now, at the last meeting, vice mayor directed staff to please take a look at this bill and make sure that this bill would not 2289 would not harm local residents, local government, it would.

And I have not seen these city's action yet.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Alright. Thank you for being here. With that, we will go ahead and close the public comment opportunity and move on to our next item, our city manager's report.

Good evening, madam mayor, vice mayor, members of the city council. Jason Berman, your city manager. Several items report on this evening. First of all, we had a wonderful ceremony earlier today out right out in front of, this council chambers where the city dedicated, this whole campus in honor of officer Ty Lenehan. This camp campus now will be known as the officer Ty Lenehan Public Safety Center. Beautiful, plaque and monument right outside. As you leave tonight. I would encourage you to stop by and take a look. This weekend, a lot of country music happening in Elk Grove. First, we'd already mentioned, the Luke Bryan concert.

20,000 people for a sold out concert, first of its kind in the city of Elk Grove, so we're excited to host that. There will be traffic problems, and so we certainly do encourage what Mark suggests, which is get out and get there on your bike. There's also rideshare opportunities dropped off right in front. If you can do one of those those two things, that'll save yourself a lot of a lot of headache. If you are going to drive, there are traffic control restrictions, detours, other things.

And so go to the police department, Facebook and Instagram pages, and you can get all the information that you need there in order to navigate your way around that. We're also having a country music on Main Street, which is a free country music concert out of Old Town Plaza the night before. So Friday night starting at 6PM, you want a little preview to some country music going down to Old Town Plaza at 06:00 on Friday night. Just a reminder, the city has launched its national community survey. We do that every two years.

We launched it on April 27. The postcards have all been mailed out inviting people to participate. People have until June 1. The one that will be available to anybody on the city's website is going to be opening up on May 18, and people can go on there and complete that survey. Again, that'll all also be open to through June 1.

Talking a lot about bikes. May is bike month. Citi is offering free ebike classes to showcase different systems and types of ebikes available on how to shop for, maintain stores, safely ride an ebike. Virtual class will be held this Saturday, May 16 from eleven to twelve on Zoom, and a live session is scheduled for Saturday, May 30 from ten to twelve at District 56. Elk Grove residents who participate will be entered into a raffle to win a free ebike.

Register online from the city's website. We have our big truck day coming up on May 20 from nine to 1PM at District 56 geared for younger kids, two to six. Event is always a big hint with staff and vehicles to to really have a great time to learn about some of the great things that our public works department does in in providing services to our community. So activities, entertainment, special photo places, lot of food available for people who wanna come and take their young ones out to that event. And then, we are heading into summer season.

So Elk Grove Aquatic Center is gearing up for the start of official swim season, which will start Saturday, May 23. Rec swim, group, private lessons, kids camps, daily water fitness stations, all available all summer long, operating hours, and more information can be found on the district fifty six website. And that concludes my report. Happy answering questions the council might have.

Alright. Thank you for your report. Any questions? Looking to the right, seeing none. Looking to the left, seeing none. Thank you. We will move on to our next item, which is our consent calendar items. I will go ahead and open up the public comment opportunity. I do not have anyone sign up to speak on this. I'll close public comment and look for a motion to approve consent.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Next item. Public hearing.

That first public hearing will be considered resolution approving the community development block grant and home investment partnerships program twenty twenty six twenty seven action plan.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members. I am Alicia Tutt, management analyst with, Housing and Public Services Division. The item I have before you tonight is requesting the formal adoption of the twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven action plan, which serves as the annual budget and implementing document for the community block grant and home investment partnerships programs through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. During the March 25 council meeting, you weighed in on the allocations which were subsequently incorporated into the action plan. The action plan was then released for a thirty day public comment period.

Staff has not received any comments on the document during this public comment period, which concludes with this evening's public hearing. A copy of the document was included in your packet for tonight's meeting. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Thank you for your presentation. I will declare that the public hearing is now open and open up public comment. We do not have anyone signed up for this item. I'll close public comment and declare that the public hearing is now closed. Any questions or comments? If not, I'll look for a motion.

I have no questions. I'm willing to make a motion. Second.

Alright. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Alright. We will go on to our next item, 9.1.

Let's receive information. Consider resolution establishing the accessibility compliance to create equitable small business spaces incentive program.

Alright. Good evening, mayor council. My name is Mel Lasher. I'm an economic development analyst, and this is Jim Ramsey, the city's risk manager. Today, we are here to present on access, the accessibility compliance rate small business spaces incentive program.

Okay. So the recommended action of this item is receive information and consider a resolution establishing the accessibility compliance to create equitable small business spaces access incentive program and adopting the program policies, guidelines, and procedures, and authorizing city manager to take all actions reasonably necessary to implement and administer the program. Alright. So before we get into the particulars of this program, we wanna highlight a few things. First, the idea for this program has circulated for several years, but the current push to bring it to life comes from a member of the Disability Advisory Committee, Chris Cameron, Naramore.

Cameron raised the need for programs like this when he spoke to counsel several weeks ago during his application to join the committee. Second, this program is a joint effort between economic development and risk with support from community development. Risk provides expertise ensuring the program meets accessibility needs. Economic development provides the connection to our business community and manages the program, and community development provides the framework to ensure small businesses properly implement the necessary improvements.

Okay.

Oh, sorry, wrong slide. We're now on the right slide. All right, so program goals. We have several goals for this program. All are centered on reducing the financial barriers associated with compliance.

First, we want to foster inclusivity by supporting businesses and the community through equitable commercial spaces. Second, we want to improve customer experience for all individuals. And finally, we want to proactively address ADA compliance and reduce reduce exposure to accessibility related litigation for our small business community. Accessibility is important in all communities, but what many people don't understand is that it is a growing need in Sacramento County and Elk Grove. More than two hundred thousand Sacramento County residents have a disability, and approximately half of those are mobility related disabilities.

By 2030, this need is projected to grow, an estimated twenty five as an estimated twenty five percent of the county will be over the age of 60. Senior populations have statistically higher rates of disability, increasing the demand for accessible and inclusive commercial spaces. So a little background on compliance. ADA compliance for business is not optional. It's mandatory.

Businesses that are not compliant with accessibility laws can be exposed to litigation, including costly lawsuits and penalties. Additionally, certain projects and improvements can trigger closer compliance review and mandatory upgrades. For commercial tenant improvement projects under $209,000, at least 20% of the construction budget must be dedicated to accessibility upgrades, following a specific priority sequence listed on the slides. On projects that exceed the $209,000 threshold or that have a change in occupancy type, they're required to upgrade to full ADA compliance, that's regardless of the project value. Beyond this, there are also businesses that want to proactively increase accessibility but lack the funding to make improvements needed to comply with regulations.

There are several other cities in the region that have accessibility programs. These include San Jose, San Francisco, and other cities like the city of Fairfield that are working to develop the programs. Okay. So for this program, access, we're structuring this program as a matching reimbursement grant, that will cover 50% of eligible project costs up to a maximum of $10,000 per business or commercial space. It's important to note that this is a reimbursement based grant, meaning the business must complete the workforce, including all required inspections and obtain a certificate of occupancy before funds are dispersed.

While the grant can significantly reduce costs, businesses still need to be invested in this process and see the project through to completion. For many applicants, this program can also be paired with other economic development resources such as our PASS program, which is not reimbursement based and helps reduce the upfront costs to businesses. Right. Access is specifically for small business owners and for properties designed to house small businesses. This is not a large business program.

To qualify, businesses need to have fewer than 20 employees and an annual revenue of under $3,000,000 They also need to be properly registered with the California Secretary of State, licensed in the City of Elk Grove, and in good standing. In certain cases, businesses that are currently not in good standing may still be eligible if participation in the program would help them resolve issues and bring them back into compliance. I'm sorry, I skipped a slide accidentally on that. So this is the one that's talking about our eligibility for our programs. So a little bit more on this program.

So for this program, as required by the funding source, which we're gonna go into a little bit later, all eligible expenses need to be tied to accessibility upgrades identified through a certified access specialist report or CAS report. The CAST report will be required as part of the application process for the incentive program and the cost of the report is reimbursable another program. So what is a CAASP? CAASP stands for a certified access specialist. These are professionals certified by the state of California to evaluate buildings for accessibility compliance. Alyssa's certified cast is available to the public through the division of the state architect.

Okay.

So some of the eligible expenses under this program. Examples of accessibility upgrades include ramps, handrails, compliant door threshold, widening doors, accessibility hardware, and other path of travel modifications. Other eligible expenses include upgrades to existing facilities as well as accessibility related equipment, fixtures, and materials. This can also cover surface improvements, seating modifications, and other elements needed to ensure the space is fully accessible and compliant. It's important to note that the vast majority of these improvements are permanent upgrades to buildings or commercial spaces, meaning the improvements stay with the property for the lifetime of the property.

Alright. And finally, we're gonna talk about funding. Funding for this program comes from Architect Fund and is supported through a $4 fee that is collected during the Elk Grove business licensing process. It's important to note that there are specific restrictions on how this money can be spent, and this program is designed to ensure that funds are used in a way that is consistent with those requirements. The fund currently has a balance of over $96,000 and it continues to grow at a rate about $10,000 a year. Alright. With your approval, we look forward to working with our businesses to make Elk Grove more inclusive and accessible for all. Thank

you. At this time, I will open up public comment. I do not have anyone signed up for this. I'll close public comment. Questions and comments? I'll start to the left. Council Member Brewer.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank you for the report, Ms. Lasher. This is a really good proposal. I strongly favor it for many reasons. I know with a lot of folks that I talk to in the disabled community, this is one of the things as they are trying to launch a business but also as they identify spaces. This is a really good mechanism to get the word out just so people know that this is available. So thank you so much.

Vice Mayor?

Yeah, agree with Councilmember Brewer, helping our community, our residents, but also helping our business owners who struggle just, you know, to make ends meet and get it get open. This can help leave a burden on on them providing these improvements for for their businesses. So, we're helping our small businesses and we're helping our residents. So thank you very much for both of you.

Thank you. Looking to the right, any questions, comments?

A couple more questions. Idea. Happy to support.

Councilor Robles? Same? Yes. It's fantastic. And I love that one of our commission members came up with this. Accessibility is something that everyone should pay attention to. And so I think this is puts us obviously in the right direction. So thank you for all the hard work. With that, I will look for a motion.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Next item. Welcome back, Melissa and Andrea Cortez.

I'll try to get the slides right on this one. All right. Good evening again. Again, my name is Mel Lasher, I'm an economic development analyst. And this is Andrea Cortez.

She's the police department's real time information center manager. Today, are here to present on the Community Sentinel Program and the Business Reimbursement for Integrated Camera Systems, or BRICS incentive programs. We like very long names for our programs and good acronyms. All right.

Somehow I think there's probably Jeff Warner involved in there somewhere.

No, it's all Daryl.

Speak some Daryl Daryl Daryl.

Because usually Jeff's the one who comes up with these. Just okay. Alright.

Okay. So recommend action for us. There's two recommended actions for this item, and they are to receive information and adopt a resolution ratifying and approving the Community Sentinel Program and authorizing the chief of police or designee to take all actions reasonably necessary to administer the program and to receive information and adopt a resolution establishing the business reimbursement for integrated camera systems, BRICS incentives program, adopting the program policies, guidelines, and procedures, and authorizing the city manager or designee to take all actions reasonably necessary to implement and administer the program. All right. So again, before we get into the core of the presentation, we want to talk about the why behind this initiative.

This program is a strategic partnership between the Elk Grove Police Department and our economic development team. We recognize that community safety and economic development and economic prosperity aren't separate goals. They're sides of the same coin. Public safety is absolutely critical to a thriving business environment. Think about it from the perspective of a business owner.

You want to operate in a city where you aren't battling constant losses from theft or property crime. You want an environment where your employees feel secure coming to work and where your customers feel comfortable walking through your doors. We are fortunate that Elk Grove already enjoys this reputation as a safe, supportive, and highly desirable place to do business. This program that we're presenting today and talking about, it's not about fixing a broken system, it's about reinforcing our strengths. By enhancing our Arctic capabilities and expanding coverage to the community sentinel and BRICS programs, we are providing businesses with the high-tech resources they need to stay protected.

Through this program, we are aligning public safety efforts with the city's broader goals of business attraction, retention, and expansion. We're here to ensure that Elk Grove remains a place where businesses don't just exist, but they flourish.

Okay. And for those who have seen the annual report, you're probably familiar with the crime in Elk Grove but just to give some context, the the property crime accounts for approximately 68% of the overall reportable crimes in Elk Grove. What's being displayed here on the heat map is the shoplifting incidents from 2024 to 2025 and while overall crime saw a slight decrease, we did see a 6% increase in shoplifting incidents. And the map here is depicting a heat map which aligns with our business district maps, which further supports the need for this program. Just some background on the Community Sentinel program.

It was launched in the 2024 after a one year pilot. The program allows for participating businesses to share live peak cameras with the real time information center. This is a voluntary program, so only those businesses that are interested would participate. And this would be accessing exterior camera feeds only. So if a business has both interior and exterior, we would only be accessing the exterior camera feeds.

There is an MOU that has been designated and they will sign that MOU to participate in the program. Businesses establish the retention and access, so if they only choose to have footage accessible for twenty four hours, then that is their prerogative and they dictate that. If they prefer we only have access to live footage, then that would be the way the the settings are administered. And there's no outside access by anyone other than the Elk Grove Police Department. There's also options to currently to lease cameras from our current provider and there is no cost to participate in the program.

And so here are some of our key participants in the program. We are our goal is to increase participation, to alleviate any funding limitations, increase marketing and outreach by adding it to our current economic development programs. And then what you're seeing here is the interface of the system. And it just should be noted that what you're seeing the feeds that are displayed there are only displayed after the icon is launched. So prior to that is just the camera feeds appear as an icon and they would only be launched or called up in the event there was an active call for service or some sort of in progress crime.

And then this is just an example of a use case and if you follow us on social media you've likely seen this video so we won't play it here. But this individual incident involves an individual who had committed a theft at the Ulta location near the Target shopping center and the Elk Grove Police Department received information about this theft. We were able to get a good vehicle description, direction of travel, and a partial license plate. Leveraging the technology and the real time information center, operators were able to locate the vehicle of interest and direct the units to the Sephora parking lot. Using DFR, our tech was able to maintain a visual of the unit a visual until the subject exited the store after committing another theft in in Sephora.

A foot chase then ensued, and if you watch the video online, you can actively see the property falling out of the subject's coat. Then units contact him, and he is arrested. And then it's estimated that he was responsible for approximately $3,000 of retail theft and significantly more in the region. And so I use this example because it calls out a few things. It highlights a couple of points.

As far as in that incident, we had a good vehicle description, we had a good direction of travel, and we even had a partial license plate. We don't get that in every call for service and so having access to these exterior cameras facing a parking lot would better position our law enforcement to apprehend the theft subjects. The goal is to recover the stolen property prior to it leaving the city. That's the ultimate goal and this program supports that.

All right. So the primary purpose of the BRICS program is to drive participation into the community center network. As Andrea touched on, we already have this technology in place, and we have an extensive network of city owned cameras that are in strategic locations. But the true strength of the system, is gonna come from a larger network. We've identified several goals to ensure that this program delivers tangible results. First, expanding our network. We wanna increase the number of live exterior feeds in our business districts. This isn't about more cameras. It's about better coverage in areas where it matters. Second, we wanna integrate more feeds for real time response.

This gives teams more situational awareness needed to respond faster and more effectively when issues arise.

Third,

this helps with proactive collaboration. BRICS is designed to enhance the bridge between the city and local businesses. It turns crime prevention into a collaborative effort, and it's strength it's we are all strengthened through this partnership and through sharing resources. Ultimately, are striving to support a safe environment where employees and shoppers feel at ease. And finally, these efforts directly advance our strategies for retail theft reduction and business retention.

When we mitigate losses and improve safety, we ensure our local economy remains resilient and competitive and we can keep businesses in Elk Grove. All right, so similar programs. To ensure our approach is both competitive and effective, we looked at how other California communities are tackling similar challenges. We aren't reinventing the wheel here. We're refining the model that is already gaining momentum statewide.

So as you guys can see, San Joaquin County, they have a $2,000 grant program that they run through their Chamber of Commerce, Rancho Palos Verdes. They have a reimbursable grant program as well that's capped at $2,000 And then San Jose has a program where they offer a $350 rebate for the core device that businesses would need to integrate their feeds. Alright, program eligibility. So this program is open to commercial businesses or properties, including retail spaces, office spaces, industrial, and also multifamily housing. I wanna highlight what has already been said is that this is for exterior facing commercial game grade cameras only.

You do not want interior feed cameras. So to qualify, these systems must be capable of Arctic integration and businesses must pass a CPTED compliance. We'll talk about what that is in a second. Eligible expenses include new commercial grade cameras and their components, upgrades that improve image quality or coverage, along with hardware and software specifically needed for R Tech connectivity. This program will not cover costs associated with ongoing monitoring services, alarms, guard services, or any subscriptions, excuse me, that aren't strictly required for integration.

Okay. So the approval process. This is a little bit different than some of, Economic Development's other programs because we are partnering with the police department. One of the most important parts of this process is the CPTED review. CPTED stands for Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.

It's a proactive strategy that reduces opportunities for crime by shaping the built environment to positively influence how people behave. This can include improving visibility, enhancing lighting, and making other adjustments that support clear access and property protection. Why are we requiring this? For this program, these evaluations help determine optimal camera placement to ensure that the best possible coverage that we're getting the best possible coverage. And it's also helping improve safety for the businesses.

So we want better coverage. We also want to make sure our businesses are getting the most out of our partnership. So this investment in security, we want it to work hard for our businesses and for our community. Oops, here we go. Sorry, I keep messing up the slides.

All right, so program costs and funding. The program is designed as a cost sharing partnership between the city and our business community. We are offering a reimbursement grant of up to 50% of eligible costs with a maximum funding amount of $5,000 per business or commercial property. This funding level is higher than the other programs because we want a meaningful resource for both individual small businesses and larger commercial properties with multiple tenants. By offering a higher cap, we ensure the program is accessible and impactful for commercial spaces of all sizes.

All

right. And then with your approval, we look forward to launching this program to further strengthen the bond between our business community and public safety. As we mentioned earlier, this program isn't about fixing a broken system. It's about reinforcing our existing strengths and providing the resources necessary to ensure Alcoa remains a safe, supportive, and highly desirable environment for businesses of all sizes to flourish. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. At this time, I will open up public comment. No one has signed up to speak. I'll close public comment. Just a real quick question. Are we proactively reaching out to businesses that we've identified? Are you are they coming to us voluntarily? Like,

how do combination of both. So we've discussed marketing for this. We have several businesses that are already very interested in this. As economic development, we are adding it to our program's flyer, and we're actively talking to businesses who are very interested

in this.

Yeah. I imagine you're at least with PD, you're looking throughout and seeing which ones are on those key corridors so you can triangulate and get those points that you need. Yes. Okay. Alright. Questions. I'll look to the right. Council member Spies.

Alright. First, have and I I HOAs are not within scope of this but hopefully, we would at some point in time, if this goes well, consider HOAs because again, they're not, it's not business. I understand that But they would likely be have some interest in it as well. Another instance. So I have in my private life, I have a business. My business is in an office suite. The exterior of my business is a hallway. Would that apply or is it only for exteriors of buildings?

It would only be exteriors of buildings.

Okay, got it. So the property owner would have to ask for that, not someone who has a suite within the building?

Correct. Property owners would need to sign off on installations depending on the situation.

Okay, got it. Then the other question I have is this is not a so these cameras are not monitored, correct? In that they are not detective. So they don't have businesses should not have the expectation that there is a human being watching that location, correct?

That is correct. And that's outlined in the MOU is just that expectation that no we're not a replacement for security. We're not actively monitoring. In fact, we make it very clear we are only responding to a call for service or some sort of criminal activity. So there needs to be some sort of initiation for us to activate a camera.

Okay, so it's more of a detective or investigative control than it is for prevention. Correct. You're not gonna have somebody I mean, may see the cameras and walk away. Right? That's a deterrent. I just wanna be sure that businesses have no expectation that just because there are cameras that go back to the Arctic, they aren't getting any additional eyes on their business.

Correct. There there is some signage that will hopefully offer us or act as a deterrent as well but we we also intend to make that very clear as far as there's no expectation of proactive surveillance there.

Cool. Thank you.

Council member Bliss.

Thank you, madam mayor. Just want to say thank you for the presentation and looking forward to seeing how many businesses do sign on to this and make sure that we can prevent that from occurring in our city. Thank you.

Thank you. Looking to the left, any questions, comments? Councilmember Brewer?

I want to thank you for the report, but I do have a question. For the application process, is this, ongoing over a twelve month window, or is there a certain season or time of year for people to apply for these grants?

It's a rolling application.

Okay. But with that said, is there any sort of like situation? Because based on the amount that we're that's being called for, I believe the pod is 75,000. Is there a situation where we may have to turn people away because we will we may exhaust the full 75,000 for that pot for the year, or is that something we're foreseeing in terms of forecasting the number of applicants who will apply for a grant of reimbursement?

So this is a pilot program. We know that there's interest. We don't know how much interest there will be. I think that's a great problem to have if we run out of money. And when that point comes, we can address that issue and see if we pause funding or if we look for more. But that would be a great problem to have. We'd love that.

That would be. Then at the application or at least the criteria. The criteria makes perfect sense. And it looks like we'd be doing a great favor for those businesses, whether it be retail or commercial, that would apply for this because it provides that extra set of eyes and ears in different quarters of the city where you just never know. There's blind spots, places where we are unable to be at. And I think this is a really good idea of putting this out there for a trial balloon just to see how it works. But very good stuff. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Mayor?

Thank you, Mayor. I heard, I'm glad I heard you say there's going to be signage and I was wondering that I would imagine that would also could deter not just shoplifting but just loitering and maybe just vandalism and any any shenanigans that I guess that might that I see nodding side.

Yes. That's that's the hope is that the signage would deter that kind of behavior.

Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. I'm excited about this program. It's really good. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Same. I already asked my question but I'm looking forward to seeing the implementation. Alright. With that, I'm looking for motions one and two.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Alright. Next item.

And next is item 9.3, which is to receive an overview of remote comment regulations required by 07/01/2026 under senate bill seven zero seven, review proposed policies and procedures for providing comment during public meetings, and then a few actions to consider for resolution adopting a disruption of service during public meetings and resolution during, concerning the conduct of city council meetings. Mayor, vice mayor, and council members, I'm Jason Lindgren, your city clerk. I have a brief presentation, so I'm just gonna hit a couple of buttons here and then hop up to the speaker podium and continue from there. Ta da. Here I am.

So what we have here tonight are some changes that our state legislature gave to the Brown Act. As Brown Act body, there are now gonna be some requirements that come in at July 1, of this year. And so this is really a precursor to give you a heads up of what's to come. What I would say for just kind of an overall overview for the city of Elk Grove is that we're not gonna see a lot of changes from what we saw back in the days of COVID, which is that basically we will be opening up a portal in order to hear the audio comments that come from folks that log on through the systems that we provide. I think when you look at what they did through the implementation of SB seven zero seven they took a lot of practices of probably what they saw during that COVID era, gave some kind of options for cities to pursue depending on what technologies they already had implemented.

And then they played a lot of hopscotch inside of the Brown Act. So I'm not gonna go through in detail every single place that they stitched and moved things and moved pieces around. But what staff have been doing has been distilling that down to what are the effects that it's gonna have for the city of Elk Grove. We've given our estimate of water capacities in order to implement this using a lot of the technologies that we used back in the COVID era. And then we just have a couple of actions for the council to do.

So we have some reassurances of what we expect to see for changes as we get into the second part of 2026, but then we just have a couple of actions for you that are mandated under the Brown Act as of this year. So where are we going on this trip? We're gonna talk very briefly about some definitions and terminology that crop up now inside of the Brown Act, but then we're gonna go into what are the new regulations. What are we required to do as an agency under the Brown Act, and what's the application to the city of Elk Grove starting here on July 1. We're gonna talk about a lot of sections that they added that their requirements that we're already doing.

And a lot of them are very good governance practices and encouraged practices under the Brown Act. Like many state legislative regulations, they usually consider what they set the lowest bar. There's always opportunities for agencies to do practices that are above and beyond. But we believe we check a lot of these marks and we may see some differences just in order to attune ourselves to what those regulations are. I'll briefly talk about our technologies that are gonna be utilized and the application of kind of some of these guidelines that have been provided for where the legislature wants to see local agencies activating.

And then of course we have the policies that are up for review. We have two of those that we'll be asking for your action for consideration for tonight. I think one of the most interesting things is the staff report. Go ahead and read that because I'm not gonna read all these definitions. These come from the Brown Act, but part of what I tried to do from the staff perspective is note that there were already some provisions for teleconferencing, remote participation, and we saw the provisions that were provided under the COVID times of us being able to take on remote public comment.

And a lot of what SB seven zero seven does is it codifies a lot of that. And so it gives this kind of reference point about how do you take remote public comment. And for me, that really is the main focus of what s b seven zero seven is asking, is to say for your local agencies that are the eligible legislative bodies is provide that avenue for folks to provide comment remotely, and that's really gonna be the biggest step that we're gonna be taking. So lots of definitions. What it really comes down to is that there's a couple of varieties of how agencies can adopt, and we've seen and heard all the stories about Zoom bombing and opening up Zoom meetings or Teams meetings.

And what they did is they kinda gave two paths, which is folks can open up and have completely open audio visual with video participation of remote participants, or you can take a path which is very similar to what we do here in Elk Grove, which is that you have a live webcast, which we currently do, but provide an audio component. And that audio component, we're not gonna be dealing with phones. We're gonna be using technology. So we use basically the back end of a Zoom meeting in order to provide an audio opportunity for folks that wanna participate remotely. I think something that's interesting about all the definitions and the enacting portions of SB seven zero seven is they put a sunset on it.

And so part of it, sunsets disappear really quickly in California sometimes, but they do have a sunset of 2,030. And so something that's interesting in the history of SB seven zero seven, I think what was attempted at the first end was to address Brown Act bodies with very specific jurisdictions and subject matters, and they were trying to regulate and provide avenues for those like student body associations or medical professional administrative staff across the state having a capacity to meet remotely and receive public and receive comment remotely. And I think what happened is they kept the focus on that and did a lot of dabbling inside the Brown Act, but didn't quite come back to local agencies such as cities with a pretty large scope on subject matter of our jurisdiction and how the remote comment might affect the play of meetings and the decorum and the things that go on. So what I find is the state legislature did one of its grand experiments, opened up a whole bunch of petri dishes of local brown act bodies of which we are going to be one, and we're gonna find out what happens over the coming years.

I think we've had a sample of this under COVID, so it's not gonna be completely different from what we've seen in the past. But I think we saw some flags of interesting practices that can occur, and so we're gonna do our best to forge ahead and see what the future brings to us. What I really wanna highlight here is that there's no direct definition about remote oral public comment, but that's really what this is all talking about is the ability for local agencies to take comment from the general public from remote sources. So whether they're dialing in using their computer, whether they're calling in by phone, this is the capacity that we're gonna be building to have and provide it at our first meeting in July, which is actually the July for the city of Elk Grove. And, again, then our big focus is on the eligible legislative body, which is the city council.

When you start going and staff was going through the regulations, when you start talking about all of our committees and commissions for the most part, They are what are considered eligible subsidiary bodies. They have this option that they can be considered for having this remote public comment. And as we go through kind of through the presentation, staff has been of a position that because we're going into this petri dish experimentation phase with the state as far as where we're going. Our recommendation is to start with the city council and then see how things go. And we'll get back in into that as time goes on. So the new regulations and the application to our local agencies. Again,

it's

our city council that we're going to be focusing on for providing a remote public comment. And again, this was that two way path. And from the staff perspective, we already have in play Granicus, which provides our live webcasting, and it just made sense from how we reacted and implemented a plan during COVID. It matched this two way telephonic service in the live webcasting. So what that does is it takes out that visual element of the remote callers that come in.

That audio is provided through the engine of a Zoom meeting, and so it's audio that would be pumped through our chamber. And that's part of why when we looked at subsidiary bodies and how functions of this application would go to all of our committees and commissions, it becomes a little more interesting because this is the meeting that we broadcast out via Granicus and has the technology and the support for being able to provide just from our partners at Metro providing all the AV support that happens here at City Council. When you start taking this to our other levels of our other cities and our other committees and commissions, we start losing layers of support. And from a staff perspective, we wanna first find out how this grand social experiment works before we start prescribing it for all of our committees and commissions. The other main requirement that comes through from the state perspective is adopting this policy regarding a disruption of service.

And what I wanted to emphasize on the disruption of service policy is that doesn't mean that if someone calls and says, you know, I'm having a hard time coming through on the machine on their side. That's not what this means. It's not a connection from folks that are remote from us. It is the broadcast that we give, and it's very easy for staff to keep a baseline and kind of a heartbeat as far as far as our our broadcast. If we don't broadcast, our captioning stops because that's done remotely.

We'll get a ton of calls, and we'll also be able to validate if our service is getting disrupted. We'll be able to validate that from the staff perspective. And so it's just one of those things that as your city clerk, when I look at something such as opening up the whole world to being able to call in to our public meetings, I start playing a strategic defensive game of how could someone try to play the system. And so we wanna make sure that that's not being done because one of my core principles is to keep decorum and to keep our move our business moving and the business of the city moving. So we don't want it to be interrupted with folks that are just taking an option to try to disrupt the process of the meeting.

Those are the only requirements that we get into. We get into a lot of otherments that are requirements that for the city council to take action on. So that's that disruption of service policy, but it's also just we're gonna have another policy question, but it's more internal for us. When it comes to the good governance and encourage practices, what the state did is they had a lot of requirements that as staff, we believe we are already meeting those requirements, or we will be able to meet them as we come into July purely with wording, like the wording that we changed for the opening of our COVID agendas and giving direction for folks about how to participate remotely, how to get engaged, how to access the meeting materials. So we feel confident from staff level that we will be able to implement a lot of those.

But just to go over a few and what you may hear from other jurisdictions, one of the first one is that there's a lot of regulations about translation and interpretation services and accommodations. And one of the first cuts that came from s b seven zero seven was a requirement based on percentage thresholds. This is probably a state go to in that when they look at things for doing translations that require thresholds, it's very similar to what they do for elections. So if language groups hit certain percentages in a community, then it triggers a new requirement. Just to give you a sense for the city of Elk Grove, well, the requirement by the state is that typically a required element of translating, say, our agendas, that threshold from the state regulation is 20% established by SB seven zero seven.

To give you a sense for the city of Elk Grove, our language groups, the nearest ones we have are hitting just under 8%. And so, and it's about three different language groups that we have hitting 8%. So we don't hit the thresholds to require us to translate, but I think from the actions that have been taken by the city, you'll find that we have many resources not only to provide translator translators if they are requested, but we also have a lot of resources through our website which take the data and can convert it into other languages. So we have a lot of nice technologies that are meeting a lot of these requirements. And when we do go down this kind of list of having a consolidated integrated agenda management platform, That's gonna be iterations.

We will be doing some tinkering in that regard as well, but it's still those are practices that we already have. And so it's just in order to make them continuous improvement and make them even better in terms of meeting the requirements. Those general explanations are gonna be language and verbiage that our good city attorney is gonna assist with to make sure that we have the language for folks not only to understand the process of how to participate in our meetings, but also how to sign up, how to stay engaged, where to go for resources, and where to find information. And the last part, which is one very similar to what we found, and I think these are some carryovers from when we did our redistricting effort, but it's reaching out to the groups that are hard to reach. One of the wonderful state requirements.

Right? It's very high mandate with no direction or guidelines about how to get there. But I think with our community toolkit and the processes that the city's been implementing in order to do extended outreach for items of interest, it'll be a nice resource that we'll be able to pull on in order to meet some of the these good governance and encouraged practices that are put out there by SB seven zero seven. I've mentioned a little bit about what our technologies that we're planning on using and how we're planning to make meeting of this mandate. And what we're planning from the staff perspective and present to you this evening is that we will be embarking upon this for the one eligible legislative body that we have, which is yourselves, the city council.

We will be using a two way tele phonic service. So we will be running a Zoom meeting, and we'll have it in the background, but you won't see any of the visual components of that, and it'll allow us to patch speakers in. And we'll be still doing exactly what we're doing right now, which is live webcasting via Granicus. So part of what we found is when we're doing with any of these kind of implementations of technologies and the decorum in the room, the there's a core principle within s b seven zero seven, which is no matter who's giving public comment, you treat them the same. So if whether they're remote or whether they're in the chamber, you're gonna give them if there's a speaker timer limit, they all have the same speaker timer limit.

And so when we do these approaches, we think about, okay. We wanna make sure that everyone's treated equitably, but we also don't wanna drive the city clerk crazy managing various places where people are doing resources of pulling in about when they wanna speak, how they wanna speak, the or the systems that we have to keep track of. And so going through into the technologies utilized, what we're asking as a second part of the action tonight is a second resolution that's about your conduct of meetings. And this is an item where we talk about kind of the order of the agenda. And one of the asks from the staff perspective is that when we talk about public comment of coming from those both the source of here in the chamber of folks that are in person, but also managing and queuing up all the folks that are coming in from online, The request under the rules of procedure are pretty basic, which is can we please take the folks that are inside the room first because we have a very established system in order to do that.

And it gives time for us as we're organizing, as the item's unveiling and as speakers are going through and coming forward, for them to take the remote speakers after those that are inside the chamber that sign up to speak. So the policies, just going back, the disruption of service policy. When we go back to, you know, the the process again, it's about the disruption of service of our broadcast. So all the and when it comes to I think we've encountered this back in COVID. We had folks that were out camping.

They had bad reception. They their phone line would drop. Those are things that we will probably be dealing with when we go forward, but it's not something that warrants the stoppage of a meeting. What we will do as staff is do our best to coordinate with those folks and get them reconnected, get them back into the queue, and see if we can get them to a better space in order to address the council. But I think from what I remembered back in COVID time, we sort of have to fly blind a little bit because we're guiding someone only using audio.

And we've got some pretty good skill sets in doing that, so I'm pretty confident that we'll be able to bring folks in. The conduct of the rules of procedure is the second resolution that we're asking. It's your rules of procedure. Just asking for that component in order for us to queue and call forth the folks that are present in person first and then our remote speakers. And I just wanted to reiterate, we'll still have the continuity of our existing regulations.

So we still have our AV policy. So the AV policy wouldn't allow someone that's a remote speaker to remotely broadcast and take over our screens. That would be something they would submit and likely I would be running that and then coaching folks through is hopefully whatever they submit would have page numbers so we can stay in queue and and keep moving forward. But it's also there's no other changes to any of our other existing regulations that we have. So no changes to our speaker time limit.

We still keep those same items. And I think part of it is not to forget as well that with our existing regulations, I believe we have a lot of the tools that we may encounter some mischievous play and folks doing some interesting things. But as a council, there is a lot of discretion that you have under the existing regulations of our rules of procedure just to let folks know. And also under SB seven zero seven, there is a reiteration. For anyone that's acting in a disruptive manner, that capacity for the chair to have them dropped out of the call is reinforced under SB seven zero seven.

And in this case, it's just as easy as hitting the hang up button or the mute button as controlled by your city clerk. So we're fairly confident that the technologies have already been tested. Of course, human beings are ingenious in how they can use a system and do fun things with it, but I think we're fully prepared. And even if we run into something that is unexpected, we always have the ability to bring these regulations back and have a discussion about if there are any issues that come forward in this grand social experiment bequeathed to us by the state as we endeavor into the 2026. So what I would expect is if we get a council agreement or if there's any questions or concerns about this process, but if we get to the hurdle of adopting a couple of resolutions tonight, we would be seeing remote public comment coming to our first meeting in July, which does not happen until the 07/22/2026 regular meeting.

And with that, I am open for any questions.

Alright. Thank you for your presentation. At this time, we'll open up public comment. I have one speaker, Mark Graham.

Good evening again. Mayor and council Mark Graham. Your city clerk as you can tell is as sharp as a tack. He is complete completely on top of this thing and it's just amazing sitting back there listening to how he covers so much of it in such great detail and it's a gift to the city. Alright.

I have a question about this. It says somewhere in the documents and city clerk just said that there are no changes to there are no proposed changes to either the speaker time limit or the city policy on the use of audio visual equipment for public meetings. Alright. Now, please direct your attention to what is it? Attachment two section three c little number one or I.

No individual speaker may address the city council for more than three minutes. No individual speaker may address the city council for more than three minutes. Is that for the whole meeting or is that for the agenda item? It needs to be clarified. I want to believe that your intention and the staff's intention is that that is talking about per agenda item.

It says and this is supposed to be consistent with section five four nine five four point three lowercase b of the government code. Well, if you read that, and I've read it during the meeting tonight, first of all, are guidelines. It's not a mandate to the city. And it says, you may adopt reasonable regulations. I don't think three minutes for the entire meeting is reasonable.

Two, make sure that the intent of subsection A is carried out. Subsection little A is carried out. Well, if you look at subsection little A, five four nine five four point three little a, one, every agenda for regular meetings shall provide an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the legislative body on any item of interest to the public before or during the legislative body's consideration of the item, etcetera. So it says any item of interest to the public. What if I or your fellow residents, my fellow residents are interested in two items that are on the agenda?

Are you going to give us one and not the other? We won our three minutes. Your interpretation seems to be that there will never be more than one item of interest to the public. Again, does this mean on the entire meeting or only per agenda item? I think you should at least make an exception for section five, which is items that are not on the agenda.

And I think it's philosophically inconsistent for you to expand public access by going back to what we did during COVID, where you're gonna allow remote comments via Zoom and so on, on the one hand. And on the other hand, if that's really what this is supposed to do to limit all us all of us down to three minutes for the entire meeting. That's philosophically inconsistent. Do you wanna hear from us or not? I think the council does its best work when you listen to the residents. We are a golden asset to you. I think you've learned that over the years, I'm not telling you anything new. We often give you information that you don't know and you're supposed to represent us. And finally, I think that you should also expand this to the Planning Commission. If it's a good idea for the City Council, it's good for the Planning Commission as well.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. So I would request a clarification to be put there in writing that says three minutes per person per agenda

Thank Thank you.

Cheers.

Alright. Thank you. And that is our final public comment. As I understand the presentation, it's the, like, the three minute, that's how I'm understanding it. So I I don't know if Yeah. If I can further clarify this. It seems Yeah.

In response to the public comment, the long standing practice of the city of Elk Grove has always been three minutes per agendized item. Right. And so we don't I mean, to provide crystal clear clarification, if someone comes up with 15 topics of interest under general public comment, we do have a three minute speaker time limit just for general public comment. So we wouldn't take those 15 and then say, go ahead. You got forty five minutes. Go for it. But for all of our agenda items, there is the opportunity for folks to sign up to speak. They would get those individual three minutes each time. I'd be resetting that timer for each and every time that our members of the public have

addressed this.

It would be exactly the same extended to the online universe.

That is correct.

Okay. So I think it's pretty straightforward.

Is is there an opportunity for clarification? I guess that's what I would ask is. Is, I mean, is is there opportunity for clarification within those paragraphs to make certain it says that?

I like to run the timer. I like language to go to our city attorney. So.

Yeah. We can certainly do that. Yeah. Mister Lindgren is correct. The mayor is correct. Everyone's correct. It is three minutes per agenda item. If the council wants to add that expressly into the policy, that's the practice. That's the policy. That's what we do. So, it doesn't change anything substantively. Right. No objection to that if that's what the council wants to do.

Yeah. I mean, I I if it requires additional clarity because we are now going to be adding this additional opportunity, maybe it needs to be more expressed. So that there is no room for misinterpretation.

So with the council's direction, if you pass this tonight, just give us a direction to make that revision.

We'll go and

take care of that.

That would be just an add on. Right? Yep. Well, I mean, I I think you are ready for this, city clerk. Jason, you've done a great job with the presentation. You're always two steps ahead, 10 steps ahead sometimes. So I'm very comfortable with what you've presented. I know other agencies are adapting to this as well. We just had this discussion at SACRT on Monday so that we can be prepared for these changes as well. So thank you for that. I'll open it up for questions from my colleagues. I'll go to the left this time. Any questions, comments?

No comment. Good idea. Willing to move the motions when the time comes.

Okay. Vice mayor?

No further comments. I support this item.

Anyone on the right?

I support the item. I think there will be unfortunately, there will be times when people abuse it for their own purposes. However, we'll deal with it when that comes up. So I'll be happy to support the motion, particularly with the changes to the agenda or changes to the clarification on the three minutes per I

sort of heard a motion with the additional language. Correct?

That's right.

Okay.

And then I would second it.

Then you will second it.

But we don't have

I'll say

You'll say aye. Alright. Well, thank you. With that, we have a motion and a second. All vote and and this is for motion one and two. Yeah. Just as a reminder. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. And you have that add on. Perfect. Alright. Council comments, reports, future agenda items. I'll start to the left.

No comments. Defer my comment as well.

I will defer. I'll defer as well.

Well, there was a SACRT meeting Monday. That'll be my update. Okay. Just before we adjourn, I do wanna adjourn. In the memory of our former colleague, count supervisor Pat Hume. His mother passed away recently, and she was just a a tremendous champion and advocate for our great city. She loved Elk Grove. And so we extend our condolences and our love to supervisor Pat Hume and will adjourn in the memory of Janet Hume. May her memory be a blessing to everyone that knew her. Her services, I believe, are tomorrow or Friday.

Friday. Friday. For those who are interested. Thank you. With that, we will adjourn at 08:32PM.