City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everyone. I am Mayor Erica A. Stewart, and I have most of our city council here. Wanted to let you know that Vice Mayor Francis is here joining us via Zoom. Every council member must request to participate. If they would like to participate via Zoom, there's usually a reason, so I think she'd like to share if she would like to disclose if there are any individuals 18 years or older present at the remote location they are at. Vice Mayor?

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I am requesting remote attendance this evening due to the illness of a family member, and there is nobody over the age of 18 in the room with me.

Great. Thank you. And council members, are you okay with her joining via remote? Great. Thank you so much. And with that, Vice Mayor, if you'd like to join us as well, we will... Nope. Sorry. Do you want to call roll before we go to pledge? Okay. Sorry. We'll have the City Clerk call roll first.

Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Council member Boswell.

Present.

Council member Marks. Here. Vice Mayor Francis. Mayor Stewart.

Here. So I'll move forward to us including Vice Mayor Francis participating remotely. Thank you so much. And with that, let's go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance. If you are able and would like to, please stand. Well thank you very much. Today we amazingly do not have any presentations or proclamations, which is rare for us. But we do have just a couple of changes I want to bring your attention to. Bear with me here as I get to the number 5G. We originally were going to appoint an advisory body member for the Human Relations Commission. That is just being put on pause at this time. And that is coming back to us on a day uncertain. So we'll talk about that topic later. And with that, we also had one other item. Hold on one second. On consent item 5D, as in David, it has staff agenda correspondence has been submitted and published earlier today. So if you are here regarding 5D, which is the authorization to disperse pro-housing incentive program grant funds from the Affordable Housing Fund, please take a note of the agenda correspondence.

And with that, we'll jump into the city manager report.

Great. Thank you very much. Happy to be here this evening with everyone at our first meeting in August. We have a few things to highlight for everyone with our slides, so we'll just jump in here. The first item is a bit of good news we want to highlight for Council and the community. which is that the California Joint Powers Insurance Authority selected the City to receive the annual Workers' Compensation Performance Award. Last year, the City received the annual Liability Risk Management Award as well. These awards reflect good claim management and costs that are below average for the size of our agency. Our HR Director Nicole Dominy attended the July 22nd CGAPIA Annual Board of Directors meeting to accept the award on behalf of the City. We also wanted to highlight that the City received its annual CGAPIA member contribution invoice for workers compensation and liability programs that might not always sound like something to celebrate but in this case we wanted to highlight that it included a 14.5% discount which is a savings of about $178,000 in recognition of our excellent claim performance. This is the first year of an incentive program that CJPIA is offering to reward members for their efforts in managing claim costs, and the city has been recognized in that work, and we just want to highlight that. A lot of things happen behind the scenes here at the city to manage risk like this, and we wanted to go ahead and highlight this good news for Council and the community to let folks know that a lot of that work that's going on is leading to really great results. Next up, this item would be familiar to anybody who had tuned into our last meeting, but because we are in this time, we wanted to highlight it again for folks to be aware. So construction began this week. on new solar shade structures in the parking lot at the cinchimer park swim center and as a reminder to the community the parking lot will be limited during construction so it will be open but it will be impacting a number of spaces in that area while parking stalls in the center of the lot will be closed parking will remain available along the perimeter of the lot the highlighted parking stalls on the side show the spaces that will remain available throughout the project. The most noticeable construction activity is expected to occur August 8 through the 21st, when crews will be drilling foundations and installing the steel support structures. And during this phase, the project will generate more noise and construction activity than at other times. The swim center will remain open throughout construction with the exception of a few days in September when the project is connecting to the electrical grid and power needs to be turned off temporarily. Construction is anticipated to be completed in October. We know this is very impactful to this heavily used amenity and asset for the community, so we really appreciate everyone's understanding as we complete this work it's important for us through to modernize lead to additional energy efficiency and really support our climate action goals, but we know constructions messy and impactful so again, thank you to everybody for your understanding. Next up, we want to highlight an event that's coming up soon. We're excited to share that the next Belonging Project event will be Your City, Your Voice, giving public comment that counts. We know that attending public meetings and speaking at the podium can feel intimidating, especially when you have a limited amount of time. That clock up at the front gets red and, you know, loud at times. And so we We want to provide people an opportunity to practice and also really get over any of those fears and concerns that people might have in speaking at public comment. So this interactive workshop will help community members learn how to access meeting information, follow local issues, and really organize thoughts and deliver thoughtful and effective public comments. Participants will be introduced to our climate action plan as well, and giving participants a real world topic to explore during a workshop. So again, we'll be giving people practice coming into council chamber and standing at the podium to give public comment. The League of Women Voters of San Luis Obispo County will help participants turn their ideas into public comments. And Rachel Whalen from the Chamber of Commerce will provide expert guidance and participate in our practice city council meeting. I have to say, every time we do something that involves a mock or practice city council meeting, it is a fan favorite. It's super fun for folks to give it a try and see what it's like. You could try on a persona if you wanted to, but at least Giving people that access that we're really looking for the workshop is being held on Thursday August 27 from 530 to 8pm right here in our Council Chamber. Registration is encouraged by August 24, but it is not required, it just helps us get a sense of. how many people are going to be here and make sure we're well resourced. You can visit slowcity.org slash diversity to register and learn more. And we hope that community members will help us spread the word as well because every voice belongs in city decision making. And that's the point of this work we're doing through this event. So please spread the word and participate. Next up we want to let folks know about where our utilities office is currently located. So our folks in our utilities office will be working through a temporary closure. That office is located at 879 Morrow and it will be closed starting on Monday, August 10th as renovations to the building's roof will begin. They will replace the existing roof to improve structural safety and construction is expected to last over a month. Signage will be posted to direct the public in need of customer service to where our folks are housed. Our utilities administrative support will be temporarily relocated to the finance front counter, so anybody who's got questions about billing or any kind of account needs can just go to our finance counter and get help there. For general questions regarding water and sewer services, the public is encouraged to contact staff by phone. uh anyone wishing to pay in person for water and sewer service bills again can visit the finance department customer service counter downstairs in this building monday through friday 8 a.m to 4 pm to reach our utility services in person again finance department for phone 805-781-7215 and we have a lot of services online as well including stopping or starting your water and sewer service, paying your water and sewer bill, reporting a non-emergency issue, getting information about water conservation and recycled water information. If you have questions about trash, organics and recycling, or to report illegal dumping there's information at that slowcity.org utilities or reporting illegal dumping can be done at our aslo portal so lots of great information there and we will look forward to getting this project completed and making sure that our building is working well into the future Next up, we're highlighting a couple of different Parks and Rec programs. So our Parks and Recreation Department is hosting the fifth and final Monday meetup event of the summer at Duval Park on Monday, August 10th from 5 to 7 p.m. You can join your fellow community members there for a variety of food trucks, family games, music, and information boosts. um it's been these are really wonderful opportunities throughout the summer to just come out to your you know local park or you can go see a new a different park across town and have an opportunity to we have a lot of booths that city staff provide on lots of different activities and information going on around the city and you can eat your dinner and play some games with with some neighbors In addition, we wanted to highlight some upcoming community volunteer opportunities at some of our cherished outdoor venues. So the Whalerock Reservoir Trails are looking for volunteers to help upkeep and do some light maintenance. If you haven't visited the reservoir, which is located in Cayucos, It's a great trail for walking, hiking, and biking and that's nestled along the water reservoir and the rolling coastal hills in that area. In addition, the Laguna Lake Dog Park has volunteer spots available for general organization of dog toys, some light raking of wood bark, and enjoying the very popular dog areas. Our Johnson Ranch open space also has opportunities to help with plant restoration, as well as creating and supporting the beaver dam analogs, which are person-built dams that mimic beaver dams, which is a really amazing amenity that we've had a lot of volunteer groups maintain over time. For more detailed information on these opportunities, please visit our volunteer webpage at volunteer.slowcity.org. And then last up just wanted to highlight some items that are next meeting on August eighteenth. We will be having a few grant items coming forward, and then for our business items we've got some refunding bonds for Nascimento project, and then introduction of an ordinance that would amend our mobile home park rent stabilization ordinance. and just to highlight that item up on this screen for consent we submitted nomination forms for opportunity zones so this is a ratification of we had an incredibly tight timeline to submit those as staff and so we'll be bringing that forward for council in the community to see approve and support the efforts to get those zones deemed opportunity zones. So with that, that's my report this evening.

Thank you so much. So many good things happening. Can you just, I may have missed the times, did you say that 2 to 7 p.m. was the drilling at Centumar Pool? Sorry.

I don't think I said a time.

OK. What time do you picture that happening, just picturing the Sinsheimer School happening right there?

Yeah. Thank you, Mayor and City Council. We didn't list any hours of operations in there. There was more of a date listed in there, and I believe it was August 10 to the 21st. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The 8th through the 21st. 8th through the 21st.

um so it's more of like a span during that construction period and that that work would be more impactful to the community typically those hours would be from around 7 to 5 pm but i can look more into what those if there's any specific hours related to that project and get back to you great thank you so are you connecting with the schools letting them know so they're prepared for that yes correct yeah we've been in communication with the surrounding area schools anybody who's residents that lives close by making sure that they're aware of any of the impacts and we also have updates on our website and we'll be in close communications with the community perfect thank you just knowing they're coming back to school and that might be a surprising thing to walk into as well as the senior homes around there so thank you so much thank you

Any questions for City Manager? Okay. Okay. I'm seeing Vice Mayor shaking her head. No. We can move forward. So next, just as a quick reminder, we do have public comment next. So public comment is for items that are not on the agenda. So you have your time. If you've not turned in a slip yet, you still have time. City Clerk, are there people on Zoom right now? Shall I go through the whole spiel?

Yes, there are three.

Okay, great. So if you are on zoom, then you also can give public comment. We have speaker slips in person. You can raise your hand on zoom or press nine on your keypad and city clerk will notify you when it is your turn to speak. So we have people who will speak in person first, and then people who are on Zoom will speak next. And with that, we will always have people who wish to speak for one minute, they get to go first, two minutes, second, three minutes, third. With that, we'll move forward. City Clerk, is there any public comment for items not on the agenda?

Yes, we have three people in chambers. I'll read all three out if they'll line up. Sean Harris, Louise Justice, and Sharon Roberts.

All right good evening uh thanks for uh the time your time uh I'm standing here today because uh this administration is facing a severe crisis of fiscal stewardship and systemic accountability and with the exception of the council member Marks this council has been silent uh this city is trapped in a whistleblower lawsuit your city attorney and city manager are named as individual defendants alleging serious financial misconduct by diverting public revenue That's an allegation of a lawsuit against the city. These are not minor administrative hiccups. This is potential corruption. Taxpayers demand immediate answers. Exactly how much public revenue was diverted and whose pockets did it line? What is our financial exposure in legal fees, damages, and eventual settlements? Which internal controls failed and why haven't they been fixed? You wasted public funds on independent consultant. This is a different issue part of the lawsuit. Public funds are wasted on independent consultant who recommended cutting building permits by 35%. You then dismiss those findings without public debate. How much taxpayer money did that consultant cost us? What is your exact rationale for tossing the report in the trash? Did you reject it because you were terrified of losing $1,000,000 in revenue? Did you dismiss the recommendation to reduce fees by 35% without a public hearing? Are you required to have a public hearing when doing so? Mayor Eric Stewart was recently referred to the Personnel Board, thankfully, by Councilmember Marks, former Mayor Marks. for leaking a confidential grand jury report. This is a blatant toxic lapse in judgment. We need absolute proof that our elected officials respect confidentiality laws. Except for Council Member Marks, this entire room and council has been silent. Your collective inaction looks like a coverup. You're failing your oversight duties. Answer these questions, please. Why are the city manager and city attorney, she's not here at the moment, the manager is, still present in council meetings while under investigation? What disciplinary or firing process have you initiated against him? And I'm addressing the council. Will the Mayor immediately turn over all communications regarding this scandal and potential involvement? Are we to believe the Mayor was unaware of the named defendant's actions regarding the allegations of diverting revenue? Will she be implicated during the discovery process? What concrete steps will you take tonight to rebuild broken taxpayer trust? stop hiding behind closed-door litigation, uh, face the public and answer for this administration, please. Further, and lastly, uh, as, uh, liberals and Democrats cry rivers of tears regarding Donald Trump's alleged corruption, and there is some, I'm a Republican, I'm aware of that, uh, they ignore, this city's liberals ignore what's going on in our city, uh, our city seat. Uh, this is clearly evidence, there's clear, uh, allegations going on and a lawsuit that, uh, that substantiates this and attorneys don't pick up cases unless they think they have a they'll prevail and uh an attorney picked up a case against the city and I'm really looking forward to discovery and I and I I will not be surprised if the mayor is implicated she recently went to a personnel board meeting because she leaked confidential grand jury invest in investigation thank you Louise Justice

Good evening mayor and Council members i'm Louise justice I live in on Augusta and San Luis Obispo i'm here with regard to the pathway through the Johnson park, which we know is since armor park. As a resident who uses the Johnson park pathway to get to the public pool i've noted that in the past several years, the cracks. Have been paint marked and never have there been repairs made, and this is nothing that has. done been done so I reached out to ask a slow and I received a response saying thank you for reaching out. Parks maintenance actively marks areas to make them visible for the public and they will repair the areas when time allows. If you have any additional questions, please reply to this mail. Well, since I had a lot of questions, I felt that this particular response was not sufficient. So this is the reason I've appeared before you this evening and asked if you could possibly ask That these dangerous and believe me, they are getting worse these cracks in the in the pathways need to be looked at and repaired as soon as possible, we don't want anybody tripping on them, especially people of my age, thank you.

Thank you.

Lastly.

Sharon Roberts and she's our final speaker in chambers okay.

Good evening. My name is Sharon Roberts, and I'm a slow resident and voter. I am here to voice my disagreement with the recent decision of the personnel board not to censure the mayor for sharing a draft confidential report from the grand jury. Maintaining confidentiality and not breaching it is the high ethical and legal duty of all members of the slow city council. I believe they take an oath to do this, and the mayor should set the example for all council members and staff. When our country at the highest levels is going through so much turmoil because our president does not believe the rules apply to him, I believe it is even more important that we can rely on our local officials. The early confidential report the mayor received was accompanied by a letter with specific instructions not to share the draft before the final public release. So I don't buy the idea. This was just an occasional error in judgment. I think the mayor clearly demonstrated her loyalty to Cal Poly over the city, the grand jury members, her fellow council members and the residents of SLO that she has sworn to represent. This occasional error in judgment violated California Penal Code nine three three point oh five. If this had been any other city employee, how would it be handled? Cal Poly is not part of the city or county government. It is a state university. There is a clear division. The June 13, 2025 grand jury letter that accompanied the draft report clearly stated the report was not to be shared with anyone. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have people on Zoom?

No, we do not.

Okay. With that, we will actually, City Manager, do you want to respond to anything that you've heard? Was there anything that you wanted to share around cracks or personnel board, etc. ?

And just certainly on the issue of the the trail that was mentioned, we will ask our team to get back to you with additional and set up a time to give you the ability to ask questions and make sure that all those questions are answered so. we'll make sure to follow follow up on that issue happy to you know respond to any other questions that anybody might have as well on the other items.

Thank you. All right, with that we'll move forward to the consent agenda, the consent agenda is considered non controversial items, I know a few more people come into the room, so if you would like to present public comment, there are some slips up here if you'd like to share any public comment on the. consent items or the public hearings want to make sure you can do that so with that do we have anything from our colleagues that would like to be pulled vice mayor.

yeah nothing to be pulled at this time, but I did just want to make a brief comment about five see which is in regards to the Community resiliency Center. Just incredibly grateful to staff for pursuing this. I had a vulnerable family member pass away during a heat wave and I am just really enthusiastic about making sure that our community has some of these resources available for our vulnerable community. And I'll leave it there.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Yes, I also have a comment on five. See, which is, I don't know what the content of the grant is going to be. And I don't know if council will have a chance to have any input into that. um but i i do think that it's a wonderful opportunity to also co-locate with a splash pad a splash pad is is a great tool in terms of combating climate change it's free it's a way of cooling off and if the center If we get the grant and the center is actually located in a park, I think we should also have a splash pad. So I would like to put that in there. And I know that the city manager is also a great fan of splash pads. So I keep trying one way or another to get the city to the point that we'll actually go ahead and plan one and implement it. So that's the only comment that I have on the consent agenda. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Shoresman.

Thank you. Yeah, not pulling any items either, but also wanted to just draw attention to the CalRecycle beverage container recycling grant project. It's another gem, and I just always appreciate staff looking for great opportunities to provide value to the community through grant programs. Then we don't we get something without even having to pay for it so appreciate that work and. There was one comment I just wanted to make sure, do we need to say anything about the. The the resolution change for I forget what number, it is. G for five G okay all right, thank you and.

Thank you. Yeah, I was actually going to comment on 5E as well. The grant application for the expansion of really more access to clean drinking water. And I just think that, you know, something we kind of take it for granted here, but this is not Flint, Michigan. This is something that we are always in taking care of. And I just really appreciate our utilities team to making sure we have Good clean act or good access to clean water. And that's really everybody in our entire community. Councilman shorts and did you have one more thing before we go to public comment.

Just it wasn't five G was five D the pro housing resolution, I wondered if we needed to actually draw that out in our motion on consent that we were changing the wording in the resolution or. I know, but there's just a question if we'll need to do that when we approve the consent agenda or no.

Yes, we will when the motion is made to include staff agenda correspondence.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry about that. All right. With that, do we have any public comment on the consent agenda items?

We have none in chambers, and I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Okay. Anyone on Zoom, this is your chance to raise your hand or press 9 if you'd like to speak on anything on the consent agenda. Okay, with that, I'll go ahead and bring it back. So as I mentioned with consent calendar, the consent items, we have consent item 5D, and we have that referenced in the staff agenda correspondence that was submitted and published earlier today. And 5G has been removed from the agenda and continued to a date uncertain. So as we talk about a motion, just please make sure you include both of those. Do I have a motion? Council Member Schwarzman.

Sure. I'll move approval of the consent agenda, noting the agenda correspondence change for the resolution in 5D and the removal of 5G.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell. Second. Thank you, City Clerk. Can we have roll call, please?

Council Member Shoresman. Yes. Council Member Boswell.

Yes.

Council Member Marks. Yes. Vice Mayor Francis.

Yes.

Mayor Stewart.

yes and the motion passes 5-0 with the approved amendments thank you so much So now we'll move right into public hearing. That is six o'clock public hearing. That is the fastest we've gone in a long time. So thank you so much. And thank you to staff. So we will be discussing the potential ordinance of to amend Title 13, Chapter 13.12 of the Municipal Code to establish a new underground utility district. and that will also potentially provide direction on the Prado Interchange and Prado Creek Bridge projects. So with that we will have Assistant City Manager Scott Collins and Major Projects Manager Matt Horn to present the report along with our consultant. And with that, I will pass it over to the team. Again, if you have anyone on Zoom that may have any questions or I'm sorry, any public comments or anyone in the room, please make sure you turn in your slip or you raise your hand if you are on Zoom so we can make sure to include you in public comment for this item. Technology is awesome, but the city clerk is a little more awesome.

She is amazing. Thank you so much. I'm Matt Horn, major city project manager. I'm the project manager for the two projects that we're going to talk about this evening. And I'd like to introduce Brent Lemon to my right. He's the executive vice president with Consor Engineering and here to support the interchange project tonight. In the audience, we have George Aguilar as well. He's the principal with the Wallace Group. And he's here as our technical expert for the Creek Bridge project. And additionally, we have Pinaro Diaz with Caltrans District 5. He's the project manager for the state for the Prado Interchange project. So I think we have kind of like the buckets of technical experts that we have here tonight to help support this item. I'd like to thank our technical experts for coming in and sharing their evening with us. And thank you guys for devoting almost your entire evening to these two very important projects that unfortunately do not include a splash pad as of right now. The opportunity is ripe. So for... The general agenda for tonight is to do a couple items for both projects and then, of course, one for the entirety of both these projects. And one is we're hoping to get Council's direction on introduction of an undergrounding ordinance to support the Prado interchange project, receive and file various technical reports that will be submitted to Caltrans to help facilitate the interchange project as well. We'd like direction on an aesthetic theme this evening for the interchange, and then some direction from Council on whether we would like to explore the idea of putting a Class 1 bike path adjacent to Elks Lane as we do right-of-way acquisition or construction of that roadway. For the creek bridge, we have the preliminary value analysis here this evening for Council's consideration and in several budget revisions to to match the appropriations, which is available in our A software system for for project execution and then to support both projects, we are actively working on grant applications for both these projects currently. And we'd like the authorization from Council to submit those grant applications and future grant applications to support both the the interchange project and the creek bridge project. and then if we receive them, bring that information back to council for consideration. So just in a nutshell real quickly, I'm sure council members, maybe perhaps the community as well, but Prado Road, how it exists today is not the hopes and dreams of the city for it in the future. Prado Road theoretically in the future will connect from Madonna, all the way over to Broad Street with three project implementations, two of which we're currently working on tonight. So the first project is the Prado Interchange. And thank you to the clerk's office for giving me a very large cursor that I can point to my screen with. So our Prado Interchange project right here in red, that's the limits of that work. and that will help Prado Road achieve that connection. Additionally, we have the Prado Creek Bridge, which is in green, which is primarily at the creek crossing, but it does extend all the way to Sierra Meadows. And then in the future, as development occurs, the Prado extension, as these properties develop, Prado is planned to extend all the way to Broad Street, creating an east-west corridor for vehicles, bike, pedestrian. It'll improve emergency access, evacuation abilities for the city. So it's an important corridor that's included on our general planned land use, excuse me, circulation element. So quick background for you guys on on the interchange project what the plan improvements from roughly are so moving from the left hand side of this screen to the right. This is the the approximate limits of the new interchange project connecting at existing roundabout in adjacent to San Luis. ranch. At the Leo drive connecting that roundabout installing a new bridge going over the top of us one on one. Establishing or reconnecting existing northbound on and off ramps to the new bridge over crossing with a new signal eyes intersection widening Prado road. From actually to two lanes in each direction and then the Center Center turn lane or median. Realigning Oaks Lane to connect with Prado Road someplace that's lower than on a bridge, but at the same location where it'll be used for ingress and egress to the water reclamation facility in the city's corporation yard, and widening the Prado Road from that intersection all the way to the terminus of the creek bridge project. Moving into the creek bridge project it picks up right where the product interchange project leaves off connecting product road to the new bridge. Replacing the the existing two lane bridge with a five lane bridge that has the appropriate number of travel lanes bike facilities pestering facilities, a new wider bridge. Moving that all the way into the intersection of Prado Hager itself reconstructing that intersection with a new protected intersection and then additional improvements down product road from high gear street all the way down to Sierra meadows with additional active transportation improvements for that road way section. So project milestones that we've accomplished here for both projects. These both represent long term corridor investments for the city. We've completed environmental work, engineering work, funding and agency coordination work. The interchange project is advancing right now through final design. And we've completed a value analysis for both projects this evening. Well, not this evening, but we're presenting both of them this evening in different stages of completion. And then we're hoping to get council direction on a couple of necessary items so we can keep on moving these projects forward.

Drink of water real quick.

Sorry about that i'm starting off with it's kind of be a smorgasbord of different kind of related unrelated items that were seeping direction from Council tonight, so it bounces around a bit, but. The first thing i'd like to get provide you guys some background information on as our undergrounding our proposed undergrounding. utility district 17 so. The display on your screen shows some lightly shaded areas. using the big cursor and kind of coming over this blue shaded area. This is the limits of our undergrounding district 16 that's already established and was established in 2022 by council to support undergrounding of overhead utilities within the Creek Bridge project limits. Tonight's ordinance introduction for council's consideration is doing that same work to support the Prado interchange project. That area is defined by this green shaded area right through here. And it's basically the project limits of the interchange where there's some overhead existing facilities. And so both of these undergrounding districts will work together in unison to provide this heavily used corridor, heavily used utility corridor with underground facilities for communications and electrical facilities. So what we're doing here tonight provides the framework for that implementation, how we work with the utility companies, how we work with private property owners, how our projects move forward. For implementation to get those facilities underground and there's some benefit to the city and utility owners from that from the city side of things we get a more open right away, where we have greater flexibility for bicycle and pedestrian changes installations. Less likelihood of people hitting fixed objects in all modes of transportation and it provides some additional resiliency for our Community Members for other utilities as far as down power lines down communication facilities it's less likely for those to be damaged during weather events if they are.

they're under underground so it improves the reliability it reduces conflicts and um and also improves the aesthetic appearance of this area as well um i have a question now mayor yeah could we just have some questions about the utility district before we go on to the next thing or do you do you want to go ahead and give the whole staff report And then we go back to it. I think it might be easier if we just asked. I have a few utility questions.

I'm okay with that. Vice Mayor, do you have questions for the utility district alone as well? Just figured I'll highlight that to you. I can't see you yet, but if you have questions, please let me know. Council Member Marks.

Yeah, well, first of all, I wanted to know if the utility district costs were included in the budget for the bridge or the interchange or is this like an add on to what we've looked at before.

The utilities cost as we know them right now are included in the staff report included in the funding table and included in that $9 million that's discussed about in the staff report for utility installations.

Yeah. Okay. Well, previously, we've looked at other bad budget projections for the bridge and for the interchange. Yes. And is this utility district and an add on to what we've seen before? That's my question.

Yes, it the our information right now concerning all utilities, what utilities dry utilities communication utilities is they it's in excess of what we originally anticipated. So, and I can't remember what we quoted in the past as far as underground or utility costs, but it's currently estimated about $9 million for for water sewer communications electrical underground.

Okay, so are the property owners on each side you're getting the easement from do they also have to contribute to the cost of the utility district.

No. So the property that we're getting with any additional right-of-way purchases for the interchange project is independent of the utilities undergrounding. The coordination work has occurred with the newer properties and the properties that are currently under development within that reach. So RTA is aware of it. It's just a newer installation, so we should be able to seamlessly connect to those properties. Forty Prado is aware of it. They've been notified. And of course, there are newer development and they they are helping us with the elks lane connection as well. 46 Prado is currently under development. We've been coordinating with them as well. 46 Prado will likely have some cost for undergrounding facilities because they don't have existing. Well, they don't have all the existing facilities that they need, and so they'll likely have some additional utilities costs that want to be covered by the City, unless they are able to get in and complete their project prior to our undergrounding work and, finally, based on what happens here to tonight if Council wants to move forward with this or not. If we do want to move forward will want to get get the design, a little bit more completed get a better time frame for when this change would occur. and then we'll start working with the existing property owners to make them aware of the impact, when it'll occur, what to expect, those type of things. But there's a fair amount of unknowns right now to begin that coordination. Of course, they've all been noticed as required in the municipal code for notification of underground utility districts. We sent them a letter by certified mail about a month ago. Or so, and we've been working with all the utility companies as well. So they'll get additional notification that way. I'm sorry I've been speaking so long. I might have forgotten when you exactly asked me, though, as far as the question. So if I have another question. Okay.

So as I recall, PG&E had a fund for undergrounding utilities in the past. I don't know if that does that fund still exist and is PG&E going to chip in at all to help us with these costs?

Well, let me see it so PG&E does have a share of the cost for the underground and work the city is not paying 100% of the cost for this base basically how it it breaks down is. PG&E covers the cost for what it would cost them to relocate their existing overhead facilities out of our project way, so we get that credit cost okay. Additionally, if they're installing a fixed object too, they take that deduction as well as a tax credit. And so whatever the wire cost as far as the installation, they take those kind of deductions as well. So it's a myriad of those summations. And then the actual cost is taken out of those credits. And then we pay the remaining cost increase between the credits and the actual cost.

Thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you, Councilman Shoresman.

Mine's a perfect piggyback on that. So you talked about PG&E, but is there sort of a shared responsibility with some of the other utilities as well? Obviously sewer and water are the city's utilities, but natural gas, petroleum, some of the other Communications, do they help pay their portion of the undergrounding as well?

So it's generally the same item. So what we're doing for the undergrounding work is we contract with PG&E. PG&E coordinates lots of this work for us. We install conduits in the same trench that will be used for power, for communications. Existing underground services, such as gas, They they're not part of this effort they're part of their part of the effort to move their facilities out of the projects way and then move them back but they're not part of the underground work in that. there's no additional cost to the city for that water and sewer will will be a city expense, regardless of whether it's general fund or utilities fund. It's estimated around $3 million for those costs right now. It's a heavily used corridor for utilities in here, especially with the water treatment plant there and then the recycled water coming from the water reclamation facility. So this is a significant utility corridor for the city.

So is it $9 million for all of the undergrounding? And you said $3 million for city utilities. Is that separate or combined?

It's combined in that $9 million. OK. So the $9 million is comprised of the best known costs that we know right now for water, sewer, communications, PG&E, and Phillips 66.

OK. Thank you so much.

Appreciate that clarification.

No problem.

Vice Mayor, any questions?

Thank you.

Okay. Moving on to the interchange value analysis work. Let's see here. So we have two pictures on the screen. The the first picture off to the left right here is is a rendering of what the product, the interchange project might look like prior to the value analysis work and the rendering on the right hand side of the screen is is a rendering of what the project would look like post. Value analysis work, I think the two biggest changes that you might see in these two renderings is one the bridge width for the over crossing in in in in the images, though the one on the left or pre value analysis is wider. The one post is narrower. And then secondarily you'll probably see underneath the northbound on and off ramps. Perhaps like a wall or a tower type of installation from the ground to the the bridge and the post value analysis in a lot of peers in the pre. Value analysis generally the intent of the value analysis was to reduce the span length or the length of the bridges, the bridges are the most. costly thing to construct in the shorter distance that we can make them the cheaper, the project will be and so. And then also reducing the number of piers or drilled supports that we have to install reduces cost. So using those two methodologies help reduce our construction costs by $20 million. So one thing to kind of take note of in the value analysis part, The project cost is remains similar to where we started prior to value analysis, but post value analysis it's so that the dollar amounts are very similar there has been a reduction in $20 million worth of construction costs related to. The bridge itself, so the value analysis work that we've done has value in that you'd be looking, we would be looking at a cost that's. $20 million greater than what we're looking at today if we didn't do these value analysis improvements. So it's in my mind, it wasn't an effort in vain. It's provided some real value to the city. It's kind of an overarching theme on the value analysis work. But this work is largely completed you'll you'll see as an attachment to one of the um is the attachment to the staff report is the final value analysis document and just as a kind of like a reminder for for council the the value analysis process goes from you know technical experts sitting in a room kind of looking at ways to reduce the project cost coming up with their best professional estimates on what can be done and how much that cost would be and then after we get direction on that we go through the technical reports and the implementation efforts of of that And so so we're doing the technical reports right now to support the interchange project and for the creek bridge project we're asking you to look at the best professional estimates of or judgment of our technical experts and provide your overall agreement or disagreement with those paths forward to reduce those costs. And then at a later date, the technical studies will be brought forward for council, most likely during likely either a grant appropriation or authorization to advertise for construction bids those projects. I probably should have fit that into a more natural place into the presentation, but that's the general theme of the value analysis work that's under consideration this evening. So this table right here gives you a current breakdown of what the construction expenses are planned to be for the interchange. And so this is the table that's very similar to the table five that's in the staff report, except for a couple abbreviations that I needed to do to fit it onto the table. to the the screen and so our current um estimated construction cost for this project is 80 million dollars and that's in 2026 um funds so the the the contract amount that you're seeing on this this um table is 92.6 million in that it's been escalated from the 2026 dollars to 2029 the date that we anticipate construction and with a an escalation amount that we anticipate happening. So there's not certainty, but it's the best available information that we can provide to council at this point in time for construction. We used a 5% escalation cost for these projections, moving it from 80 million to 92.6. But one thing to point out too is the level of debt financing that's assumed to make the all the mathematics work for the expenditures and funding plan the debt debt funding amount has has been increased to 85.2 million. As far as projected debt to fund the interchange project right now, and that's up from 75 million that was shown in the financial plan, and then 65 million that was shown in the Va. Staff report for implementation in November. November 4 2025 so that's really how we've. made the deficit credits work for the expenditures and funding plan for the interchange. Work in this again is our best best information available at this time it, we will continue to update both the cost and the funding plan based on the best known available information at that time and then also. with the huge amount of grants that we're hoping to get here in the near future. But I'll step into that one here real soon.

Mayor, I have a question on that, if you're willing.

I am willing. Go for it.

Yeah, thank you so much.

And great to see you, Mr. Horn.

um we obviously as a council and i don't mean to speak for everyone here but if i'm remembering correctly there was pretty universal uh hesitation around the costs and of course we're seeing even increasing costs in this table here as we move forward and i know we got a little bit of correspondence um asking us to identify how we were going to fund this very expensive project. But just seeking a little clarification here, it's my understanding that this next step that we're taking is an important step in identifying and applying for additional funds because we're getting the projects to that shovel-ready point where we actually become eligible for applying for a lot of those grant funds. Please correct me if that's a misunderstanding of how we continue to move this forward, even without having additional funding identified at this stage.

Sure, yeah. I would characterize where we're at right now is taking some important steps to move the project forward. Tonight, we've really kind of focused in on kind of getting the scope correct for the interchange project and the creek bridge project. And I'm getting some authority to ask for additional grants to support both of these projects. The funding plan that we're presenting right now will change because I feel confident that, one, we'll get better information in the future as far as expenses, but also, two, is our grant work will succeed in some fashion where we'll get some additional grants which will lower um the the debt amount um for for the city in the future so tonight really what we're hoping to do is advance the project get it more towards a construction ready place for both projects and um during that time as we're working to get it to a construction ready we'll be actively soliciting um a number of grants so i have a half dozen i'll talk about a little bit later in the presentation with three that are on the near term horizon for application. So just know that we're actively working on it. It's our goal to reduce the debt financing amount to the closest to zero as possible and to decrease the general fund or the city revenue amount into both these projects as low as possibly can be. So with that kind of like that overall hope and dream for these two projects, that's the path we're going down for implementation until corrected by council.

Very excited to hear about those three near-term opportunities and all six of them that you're going to talk about tonight. Thank you for that.

No problem. Thank you, Mr. Horne. I'll pass it over to Council Member Shoresman.

Thanks. Yeah, I'm hesitating to ask questions because we're so used to doing it at the end. But you stated some numbers as you were going through this slide, and I'm always madly looking for the numbers that you're stating. And I don't think I saw them all. But so just to recap a little bit, under the contract line, it says from 29 to 30, that's the 92 million that you're estimating. You said in 2026 dollars, the full construction is about 80 million. And is that the 92 that you think it would go up to by 2930?

Yes ma'am for the full construction yeah so currently it's estimated to be $80 million if we were to go out today. To build it in three years from now, things will we anticipate things to be more expensive or anticipating a 5% inflationary factor. per year, so that 80 million becomes 92.6 million in this table if we implement the the interchange project in 2029, which is the current plan.

Okay, and then I think I heard you say and vice mayor is correct i've been very, very uncomfortable with the proposition of debt financing for this interchange this whole time, and so I think what I heard you say was that. And what I remember before was that we were projecting 75 million, but now it's projected to be 85 yeah I hear that correctly.

So there's three different projections I spoke about real quickly. In the financial plan, we projected a debt financing amount of $75 million. In November 4, 2025, with the preliminary value analysis report, we took those numbers and dropped them down by $20 million. So generally, the debt financing amount at that point in time was going to be $65 million. Based on the growing cost for the different items that are identified in the staff report and our current cost estimate, our current projection for debt financing is $85.2 million worth of debt financing. It's important to note here, and I'll get to it in a future slide, is included in our financing package right now is an assumed $35 million worth of federal and state grants that we'll secure to help fund this project as well. So we have some grant work to do to get our funding package to where we want it to be.

And those grants should we be lucky enough to get some of them and work really hard to get them would come off of the projected 85 million or is that, in addition to the 85 million.

So we would assume debt service for yeah so the way the the financing packages or financing plans written up right now. Because we assume that we're getting $35 million worth of grants. And so the first $35 million worth of grants would go into that bucket. And then anything in excess of $35 million would then go to reducing the $85.2 million worth of debt financing that's currently shown in the funding plan.

Okay, thank you and i'm sorry if I jumped ahead if you're going to go over that later, but and then one last question on this slide so if i'm reading this correctly, the current. design costs just in this current year is about $10 million for the interchange.

That's correct. So these are currently what's funded in the account and are going from top to bottom. Our design is just a little bit over $10 million worth of funding in the account. Our phase one work, which is the value analysis work, was around $3 million. Right now we're currently started into phase two, which is the plan specifications and estimate portions of the project. and so that that's an additional 5.9 and we've just started um that work we've just let that um contract amendment um through phase three which is kind of contract administration um um work um after the plans are are complete is is an additional 100 000 roughly additional $100,000. We've had a couple amendments. Three amendments so far, one has a cost, one was $22,000, which reduced our contingency from a million dollars down to, $977,000 which is shown in the table as well, so things that things that we can do to reduce cost is you know you know, keeping keeping our contract good marching forward and expedient manner. getting the decisions that our designers need to kind of keep on moving the project forward and maintaining as close to static project scope as we all can will help us keep our design cost as low as it can be.

Awesome. Thank you. I'm sorry to dig so deep into the details of the numbers.

That's what I'm here for. So this is probably what everyone's really excited about here, and so the next thing I like to talk about real quickly is the interchange aesthetic themes and so we've had three aesthetic themes developed. we've labeled them perhaps there should be a better label for for these these things, but we have the base theme that we've developed. We have the the mission theme and then we have perhaps more of the modern mission. And so the base theme really is is a theme that matches most closely to the creek bridge that that theme that's already been selected and Implemented in the plans and specifications, the mission plaza mission theme is more kind of like the standard kind of tiles and you know things that you might might picture with the The mission Plaza and then the modern missions, perhaps more of a look like the neuro restroom. That was recently installed in the mission plaza So those are the kind of like the the three themes that we were tearing off of we've showed these themes to decal trans ultimately caltrans there's a group of people. On the project team who are visual impact assessment folks So these are landscape architects and. You know, tell it to designers who have a keen eye for aesthetics and they've looked at the environmental document and they've looked at the three themes that we've shown them they selected the base theme as being the. The, the one that they prefer and then to the one that they believe closely most closely matches the the intent of the environmental document for the interchange. We've had our environmental team look at it as well. We believe that there's a path forward and all three of these themes of Council has a strong desire for one versus the other and we'll just take it'll take a little bit of time to work through all the different issues, but there's going to be issues with anything that we generally select here tonight, because it's it's a it's a theme of the path forward that we need to move. On there's different components that can be changed out in any of these themes. Which i'll get to in a little bit later, so you can kind of see the different components of them and then. In general, we're looking for just high level direction on preferences. So if council was to say generally, hey, we prefer theme X, but we really like the widget in theme Y, implement that in some way. Or just let us know your laundry list of what your concerns might be, and we can address those as we fine tune the aesthetics with Caltrans. So with that said, With that said, I'll walk us through real quickly the three different themes that we have. So this is the base theme that you're looking at right here on the left hand side. And this is true of all of the three themes I'm going to show you. On the left hand side is the view from Prado Road, the overpass. Going over us one on one in the right hand view is the view from us one on one as you're going under the new the new interchange bridge so. On the left hand side you'll see that this this quote most closely matches the. The creek bridge project the. The fall protection fence this fence this fence that's right through here this fence is just a standard wire very. Uniform a fence to make sure that people don't inadvertently fall off the bridge the the the barrier. or right underneath the the fence has stencils or it's showing the nine sisters or the seven sisters, depending on how we choose to count the sisters they're shown represented there. And moving down to the right hand side of the screen you'll see the abutment walls adjacent to like the Sam was a bispo signage those are standard. abutment wall standard panels there's no geometric design. To those we implement a two tiered signage and landscaping area. Right through this area will see landscaping on actually on the on the existing ground layer the the first tier and then the bridge level also has some plantings in there as well, and then the sand was a bispo. gateway is delineated on that. And then the other item that I'll point out to you real quickly is this barrier right below the fence. While it shows the nine sisters on the Prado side of it, it has just a texture on the US 101 side of it to kind of break up the massing of the concrete right there. Moving into our mission theme again you'll you'll see the Prado and us one on one on the left and the right hand side. You'll see a couple of different different influences here and largely it's the mission theme kind of influenced by standard kind of like mission architecture kind of tiles. The railing on this design matches the product creek bridge the towers these areas right here. These are something that's not in the base theme. They are protection towers. They make it harder for people to get in and around and kind of get on the outside of the bridge structure. And so they're designed for that purpose. They also add kind of a gateway feature. to the project and they're currently planned for illumination or sort of lighting at night. Just a side note on the lighting is the amount of lighting that we're showing, it was, I believe it was an attachment, one of the attachments to the staff report, perhaps H, shows some nighttime renderings of those. Those might be more lit than currently Caltrans is comfortable with, but we'll need to kind of work through through those uh through those kind of issues with whatever theme is ultimately ultimately selected really the the intent of of the environmental document was to try to blend the um the interchange into the natural surroundings as much as possible but this is a large concrete structure so you're going to see it no no matter what so um So it's a large structure. But that's the general theme of our mission. You also see some additional brickwork on the abutment side of the renderings right here to break up that massing. You'll see arches. Going across the barrier rail and then of course you'll see the the nine sisters in the fencing fall production fencing that's up here probably see it a little bit better in this rendering right through here it's it's a perforated metal that you can see on the bridge itself. And our final theme tonight is the modern mission theme. It has a lot of the features, similar features to perhaps the modern mission. The towers have been changed out for more of a smooth type of tower and the tiles have been switched out to more of a weathering type of steel. So the weathering steels are kind of like the rusty brown color for like a lot of our pedestrian bicycle prefabricated bridges. So that's the patina of that weathering steel in there. They're lit as well. They're shown to be lit as well. Again, the railings match what's in the creek bridge project fencing includes the the nine sisters, the the but meant panels that you'll see down in the lower image their geometric and nature their their custom their their intended to kind of break up that that massing of the abutments and it has a five tier planting Area down through here just a footnote for Council, if this is the the the theme that is ultimately selected for Council will probably need some flexibility about the number of tears that we ultimately move forward with thinking that we need to make sure that it's the appropriate height to keep people from to readily climbing in that area. And these might be a little too low. um. And then the final item I'd like to point out for this.

While you're on that slide, can you just point out where the words San Luis Obispo are?

Oh, the bottom tier, thank you.

Thank you.

I'll never be able to see that, sir.

But thank you for, it's right down here where this large cursor is, so. Again, we'll need to address landscaping and all of that. So Oh, and then one final thing for for this item is this this item this this theme has a different. label on it, then the other themes in that you'll probably see Prado on the outside area of the tower right here indicating what roadway or exit that would be for for for users so bit of a branding for the for the roadway itself.

I think you have some questions from council member marks.

Thank you. Yeah, I missed. My question is about the timing. Is it necessary to her counsel to give you the feedback on the aesthetic theme tonight? Or is this something that could be that we could think about and perhaps have a subcommittee or talk to other design professionals and then say, get back to you at another time? To what extent is it necessary that we make a determination on this tonight?

Sure, yeah. Just to quickly back up is we've had these themes developed by our team. We've explored these themes with Caltrans, and they've looked at them. We've explored them with a couple of local stakeholders in the community to kind of get their feedback. as well. There's preferences there in the different themes. Ultimately, it would be the project's preference that if we're able to make a theme selection tonight and kind of give some general guidance for our project team for implementation, that would be the highest value in that we can incorporate those changes in the landscaping changes that need to be included in our project cost and our supplemental project report that will ultimately go to Council here. That's your preference.

My question is, is it necessary? It's really hard for folks to just put together a design like this in an open public session with like, oh, you can separate take this railing this element or what do you think about the letters and the uh having breaking up the name of san luis obispo and all the the various uh elements of of the you know that you're looking at yeah so i i just i feel is it it's going to be very difficult and it may not really come to a decent conclusion. So if we did come to some kind of determination on this tonight, would we get another rendering that would come back and say, OK, you guys, you've done your sausage making in public here. This is what it would look like. And then we can take another bite of the apple. I'm just not sure how well this is going to work, frankly.

So the reason I say it's the project's preference for a determination to be made tonight is basically time and money. And so we can do anything that we want to do. If we want to delay the decision making, it will just cost us more. um funding in the in the future um it'll delay our submission um for the project report until we're actually able to come up with that um that uh determination and um so everything will just be a a little bit more expensive so and I'm not sure where council's agenda opens up and when we can have this conversation again. So it could be several months.

Maybe next month.

No, I'm kidding. Oh, yeah.

I was saying next month. Well, I mean, there might be other times, but I think let's wait on the rest of that because I think this is kind of more just question, then we'll talk about deliberations a little later.

No, we need to have that conversation, but no, my concern is just this is a very difficult exercise to, I mean, all right, we'll get to it later. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Horan. I thought we had another question, but I think we're moving forward. Anything from Vice Mayor? No hand? Okay, we'll keep moving forward. Thank you. And then we'll take a break in a few minutes and come back to it.

All right, looking forward to that. This is my favorite slide of the presentation tonight. And so if when you look on the left-hand side of the screen, you'll see a rendering of the new interchange. When we look on the right-hand side of the screen over here, you'll see a rendering, actually a Google Earth image of the existing condition. And so tonight for your consideration is, do we want to install a gateway gateway signature signage on the product interchange or not generally caltrans allows for one one signage or didn't see identification marker. City, and we have one are already. And so if we wanted to put signage on the interchange would likely require us to remove an existing one that you may see on the right hand side of the screen. So I left it zoomed out to this level specifically because I wanted to show the You can see the speed limit sign over here and you probably have a better opportunity to actually see the speed limit sign than to the where this arrow is pointed out over here but over to the right hand side you'll see a small gateway monument that it's our San Luis Obispo. A monument it's very similar to there's one very, very much identical to it on on the southerly entrance to the city at us one on one and there's a much larger newer version of that on. highway one at highland and so that's a much larger. implementation of that. And we've learned from these installations that perhaps they need to be larger for people to be able to see them at the travel speed of the roadway and then to make up for the different vegetation. So again, that's just for context.

Can you just, context-wise as well, what, how much larger would this be than the one that we see on Highland right now? Just like percentage-wise or one and a half times or? Oh, that's because I mean, we are a little bit like spinal tap on our current version here, the Stonehenge, but trying to just get a little bit of an image in my head.

You know, it's a great question. From memory and estimation, I would say this is probably 125% the size. Just a little bit of picture. Okay, thanks. That's kind of where I'm seeing it at.

Council Member Shoresman has a question too.

So is this is the bottom right picture is that North pound. Yes, ma'am okay, and so, and the I guess both both pictures are conceptually northbound traveling yes. You said, we have a southbound. entrance by yeah okay by question i'm sorry i'm hearing voices. So, like beef as you come into town going southbound there's one before the grand avenue exit or there abouts right.

Correct. Yes.

So I don't know. It seems a little bit weird to me that this is not actually the entrance of town. We have one more overpass before this coming northbound at Los Osos Valley Road, right? But yet the entrance marker right now and this overpass would be after the Los Osos Valley Road off and on ramp, correct?

It would be, yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Just making sure I'm tracking all that.

No, you're absolutely right. It is past the first gateway into the city. This is our opportunity at a similar location to make this installation happen. It's into a very similar location to where our existing gateway sign is, though. So there's a bit of that. And then finally, I would say also, too, This is a the US one on one right through this area is pretty straight and flat. If you were to if you were to take your eyes and look around this would probably be the best time to be able to look around and kind of check out the different views. Rather than making that kind of like gradual sweeping turn as you're entering into San Luis Obispo and then kind of jumping off at Los osos valley road which you probably wouldn't miss the entrance sign anyway for. from a fairly long frame, but sorry to think out loud. No, that's okay.

It's kind of what I've been doing here with this. And the gateway, like the San Luis Obispo, would be on the other side of the road from where it is existing now, right?

Correct, yeah. Okay. So yeah, the orientation is incorrect, but generally you would see it as you're heading northbound on US 101 for Prado Interchange, you would see, northbound people would see the San Luis Obispo. Southbound would not.

Right now, I think what i'm asking is as you're driving northbound the way this rendering is on the top left. The the name of the city would be on the opposite side of the road from the direction you're driving correct yeah whereas right now it's on the same side of the road as where you're driving. I believe that that when you're driving northbound the the marker the marker that's existing there that's kind of small is on the right side, oh yes, yes, rather than the left, yes, correct, yes, thank you sorry just trying to work, no I got confused it was mine.

It's like stage left, stage right. That is a little bit confusing. I wasn't sure if that was flipping over and that was just a way for us to see it better or if it really will be on the left side towards the Froome Ranch. So is that what you're saying? That'll be more towards the Froome Ranch where it's listed now? I mean, San Luis Ranch, sorry. Sorry, San Luis Ranch.

Oh, so it's actually, no, sorry, Brent's correcting me right now. So Brent, this is on the northbound side. It's the same side as the existing.

Yeah, so the view taken in the rendering. The view taken in the rendering is southbound traffic going under the bridge. And so the on and off ramps are northbound on and off. So that gives you the orientation over to the wastewater facility all that stuff is to the left of the screen of that rendering and then from ranches to your right.

Thank you that's very helpful. Thank you.

Do that again Councilmember, so it would actually say San Luis Obispo on both sides. Of the of that side of the road.

Yeah, so the team right now has developed both of these quadrants on the freeway side in a similar manner. So what you see in southbound, you would see in northbound.

OK, thank you.

Thank you for the clarification. All right, back to you, Mr. Horne.

I've given him full permission to kick me under the table when I make a mistake again, so please do. Moving on to the bridge project moving from the interchange to the creek bridge project, so the the value analysis that was completed for the the creek bridge project was largely kind of based on council's direction at our November 4. 2025 meeting when we saw a rendering of what it could look like. And ultimately, we're looking to kind of reduce costs for these corridors project. And so value analysis was completed. We've identified seven different areas that we would like to explore or at least have council weigh in on whether we should explore them in the future. And so in the total summation cost of what we've come up with is just a little bit over $6 million. And what our recommendation, ATC's recommendation to council would be to capture about $5.4 million of those savings. And so I'll kind of walk through those a bit for you. So item seven is, excuse me, item one is reducing the bridge width. And so currently the bridge is currently shown to be 114 feet wide. We believe that we can reduce it to 91 feet by eliminating a vehicle lane and consolidating some pedestrian and bicycle facilities, much like we did. for the interchange project, installing a class one path on the southerly portion of the roadway. Bringing that width down a little bit is anticipated to save about $3 million of construction cost. We also looked at. We looked at many different. We've turned a lot of stones on these projects, and one of them was to eliminate the undergrounding work that's currently planned for the product creek bridge project, and so much like we were introducing an ordinance tonight. We introduced an ordinance in 2,022 for the undergrounding. work for the creek bridge ultimately we're recommending to not move forward with that to continue with the undergrounding work for the benefits that we've just kind of previously described for undergrounding and it also does kind of match council's past direction what's in our current franchise agreement with PG&E as being, undergrounding as being a highly desirable thing for the city as well. So ultimately we're not recommending moving forward with that, but if council does choose to implement that, I would also like to recommend that we don't move forward with introduction of an undergrounding ordinance for the interchange. So I wanna make sure those two are connected for you. As it stands right now, if staff recommendation lines up, it would all be underground. If we choose one or the other, then we should probably do both. The other item is reducing utility trench depth. One of our standards is to require that communication conduits and different electrical facilities need to be below the lowest gravity facility or the lowest sewer line or storm drain line in the area. It's really a couple of different reasons. One is we want to reduce the future conflict potential of excavators going through and ripping out fiber or power to different people just for safety and convenience. And then two, it allows city facilities to have the priority for implementation to kind of carry stormwater away or sewage and for private property owners to connect laterals as well. So that's the rationale for the The. The standard we're asking that we just delegate that authority to the city and share to make that decision on a case by case basis and actually it's already within the city engineers purview to make those. decisions, and he commonly does. But since we're at Council, we just want to make sure that, one, you guys are on board with that type of decision, or if you want to give us some different direction, we're happy to take that as well. The Creek Bridge project has been around for about a dozen years or so. The current implementation of it, it's a much greater project than it's replacing. And we're actually doing some asset maintenance work to replace some utilities work in High Garris Street. Currently, the funding plan calls for that to be funded with general fund dollars to do that work. The team's recommendation would be to eliminate that work or to use perhaps a utilities fund that is already set aside for asset maintenance to replace the existing assets. We've talked with utility staff during the implementation of the VA, and that was one of their recommendations was just to fund it from from their current asset maintenance plans. And so that's our recommendation to conditionally approve that subject to a different funding stream taking care of that work because the replacement makes sense. The facility is aged out and it's in our best interest to get that facility replaced. The other item that we'd like to move forward with is consideration of revising bridge walls. So we have some walls that we're installing in the lower creek portion of the bridge project, and currently they're planned to be a more expensive type of wall, a soldier pile wall. That that what we think we can revise the wall change it a bit and. Use rock slow production or these large kind of boulders that you see in the Greek commonly for the erosion control that would roughly save about $2 million if that's a successful implementation. One thing that we need to check is, we need to do some hydraulic analysis work to make sure that the frictional flows and we can still convey the necessary flows under the bridge area, we think that would be. Think we can with we're pretty confident we can, but we need to be able to double check that and and have a formal report review created and signed off by our heart, our, our engineer. A minor cost savings would be to shorten some one of the raised medians that's currently in the project, we could reduce the length of it a bit still accomplish the the. intended purpose and then, finally, the last recommendation is to remove the Bob Jones bridge or labeled as number seven so initially as the project sits right now. To build the project that's currently designed, we need to remove the existing Bob Jones bridge, do all of our work, and then place it back down again at a different, slightly different location to make everything work. If Council chooses to implement alternative one and Alternative five. So the reduced bridge width and the bridge walls that will likely create a situation where we don't have to remove it at all. And so not removing at all is the cheapest thing to do and it has the concurrence of atc and the project team if we're able to implement something like that and so when council's considering these different items if one in five are currently in your plan to either prove or not approve that's the the secondary ramification that we need to deal with was bob jones bridge um So if Council wants to move forward with portions of the VA or the VA is recommended it's going to take some time to make the changes do that working and get it ready to bid currently we have the 95% plans that are currently in plan check our plan was to. come to Council in the beginning of 2027 for authorization to advertise and move forward with that implementation. If we want to reduce cost and kind of reduce the roadway width, it'll take some time to do that. At a minimum, it'll take 12 months to kind of go through the revised plan process, technical reports, and do the purchasing, both on our side and the consultant's side to make that happen. And that brings the point up is when do we want to, if we want to move forward with that kind of VA implementation at that time frame brings a question of is it in the city's best interest in the community's best interest to start the creek bridge project first and then move into the interchange project. About a year ish after the start of that construction, while it's currently under construction, or is it better to align both the start of the. the interchange project and the creek bridge project to align about the same bidding time. So there's benefits and drawbacks to both approach. One benefit is that we're able to perhaps combine construction management entities that could manage both projects at the same time. It's likely that we'll be able to reduce the duration of impact to the adjacent community members from 4 years to 2 and kind of have that multi multi project approach going on at the same time, and then finally it'll provide us some greater flexibility as far as how we want to stage construction for the interchange and specifically. Elks Lane. The interchange project is the project that's planned to install Elks Lane. If we're able to incorporate that in some way to the the creek bridge project construction timeframe, that will be another means of ingress egress to that area for for folks, and so that provides some additional flexibility as well. So you'll have some cost savings as far as combining professional service. You'll have some reduced perhaps some reduced inconvenience for for adjacent community members. And then, finally, you most we believe you'll probably have also reduction in beta cost for one or both of the projects in that. anyone who perhaps is bidding on the interchange project would likely bid to do the creek bridge project as well because they are right next to each other it's a lot of similar work and it allows them to capture both the personnel that they have there already and it gives them more control too they don't have to work with another entity to make sure that um Their staging can happen, they are that entity so there's benefit there too, and so. yeah logically one would think that there will be some cost savings and some added value to the Community from that the the inverse side is that is inflationary cost done the math. On it, if we implement portions of the va and delay to 2029 assuming that we're all on schedule and we hit the 2029. we're still saving about five million dollars worth of cost in the creek bridge project which is five million dollars of of of cost that would likely be able to be transferred out to address some other city need excuse me sorry um okay one question council remarks

Yeah, just a practical question. From what I've read, the present bridge is not adequate at all. In fact, it's been kind of red tagged, correct?

It's not adequate for the operational uses of the facility.

So if both projects were bid at the same time, I'm not a construction person, but how would these great big machines that you need to do the work, would they be able to go over the existing bridge? Or don't you have to make a stronger bridge before you can have all that heavy duty construction machinery going over it?

Sure, there'll be larger equipment that's used to construct portions of this project. Some will come in over the existing creek bridge. Some will come in through Elks Lane. Some will come in from Delidio Drive in the San Luis Drive area. into that point. And some will get off on northbound US 101 at Prado and stage in that area. So there's multiple different ways for the contractors to reach the site. Not knowing the exact weight of the equipment that we're talking about, of course, we'll make the bridge of reports available to the contractors so they can see the load limitations there. It's currently signed and is adequate to convey a legal load. So the the H that H 20 80,000 pounds is basically it's 20,000 pounds per axle so it's currently rated to be able to handle that anything in excess of that one wouldn't be allowed to go over the bridge.

Right now, or during construction as well, so it would be kind of a workaround in terms of the strategy of how they would actually access the worksite. They don't all have to go over the bridge.

Yeah, correct. Yeah. And honestly, I wouldn't even call it a workaround because that's something that we're going to have to do no matter what. So whatever load that we're planning on hauling that's in excess of the legal allowable amount will be required to make alternate paths to get where they need to go.

All right. So I guess it's a question of the critical path of what you do first, what you do second. Yeah. Thank you.

Council Member Boswell.

If we delayed construction of the bridge to 29 and then the interchange is further delayed, what would we do? Would we go ahead and start the bridge or would we sort of permanently tie

the bridge to the interchange project. Yeah. My strategy that I would recommend to council right now would be to I mean, if you're generally okay with that, that idea is to kind of give us the the direction that yeah, that let's move forward with that direction. What we would still do is we believe it's going to take 12 months to get this work done. And so our intent is to get the work done within the 12 months and create a shovel ready package. for implementation. At that point in time, we'll have additional 12 months of knowledge on the Prado interchange and have a better understanding of is it still on schedule, is it still achievable within the timeframes that we're thinking it's going to be, and we can make that judgment call on whether We wanna delay the Creek Bridge project to align with the interchange project to start in the summer of 2029, or if the interchange project has slipped in such a way that it makes sense for us to move forward with it now. Ultimately, we would come back with our best professional recommendation for council's consideration, and you would have that ability to either approve that or not approve that with the authorization to advertise staff report.

Thank you. I'm gonna go ahead and stop you right here. We're gonna do a little break and see you back all in 10 minutes. Well, thanks for the little break and I'll pass it back to you, Mr. Horn.

Thank you very much. I have four more slides and then I'll be done. I've been telling everyone that when I practiced this in my living room, it only took 15 minutes. So I apologize for the duration. So one additional kind of smorgasbord of ideas I'd like to kind of get your opinion and direction on is Elks Lane and then the Class 1 shared use path on Elks Lane. And so the staff met with the Active Transportation Committee Don't have the date, but about a month ish so or go to kind of go over the value analysis work. That we've done for the creek bridge and give them an update on the product interchange project as well. And one of the items that we discussed at that point in time was the idea of including a class one path on elks lane. And so the rendering that you'll see Here is a rendering the consular team did for us. And so you'll see Prado Road, you'll see the new Prado Road Elks intersection 40 Prado RTA and see the new Elks lane kind of constructed going behind 40 Prado behind RTA in front of the drive in and kind of reconnecting back to the existing Elks lane. Just after the corner. So to implement this work, we'll need to do construction. We'll need to do some right away work. We'll need to coordinate with property owners. And one of the thoughts that the ATC had was, hey, perhaps we should be thinking about putting a class one path in Elks Lane while we're doing that coordination work for the interchange project. Currently that's not included in our scope of work currently it's not shown in the city's active transportation plan. But for council's consideration, they made a recommendation that next time we update the active transportation plan we look at making that change to explain that kind of identify. That is a path for a future class one installation so generally high level conversation was that this connection this pathway down Alex lane is something that's. fairly achievable more achievable than other paths to kind of north, south in the city and it's a lower volume road and Jason rose, perhaps like Madonna. Or high gear street as far as vehicle traffic, so this might be an ideal location for a class one path for consideration. With that they also made some recommendations for additional broadway changes for a segment of the roadway and we're full support of that change there for implementation. segment three of the project but one of the considerations for council is do we want to look at right away while we're doing the interchange work and do we want to update the active transportation plan just As far as design level of completion, cost impacts or analysis thereof, we haven't done any of that. We have the idea, but we want to make sure before we start doing this work and incurring those costs that it's something that actually Council supports and wants us to work on. For implementation, if we get that direction, we'll start doing those cost estimates. It can be rolled into some other work that we're doing right now, so it's not going to be a huge cost to make those, to get council more information on right-of-way cost for consideration in the future if you choose to move forward with that. So that's the Oaks Lane piece of tonight's equation. And gone over funding strategy, a little bit, but let me just hit it one more time because it's one it's complicated to this might Give you guys some additional thoughts or questions that you might want to talk about funding strategy and of course these these two tables. I hope they're visible for you. The table in the upper left hand corner is the interchange funding plan, and so that that's differentiated from the expenditure plan is one is how we're going to get the money and the other one's how we're going to spend the money. These are how we're going to get the money funding plans that the left hand side is the interchange and the right hand side is the Prado creek bridge. um so the funding plan for both projects uses multiple different sources to fund this project i think i saw some perhaps some agenda correspondence and it was more framed to there's not like one grant opportunity that's large enough to fund uh project x or y and that that is true there's not one but um typically most of our projects are funded by a myriad of different funding sources to for implementation And these are no exceptions. So it's a composite of local funds, either from capital outlay or or debt financing specific to the interchange regional funds, some from the county for the interchange specifically and from for the interchange specifically developer funds so people who develop land they either pay into one of our fee programs typically so the citywide tiff for san luis ranch specifically the airport area there's different programs that we have that we're utilizing to help fund both of these projects and then finally grants have a component in in both of these projects looking at the creek bridge project specifically that one is shown to be. fully funded actually we have we're anticipating an excess of funds in that project to about the $5 million area. Which might be able to use for perhaps a project that's really close to the creek bridge project and maybe similar in nature. That has a need so so the the funding plan is in excess and it's largely grant fund it's funded largely by the highway bridge program. And then again, so. I mean, let me walk through the interchange funding table real quickly for you to just point out a couple things for for you, because I know we were talking about this a little bit, and so, if you look at the comp oh sorry column 2930. you'll see under local funds you'll see a debt financing line and this debt financing line is the dollar amount that we previously talked about 85 point. You'll see the developer funds that we're using for implementation. Of the the project right now so they're the developer funds are largely paying for the the value analysis, the PS any work that's currently underway and we're showing it paying for right away right away costs and some utility costs and some construction costs as well to the around 25 million dollars. 20-ish million dollars, 24, I think, in total. um from from uh from san luis ranch to help offset some of these um some of these costs um additionally um the other two uh items i just want to point out to you we talked about this a little bit before but under the grants item you'll see a grants of 35 million dollars right here these are future grants and what we think slow cog perhaps will be putting into the project as far as contribution from our regional partners and our grant work so That was the 35 million that we're talking about that we need to receive 35 plus million dollars to be able to start removing costs from the debt financing line of this current expenditure plan so. That's in table form of what we kind of already talked about. So that's for your consideration. That's right there. And again, we're currently under the impression that we want to reduce the city obligation and the debt financing to the maximum extent practical by funding with grants. And until we hear otherwise, that's the path we'll go down. Our grant strategy. And so we've talked briefly about this before, but there's generally, excuse me, there's seven grants that we've analyzed as of right now for the interchange project and bleeding over into the Creek Bridge project a little bit. And so of the seven grants, it tells you the grant program name on the left hand column in the center column. It tells you whether it's state, or federal funds and it gives you the potential award amounts off over here to the side so just kind of an order of magnitude. dollar amounts that could be achieved for some of those projects that rank well within those grant programs, the three top three with the asterisk right here, this is what we're calling our tier one grant opportunities. Our tier ones represent, in our opinion, is the most achievable grant package, probably the most successful grant package that we'll be able to put together and offer for consideration. And these are all in some form or another underway right now. And so I don't. I don't know if we talked about the Highway Safety Improvement Program grant that we're currently working on an HSEP grant right now to support the Prado Creek Bridge. George Aguilar and his team are doing that work for us right now. And so the Creek Bridge likely will be eligible for about a $700,000 ask from that grant. grant application offset some of the traffic signal work that we're looking at in the cost benefit ratio. lines out well with the reasonable awarded cost benefit ratios that the program currently funded. Last year, so we're working on that application thinking that if we're able to offset some of the cost of the creek bridge that will ultimately help the product corridor. offset some of these future costs that we're looking at right now. Our local partnership program the state funding it's the the second row in this table, the local partnership program it's an item that we developed a letter and we sent it to the California transportation Commission ctc. for consideration and basically we're trying to get um our impact fee program looked at right now to ensure it meets the eligibility requirements for the local partnership program so the local partnership pro grant program is it's a bit of a self-help type of grant in that if you have something that's set up to Specifically for transportation projects, you are more likely to receive your likely or you are eligible to solicit grants from this program. And so we believe and we've provided them evidence that our our transportation impact the program is that self help and it makes sense for us to be included in this partnership program and we're waiting for their determination, we should have it. Very soon, if not, I say very soon so that's one of our funding sources as well, and one of our possible funding sources as well, and then, finally, is the the remaining third tier one grant is the solutions for congested corridor. um program and so that would be a grant application that's ultimately developed and submitted by slow cog um but we'll be working hand in hand um with them to to do that work um we're we have a meeting with slow cog and the ctc to do a bus tour um in september kind of in and around the slow cog jurisdiction to look at the different projects that they will be considering for City Council Chambers. City Council Chambers. So those are the three grant programs that are currently underway for implementation for these two projects that we're talking about. So after we get these moving, we'll look at the second tier and start working those as well. So really, the intent is to use our resources at the highest likelihood of return first, and then get the next tier going after those are in flight. So that's kind of the grant strategy, the high level overview there. And then finally, just the next step. So after we get done tonight and council gives us direction on the different items that we need to pursue, we'll be updating our plans and implementing council's direction. We'll be updating the bridge plans based on, in the value analysis work, kind of based on which items council wants to move forward with. We're continuing to pursue grant funding, um possibilities and with a resolution that's council will be considering tonight to authorize staff to actually apply for those grants and then bring that that package back to council for appropriation when it's actually received will help expedite that process for us a bit and help us turn around more timely on some of these grant applications City Council Chambers, City Council Chambers, Council will next see the interchange again, most likely on September 1 for this well if Council chooses to introduce the underground ordinance tonight, you will see this project again on the consent calendar for on September 1 for. The second reading of that ordinance so that would be the next time that you see the interchange project, following that will be the summer of 2027. it'd be the next time that counseling community there's a public meeting so in 2027 summer 2027 we're planning on having another Community meeting much like the Community meeting that we had in March to kind of. bring everyone in reintroduce into the project perhaps let them know or at with delivery of it, give them an update receive their feedback and then. prior to or shortly thereafter will be with council discussing right-of-way acquisition needs and getting authorization to move forward with that or not move forward with that. So that's kind of our next steps or the next times that formally these projects would be in front of the community council for consideration. And during your deliberation I have three different slides for the staff recommendation up there, so if you need to kind of go through them, this is the interchange one. These are the bridge recommendations and then, of course, is the the grant application that applies to both projects and we can go through those and working from the. the PowerPoint if you would like to do that. And then finally, 15 minutes later, the team is available for questions. And thank you for your patience and your time.

Thank you so much, and thank you for accepting our questions throughout the presentation versus our normal process. I think there's 10 different recommendations in here as you just went over, and that's a lot to go through, and a very complicated project as well. So thank you very much. So before I move forward, I just want to make sure, is there any public comment at this point?

I have no speaker cards.

Okay. With no speaker cards online or in person, I'm going to kind of muddle the questions and deliberations in case I feel that as we have some deliberation, more questions may come up. So I want you to feel comfortable to be able to ask the questions. I'd love to kind of separate this since there are so many different issues. I'm thinking we talk about the utility district first, then the bridge, and then the interchange. How do y'all feel about that? Do you make thumbs up or thumbs down, Emily? I'm sorry, Vice Mayor. Okay, thank you. Okay. So let's talk about the utility district first. I'm hoping that feels a little more streamlined, especially because this is something that we've asked staff to do, is every chance we get, we want to move forward with utilities to be undergrounded. As mentioned today, accidents and safety, but also fire and other emergencies that we have found that undergrounding as much utilities as possible is our goal today and going forward climate for climate safety reasons as well. So all of that to be said, I'm very much for moving the utility district forward. I don't have major questions with this. I had some questions around electrical work and how if that would affect our local electricians. I talked to our city manager and Mr. Horne about PG&E and trying to understand if there were any questions that I should be aware of that I'm missing, but I feel pretty confident with that. How about you all? Vice Mayor.

Yeah, Mayor, do you mind actually giving a little bit more information about what you learned about local hire and electricians?

Absolutely, you know I met with our local IBW and I was asking around, and actually our UA 403 was asking around our utility district and did they see any changes they would want to make in this for potential CWA in the future, PLAs in the future, and there's a lot of work already being done at the state level of how to involve the or incorporate the utility districts in future CWAs and PLAs so they community workforce agreements so they didn't see any um large concern with that and as far as um will our local workers be able to work with the underground utilities absolutely that's already something that's in process these days

Thank you for that additional information. I'm also comfortable moving forward with the underground utility district and appreciate my colleagues' questions about funding splits on that. So we'll leave it there.

Thank you. Council Member Shoresman.

Yeah, I appreciate staff's answers to the questions. I mean, it's always a bummer to hear that $9 million are going to be added to the cost of the project in order to meet our other goals, which are, you know, as you outlined, Mayor, the value of undergrounding is pretty important to this overall project. It's just a You know, it's an unfortunate we'll talk about this more later with some of the other things and aesthetics that everything costs money. So unfortunately, that it adds $9 million to the project is not great, but it seems like a necessary piece if we're going to continue to move this project forward.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Yeah, I'm I support the idea of the undergrounding and creating that new utility district. I think it's it's a good idea for a lot of reasons. My one hesitancy would be in terms of the cost to cap slow with 46 Prado. Yeah. And I'd like to you know, that's something that's a bridge we can cross, so to speak later. But I'm hoping that it doesn't burden CAPSLO to the point that they can't go forward with that project, which is family housing. But yes, I do support it. Thank you.

Thank you. Very well said. Councillor Marks, that is something that was also in my mind as we were talking about this earlier and Mr. Horne was presenting on this is we don't want to see lower income housing and family housing be negatively affected by this. Council Member Boswell.

Yeah, thanks for those comments. I agree as well. Yeah, I'm supportive of this. And I believe for this one, we'll need a motion, correct? This is an ordinance.

Yeah. Thank you. And Council Member Shoresman.

Sorry, just to sort of chime in on the discussion about 46 Prado. I guess in my mind, I was thinking that these improvements might actually help that project. Is that a possibility or am I way off base? I didn't view it until you all mentioned that it might hinder the project as a potential damage or cost to that project.

I don't think you're off base with that. Thought is basically, we need to do some work to cross Prado that the city be implementing with with the project which likely they would need to implement with their project anyway, and so we would likely pick up that installation it's really hard to know exactly. What cost increase would be passed on to 46 Prado? I'm not quite sure what their electrical plans look like. But rest assured that we've been coordinating with 46 Prado. We intend to continue to coordinate with 46 Prado. And we're working together to ensure that they They're aware of it and we're making smart decisions that impact the least amount of funding to be able to make all of our projects move forward. So we're working that angle as well, knowing that they're important community partner.

That's good. I think they have a long ways to go to so not probably not they're thinking about that too closely at this point, but thank you.

agreed and thank you, thank you for working with them and working with them closely and hopefully we're early enough on in the stage of their construction and for their project or sorry they're designed for their project as well that hopefully that will help Council remarks yeah just another question do we want to go ahead and have a motion regarding the undergrounding.

and and then keep going yeah yeah this is a big package all right i would like to move that we introduce a draft ordinance entitled an ordinance of the city council the city of san luis obispo california mending section etc to establish a new underground utility district 17 as per the staff recommendation perfect thank you councilmember schwarzman happy to second that

Thank you, and city clerk, can we have roll call?

Council Member Marks? Yes. Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Francis?

Yes.

Mayor Stewart?

Yes, and that motion passes 5-0. Thank you. So let's move down to the Prado Creek Bridge recommendations, which is the 7, 8, and 9. We'll come back to 10 once we've talked about the interchange. So seven is about the value analysis study, just for anyone who's listening. Eight is authorizing the finance director to make the following budget revisions. And then nine is adopting a resolution to move forward with the budget adjustments for the Prado Creek bridge replacement project. So any initial thoughts on the value analysis? Council Member Shoresman.

When I met with staff yesterday for a gender review I was kind of my reaction to this part of the item was didn't we already do that, because I we did talk about the value analysis on the bridge already and talked about. You know the the the funding the money that it was going to save us and the needs for the the Bob Jones bridge and and how that was going to impact potentially the bridge, and so I kind of thought we had already done this, to be honest, but. But it was clarified to me that the piece that we really didn't finalize was and and clarify was clarifying to me is that we still need to do the redesign to accommodate the value analysis. So with that, I'm fully on board with all of the bridge value analysis items that are here in 7. 8 seems a little bit of a cleanup of some budgetary things that we need to just clean up, and then also in support of the draft resolution as well. don't know if we want to comment now i mean i guess i just will um about preserving the opportunity for the bob jones extension as we go forward with elks lane it seems smart at this point to at least keep that in mind as a possibility right now and not you know if we if we get to the point where we want to include it in the active transportation plan in the next revision then based on the way this analysis goes i think that would be a good idea but at least for now at a high level i think it's important for us to keep that in our minds as we do the rest of the analysis thank you vice mayor

Yeah, I'm happy to jump in and go next because I agree wholeheartedly with everything that Council Member Shoresman just said. We've got the value analysis, which I think it feels like a no-brainer. And same for the others here. I really, really am excited about the idea of keeping the extension of the Bob Jones along Elks Lane front of mind as we move forward with this. So I will leave it there that I'm in favor of these three actions plus the Bob Jones.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Yeah. First, just one one additional question on the It's in the value analysis table one, item five, which is the replacing the walls with the rock slope protection. This seems to be, I mean, is it possible that we would not be able to move forward with this? It says that we need additional review or Because this is a big cost savings piece.

It is. It is possible that we won't be able to move forward with this piece. What we need to do is do the hydraulic analysis to ensure that. So rocks have a different frictional force than a soldier pile wall, so less water can go through a higher frictional area than the other design. As we currently plan, we want to use rocks and there's a possibility we wouldn't be able to use rocks. Would the secondary approach be, we'll just implement it per design right now? I would say probably not. We'd look at perhaps a secondary system that we could install, maybe different than a soldier pile wall that's maybe more expensive than the rocks for production, but still is At least more less expensive than the soldier pile wall just because of the benefits of of doing that work and then also staying out of the. The Bob Jones creek area so sorry for the long rambling answer so yes there's a probability that we wouldn't be able to do it, but we look for an alternative and update Council if that occurred in the rationale for it.

And that'd be figured out before we went to bid for a contract.

That is correct, yeah.

So we would know at that time our estimated project cost.

You would know at authorization for advertising. You'd have the updated engineer's estimate, the probable cost, and then an explanation on why or why not we could not implement council direction.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm also supportive of these items and the recommendation staff has put in table one. I'm quite happy to see that we're able to follow the ATC recommendation to and hopefully not have to move the Bob Jones Trail Bridge at all. That would be wonderful. And if we're going to comment on Elks, I also think it would be a good idea for us to look at that possibility because it just seems like, you know, the ATC identifies the creek Putting that portion of the Bob Jones Trail continuing to follow the creek northward just seems so unlikely to ever happen with all the complications around being in the creek. It certainly seems like in the short term, we would be much more successful continuing the Bob Jones North with an Elks Lane alignment. So I definitely think we ought to be looking at that. This is our chance to possibly do that. It won't exist again if we don't keep an eye on it now. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Yes, I agree with what Councilmember Boswell was saying and Councilmember Shoresman as well. I think saving money is always a good idea and I also just think that it's a good mantra to follow as we go on with this project because it's always been the huge question with this whole project has been where does the money come from? And we have just proceeded decade after decade and said, well, we're just going to do it and we're going to put the money together any way we can when we have to do it. And so I think this is a really important next step. And yeah, if we can do that Elks Lane bike path and create a safer kind of bike path along that corridor, that's great, too. And with the Bob Jones Trail, yeah, I mean, if we can You can save money by not doing something that you thought you were going to be doing that's a you know simplifying your life that's good, so I support it, thank you.

Thank you, and thank you to my colleagues. I very much agree. I mean, we've asked for value analysis for a reason, is how do we save money, still stay safe, still achieve what we want, and still attempt to look good. And I do think that I'm thankful for ATC suggesting the class one lane, bike lane for Elks, I think, Elks Lane, I think as much as it's possible for us to help people get around our city, that's our goal, whether it's through walking or cycling, et cetera, or driving. And I say et cetera because it can be, you know, bike, strollers for that matter, one wheels, I mean, scooters, you name it. So just really looking at how do we help people get around is always our goal. Thank you for this, and I think we're ready to move forward to a motion on this bridge. Do you feel yes? No, that's a different. We're just doing 7, 8, and 9 for the bridge. No, not yet. We're going to go back to 10 after we do the interchange. Thank you so much. Oh, we did bring in six. I'm so sorry. I think we were just mentioning that. Do we need to bring that into this since that's more of the interchange? I think let's keep the interchange with interchange if that's okay. Yes. Okay. Council Member Schorzman.

uh let's try this can uh can i make a motion supporting staff's recommendation in items six seven eight and nine on the slides And then that covers that covers the it is in conjunction with the product road interchange project I didn't specify the yeah got it make you think thank you just I would that's why I just listed the numbers on the screen, thank you, then specify the bridge or the. So that would be my motion staffs records to support stacks or staffs recommendations for items 678 and nine on the slides.

But six says Prado Road interchange project. So I just wanted to make sure that just the concept of six. Yes. OK.

Thank you.

Sorry. Councilor Boswell.

That was a motion, right? Second.

Thank you. All right. So we have a motion and a second. City Clerk, can we have roll call?

Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Marks? Yes. Vice Mayor Francis?

Yes.

Mayor Stewart?

Yes. And the motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much to my colleagues for making that all make sense and work through. So now we'll come back to Item 1 through 5, Prado Road Interchange Recommendations. I'm sorry. two through five Prado Road interchange recommendations, the final value analysis and the city manager to approve and execute the final Caltrans supplemental project report, the aesthetic theme and the gateway branding. So let's talk about the final value analysis first. Council Member Schwarzman.

Yeah, can I back up just for the sake of, because of some of the emails that we got with some pretty big questions like, should we even be doing this anymore? And I know we've talked about this project just even since I've been on council, this interchange has come to council several times in different parts of the process, but the costs have continued to rise over time. We anticipate that they're gonna continue to rise more debt financing, $85 million or more is a lot for our community, our size. So can you maybe back up, and sorry, I didn't prep you for this, but can you maybe back up and just describe, do we still need to do this project? Is the interchange something that this community needs? And what would happen if we didn't go forward?

Sure, just a real high-level overview of the benefits of doing the work on Prado and coupled with the Prado Road interchange. So the city's limited on the number of east-west corridors that we actually have. In the general plan, in our circulation element, we've been planning on making this connection for a very long time. Two, it helps us improve circulation. It reduces vehicle miles traveled, so there's a benefit ecologically by reducing less carbon. There's also a benefit safety-wise and for evacuations as well. And then, of course, the kind of the secondary component of installing, you know, a connection and some real active transportation improvements in there is the benefit of perhaps using your bicycle to make that connection instead of a vehicle. So there's there's community benefits to that. Secondarily, installing a new interchange increases the resilience of our existing interchanges at Los Osos Valley Road. Only one oh so so that one and Madonna road it currently both of those both of those interchange areas get congested they get impacted and they will continue to increase as far as the level of impact as the city grows and as the Community Jason to. to the city grows. This new connection provides more vehicle throughput for the community. It reduces those impacts. It reduces circulation time for the newly developed areas. It enhances our ability to perhaps develop in the southern portion of the city and their necessary improvements to kind of support future growth. Finally, I will say is there's benefit as well to U.S. 101 mainline and as far as higher speed accidents in twofold. One is the... The the pedestrian crossings us one on one, while it's not intended to function that way it does periodically happen, and it does periodically not in so well. So, providing a safe route across us one on one of this location has a benefit. There and then also allowing the appropriate kind of weave distance merge distance on us one on one for northbound on an off ramp. will reduce the likelihood of higher speed vehicle collisions as far as lower speed vehicles in front and higher speed vehicles coming back and impacting those vehicles to be able to maintain the appropriate speed. or more appropriate speed on on the freeway instead of a lesser or stopped speed at some of those exit locations. So those are some of the kind of the the high level benefits of the interchange. Did I miss something specifically?

No, I think you phrased it more as the the benefits to it. I was kind of asking I was asking what you know what would happen if we didn't sort of which you you did. You did answer you. I mean, I heard you say that there would probably be increased traffic on the surrounding the surrounding overpasses and intersections. There would be potential for more increased queuing maybe on the 101 and on the adjoining streets. And so you phrased it more positively maybe than negatively, which I was looking at, you know, what's the worst case scenario if we don't do this? So, you know, I think you got the answers out there. And the reason for doing it out there, you just had a slightly different slant on it.

Sorry, my glass is half full.

That's good. No, thank you. I appreciate that. I think it's important to step back and for people who haven't maybe been tuning into this all the way along to understand why we're here right now even talking about this. So pardon my backing up big picture, but it seemed necessary with some of the emails that we got. So thank you.

Thank you, and I think really when we look at some of the high commute times right now, we are already seeing some of the effects of that queuing. When we say queuing, just average layman's terms, we're talking about backed up all the way up to potentially Costco. target area if we let this continue on and on. And when you can't get through your streets, that's not safe on a regular basis for commuting or otherwise, and especially in case of an emergency. So I think that's one of the things that we have to kind of think about what we're talking about. City Manager, did you want to add into that before we move on?

Just one quick additional kind of looking out even farther into the future that we, we will we have a new housing element cycle coming upon us and will need to plan for accommodating additional units. And our ability to actually build out and accommodate those units will be significantly impacted if we do not provide a piece of infrastructure like this to address the very real safety impacts that will happen along the main line of the 101. So what will happen is that as we look at housing developments that might otherwise not trigger additional sequel reviews or require additional mitigations because of safety impacts related to additional trips. this will become potentially the issue stopping housing development from happening in our city. That's one of the struggles we have as a jurisdiction, just like most in the state, where we are required to accommodate a lot of units in the city for additional housing for reasons that make sense in terms of our overall just need for additional housing around the state, but without the funding necessary to provide for a huge project like this so that's a part of our grant process we'll be tying the realities of what will happen if we are not able to get this project done which will be a really difficult time for a lot of additional housing development and other needs in the community going forward for an indefinite amount of time until we look at making probably a very similar improvement in the future only look at cost escalations, you know, double, triple, you know, keep going in the hundreds of millions of dollars to put something similar in to address the safety impacts on top of all those other benefits that we're describing from active transportation. But the safety piece is incredibly important to think about now and then into the future.

And if Director Tway were here, I would ask her to remind us just how many projects have traffic mitigation hinging on this project. There's a lot of housing projects that have already currently either been constructed or in process that That when they were doing their development plans, it was based on this process of i'm sorry the product interchange project going through so without that it's a challenge, thank you, thank you, Council member marks.

Yes, I agree, but with both the city manager and the mayor on that also when you go back way way back to the last time we updated the land use and circulation element. This Prado Road overpass or interchange has been part of the traffic mitigation for our land use and circulation element, but then for all of the different housing projects that have gone on since then. And that's why the developers have been paying into these funds is traffic mitigation development fees. and development impact fees. And it was all planning, but it wasn't done for no reason. The projection is that as much as we might want people to walk and bicycle and all that, that we're still going to be in cars. And when you bring more people into the city, By building more housing your that means you're going to be bringing in more cars, so I think we have to face the facts and this this project is is definitely necessary. Thank you.

Do you want to share your opinions on value analysis, right now, or do you want to wait no.

I thought I already did that yes value analysis is okay sorry yeah maybe I missed that sorry well I'll do it again we did it we did it for the bridge but now we're doing for the interchange oh okay yes I'm in favor of the value analysis for the interchange yes perfect thank you councilmember Boswell just first kind of a another question

It's funny, I can sit up here and be very confident making decisions about tens of millions of dollars, but once you ask me questions about aesthetics, I get very nervous. I've never trust my judgment on aesthetics. Do we have time to send this to the ARC, for example? I mean, we have a citizen advisory body of experts in design and aesthetics. Could we use them to get some help here?

We could. We could send the project to the ARC, have them review it, and they could give us what they want to see here, and we could do that. The impact is just time. I'm not sure what their calendar looks like. I'm not sure. They are not very busy, I can tell you that. And I'm not sure if one of these three themes would be acceptable to the ARC or if they would like to see revisions to those themes submitted back to ARC for review, kind of fine-tuning or additive effort there. Whatever the the ultimate timeline is between now and kind of getting back to the Council for the aesthetic thing that we want to move forward with would be the delay that's impacting the supplemental project report, which everything it's a cumulative delay. So if it takes us 3 months, we're gonna have to figure out. how to make up three months for the start of construction or do something to minimize that time. So whatever that time frame is, we need to figure out a way to cheat our way back on the schedule.

What are we anticipating right now for when we would finalize the supplemental project report?

That's a great question. Hold on a second. So i've conferred this time, hopefully I won't get mixed up on direction so right now we're looking at submission to caltrans of the supplemental project report kind of in March 2027 the supplemental project report is. What you've seen as an attachment with about with a dozen attachments into that document which includes the 65% plan so which we're developing right now. So that is, what's that, three, six months from now for implementation there. Still, if we have some delay in whatever the aesthetic theme that we want to have, we're still going to have to make up that time somewhere. It might be that we're able to cut some of the time off of the supplemental project report And get it in a little bit faster than whatever that delay is but we'll be looking at ways that we can make up. That time, so I just want to be crystal clear is like is you know it's it's. it's not something that's built into our schedule right now and we'll do our best to make up for any delays that are in their schedule, but it'll be a delay and I can't really. Worst case, it's whatever the time amount is that we're delayed from now until we ultimately get the decision. That's the worst case scenario. But we'll be looking at ways to make that up in a different manner as well.

I mean, you could be doing other

And we on this piece is going on, and we would it's just at some point in time that's going to become a critical path for the SPR. And I don't know what that actually looks like right now to be able to to provide you the it's going to be two months, three months or 50% of whatever the timeframe is. But I think it's going to be a critical path. so i'm giving you the worst case scenario because um one thing i'll just caveat here is i i try to give you guys the worst case scenario but the worst kind of like probable case scenario and not go um way overboard but um yeah i just i don't like to be able to not make my commitments to to this this board and can i throw out a i i question idea for maybe a compromise um

So right now, I was curious if you're good with the final value analysis, and then we could come back to the aesthetic. But I'd love to hear what y'all think on the aesthetic. I have some real clear opinions, and I would love to share those. And I think that they might have an ability to have some continued updating from arc maybe going forward so i i don't know or i'm just kind of trying to talk about this a little bit can we kind of like talk it out a little bit before we decide the like this is a major barrier yet you know i mean let's just kind of talk it out a little bit first is that okay yeah yeah i do have some thoughts on it as well i just i'm just sitting there we have an arc like they're the experts like

This is a perfect use for their kind of expertise, and I do think it would ultimately improve what we're trying to do there. So that was my main thoughts on that. I can speak to the other items. I'll also take a step back. As you know, at our previous council meetings on the interchange, I've expressed a significant amount of skepticism. I even voted against allocating funding the last time we were faced with allocating funding. I continue to question whether the level of benefit for the Prada Road interchange is worth the cost. It's not that there aren't benefits. There definitely will be some benefits. But are there $150 million worth of benefits, and particularly thinking of the kinds of other transportation improvements we can make in our community for that level of funding? I continue to be skeptical that that's the case. Moreover, the level of debt financing, I mean, there's simply no way I would support this level of debt financing at this time. I'm obviously very hopeful that we'll be very successful in finding additional grant funding to cut down that level of debt financing that would be necessary. But the annual payments on $85 million of debt financing, the things that we could do in the city with those annual payments would be significant, very significant. So I continue to remain skeptical of this project. However, the items in front of us tonight are actually reducing the cost of the project, and they're also directing staff to go out there and do everything you can to find find that funding so we can reduce debt financing so i'm going to be supportive of what's being proposed tonight but i want to be clearly on record that i continue to question whether question the value of the overall project as it currently stands A couple of things on the specific items. Do you want to do aesthetics as its own little discussion? Okay. So I'll just comment on the other ones. So two is fine. The only thing I would ask for three is that once that Because we're going to delegate authority here, whenever we delegate authority, I want to report on how that authority was used. So I'd like to see a memo once that supplemental project report is finalized back to council, just letting us know on what the, not every, you know, strike through and underline, but what were the significant changes that staff made before sending that report.

and then um yeah so that's the other the rest of them are the aesthetic stuff so i'll stop there that's that sounds good and then we'll come back to aesthetics and gateway and so we'll just kind of do two and three uh councilman shorts and then i want to get back to vice mayor she hasn't been able to speak yet but i say i feel like you have a question on that yeah

Just a question for Council Member Boswell, because in the language there on the slide, it says in regards to the SPR, the Supplemental Project Report, upon completion of the remaining technical appendices, provided no substantive changes are made to the project scope, purpose, or core recommendations, are you still looking for a memo even if there's no substantive changes made?

Yeah, I would like just some sort of reporting out that, yes, some changes were made. Either they were minor wording changes, or we adjusted a dollar amount by a very small amount. I just want to know. I want some reporting, one, it was done and submitted, and then just a memo briefly explaining back to us if anything was changed. I understand that if they're big changes, they're going to come back to us. But if they're small changes, I still want to know generally what they were. i guess i would it's literally just editorial like we corrected spelling okay i probably don't need a memo on that but okay i guess i would look to the assistant city manager to see if that seems reasonable

That's very reasonable can do. We look forward to the opportunity to speak with our partners at Caltrans about some of the recent changes and other things we anticipate around landscaping. So that would be a great opportunity to share back what we learned through that process.

Yeah, I have questions about landscaping too. So that'd be good. Okay, and I'll let I see the vice mayor's got her hand up.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate to my first question tonight. There's absolutely no world where I'm going to be okay moving forward with $85 million in debt service for this project, but I'm feeling optimistic since I hear optimism from staff that they are going to find substantial funding options out there for us. And items two and three, as Council Member Boswell pointed out, are moving forward with making sure that we're cutting costs where possible. So I'll be supportive of those two items.

Great, thank you, and I agree as well. I mean, I think we're all trying to figure out how do we make this as inexpensive, probably doesn't seem like a right word, but trying to keep the cost down as much as we possibly can. And some of the things that we're doing here today and trying to make it as shovel-ready as possible helps us be able to get access to some of those grants. So I think that that's what we're going for. I think it's... I don't want to say it's a given, but I feel like you've heard from a lot of us on council through the years that we're really not excited about a huge price tag. And I think that staff has heard that through the years. And honestly, since before even all of us sitting here, the five of us sitting here. So I think if there's ways to reduce costs, that's what we're doing. And that's why we've come back with value analysis for both the bridge and for the interchange. So I appreciate what we're doing here. really hoping, but it's more than just a hope and a wish and a dream. There's true expertise in engineering and design that's gone behind this and true discussions with some of our partners already as far as from the city to the state to the county, and we need to keep doing that. So I feel confident moving forward with that. Council Member Marks.

Yeah, as to item two, it is a receive and file, the final. We don't really have to vote on that. But I do want to say there's also our bond rating. And we're already in debt for the latest parking garage. And so in terms of what possible future debt we might take on, it's not just How do I say it's not just whether it's acceptable to counsel it's also whether it's acceptable to our bond rating and we may end up in a situation where we would need a certain amount of to take on a certain amount of debt to move forward. And we would get the red light from our bond rating, say, sorry, you guys, you just can't do it. And so there is a practical reality there. But I do think there is great value in moving this project to the next phase. In terms of authorizing the assistant city manager, I think that makes sense. And getting feedback also makes sense, just so that we know that we are still in the loop. So I think we're, are we, I support three. And then I think, at some point, I guess I would like to make the motion that we authorize the assistant city manager to approve and execute the final trans CalTrans supplemental project report, as per the staff recommendation.

Thank you for that motion. We do have one comment, and I definitely have a question based on what you just said. So I'm going to ask that question real quick. If I remember correctly, I know we'd have to, with the debt financing, we had to figure out Our our assets and we confirm and we go through that entire process with the bonds, but at the same time, as far as our rating I believe our rating is pretty high after we went through our last parking the cultural arts district parking structure that we were at like a plus of that correct city manager. double a correct which is a still a very high bond rating um and we do get that updated on a regular basis and so we haven't had any trouble maintaining that over time great thank you just trying to make sure i have all the pieces in my mind that i can possibly have at this point in time which obviously also changes often so um thank you council member shore's been

I'll keep this relatively short with relation to two and three. Obviously we're receiving and filing, and we don't need a motion on that. But I am in favor of receiving and filing the final value analysis and appreciate all the work staff have done and continue to do to bring the cost down on this project. I'll agree with my colleagues, and I I feel like I've been pretty clear when we've talked about the debt financing piece. If we were voting on that today, I wasn't very excited about supporting $75 million in debt financing. So I'm really not excited about supporting $85 million in debt financing. And I know that there are benefits to our community, but there are benefits in building this piece of infrastructure for our entire region. This is a regional project. I think we need to keep marching to that drum because it is not just San Luis Obispo residents that are gonna use this piece of infrastructure and are gonna wait in the longer queues and have more traffic issues if we don't build it. It's gonna be everybody that comes into or through the city. So I think that needs to be continued to be, to be noted whenever we have a chance. I'll be curious and happy to see a memo back on any changes in the final SPR, because I know there's still some negotiating that's happening around that with Caltrans. And so I think it's important that we do hear what comes of it in the end. And I have some thoughts about aesthetics and also some questions, but it sounds like we're going to do that after.

Thank you so much. And I appreciate that. Yeah, we'll come back to aesthetics. So we have a motion from Council Member Marks. Council Member Shoresman, did you want to second?

I can second that.

Great, thank you. I don't see any more hands or comments, so City Clerk, can we have roll call?

Council Member Marks? Yes. Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes, and the motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much for helping us get through this 10-point process. So next we have, let's go with 4 and 5. I'm actually going to kind of go 5 and 4, if that's OK. So with the gateway, I think the Stonehenge picture there was pretty clear. I think a gateway is good. I have lots of appointments, lots of thoughts on the aesthetics, but having it so that as you are driving without needing to put on your glasses that you can see the city name, I think that's really important. I think that having it not out in Los Osos Valley Road where you're going around a big swing of a curve is good as far as, I don't know if that was the first reason that Rotary came together and said we want to put together this sign right here or what Caltrans said or where that came from. Maybe at some point we get that history that would be kind of fun, but I do think, having a larger gateway is very helpful for quite honestly all four points of our Community, but you really only look at three because you know greenbelt. I will just say my two cents on the base theme, do you mind putting up that beautiful picture of the rendering. Well, first and foremost. We're all talking about money. It is the least expensive. So of course, that is the first thing that comes to my mind when I look at this. But it is also clean and streamlined. I do like how there's the nine sisters in the top left. I wouldn't mind if it was in the fence. I also wouldn't mind if it was on the fence, because you could see it from the front and the back, meaning either direction, north and south, I should say. The other part with the San Luis Obispo You it's hard to read when it's kind of shifted like that I think centered and real clear real bright big lights when it's more sorry big letters when it's in the night vision then split up, you can see it's very beautiful it's lovely. but all times of day you should be able to see the sign clearly. Obviously we want the trees and we also don't want the trees to grow into the letters. So I know this is just a rendering, it's just pictures, but I just want to make sure as we talk about this landscaping that we think about the long term and as it all grows out, how is that going to work? I don't want to have to cut down a tree because it covers up the word obispo. And we just got San Luis Obie. So just, you know, thinking about some of that. The other part is we have, I forget the very technical word you used, but basically I think of the copper patina that we have underneath the North Toro. That seems to be a theme that we are using more and more. That could be our avocado green of the 70s today. I don't know. But the point being that I think keeping consistent sounds good to me when it comes to big metal letters that we're going to keep for a long time. So that was just my two cents on this. I really don't want to have number two. I have lots of personal feelings about it, but bottom line is we're not Santa Barbara, and that is Santa Barbara's look. So I don't think we need to look at number two as the mission style. It just doesn't seem logical. Like I said, other than the fencing. As far as the towers, which I also find a little CMC-ish, but I think that the fact that we could help stop people from climbing did bring me pause and wanted to say I'm open to that, but I definitely think those look a little prison-ish, so I'd love to kind of back that out a little bit um in some way shape or form i'm game for the prado on number three on the on the towers but i don't think it's necessary um and again on the side there with the abutments i think just keeping it simple trying to keep the cost down maybe in the future we could do a mural um that would be great uh like weekend like we did under north toronto greenway so that's my two cents council member marks thank you um

yeah i uh i have a lot of thoughts about this but i do believe that the base uh design is is uh the most efficient i do not um like the way that the word obispo if you get uh is offset I think we need to have the whole name of the city all together in one line. And it needs to, yeah, and if for some reason you have to put the Obispo underneath the San Luis, why not just center it? So to me, that's sort of quirky. It looks odd. And I think it would really be better to have all three syllables of our city's name together. In terms of the fencing, I really think that the fencing on the existing LLVR bridge is great. I like it and I like the little monuments that are there already on the LLVR bridge. And I like the lighting pictures that look down that are slightly. Slightly old fashioned but not not really but anyway, I think we should consider utilizing some elements for that from our. Lo vr bridge. The. I have second I don't know my thoughts about having the morose deck decorating the railing. When you're surrounded by the morals who are real morals they're real morals and there they are, and then we have little pictures of them or little design i'm not sure how that actually works for me I don't find it offensive I just think it's kind of strange. So. In terms of the gateway branding, I really think that, yes, we need to have it, and we should have it in that location. It makes a lot of sense. The LOVR location is, among other things, it's dangerous if people take their eyes off the road right there. Cars tend to go over the side. I don't know if you notice that. You know people are thinking, how do I get off and you know there's been a number of accidents and that on that particular curve, so I think it's much better to have something that's clear visible and straightforward. So that's my input.

Thank you, Council Member boswell.

Yeah, I think generally on the same page. I do support, I am generally in favor of the base theme, partly due to cost, but partly just due to simplicity. I have similar concerns with number two. I don't feel like it's us. And number three feels like there's a lot going on. A little too much. The other, and yeah, we definitely, you know, there's so much confusion over the name of our city already. Let's, you know, all three words are important. Let's make sure they're all equally prominent. The railing, I mean, I could go either way. I do kind of like the third option's railing, partly because I think it also adds a little more aesthetic for the people on the bridge. I'm not overly what I do not like Prado on there because when it didn't even say Prado road so it just says Prado so most people are not going to know what that even means or they're going to think it means there's a meadow nearby which there's not exactly where it's not a meadow. So and then the only other thing I would add is because I always immediately zeroed in on this was maintenance. You know, it looks tricky. That looks like a maintenance nightmare and very hard to access for maintenance crews. And so I would just pay a lot of attention to how are we going to maintain if we're putting plants there, how are those going to be maintained? um and uh and how are we gonna keep things clean and you know if we get graffiti down there how easy is it to get to the to that and clean it so i would just pay a lot of attention to making sure this is as little maintenance as possible yeah that's all i've got to say thank you councilman okay for well for people who don't consider themselves design experts we all have

Which I I knew we would all have a little bit different slant on it, too. I I think we actually largely agree on simpler is better, and i'm hopeful, especially since the base bit is the or the base option is the least expensive one that that's that's kind of my priority is less expensive and safe. And then aesthetics and maybe matching with you know some of the elements on the love our overpass because that's our most recent new overpass so I like the idea of maybe tying that in a little bit I had the same question about landscaping and covering up the words and also just seems. I understand that the the monument sign that we have now is tiny and you can't really see it, but it also seems a shame to spend money on tearing that down and putting. Money into putting a new a new landmark that's not really even at the beginning of our city, but it seems like that's the direction we're going so i'm i'm not opposed to it, but I do think that it should be all one row. all at the same level, like my colleagues are saying, and hopefully that would prevent the landscaping from growing in front of it a little bit because there's definitely a maintenance issue there. And I do like the idea of some sort of column or safety feature I think that was the biggest I don't really. care too much about the aesthetic I can see what you were saying about looking a little prison like maybe I thought it was supposed to look a little more mission style like I don't know that it does, but um. But I think the safety feature of that element if there's another less expensive and still nice looking way, then it doesn't need to be the columns. But the the safety issues are the safety aspects of that are what seemed like the most important part of it. There was also one One picture that showed we're not really talking about the Prado bridge, but there's a sort of an entry sign to the bridge. That we were asked to weigh in on that I think is part of the base option and it says Prado bridge. And I don't I would just prefer maybe something simpler I don't know that we need to call out the name of the bridge and just have it sort of match the aesthetic of the whole area. The bridge and we're sort of designing the bridge and the and the overpass and sort of along one themes, I think they should be sort of in the same style. I do like the seven sisters on the fencing a little bit I like that aesthetic. But I like it a little better on the wall, but again that's just a personal preference I think it makes the fencing look a little nicer and you'll see it more from the roadway below to so anyway that's my two cents on the aesthetics.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Yeah, I'm actually surprised to hear as much consensus as I'm hearing, so good job, everybody. Yeah, I actually, yeah, I really think, and I think I'm hearing this from you all too, but, you know, aesthetics do matter. I spend a lot of time driving around the state and the country, and every time somebody's done something really interesting with a gateway or an overpass, I end up talking about it, thinking about it, particularly with some placemaking elements to it. And I think this is an opportunity to do a little bit of placemaking. And I was hearing a lot of people kind of focusing on the base and then kind of talking about a few additional elements. Really, it feels like a lot of people are essentially landing on the modern but a pared down version of that. And forgive me if I'm out of line with what you all have been saying. I really do enjoy the sisters appearing on that overpass, the modern version. I like it on the wall itself. I like it on the fencing. I do also think that there's merit to having those vertical elements in there for safety. A little ambivalent on whether or not the Prado name is on there, Prado Road is on there, but those vertical elements just add a little bit of interest. i know there's some hesitation about maintenance and whatnot for plantings but i've seen so many beautifully done landscape installations and if we could do a simplified version of those tiers like the base model has fully agree with you all that we need to have our name appear as one solid line the name of the city here is one solid line on there not broken up I did have a little bit of a softness for the nice geometric elements on the underpass. But of course, since we're talking about costs here, that'd be something I would be willing to let go, especially since I hear a lot of other takers for that. But I am very much in favor of the elements of the sisters on the fencing, the elements of the sisters on the overpass itself, the verticals in the style of the modern installation and San Luis Obispo appearing on one line, and I would like some nice landscaping. So I'll leave it there.

Well, thank you so much, everybody. I had a feeling we'd all have some opinions about aesthetics. But that being said, I think Councillor Boswell you have a very good point is there are people who have expertise in this and some of the people with expertise probably created this, so I want to you know use that I want to be very respectful for the people who created all these options for us and so. I still think there's an option where. ARC could at least take a look at this and say hey as these little tweaks that we're talking as little modifications that we're talking about. Can we still move forward with what we're suggesting today we've already obviously made some like. direction for what it would look like, but at the same time, is there any way that we can pull them and say hey can you put in some input to. I do think that would be appropriate, because they are the design. We put them on the ARC for a reason, or we pointed them on the ARC for a reason. So that's just my question for you.

OK. Yeah. One thought I just had when we were sitting here talking, when I was listening to you guys talk about the different themes, I wonder if this would work for everyone, is perhaps council gives us the base theme and any type of changes you would like to see and have us take that to ARC, make sure that, you know, They see the finished product they they they like it or they give us a tweak or two that we implement with that we include that with the supplemental project report and we include that in the random that we're going to send counsel with the memo to the changes to yes that's.

what I was hoping to hear. We all just talked about how we want to get as much grant money as possible and do whatever we can to make this more viable financially. And so to me, I don't want to stop the shovel-ready aspect that we're trying to make this project. But at the same time, I do want to hear any additional expertise that we could have in this. So I love that idea. I'm going to have Assistant City Manager, I think you had some input.

TEXTED HER FRIEND TIMMY AND SHE SAID THE ARC IS AVAILABLE. SO IT'S JUST A MATTER OF PUTTING THE MATERIALS TOGETHER AND OBVIOUSLY GETTING THE DIRECTION, HOW NARROW YOU WANT THE FIELD TO BE FOR THEM TO HAVE INPUT WOULD BE REALLY HELPFUL.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. I APPRECIATE THAT. COUNCILMEMBER BOSWELL.

NEW SPEAKER I WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT THAT. I THINK WE SHOULD my opinion we should give some direction to the arc that we're not asking them to design this bridge we're asking them to provide us some additional input based on the designs that are being presented to them and one meeting yes i agree and i agree uh councilman shoresman

Yeah, so it sounds like you all will kind of take the suggestions already that we've given you and that's what you would take to the ARC for additional tweaks. Am I understanding that correctly?

Absolutely. So we'll take what you hear, what we hear, we'll include it in a new rendering that we'll bring to the ARC for their review and comment in one meeting. We'll take their comments, update the rendering, submit it with the supplemental project report and include that in the memo to council.

updating you on what changes occurred and here's the the before and after uh um renderings of what happened is that it sounds like a great great way to um include the arc to me and hopefully not slow things up which i think is what your point was thank you and city manager did you want to add to that thank you i just want to make sure that we are clear as staff on

The what we're hearing in terms of the direction, essentially, what is the rendering going to look like that we go back and and prepare and so. I will just offer what I heard and certainly we definitely want and need any clarification, so it sounded like there was consensus support for the base approach, but the parts that I got. Muddy on were essentially the the kind of overpass pieces so fence, are we doing posts, are we going to be referring back to the lo vr design, so the base part, I think we got clear on essentially the the design of the pedestal reflecting what is shown in essentially number one with the clarification that we want to make. The name and one line as long as it's you know visible and making sure that we meet. The goals there of making it something that people can see easily it's just the features of the actual kind of bridge part that I myself kind of wanted to make sure, is there consensus on what we should be putting in a rendering there. I in my head I couldn't picture if we're taking lo vr components, I think that shifts we haven't created one that looks like that some of what we did with number two was really king off of. What is already in Lo vr so that was an attempt to trying to be kind of consistent with to some degree what we've shown there, but clearly it's it is different, and so there's any more direction, we can get on what you'd like to see that bridge look like that'd be great sounds good, I think, Council remarks has an idea.

um. Yeah, well, I think there was also consensus that people wanted to have the Seven Sisters, you know, and either in the smaller iteration or in the larger one, which was in modern mission, you know. So would it be possible to give the ARC the basis and then say these are these possible options that we're looking for? Are we having a smaller version of the Seven Sisters or are we having a larger one? In terms of the quality and design of the safety fencing that's on the bridge, which is like we definitely need it. We don't want anyone falling or jumping. Then what alternate designs might be possible? So that they're not just given like well here's what city council likes what do you think but they're given here's the basic thing that city council likes with these possible changes again with but with very strict parameters, so they don't go. totally creative on us either. The other thing is that I'd like to let Council have access to whatever it is the ERC is going to be looking at because this is the problem I was envisioning in my comments earlier. It's like we don't have like a little CAD kind of thing in front of us where we could see if we did this, what would it look like? If we did that, what would it look like? We don't have that in front of us. But I think we We do need to at least know what the ERC is going to be presented with. And so that will also make us better understand what comes back. You know, so are we going to have to approve whatever they, their ranking recommendation to us, right? So they'll come up with something. And then we'll see, will we see that again? Or is that just going to be a memo?

So the timeline and structure approach that Mr. Horne mentioned is that we would go ahead and take what the ARC recommended, incorporate it into the report that we work through with Caltrans, and then report it back to you. But by that point, it would be That would be the caltrans approved project and if we needed to make more changes, it would definitely spin us out into a different lengthy process so again, our issue here is time is really just the more time we come back and make additional refinements just the more likely we're going to our schedules kind of slip.

Okay, so we would be delegating that kind of final design to the ERC within these parameters and then it would be baked in and we just have to live with it. Correct. But the basic thing about visibility and what the Mayor was talking about how you don't have to put your glasses on to see what is that thing over there, you know, that as simplicity, safety, low cost. So I think, does that answer your question?

we've got a few questions we've got a few more too to answer your question maybe city manager i think if that's the the consensus what council member marks mentioned about the desire to reflect the seven sisters in either the fence or the concrete one or the other or whatever they would recommend and then looking at safety features that may include the posts essentially i'm calling him that that's not a technical term on the sides that is very helpful i think but that's assuming that's where everybody lands so i think that answers my question and i think gives us something to go on at least in my head thank you thank you vice mayor

Sorry to jump into all of the fry here, but is there a world where it makes sense, just based on what I heard, where we pass on option one, the base model, and the modern option, let them know that the modern option was too busy and too expensive, but that we all kind of mentioned elements from it. And that we'd like to find a kind of hybrid between them where some aesthetics are brought in from the modern design into the base model to reflect a sense of place. I don't know if that makes any sense to people.

I think that's a staff question. I think they're conferring. I know what you're saying, though.

Sorry i'm so lucky to have Brent here, so thank you, Sir. We were initially talking about like perhaps what what approach might be would be to select the base. theme for installation with perhaps some elements from the modern mission incorporated into them, such as the fencing. That shown top and perhaps I'm not sure if you guys like the tower that the tower pillar design with this or if you wanted it to more reflect what what's on Lo VR, but we could we can incorporate some sort of towers for safety in that base project for to help that that element.

Personally, like, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Oh, and then I was gonna, I was gonna talk a little bit about landscaping, but just know that landscaping is not final. We're working with Caltrans to, they wanna enhance some different areas, and so we'll be doing that, but with the idea of making sure that maintenance is low and visibility is high for the gateway.

Thank you for that, Mr. Horn.

Thank you. Did that answer your question, Vice Mayor, for now?

Yeah, I was just trying to simplify what we pass on to the ARC here. And it seems like we could just cut out number two and give them one and three and say find a compromise here.

Yeah, agreed. Council Member Boswell.

Yeah, maybe one more simplifying thing. I would just take the LOVR out of the equation. I mean, it's basically mission theme, if you look at it. I mean, it's basically the mission theme. And the way the... way they're sort of those blocks periodically across it would interrupt the seven sisters theme so i would just take that out of the equation to make things a little simpler thank you councilman shoresman

I think I was the only thing about the I was trying to reflect what councilman remarks that I think the only thing about the love er that you mentioned specifically was like the lighting, but if that doesn't go with the aesthetic that we're going with and that that can be. Maybe it was a nice to have, but it's not an essential in my mind either. I like the way Mr. Horn articulated. I think we're mostly, what I heard most was the base option was what people most, the simplicity of the base option, but then I heard the pillars or towers for safety in some form and the fencing, the look of the fencing with the seven sisters and maybe the seven sisters on the concrete wall As well, but mostly what I heard was those elements of the modern that were the most that's what I heard most reflected in in the five of us so pretty appreciate that the way that my Mr horn said it.

Thank you, Council member marks.

Yeah, well, we can forget the LOVR elements. That's fine. But I don't want to just give them the modern mission style because I really find that the only part of it that I would feel okay about is the railing part. I'm not interested in the terracotta terrarium that it's. imagine there with all five layers and all that, we just need a simple, the base is fine and the question is how decorative do we wanna make the railing and what do they feel about the railing elements and the towers on as in the modern mission versus the base and to make it really simple for them. So I think we're pretty much there. Are we there? You tell me.

I feel like we're pretty close to there from what we've shared. I'm seeing some nodding of heads. And I think that with the information we've shared with staff i feel like they can continue on with arc and we can still make a motion and move forward with today yep okay um so mr horn i think i think we're probably pretty close to making a motion and then um Let me go back. Sorry. No, it's just directing. I'm so sorry. I was thinking we had to authorize some things. This is just a direction, really. So up to you, Mr. Horn.

As long as we have consensus i'm good with whatever direction you want to go, I think I have the the general understanding of the base, plus the fencing plus towers and perhaps maybe the the barrier from the from the modern mission. What Brent and I were just talking about, and since a large portion of this meeting has been related to cost, we were thinking that perhaps we do this work, we put it together, we take it to ARC, but inside ARC we should probably include the anticipated incremental cost of these things, just so in a public forum we have that information conveyed. And we can kind of make that decision with cost included as well. That would be included in the ARC report. And then they write them to council later based on their direction.

Yeah, I love that. I think that's great. All right. Thank you. Well, with that, now the last and final thing we have is to come back to number 10, which is the Prado Creek Bridge and Prado Road interchange project's recommendation. So we have a resolution of the city council authorizing submittal of grant applications for the Prado Road Interchange Project and Prado Creek Bridge Replacement Project, and requiring Council appropriation upon grant award. Sorry there. But I think that last thing you just mentioned, Mr. Horne, is I think part of the Council appropriation. Is there a way that we can guesstimate that? base plus a little more, what does that look like in the whole $147 million kind of a minor amount, but at the same time we're talking about every little aspect in this that we're trying to value engineer and looking at all the different costs. So how do we put together this council appropriation upon grant award in this recommendation that would leave that room?

Oh, sure. specific to recommendation 10 the aesthetics aren't really tied into making that happen so this would be simply for grant applications so the base or the the project that we want to build will submit grant applications for them kind of like with your advanced concurrence and then when we're successful we would bring that back to council and say and we submitted on this date this is the amount that we got and We recommend appropriating it at some point in time when it's appropriate for that so that's kind of specific to that grant authorization the. sorry I got. The original question kind of tied to the air see cost will have cost, probably in a week or two as far as we're in our estimating time and we'll be able to include that in the air see report for the cost they are see report. will be made available to counsel as well, so you'll get that at that point in time to so hopefully it'd be transparent with kind of like through that process you'll get that information. And then you'll also get the feedback loop from the meeting minutes and then the erratum shortly thereafter.

Perfect. Thank you. What about Council Member Shores and then Vice Mayor?

So essentially the way I read this and I think this is what you said, but just to make sure i'm clear this resolution just gives you. The authority to apply to submit grant applications for any and all grants related to these two projects, so you don't have to come back to us each time and ask permission to apply for. 8910 however many grants you do we're just blanket saying with this resolution, yes, please go and apply for grants for these two projects correct.

That's absolutely correct. One small caveat that I'll give you in this, you may see future grant applications before they go in. And you may see that because the granting agency requires a resolution of the city council. So if that happens, that's the reason why. But really, the thought is to be able to ask for the grants. And then after we hear yes, come talk to you guys about it.

Yes, please seek as many grants and as much money as you can for this project. That's what I say. I'd be happy to make the motion unless Vice Mayor Francis wants to do it.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay.

This one feels like a big no-brainer to me, so happy to second this one.

Thank you. One more minute. Council Member Marks, did you have a question or comment? Okay, great. Well, Council Member Shoresman has moved.

Okay.

Has moved number 10, and Vice Mayor has seconded. Can we have a roll call?

Council Member Shoresman? Yes. Vice Mayor Francis? Yes. Council Member Boswell?

Yes.

Council Member Marks? Yes. Mayor Stewart?

Yes, and the motion passes 5-0. Thank you so much for all of your patience and walking through each of these. We are so thankful, Brenda, you were here to be able to kind of help us walk through this as well. And thank you for phoning a friend, Assistant City Manager, just as we try to walk through each of these parts. It's a lot of small detail, but about a very huge complex issue and project that we're trying to work through. Mr. Horne.

Yeah, sure. If you don't mind, I'd also like to extend a thank you to George Aguilar for coming and being my security blanket for the Creek Bridge. Thank you very much, sir. And then Henaro with Caltrans, Henaro Diaz, who came to help us through with those issues as well. So thank you so much for your guys' time.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. And with that, we have completed our public hearing items, and now we move forward to council communications and liaison reports. Vice Mayor.

Oh, apologies, that was my raised hand from earlier, but I have... Sorry about that. No, it's okay. I've been on the move, so nothing to report at this time.

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Just a few things. July meetings of CAPSLO and LAFCO, which I'm on liaison for both, were canceled, so I don't have those. On 7-22, I attended the City University quarterly meeting. Let's see, on Monday, I spent the morning with a couple of our CSOs downtown, always an educational experience. They were fantastic. So a shout out to the great work being done by our CSOs and helping improve our downtown. And this morning, I attended the Downtown Slow Parking and Access Committee to hear our staff present to them about the pilot loading program on High Gara Street. That's all I have.

Thank you. Council member Shoresman.

Yeah, let's see. Last week there were a couple things that went on. A couple of my committees are sort of on recesses for the summer. IWMA does not have a meeting in either July or August. and it's a good thing because i've been on jury duty anyway so i probably would have had to have my alternate attend those um had there been one in august but i did attend the community picnic on top of terrace hill celebrating the 30th anniversary of our open space and our our green belt and it was lovely it was a beautiful sunset lots of people out eating and um Flying kites and all sorts of great stuff and then also attended last Thursday night, the Diablo Canyon listening session that the Board of Supervisors held in their chambers, they had a variety of speakers on. The economic and other impacts of Diablo Canyon and what it might mean if or if not it continues until 2045 so thanks to for the county for putting that on and i'm glad I was able to attend.

Thank you. Council Member Marks.

Thank you. Yes. Well, tomorrow is the County Water Resources Advisory Committee, the RAC, And the draft decel report is out. It's basically a feasibility study. It's kind of a first stab at looking at it. And so that's going to be a very interesting meeting. It's at 1.30. I'll tell you all what happens when I get back. If you're interested, it's online at the county. And then on the 25th of July, I attended the 30th anniversary of the Greenbelt Community Picnic. Here's for the camera. This is a bandana. Everybody who attended got a free bandana and There is now a hike that's planned up to the rare endangered bog thistle trail on the 15th of August. And so if people want to sign up for that, just go ahead, go to the city website and search for the Greenbelt 30th anniversary celebration. You can sign up for the for the or the hike it should be a lot of fun it's pretty steep but it's it's great okay that's all i have for now

Thank you. I have been lucky enough to be part of two panel presentations during our CalCities conference, so I was attending a couple of those preparatory meetings. So looking forward to talking about downtowns in Santa Barbara, Goleta and SLO, some of the amazing awesomeness and some of the challenges, then also talking about running um public meetings and what that entails and some of the changes that our city clerks have continued to share with us as to how we need to run our our city meetings going forward with the online process and also kind of how we manage hate speech, as well as protect freedom of speech. So that shall be interesting. I also attended the Diablo meeting and really appreciate at least the interest in from the county to be able to provide a kind of an update as to where we're at as a county and what could Diablo look like if we were to, not if we, but if the state were to extend that. Also, so sorry, I had to switch windows here. Also, tomorrow is the RTA meeting, and I really encourage y'all, I know it's nine o'clock at night, so I don't know how many people want to look at this at nine in the morning, tomorrow is the RTA meeting. We are looking at two things that I think people really probably care about, and the third thing is just a really good thing I want to highlight. One is we are looking at our new RHNA numbers, regional housing number allocation, and the number's high, real high. And so as people in the community are asking about housing, this is a plus and a minus, right? This is helping people get housed. We need to help people get housed, and that is really important. We are being kind of foie gras forced to create housing and spaces that don't exactly fit, meaning that we don't have the funding for the infrastructure that we need to be able to build this housing. So trying to look at how do we or facilitate building this housing from the city side. So this is a very interesting conversation. We'll be talking about the economic study. and of our county, and I hope you at least go back and look at it. We'll also be talking about Measure H. Should we keep Measure H on the ballot or should we recommend, I should say, to the Board of Supervisors to keep Measure H in the ballot? Measure H is the um sorry the transportation um self-help county and so that will be an interesting conversation and lastly just in a really positive way there's going to be a mariposa pass which is that fair free transit pilot program to help with people on disability veterans some children some kids and youth So just that's a really good program that's going forward. And so I hope you check it all out. Thanks so much for your patience for that long list of things. But the RTA, I'm sorry, the RTA, the slow cog meeting is going to be, I think, very important tomorrow. So thanks so much for all of your time. And thank you for all people who have come out and sent us emails. And we'll have more information at the August 18th meeting. We'll be back here at 530. Have a good night. Thank you, Vice Mayor.