City Council - Regular Meeting

How are you all? You're ready? Thank you. Okay. Yes. Oh, good. I didn't properly say hello to you, really. I was trying to get on mic. Hello again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

How are you? How are you? I'll come around and say hello. Give her a hug. I had a brain fart moment.

I don't know if you caught it.

What?

What? What? It's going to be great. Great. Yes. I know I've asked you. Are you going in October 2? Yeah, and I've only been to the one.

OK, I think I'm going to go. We saw you looking for people to talk to. When nobody was talking, you just come back in.

Good evening, everyone, and welcome. I'll call tonight's meeting, regular city council meeting for June 16, 2026, to order. Let us rise together and proudly recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and Uh, my, uh, madam clerk, may you kindly call roll call please?

Yes. Council member Brando Cruz here. Council member Melissa Lamontina here. Council member David Oro here. Vice mayor Mark Joseph here.

Mayor Pierre Washington here. A report on closed session confirmation of reportable actions.

Mr. Summers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The council met in closed session to consider two items of anticipated litigation under government code section 5, 4, 9 5, 6.9 D two. There, the council provided direction to staff and council on both matters, but took no reportable action. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, sir. Moving to proclamations and presentations. Tonight, we have no proclamations nor presentations. Public comment. At this time, I'll open up the floor for public comment on items that are not. Listed on tonight's agenda each speaker will have up three minutes to address the council When you come forward, please begin by stating your name For the record and madam clerk do we have? Calling cards.

Yes, we have Hugh Marquez

Good evening, Mayor, Council. My name is Hugh Marquez. I was here last council meeting, and I heard Mr. McGrath talk about the new old road, and it would take up to 30 years to build, when the mayor had had a conference of different developers. Um, and it sort of got me thinking that when I walked precincts almost 26 years ago to get a town center, uh, we were told that the town center would be a central part of our town. Uh, during this time, I've, it's been 20 some years. I went to LAFCO. Um, what I remember was this when, when we. When it was going to the voters, I remember the Yeagers who were the original owners having an autumn fling and they had horses and they had the city come out and they really showed what, what, what they were going to do for our city to get the citizens to vote for the town center. And it's now 26 years later. And I thought about his 30 year comment about the road. And I thought, well, we've been waiting almost 30 years for a town center that I literally was there and spoke at LAFCO to get that town center started in this town. So I've been pretty much at this from the very beginning. And so I'm just curious. I've, I'VE HAD COUNCILMEMBERS, I'VE TALKED TO SOME COUNCILMEMBERS AND I'VE SEEN MR. MCGRATH'S RENDITION OF IT AND THERE'S NOT BUILDINGS. INITIALLY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A TOWN CENTER WHERE THERE WAS GOING TO BE SHOPS AND THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A TOWN CENTER. AND THE NEW RENDITION THAT I'VE SEEN THAT I WAS AFTER THE LAST MEETING I REALLY WENT THROUGH THE PAPERWORK, I DIDN'T SEE THAT. I SAW A PARK. And that's what I see. I see a park, and I see a taco truck, and I see the ruins. And I'm just curious if that is what the town center is going to be. And if it is, I would appreciate if the developer could get our town center. Whatever he deems is going to be our town center, I think we should get it. And part of my concern is we know the Newell Road. We're talking about he did a new ballot measure. And I'm just concerned that he's having the city go through a ballot measure for a road, and we still don't have a town center. And so I just wanted to bring that up to the council, that I think that the town center should become a priority, whatever he decides it is. I don't know. It isn't what the initial town center was proposed.

Anyway, thank you. Thank you, Hugh.

Next we have Gina Griggs.

Good evening, Council, Mayor, community members. You know, we have Parks and Community Services Commission meetings on the, what's the date, Ellie? The second Thursday of each month. You guys should all attend. I would love to see more people at our meetings. I love to see people at meetings. It's one of the reasons I love to come to council meetings. Anyway, okay, back on to what I wanted to say. What I would like to say is very short and sweet, and I don't know if it's going to make a difference because I know it's going on the ballot, but if the city has any say in the annexation of Watson Lane, I'm just here to say that that's not the answer. THAT IS ABSOLUTELY IN MY OPINION 100% NOT THE ANSWER. THAT IS A BANDAID. IT IS GOING TO DISRUPT THE LIVES OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE LIVED ON WATSON LANE SINCE BEFORE THIS CITY WAS INCORPORATED. I DON'T WANT TO SAY IT'S NOT FAIR BECAUSE LIFE ISN'T FAIR BUT IT'S NOT FAIR BECAUSE IT'S NOT THE ONLY SOLUTION AND IT'S NOT OKAY. It's completely not okay to do that to the people that are living on Watson Lane, and there are much better solutions. More expensive solutions, sure, but we have to invest in our city and without displacing long-term residents of our city. So that's what I want to say. If the city has any say-so in that before or after the BALLOT OR ALONGSIDE THE BALLOT MEASURE. I DON'T KNOW HOW THAT PROCESS IS GOING TO PLAY OUT, BUT I THINK THAT'S JUST A BAND-AID. IT'S NOT THE ANSWER. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, GINA.

NEXT WE HAVE BARRY CHRISTIAN.

HI. CITY COUNCIL. I WAS LOOKING AT THE WATSON LANE. I'M NOT IN FAVOR OF EMINENT DOMAIN GENERALLY. THE OPEN SPACE DISTRICT THAT I'M ON THE BOARD DOES NOT DO EMINENT DOMAIN FOR TRAILS. AND THE SWATSON LANE IS CURRENTLY PLANNED AS A VINE TRAIL. the vine trail doesn't do eminent domain. They won't support eminent domain for any trail for the vine trail. And it appears to me if the Prop M goes through and does come to fruition, you would need to take some eminent domain to widen that road. I wasn't at the last meeting, but I've heard 15 feet on either side. And I was looking at it, and it seems to me you just need to get across the railroad tracks AND THEN TURN RIGHT AND GO NORTH. IF YOU HAD MAYBE ONE PROPERTY OWNER THERE THAT WAS WILLING TO MOVE AND GIVE UP THEIR HOUSE, YOU COULD, I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU COULDN'T USE A ROAD AND GO NORTH AND THEN EITHER GO ALL THE WAY UP TO HESS PROPERTY OR JUST GO A LITTLE WAYS AND THEN TURN LEFT AND GET DOWN TO PAOLI LOOP WITHOUT DISTURBING EACH AND EVERY HOUSE ON WATSON LANE. That's just one question I have of whether that would work, whether there's any property owners, whether there's any vacant lots that would be, but I don't know how that gets fleshed out. I know there's, City Council has asked staff to make a report on that, and I would hope there'd be some view into different potentials, and even if it did come down to eminent domain, maybe it's better to just take one property than disrupt the entire Thing so I don't I don't know all this hard for me to get information all dust I don't I don't know who to talk to but but it seems to me There are some alternatives that could be fleshed out I don't know if that should be part of the report that staff brings to you or if there's some other way to do that Thanks.

Thank you, Barry Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak before I call people on soon? Okay, Jeanette go each

Good evening. Mayor Washington, city council members, members of the public. I was here at the last meeting.

Jeanette, could you lean into the microphone? Just to thank you.

So I feel this I was I'm talking about the expanding the city limits thing on the agenda This is such an important issue for American Canyon So I'm asking I'd appreciate town hall meetings explicitly for this purpose of speaking to the public I think it's confusing for a lot of us and we're just finding things on the fly and The concern for me is the expansion of the urban sprawl, increased traffic pollution, destruction of our environment, and who knows what species of animals and plants who live in the expanding city limits will lose their habitats. There should be environmental studies to see what we are paving over before we pour the cement. In the case of Watson Lane, we would be destroying people's habitats where they have lived for generations. Every day, I do worry that we are allowing the developers to decide our fate. Please allow more conversation and input from the people who live here about this topic, city expansion. I understand most of you work other jobs too, but if you could fit in a town hall explicitly for this. For one would appreciate it and I think maybe the people in Watson Lane because I hate to see their houses and those people dismissed Thanks Jeanette Is there anyone else in the room that would like to make comment on non-agenda items?

Okay, we have Justin Hamilton home online Justin please unmute yourself Justin, are you there? Justin, I'm asking you to unmute yourself.

Okay, there you are.

No, we can hear you now, Justin.

We can hear you, Justin. Please go ahead.

Hold on.

Let's try this again. Okay, Justin, you muted yourself. I'm asking you to unmute again.

Can everybody hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

I think Nicole, you need to turn the microphone on. No, we can hear you, Justin.

Can you hear us? Okay. We'll try this again. Justin, can you unmute yourself? We can hear you. Justin? Justin?

Is everybody there? Can you hear us? No, not on the Zoom. All right, Justin.

Justin, can you unmute yourself? We can hear you.

I see.

I think I'm on the.

There might be some, it sounds like there's some technical difficulties on your end, Justin. We'll try you again later. Okay.

He exited the meeting, I apologize.

Okay, no one else online?

No one else online.

Okay, we'll close public comment and move forward to the agenda changes. I'll go to council and ask if there's any agenda changes. If not, I'll accept the motion to accept the consent calendar.

Before you move the consent calendar, I'm sorry, I should have done the agenda changes. For the consent calendar, please pull item number 10, Napa River Ecology Center project level agreement.

And I don't want to pull item 11 But I do want to clarify that that is essentially a clarification of a resolution that we already adopted That it really isn't kind of addressing a new issue.

It's just clarification Okay, so we're pulling item 10 for City council member oral mayor

Yeah, as I understand, there's a conflict for customer order on item number 10. And if that's the case, you could always move approval of the rest of the consent calendar, just state your intention to abstain from that. I'm not sure if that's the basis of which you've pulled it.

That's basically what I'm doing. So I'll do that instead. I'LL MAKE A MOTION TO ADOPT THE CONSENT CALENDAR, BUT I NEED TO ABSTAIN FROM ITEM NUMBER 10.

SO EVERYTHING BUT ITEM 10?

NO, THERE'S A MOTION FOR EVERYBODY TO ADOPT THE CONSENT CALENDAR. I'M JUST ABSTAINING FROM ITEM NUMBER 10.

AND I'M GOING TO SECOND THAT MOTION AND WATCH WHILE HE ABSTAINS FROM ITEM NUMBER 10.

There. It's not being pulled from the agenda, Mayor? No. He's just offering a motion that already explains he will be abstaining from 10 while still voting on a single motion. I'm just being snarky.

But I was just curious. That required a motion?

I'm moving the consent calendar.

Time out. I get it. I get that David does not want to be part of item number 10 because he wants to abstain himself. But he also made the motion to approve everything else on the consent calendar. Thank you. You made the second. And I'm seconding that motion. We have a second. Can I get a roll call, please?

One moment. Council member Brando Cruz?

Yes.

Council member Melissa Lamatina? Yes. Council member David, excuse me, David Oro is abstaining.

I'm abstaining from item 10, voting yes on everything. Okay. Correct.

Vice Mayor Mark Joseph? Yes. And Mayor Pierre Washington?

Yes. It might have been easier to just pull. Yeah.

So the net effect of that is that items to THROUGH 9 AND 11 ARE APPROVED 5-0 AND ITEM 10 IS APPROVED 4-0-1 WITH COUNCIL MEMBER BUARO ABSTAINING. GOT YOU.

THANK YOU, SIR. SO NEXT WE'LL MOVE ON TO PUBLIC HEARING AND THIS EVENING WE ACTUALLY HAVE NO ITEMS REQUIRING PUBLIC HEARING SO WE'LL MOVE ON TO THE BUSINESS ITEMS WHERE WE HAVE TWO BUSINESS ITEMS. ITEM TONIGHT FOR The first item will be the business item number 12, fiscal year 2026-2027 salary schedule and classification plan update. I do have something to read, but that's later.

In a few moments, correct. This item, counsel, is a perfunctory item that would be on your consent calendar if not for the fact that CalPERS requires you to HOLD IT AS A BUSINESS ITEM TO READ THE WORDS THAT YOU NOTED AT YOUR DIAS THERE. EVERY YEAR THE CITY ADOPTS A SCHEDULE IDENTIFYING HOW MUCH EMPLOYEES BOTH FULL-TIME AND PART-TIME WILL BE PAID IN THE UPCOMING FISCAL YEAR BEING THAT WE'RE STARTING THE FISCAL YEAR IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS. IT'S ROUTINE FOR THE COUNCIL TO ADOPT THE NEXT YEAR SALARY SCHEDULE AS WE CALL IT. THAT'S WHAT THIS ITEM BEFORE YOU IS THE 26, 27 SALARY SCHEDULE AND CLASSIFICATION PLAN UPDATE. And the salary schedule itself is listed as one of the attachments. That document will be publicly available on our website as well throughout the fiscal year. And CalPERS requires that the statement that you're about to read be read so that everyone in the public knows. Gotcha. So I can read it now, right? Okay to read?

Please. Okay. Persuade to California government code section 54953. small c 3 a recommendation has been made to adopt a salary schedule as present presented in the resolution that enumerates the salary schedule which includes local agency executives Now that I read that are we still going to have a presentation on it? No, just need a motion Uh, public comment would be appropriate first. Okay. Well, I'll open up my clarifying questions. Yeah. Okay. Any clarifying questions from the council? Seeing none, I'll open up to a public comment for item number 12.

Uh, madam clerk, do we have any, is there anyone in the room that would like to make public comment on this item? Okay. Is there anyone on zoom that would like to make public comment on the salary item? There are no public comments.

Thank you. I'll close public comment on item number 12 and turn back to council for further discussion or adoption of this resolution.

Seeing no other public comments or questions, I'll make a motion we adopt the resolution approving fiscal year 26-27 salary schedule and classification plan update.

And I second that motion.

Thank you, sirs. I have a second. Madam Clerk, can you do a roll call, please?

COUNCILMEMBER BRANDO CRUZ.

YES.

COUNCILMEMBER MELISSA LAMATINA. YES. COUNCILMEMBER DAVID ORO. YES. VICE MAYOR MARK JOSEPH. YES. MAYOR PIERRE WASHINGTON.

YES. OUR NEXT BUSINESS ITEM WILL BE ITEM NUMBER 13, SALES TAX MEASURE. AND I'M SURE MR. HOLLY WILL BE PROVIDING THAT INFORMATION.

Correct, Mayor. Thank you. This item is kind of the final step in a process that we've been engaged in since January at Council's direction. We began to poll our residents about their interest in city services and a variety of funding mechanisms to pay for additional city services. Earlier this year, we actually did some polling amongst our residents. The results of that polling have been presented to Council and are included in your packet. At your last meeting, we had a discussion about whether to move forward with a city sales tax initiative. This would be a 1% general transactions and use tax or a sales tax that would be a general tax that could be used for a variety of general government purposes. And as it relates to the November 2026 election, tonight would be the last opportunity because it has to be at a regular council meeting. The council can't adopt this on your own. It has to go to the voters and it has to be directed to go to the voters at a regular meeting, which is tonight. The deadlines for the county's election process that we consolidate with are tonight, at least for your purposes. for a tax initiative, so if the council's interested in moving something forward, the ballot language that's proposed is what you saw two weeks ago. It's on page 90 of the packet, and I'm not gonna reread it, but it's in there, and we've had kind of a robust conversation. We've seen the polling results. It's really up to the council. If there's an interest in doing that, a simple majority would suffice, but in general, if this is something that the council's interested in putting on the ballot, showing unanimous sort of activity, would seem to the voters where the perspectives are so that's kind of all I have. Thank you Mr. Holly.

Any clarifying questions from council? That's clarifying. Clarifying questions after public comment. Okay. Then I will now open up a public comment for anyone in the room for comments on item number 13.

And we have Gina Griggs.

Hello again. Good evening again, council, mayor, city staff, community members. Did we lose anyone? I don't think so. How exciting, okay. Again, my comment will be short and sweet. Try to keep it to the point. My dog's also expecting a walk before dark. So on behalf of my dog, here's my comment I am in full support of this tax measure. I hope it goes on the ballot I hope the council and the mayor fully support it. I hope the community supports it our community Our little city is growing. We need infrastructure. We need fire protection We need might need additional police this tax measure will go into the general fund it can be used for a multitude of things and And if we are going to grow and sustain and be responsible and foresightful, which I encourage us to do, and to look at long-term solutions with a visionary lens versus a short-term vision, LESS LONG-TERM GOAL IN MIND. THOSE SOLUTIONS OFTEN TAKE MORE CREATIVITY, THEY TAKE MORE WORK, AND THEY TAKE MORE MONEY. SO WE NEED TO HAVE MORE MONEY SO THAT WE CAN SUSTAIN AND GROW AND BE RESPONSIBLE. and have what we need to have for our community to keep us safe and grow and maybe get more aquatics, maybe get more parks, maybe get, again, fire and safety, all the things. So I am in full support and I hope that the council is as well as our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Gina.

Hugh Marquez.

Mayor, Council, Hugh Marquez again. I'm also in favor of it. As a growing city, I think we need to invest in it. Our police force is A number one, and that's only going to go up, as we know. as things go up. I think the fire mitigation with our outlying areas, I think that's a very smart move to put that in there. And I think our parks could definitely do for some improvement. I mean, we've done a lot. I talked to you about the bathroom, the coverings. We've done a lot for it, for our parks. But office space, we have a pool that needs renovations. We have to maintain what we have. And I think it's a good idea for the city to consider putting that on a measure and letting the citizens vote to see if they want to help our parks, help our HELP OUR, WHILE OUR FIRE DEPARTMENT HAS THEIR OWN BUDGET, THE FIRE MITIGATION IS SOMETHING, OUR SHEEP, THE SHEEP THAT ARE THERE, THAT'S A TOTAL SEPARATE THING THAN OUR FIRE DEPARTMENT. AND I THINK AS WE'VE SEEN WITH THE SHEEP AND WHAT'S GOING ON, THAT IT CAN ONLY GET BETTER IF WE HAD A LITTLE BIT MORE MONEY TO MAKE IT, TO HELP OUR CITY AS WE GROW. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. HUGH?

IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE ROOM? Please state your name when you get to the dice. The gentleman actually raised his hand first. I apologize.

Good evening, council. I'm Chris Chiego. I'm a resident here in American Canyon. And from following the council meetings for the past few months, it's pretty clear that the city has some real fiscal concerns and some real priorities, parks and recreation, new things it would like to do with the budget. And I appreciate that the city has been managing its budget very well for the past few years. But this measure just as written is a little confusing to me. I'm really curious what the council intends to do with the funding from this measure. Because right now the language includes many different specific items. There's I think eight or nine at least by my count on those. But as a general tax it could be spent on anything. There's also a very long list of parks and recreation improvements that was discussed around the same time as this was introduced. Is that going to be part of those as well? And then there's been some discussion at the last few meetings of the budget deficit and the need for some more revenue to plug that gap as well, too. Also, I think we are all aware there's some transportation issues that might require more funding in the future as well on this. So just from reading all this and the discussion, it's hard to tell where this funding is going to be spent. It's $3.7 million a year, which is a lot of money, but it can also dissipate very quickly. So with all these different priorities and all these different things it could be spent on, I'm worried it could just dissipate rather than being spent on good use. Plus some of the potential uses of this revenue here like maintenance for new, if you have new buildings, you need more maintenance. If you have more hires, you have to pay more salaries and benefits and those go up as well too. So I'd like to hear a little bit more at some point from the city about where this is being prioritized. What specific aspects are going to top priorities and what aspects might be something that could be done later or some other time. So if the council chooses to put the ballot on the measure tonight, I'd encourage two things. Give us a clear plan of where exactly and what specifically the measure is going to go towards. Where are the top few priorities? Where are the nice-to-haves? What are the next level of those things like that? And give us a clear sense of those goals, if it's passed, where it would go. And then I think, secondly, also make sure to review this. Right now there's no oversight committee. There's no sunset in the language on this point. So if it passes, it would be nice for council to say, How did this go this year? Was this affecting the community? What investments were being made? And how can you effectively spend the money in the future and see the effects of this on the businesses and the people of American Canyon? Thank you. Thank you, Chris.

Next, we have Cindy Biederman.

Good evening. Chris said so much of what I was going to say, so I appreciate that. I did everything that he says. He's right on point on pretty much everything. The accountability component of it, well, first of all, it is. It's so vague. I mean, it's just so broad, I should say. It's probably better saying. I can see a lot of money getting lost or hey we do it here do it here and may not really go to what we really want but the top portions of it some of the slides that I did see are a little bit of confusion I don't know if you guys are going to do a presentation on that or just say here's the slides this is it because there were some areas where it felt like it was redundant on where the you know safe place for children to play parks maintenance you know that kind of stuff so it's like okay why are we pulling these out because they seem like they're really interrelated uh... and i'd really have to question to are we going to if you're going to this measure take this to the ballot and possibly fight major m on the ballot are you going to justice to both are you going to do not a lot on either one so that that's a concern that i have here please let me to full uh... accountability piece of it is this going to be that like you've seen the oversight of it is there is it going to be on the uh... Can you tie that back to the manager's evaluation for another form of accountability? This is where we're going to put it, but this is what we're going to do. So when it comes down to his evaluation, did you do these steps? And it's just a matter of another check and balance. So thank you.

Thank you, Cindy.

Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak? All right. We're going to try Justin Hamilton-Holl online again. Justin, I've asked you to unmute yourself. Can you hear us?

Yeah, I think I hear you in the room. I think that room, the Zoom me with the microphone will turn off. Thank you, Michael. Turn the microphone on. Yeah, I do want to see that. I want to see that continue. My question is, I missed a couple of comments. um uh i didn't see it i know we're in close to 2027 which was carrying them more uh puts new sidewalk in there and um new housings so thank you so much thank you justin we have no more public comments

Thank you, Madam Clerk. I'll close public comment for item number 13 and return back to the council for further discussion or to adopt the resolution. City Manager Hawley.

Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of the comments that we heard from the public. One related to oversight committee. There isn't one proposed in here, and The general reason for that is there's not an expenditure plan that's proposed in here. What's proposed is a broad set of uses. I will note that every year we don't lose money. Uh, every year we don't lose track of money. Every year we go through a very comprehensive auditor's report. Um, in fact, it's an award-winning auditor's report for more than the last decade, every year, uh, per the government financial officers association. And so we keep very good taps on, on the money. Uh, the uses are meant to be in a very general nature, which is why the measure was, was written that way. Although I think there is a commitment, um, from the council to engage the community, um, to say, what are those priorities? I think the current council has some ideas. I think future councils will have some ideas. And I think there will be an intention to go to the community and really talk about where their priorities are. But the measure doesn't have an expenditure plan. It doesn't say we're doing X, Y, and Z, and then an oversight to say, did you do X, Y, and Z? We use accountability through our auditor's reports. In fact, we even prepare documents that are a more generalized version of those auditor's reports that are easier for the layperson to read. And those documents are publicly available also, along with our actual auditor's report. So I wanted to kind of highlight those pieces and respond to those questions.

Thank you, Mr. Hawley. Vice Mayor Joseph.

Yes. So when this first started a few months ago, I was generally in favor of it and was ready to be a campaigner for it. Since then, we've gotten the polling results back and we now have a whole new measure that's now been probably going to go to the ballot in November. So I think a lot has changed for me at least. So my concern right now is that Measure M seems to be a more immediate issue that this city should address in whatever fashion. And I think that's our priority versus trying to get a sales tax initiative. I also think that if we're going to uh... ask the voters for money there's kind of a three-step process in my mind first we have to make the case that we need it uh... and certainly were beginning to do that i think uh... our budget is balanced this year but as we've seen there's a five-year forecast in which it's a gap in its growing so i do think we're beginning to make that case but i i think we have to go further I think we also have to demonstrate, and this will be the second step, that we've done everything we can, that we've tightened our belts, that we've tried to be as creative and as efficient as we can and, you know, cut back where we have to cut back and so forth so that we're at a point of saying we've done everything we can do, we still need your help, please support this tax increase. I don't think we've done steps two and three. Clearly we don't have time to do step two because we've just identified the problem. So clearly we haven't been able to put together a budget that shaves the kinds of money we need to shave out of it. So that to me sets the stage for the final piece and that is the polling results. We can try to spin it however we want. But the bottom line is about a third of the population loves it, a third of it hates it, and the third in the middle can go either way. And to suggest that 5% is leaning towards it is the same as saying they might lean against it. I think normally when you're going to go in and you're looking for money from the voters, you need a cushion. It would be nice if we had something in the 60% range so that we knew that if we lost a few votes, we'd still be able to pass here we're literally at break even and my concern is if we try to tackle this prematurely we're gonna spend the money to educate and go through the motions and focus on that and probably not prevail And then we're going to have to revisit it in two years or whatever. But I'm just concerned that we're spreading ourselves too thin. I think Measure M is going to take a lot of our attention. I don't think we've made a strong enough case. And that's why I think the numbers aren't really where they need to be. And so as much as I support it in concept, I just can't support it now. And I wanted to explain my rationale.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Any other comments?

Council Member Orrell. Yeah, and just I think we sit on a separate side of the table on this issue. And I do want to address the comments around where this tax measure is. If you paid attention, if you paid attention to the previous measures, this is a general tax measure. What are we calling it? It's a...

A general tax measure.

It's a measure. And a general tax measure is a 50 plus 1 vote. If we were to put this something specific for like parks or police, it would require two-thirds. The advice that we gave, that gave us from our council, from the pollers and the council and staff, 50 plus one is a lot easier to do and that's why it was more generalized. And if you heard my comments from the last meeting, it's kind of backwards. If we wanted to build a community center, it should be 50 plus one because we would know those funds are going just to that. And there was a question about how would this be ALLOCATED. IF IT'S $3.5 MILLION A YEAR, THERE REALLY IS NO WAY TO DO IT UNLESS YOU, AS A COUNCIL, THIS COUNCIL WOULD VOTE TO BUILD A COMMUNITY CENTER, FOR EXAMPLE, OR THROW IT ALL TOWARDS A POLICE FORCE. YOU JUST ALLOT IT IN THE ANNUAL BUDGET PROCESS. AND SO THAT'S KIND OF A WEIRD BUREAUCRATIC THING. HERE'S WHERE I'M AT. AND TO COUNCILMEMBER JOSEPH'S POINT ABOUT, YOU KNOW, DOING TOO MUCH, I THINK WE COULD WALK AND CHEW GUM AT THE SAME TIME. IT WILL MAKE FOR AN INTERESTING ELECTROGEN YEAR. LET THE VOTERS DECIDE. I THINK WE ARE DECIDING BOTH INITIATIVES ARE VOTER INITIATIVES. ONE IS A COUNCIL MEASURE AND THE OTHER ONE IS CITIZENS INITIATIVE MEASURE. WE HAVE TO BELIEVE THAT THE ELECTORATE WILL MAKE THE CHOICE THAT THEY WANT TO MAKE FOR THIS CITY. Whether this passes or not, I don't know. But here's what I do know, is that I don't know what's gonna happen in 2028. Instead of just Measure M, well, I have three other things. That is a presidential election year, things to show up more in election year. We put the work in this year, so I'm in favor of putting it on the ballot This time around because I know what's happening right now. I don't know what's going to happen in 2028 And I look forward to having the citizens of American Canyon Decide on this issue one last thing I'll say that always that struck me as we did these reports is that we are the lowest sales tax rate in in the Bay area. Almost by 1.10% more something like that and yet as we grow that 3 as a city if there's more businesses that get attracted on the Broadway corridor for your hotel tax that 3.5 million can grow over time we can allocate that towards other things. I think the voters should decide and I think we should put it on the ballot tonight. Thank you, Council Member Orrell. Anyone else?

I'll accept a motion if there's a motion to be had.

All right. If there are no other comments, I'm going to make a motion. So I make a motion that we adopt a resolution calling an election on 1% general transaction and use tax sales tax ordinance measure, submitting the proposed ordinance to the voters requesting consolidation with the November 3rd, 2026 general election. DIRECTING THE CITY ATTORNEY TO PREPARE AN IMPARTIAL ANALYSIS, AUTHORIZING ONE OR MORE COUNCILMEMBERS TO SUBMIT BALLOT ARGUMENTS, AUTHORIZING REBUTTAL ARGUMENTS, AND AUTHORIZING THE NAPA COUNTY REGISTRAR OF VOTERS TO CONDUCT THE ELECTION ON BEHALF OF THE CITY OF AMERICAN CANYON.

WE HAVE A MOTION. DO I HEAR A SECOND?

I'LL SECOND.

WE HAVE A SECOND ON THAT MOTION. MADAM CLERK, CAN YOU ROLL CALL, PLEASE?

COUNCILMEMBER BRANDO-CRUZ?

YES.

COUNCILMEMBER MELISSA LAMATINA? Yes. Council member David Oro?

I'm going to vote yes, but on a point of clarification, he read the staff report recommendation. Should he have been reading the resolution number language there, which is separate from what is on the staff report?

THE STAFF REPORT RECOMMENDATION IS SUFFICIENT, BUT I WOULD NOTE FOR THE RECORD THAT THE RESOLUTION NUMBER, I DON'T KNOW IF WE HAVE A NUMBER YET. IT WAS A NEXT IN ORDER. WHATEVER THE NEXT IN ORDER IS, IT WOULD BE, CLERK, DO WE KNOW THE NEXT NUMBER IN ORDER?

WELL, I DON'T THINK WE NEED THE NUMBER NOW. IT WOULD BE THE NEXT IN ORDER.

THE NEXT IN ORDER, YEAH. BUT IF IT'S SUFFICIENT TO SAY THAT THE STAFF REPORT RESOLUTION OR LANGUAGE IS SUFFICIENT.

THANK YOU. THEN I'LL SAY YES.

VICE MAYOR MARK JOSEPH? NO. MAYOR PIERRE WASHINGTON?

YES.

So that has passed.

Just one sort of point of clarification, counsel. It would be appropriate now for you all to make a decision around who would write. If any of you all wanted to write arguments in favor, arguments opposed, you have the first dibs at doing that. It would be important as a part of this proceeding tonight to affirm that. And so if there are you know, one or two of you who want to write the arguments in favor, that would be, we can't have three of you doing it, so we could have most of two of you doing it or one, and if someone or two wanted to write arguments opposed, we should decide that now so we can get that into the record.

I would suggest, since the two that made the comments tonight, I would ask if you two would like to be the ones pro and con.

Ironically, I am not inherently opposed to this measure. I'm opposed to the timing of it. So I'm not particularly interested in saying this is a terrible thing. I just think the timing is bad. So I'll let somebody else be an anti-tax person.

It's a clarify. You don't, you don't have to pick some.

Well, what I'm saying is that if he does not want to be opposed to it, there's no need to have the pros to it.

Correct.

Very, very much.

Yeah. So we make that simple. Well, actually, I think it might be a little bit more complicated if there is no pro who writes the pro.

No, you, you can pick a pro and not pick.

I know, but I'm saying if you don't want to pick a pro who writes the pros, if the council does not designate one or more council members, then it's any voter or any bona fide association of citizens. Citizens association would come ahead of any individual voter. The council comes ahead of that. So my recommendation, given the statements from Vice Mayor Joseph, would be for the council to select two members of the council to write the argument in favor, which gives those two members of council priority to be on the ballot ahead of anyone else for that in the ballot book, rather, and then leave it up to the voters to select who may wish to submit an argument opposed.

Sounds good. Okay. Does any volunteers here that would like to be?

I'll volunteer.

To promote it? All right. And would you, Council Member Orill? Sure. Thank you. We have our two.

Thank you. Thank you. Lamatina and Orill will be running.

So we'll close that and, um, we'll move to the, um, staff oral and reports are there. Thank you. None. Okay. Then we'll move on to the mayor and council comments and committee reports. We'll start with you. Vice mayor, Joseph.

Well, I'm proud to say that I got my council committee report in. Sure did. I saw it. And the only thing I will say is over the last couple of days, we did our Juneteenth and we did our art extravaganza. So we had a lot of excitement from the Art Foundation hat side of me and also worn out. So thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Oro? Aye. I SUBMITTED MY REPORT AS WELL. THE ONLY THING I'LL ADD IS, AND I FORGOT TO ADD IT, WAS I ATTENDED THE AMERICAN CANYON HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION, WHICH WAS KIND OF AWESOME. AND IT WAS INTERESTING TO SIT THERE. AND I WAS THERE FOR A FRIEND. I KNEW OF A COUPLE OTHER FRIENDS. AND THEN I REALIZED THAT I KNOW DOZENS OF KIDS GRADUATING THIS YEAR. And so I was texting their parents along the way. Congratulations. Congratulations. So it was a really nice event.

And you also gave the encouraging speech to the students. Yeah, we did.

The mayor and I were up there encouraging those students right before they got on the field. I don't know if it did any good, but they, they seemed pretty happy.

Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, council member Lamatina.

I knew. No, I'm, I'm, uh, late to submit, but I'll get that in tomorrow.

FOR THE NEXT COUNCIL MEETING. GOT YOU. COUNCIL MEMBER CRUZ.

I DIDN'T SUBMIT MY REPORT, BUT I WAS PRETTY BUSY WITH ALL OF YOU ALL. WE ATTENDED THE EIGHTH GRADE PROMOTION ACMS. WE ALSO DID THE 12TH GRADE GRADUATION ACHS, WHICH WAS VERY GOOD. WE DID THE MEETING IN THE STREETS, WHICH WAS FUN. WE ALSO ATTENDED AN EVENT IN SAN FRANCISCO. Filipino Asian law enforcement organization where we honored a Member here of the community for outstanding educator award, which was what's fantastic and This Thursday, I'd be attending the Association of Bay Area governance for a bag. That's all I got.

Thank you Thank you, sir. I submitted my report. I have nothing to add We'll move on to future agenda items vice mayor Joseph Nothing at this time Councilmember Orr? Nothing, sir. Councilmember Lamatina?

Yes, I would like to, for a future agenda item, I would like to speak about town halls. So I'd like to put that on the agenda to have a few town halls scheduled for this year and to continue on.

Thank you for that. Do we need to?

I think my suggestion with that, and I think it's a great suggestion, we are due to have a quarterly evaluation for yours truly. We're looking at the July meeting or perhaps the second meeting in August. That's probably something we can fold into there. We can talk some of the details about that and talk about maybe some topics and some of those details. I don't. Now that we wouldn't necessarily have a conversation here, we certainly would announce those when we're ready.

Okay.

If the council is okay with that. Yes.

And then to your point, Council Member Lambertino, I've had several residents approach me about town halls as well. So thank you for bringing that up.

And I would third that as well. I think it's an important thing to do.

Okay. Council Member Cruz, anything in the future? No, sir. Okay. I also have nothing to add to the future. Tonight's going to be a little bit different. We've concluded our regular business for tonight, and we're going to adjourn from our regular city council meeting, but we're going to move on to two special meetings, the first of which is going to be the city special meeting with the joint uh... public and community services commission uh... so we take about a five-minute reset two-minute recess one-and-a-half-minute recess to get you guys set up

Okay. Awesome.

Let me give you the speaker cards for that.

you can stick them in the binder.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Do you want to get out to it?

I know where they are, though. It gives me comfort knowing where they are. Yeah.

One down, two to go.

To ignore all the screamers as you walk up the hallway? OK, yeah, continue to ignore them. Thank you, ma'am. As long as they have their call light. I'm sorry? Don't go into a room by yourself. Yeah, safety first. Well, that's exciting. What do you want to do? The internship is for the summer. And it's a volunteer position? It's a paid internship? Oh, cool. Thank you. Do you have a title?

Okay.

Oh, cool. Oh, fantastic.

That's great.

What do you want to do? Okay.

Cool.

Well, if you ever want to shadow a day in the operating room, be in the operating room and see the surgery and follow a surgeon and you would see what the surgeon does, what the physician assistant does, what the anesthesiologist does, what the nurse does, what the tech does, what the vendor rep does, you are more than welcome to come to the queen. I can get you. It doesn't feel comfortable when it's open. Yeah. Yeah, so if it's something you're interested in, the OR isn't necessarily for everybody, but when you're going into a medical field, it's...

Okay, we're going to start our second meeting. We're going to start our second special, our first special joint meeting with the parks and community services. Somebody...

We're good. You ready? Okay.

So again, if you would please join me in our Pledge of Allegiance, and I will ask Chair Mallory to lead us in that pledge.

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Holy Father, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Chair. Madam Clerk, can you do a roll call for both the Commission and the Council?

Yes. Commissioner Shirley Cote?

Present.

Vice Chair Scott Meyer is absent this evening. Commissioner Ian Smith? Present. Chair Elston Mallory, Jr.?

Present.

Okay. Commissioner Gina Griggs. I'm sorry. Here. Council Member Brando Cruz?

Here.

Council Member Melissa LaMattina? Here. Council member David Oro. Here. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph.

Here.

Mayor Pierre Washington. I'm here. And I apologize, I forgot to call our youth commissioners. We have got Sandhya Chandi. Here. And Charles Plummer Jr.

Here.

Welcome. At this time, I'd like to open up public comment for items that are not on tonight's agenda for the parks. Are there any...

IS THERE ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK ON ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA FOR THIS MEETING? OKAY. ANYBODY ONLINE? NONE. WE HAVE JUSTIN HAMILTON. JUSTIN, YOU MAY UNMUTE YOURSELF.

Thank you, Ms. Cole. And welcome. This is a special meeting, so I want to get back listening. And I want to say to the park director, I can't wait to see, redo, re-upgrade to park one. I need to see that we get to park one going. So thank you.

Thank you, Justin.

Okay, there's no additional public comment.

Okay, I'll close all public comment and move to the agenda, which the first item will be our business item. Item number one, parks and recs master plan, and our presenter will be Deputy City Manager Akita.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. On May 5th, staff presented the public draft parks and recreation master plan. Since that meeting, feedback received along with the extensive public engagement efforts conducted throughout this process have been incorporated into the final draft before you this evening. The plan builds upon several guiding documents, including the 2012 Parks and Community Services Master Plan, the 2015 Needs Assessment Plan, the Clark Ranch Master Plan, the Veterans Memorial Parks Master Plan, and the Kimberly Park Master Plan. In addition, the city's 2040 General Plan serves as the guiding policy framework, providing long-term direction for parks, recreation, trails, and open space planning in American Canyon. Staff carefully incorporated the feedback received from the Council on May 5th. Those updates included reclassifying Shenandoah Park from a neighborhood park to a community park, removing photo credits from images that are owned by the city, updating Chapter 3 and the park acreage calculations to exclude open space acreage and revisiting the vision for Clark Ranch 2.0 with the understanding that additional planning efforts beyond the master plan here this evening will be necessary to fully realize the site's potential to serve American Canyon now and into the future. At its core, the plan is about ensuring our parks and recreation system continues to meet the needs of our growing community. It provides a roadmap to guide future investments and priorities while balancing today's needs with the opportunities and aspirations we have for future generations. We are proud of the work reflected in the document before you this evening, and staff recommends that the City Council adopt the Parks and Recreation Master Plan to guide future decision-making related to parks, recreation, and community services here in American Canyon. That concludes my staff report. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Allie. Any clarifying questions or comments from the commissioners before we ask the council?

I have a statement. THIS IS A VERY WELL WRITTEN DOCUMENT.

CAN YOU TURN ON YOUR MICROPHONE?

I'M SORRY. CAN YOU HEAR ME? I'LL JUST SPEAK UP. I'M NOT SURE IF IT'S ON. OKAY. THIS IS A VERY WELL WRITTEN DOCUMENT. IT'S EASY TO READ. IT'S EASY TO FOLLOW. IT REALLY SHINES A LIGHT ON OUR CITY AND OUR COMMUNITY. AND FOR THE COMMUNITY HERE, WHEN THIS DOCUMENT IS AVAILABLE, PLEASE GET A COPY. Be glad that you did. It really highlights our city, and the hope is that it's adopted this evening. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else from the commission? No? You're the spokesperson for her. I knew it. I couldn't resist it. Go ahead, Gina.

I mean, thanks for asking three times, because you knew I wasn't going to resist. I know. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with Chair Mallory's comments. A lot of work, time, effort, energy, discussion, community engagement went into this master plan. It aligns with the 2040 general plan, and it addresses a lot of things, and it updates a lot of things. And it's, quite frankly, it's exciting. It's really exciting for this to be our master plan and to see where our city is headed with regard to parks and recreation and also in alignment with the general plan. It's very exciting. So I do hope that it gets adopted as well. And that's my comment.

Thank you, Ms. Griggs.

Following my fellow commissioner's comments, I would like to add that I really appreciate classifying Shenandoah Park as a community park because it really is a place that brings us all together. We've held several events there in the past from our city's winter celebrations to even the high school's senior sunrise and senior sunset events. So it really is a community place and I really appreciate putting it together in this master plan that's easy for the public to read and access.

Thank you, Ms. Chandy. Can I say, seeing no other comments, I gotta say what I reviewed it. I could tell that there was a lot of, um, genuine effort put into the plan. And like you said, Mr. Mallory, that I think that once the residents get an opportunity to kind of review it, they'll be impressed with the hard work and the input that you collected from residents as well. So I will open it up to our council for any clarifying questions.

Well, I'll echo the comments everyone else has made. The format of the document is very easy to read and follow, so I appreciate that. I also appreciate the updates that staff has done from our initial comments. And the only area that's left is at the Micologic Center. We really ought to plug in something about parking because as anyone who's been out there It was as if it were designed for an elementary school and not for more public use. So that's the only criticism I have in the whole document, I guess, is we should throw something in there about trying to increase parking in some fashion. So other than that, I liked it.

Thank you. I see no other questions.

Yeah, well, first, well done. You know, I sat there before, not as Parks, but on the commission, so I know the hard work that you all put into it, too, is just volunteering your time, so thank you very much. You guys did a fantastic job, awesome job, read through it, and it was good to me. And I'm glad to hear that the Shenandoah Park still does a Sunrise event there for the seniors. All four of my kids did that. I'm glad to hear that it's still going strong. So thank you for all you do, and I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. If there's no other questions from council, I'd like to open up the public comment for item number one for anyone in the audience or online.

Is there anyone in the audience that would like to comment on this item? Okay, seeing none, I'll put it out to everyone online. Is there anyone online that would like to make a comment? There's no public comment.

Okay, then I'll return to council for item number one for additional statements.

Well, a quick question on the parking at Micologic. How do I, what appropriate step should I take to try to get parking plugged into that park update?

I can answer that. That's an easy update. We can easily just add that in.

Okay.

Then I'm happy. Um, so you didn't want a resolution. You just want to know how to get it added to the, to the plan. Yeah. I tend to be picky that way.

No, I think, uh, like I said, I don't think we need to make any changes. Um, we just need to publicly acknowledge we need more parking out there.

Okay. So what I, what I would suggest vice Marion, assuming one of y'all wants to make a motion on a resolution, is it on page 84 of the packet and table three, three, Talk about future amenities at the logic center. Seasonal athletic grass pickleball courts and your resolution might say and expanded parking options or something like that. You can just roll that into the resolution we can then GO BACK AND MAKE THE FINAL EDIT TO THIS DOCUMENT. ALL RIGHT.

THEN I'M GOING TO, BECAUSE I DON'T SEE THE RESOLUTION IN FRONT OF ME, BUT I'M GOING TO WING IT. I'LL MAKE A MOTION THAT WE ADOPT RESOLUTION 2026 NEXT IN ORDER, A RESOLUTION APPROVING THE PARKS AND RECREATION MASTER PLAN, INCLUDING A MINOR EDIT TO TABLE 3.4, I THINK IT IS, TO INCLUDE ADDITIONAL PARKING.

We have a motion.

I'll second.

And a second. And can I get a roll call, please, Madam Clerk?

Yes.

Okay. Commissioner, or excuse me, Councilmember, sorry, Councilmember Brando-Cruz?

Yes.

Councilmember Melissa LaMantina? Yes. Yes. Council member David Oro. Yes. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph. Yes. Mayor Pierre Washington.

Yes. Our second business item is item number two, the work plan fiscal year 2026-2027. And again, Deputy City Manager Ali Akita.

Yeah, Mayor, before I turn it over to Ali, I just wanted to say that item and then this item are really the coming together. I'm very proud of this group and our other commissions. We went through a process of reimagining how these commissions might serve the council. And I think really for the first time we were able to bring their fruits of their labor to you all. And so it's not a coincidence that we had your final adoption here with them, although they aren't able to vote on it. We wanted you to do that in front of them. So that was deliberate and exciting new things about what they're going to do next. But that was kind of one of the aspirations we had. So great job.

Thank you for that piece. And I'm sure you guys appreciate hearing that from the city manager as well. Allie.

Thank you, Mayor. Each year, the Parks and Community Services Commission develops a proposed work plan outlining the priorities and initiatives they intend to focus on during the upcoming fiscal year. As an advisory body for the City Council, the Commission's work centers on reviewing issues, exploring opportunities, and providing recommendations to support the Council's policy and decision-making related to parks, recreation, and community services. This annual process provides an opportunity to reflect on the Commission's accomplishments over the year, ensure their work continues to align with the Council's priorities and community needs, and establish a clear roadmap for the year ahead. This evening, we'll begin highlighting some of the Commission's accomplishments during the fiscal year 2526. First, the adoption here tonight of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan, which is very exciting. In addition we evaluated a potential revenue measure and provided a recommendation to the City Council to proceed with outreach and polling efforts We updated the community grant policy and recommended funding allocations to the City Council to grant and they granted those allocations back in December 2025 We updated the inflatable equipment policy to better align with the parks and recreation departments current practices and procedures They evaluated and discussed additional pickleball courts and reviewed the options associated with the Melvin Tennis Court Improvement Project, ultimately recommending that the project scope remain unchanged. And then the following projects are in progress or have been completed. The outdoor education project at Wetlands Edge Park was completed with the construction of a new outdoor pavilion, restroom, new trails, and interpretive garden, installation of a shade canopy at North Hampton Park, Installation and construction of the Silver Oak Park and Northampton Park restrooms, which opened this past weekend, and the Veterans Memorial Park playground and resurfacing project is wrapping up with final punch list items and inspections. The Commission met on May 14th and drafted a draft work plan for fiscal year 26-27 before you this evening. This work plan includes the following items. working alongside the Open Space Active Transportation and Sustainability Commission to evaluate the need for an e-bike ordinance and trail and parkway finding opportunities to improve connectivity and support active transportation throughout American Canyon. They have two initiatives carried over from last fiscal year, which would develop an active adult fee waiver policy and update the Municipal Code Chapter 2.29 Parks and Community Services Commission and Guidelines. Review the community grant program recipients. This is part of the policy and will close the loop on this year's community grant program. and additionally develop a project charters to evaluate the feasibility of additional pickleball courts and a second community garden on the east side of town. That concludes my staff report and I'm here to answer any questions if you need to.

Thank you, Ali. And I'll open it up for the council in a second, but I was going to mention that I heard a lot of things that we have asked to be put on this. to you from the council. So I applaud you for that. One of the items for me was the active adult waiver fee. I thought that was really, really important for us to get our senior citizens for mental health reasons out of the home and know that they don't have to spend any money. So I applaud you for remembering to put that, especially that one particular thing on there and, and you guys as well for putting that on there. Um, but I want to give you guys an opportunity also to make any statements on this before the council has an opportunity to speak to you. Mr. Chair, would you have anything?

We had a lot of homework these last few months, and it was very exciting. We're all new to this commission, with the exception of our one veteran here who helped us a lot. We have these two carryover items that we're anxious to tackle these in the upcoming months. So I want to say thank you to this commission, to everyone, and we're ready to head into the next couple months, few months, yes.

And you say you guys are new, but you guys were awesome. I mean, you guys were, you know, really active all year long. I think I've met with all of you guys several times throughout the year. And you guys solicited my ideals as well. So I thank you for making me part of, you know, you guys making decisions. So thank you. And I know, Gina, you have something else to say.

Thank you, Mayor. WELL, AS THE VETERAN OF THIS COMMISSION, I WOULD JUST LIKE TO SAY THAT I AM SUPER PROUD OF THIS COMMISSION. THEY REALLY STEPPED UP COMING INTO THIS NOT KNOWING EVEN THE FORMAT OF MEETINGS. STUMBLING OUR WAY THROUGH THE FIRST COUPLE MEETINGS TO BEING OUT IN THE COMMUNITY, TO ENGAGING, TO ENGAGING WITH COUNCIL MEMBERS, TO PUTTING THE WORK IN AT MEETINGS, TO REALLY ACHIEVE A LOT OF WORK PLAN ITEMS AND CHECK A LOT OF THINGS OFF THE LIST IN THE LAST YEAR. IT'S BEEN REALLY IMPRESSIVE. AT THE DIRECTION OF DIRECTOR, OH, HI. SHE'S EVERYWHERE. SHE IS. And so she is our champion and our leader and so grateful for her direction. And I am excited to get these last couple things checked off the list that have rolled over and excited for the new items as well, especially. Although it's not really exciting, but that municipal code 2.29 needs some serious update. It's like a brother typewriter right now, and we need to turn it into a Windows whatever version. We're on an iPhone 17. It needs some serious updating, so I'm excited to do that. And my only other comment would be that the only thing about this list that rubs me the wrong way is that there's nine items. So I would be really excited if you guys have a tenth item so we could round that out.

YEAH, THE VICE MAYOR WILL HELP YOU OUT WITH THAT. NO OTHER COMMENTS? I'LL BRING IT TO THE COUNCIL FOR ANY CLARIFYING QUESTIONS BEFORE I OPEN IT UP FOR PUBLIC COMMENT. VICE MAYOR.

I'M NOT SURE IF IT'S A CLARIFYING QUESTION BUT IT'S GOING TO BE THE TENTH ITEM BECAUSE I APPRECIATE ANYBODY WHO IS KIND OF OCD-ISH AND FREAKS OUT WHEN YOU'RE NOT ON A 10 TO 5 KIND OF ROUNDING UP THING. SO I'LL BE THERE FOR YOU.

Oh, so you don't have a 10th one? Oh, I do.

And if this is an appropriate time, here's what I would add, and it's a simple one. We've just adopted a master plan, and I would like to suggest that you have at least an annual monitoring of the progress towards that master plan. If you look at Table 3.4 as kind of YOU KNOW, THE WISH LIST. IF EACH YEAR YOU COULD GIVE US AS PART OF THIS ANNUAL CONNECTION KIND OF A STATUS REPORT. HERE'S WHAT WE GOT ON ONE. HERE'S WHAT WE GOT ON TWO. WE'RE NOT DEALING WITH THREE AND SO FORTH. THAT WAY I THINK BOTH COUNCIL AND THE PUBLIC WOULD GET A SENSE OF WE'RE MOVING OR IF WE'RE RUNNING INTO PROBLEMS. SO THAT WOULD BE MY RECOMMENDATION AND THAT WOULD BE YOUR TENTH ITEM. AND THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER. SO THAT'S MY RECOMMENDATION. YEAH, THE OTHER ONE ISN'T SO MUCH A PROJECT AS IT IS LAST YEAR WE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO BASICALLY SAY, OKAY, HOW ARE THINGS GOING? AND I KNOW THAT OUR CITY ATTORNEY MIGHT SAY, BUT THAT'S NOT ON THE AGENDA. SO MY SUGGESTION IS AS AN ADDITIONAL ITEM, What do you guys think about things? How's the relationship been between us and you guys? Can we, in the process of considering an additional work item, have that open-ended discussion and see what's going on? What's the feedback? Are we giving you good direction? Are you wondering what we're up to? Any of that kind of stuff. Just relax and recognize that Whatever you might say is probably important. And there are people like myself who screw up all the time. And we're still able to make it. So feel free to just open up and be frank. And if that translates into a work item, great. And if it doesn't, we're on 10 and life is good.

So feel free. I'll give you guys an opportunity to think about what he just said. While I open it up for public comment, I'm going to give public comment an opportunity to kind of tell us how they're thinking and feeling about what they're hearing. And then when we come back from public comment, I'm going to ask you guys to kind of do just like what the vice mayor asked, kind of give us some feedback on what we could do better to make you guys successful or feel valued and feel heard. So for right now, I'd like to open up a public comment for anyone that has any comment for item number two on the agenda. Madam clerk.

Is there anyone in the room that would like to comment on item number two? Okay, seeing none, we do have Justin Hamilton-Hole online.

Okay.

Justin, please unmute yourself.

Thank you, Nicole. And I spoke out, Allie and the team. I want to see more... more workshop. But we need to think back. I know that you're right. I think the Parker Rack did a great job. And I want to see if we can do workshop, like sea counting and Parker Rack open base. So, Hallie, good work.

Thank you, Justin. Anyone else?

There's no additional public comment. Thank you, Nicole.

I'll close public comment on item number two, return to the council and the commissioners for any additional statements. This is where I'm going to ask you guys to kind of give us some feedback on what you guys think we could do better to make your life easier, more manageable.

I always get told off for not being loud enough in the meetings. So I think if you look at what we achieved as a commission and then with staff this year, we got a lot done. And I think we can be very proud of that work. I think we were thoughtful and deliberate in what we did. And when you've asked for our advice, I feel like you've listened to the commission's advice. I feel like we're well supported. And with regard to item 10, I like that idea. I think it's important to give the community as much visibility as possible so they can see that we're being responsible and thoughtful. with their money, right? So I think that's an excellent idea. I can't speak on behalf of the commission. I guess I'll let them talk, but I think that's something we should take on. Thank you, Commissioner Smith.

You look like, were you gonna say something, Commissioner Coots? You try to grab the mic, feel free. We wanna hear you. You were just gonna hand it over to him, but you got something to say. I can see it in your face.

I was just going to hand it over to him but I guess now that I've got it I also wanted to you know repeat what Commissioner Smith has said that there at no time I had never felt as if we were not supported OR HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO COME TO EITHER ONE OF YOU, WHETHER IT'S HERE IN CITY HALL OR IF IT WOULD BE IN ANOTHER EVENT, AND I'D CATCH UP WITH YOU GUYS. I THINK THE LATEST ONE WE HAD WAS THE APPRECIATION DINNER THAT WE REALLY ENJOYED. I THINK ALL OF US DID. AND COUNCILMAN ORA WAS THERE, AND HE SPOKE WITH MYSELF AND MARILYN ABALON, WHO SERVES ON THE PLANNING COMMITTEE. And we had a question. He was like, you know what? If you have a question, just reach out to me. And we were like, okay. We thought that maybe there's limits or restrictions, but you guys have all made it very transparent saying, no, if you have any questions, you guys can come to us. And that goes for each one of you. And so I, me personally, I want to thank you. And it was a privilege, you know, it's a privilege serving on this, this committee. We, I've learned a lot personally and, um, And we've done a lot. And just reviewing it, I felt very proud of being a part of that and contributing to a lot of that. So thank you very much. While I've got this, I was wondering, though, on the work plan, when we talked about it last meeting, It's number two, evaluate the need for an e-bike ordinance. I don't know if that encompasses like those scooters, I don't know, electric scooters, and or drones, because those are now something that everyone, a lot of people have that did not have it when these were first written. So I think that's what we had discussed last meeting, but I didn't see it here, so I was just questioning it. But that's it for me, thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Koot.

No one else? I would like for this, our group, to meet with you all more often. I think the more familiar we come with each other, conversation and communication will be a lot easier. So if we can meet a few more times together like this in the year, that would be great.

Okay.

I'm not sure how it would happen, but however it could happen.

Well, like Commissioner Coote said, when she had an opportunity to talk to Council Member Oro, he opened the door. He says, hey, look, you know, just reach out to us, talk to us. I mean, we're simple. The only one that might out-talk you is the Vice Mayor, but everybody knows that. Anybody knows that. So, yeah, we're more than willing. And, you know, I think it's important. The reason that we selected each of you to be on these commissions is because we want you to give us the advice, and we want you to kind of give us what's happening and what's being said out in the community. So that's very important for us to have that information. So thank you. WITH THAT SAID, I'LL BRING YOU BACK TO COUNCIL. YOU DIDN'T ASK ME. GO AHEAD, GINA. I JUST ASSUMED YOU WEREN'T GOING TO SAY ANYTHING. THAT WAS SILLY.

I DID WANT TO TOUCH ON WHAT COMMISSIONER COOT SAID. I THINK NUMBER TWO COULD BE BETTER WORDED. I THINK IT COULD SAY DEVELOP AN E-BIKE SLASH E-SCOOTER ORDINANCE. I think it's necessary. It does get a little dangerous sometimes when you're walking and a scooter or an e-bike is coming up behind you and you can't hear them at all. They don't have bells. It would be nice if that was something that was a requirement. So we can still evaluate it, but if we could add scooters, I don't know if drones is necessary. A different number. But I think it is a safety thing for the e-bikes and scooters. As far as our relationship, I feel like you're all very accessible. And I love that. I love the transparency and the communication. I think sometimes when I sit on the commission and we are making decisions about things and we have one person in our audience, I would like more of the community to attend our meetings. So again, going back to the town halls, I'd like to hear from the community members so that we know and we get that feedback that we really are making decisions that are for the larger voice of the community. because it makes me uncomfortable ever to feel like I'm making a unilateral decision just based on what I think. I really want to hear from the majority. I want to hear that it's a majority or that it's coming from a large body of the community, the need, the desire. What we're working on is truly what the community wants us to be working on. So I think those town halls and then having additional joint meetings are both great ideas, and I'd love to see that.

Thank you. Commissioner Griggs. Council Member Mauro.

Yeah, I just wanted to comment on some of the ordinance and ideas. I think Commissioner Coote mentioned drones. Don't wait for our permission, right? If you have a great idea, bring it forward. Let us consider it. Let us debate it. Let us go from there. Don't be beholden to those ten things. Expand, improve, suggest. That's the work that we're hoping you guys will do for us. And if there's any sort of hesitation, have that conversation with us. Hey, I was thinking about doing this. Do you think this drone issue might be an issue? Those e-bikes are fast. They need bells, right, or something, right? So anything that you think of, I think that's what we're looking for you guys to add and consider. because that's why we have you and there's a lot of other things that we deal with just beyond parks. So feel free to, don't be encumbered by what's on the list. Feel free to add more.

Council Member Cruz. Yes, going to what Commissioner Griggs was talking about, feeling like no one is listening or wanna come out to your meetings. You guys are the biggest ambassadors. All of us are collectively, right? So it's up to you to also educate the public. Go out there, set up meetings. COFFEE SHOPS, WHATEVER YOU GOT TO DO, BUT BE OUT THERE COLLECTIVELY BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE LISTENING, BUT THEY JUST DON'T KNOW. THEY DON'T KNOW IF YOU'RE APPROACHABLE TO OURSELVES AND EVEN FOR YOU GUYS. AND FOR COMMISSIONER COOP, ITEM NUMBER TWO, E-BIKE IS A VERY SERIOUS ISSUE IN ALL CITIES. SO I GO TO DIFFERENT CONVENTIONS THAT WE GO TO FOR COUNCIL, CAL CITIES. THAT'S A HOT BUTTON IN EVERY CITY'S DANGERS. THERE'S BEEN FATALITIES IN THE PUBLIC POLICY COMMUNITY I BELONG TO WITH CAL CITIES. WE HAVE A WHOLE TEAM JUST TALKING ABOUT THAT. I HOPE IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE WE ADOPT SOME SORT OF ORDINANCE FOR THAT. BUT DEFINITELY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT THAT. SO THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THAT UP.

VICE MAYOR? YES. I WOULD CERTAINLY AGREE THAT THE E-BIKE SHOULD PROBABLY INCLUDE SCOOTERS AND EVERYTHING THAT GOES KIND OF MOTORIZED. AS TO CHAIR MALLORY'S COMMENT ABOUT MEETING MORE OFTEN, I I probably already said that myself over time. The part of the theory behind that appreciation dinner was to create kind of an informal setting to chat and just get to know each other better. But we might also want to consider uh... a very informal meeting that isn't as much fun but uh... would be an informal meeting where we're not sitting here on this side you're on that side uh... where maybe we all just pull together in a circle and chat to almost to discuss where things stand in terms of your workload uh... what issues you might be running into clarification from the council and where we ought to go those kinds of issues because There's always going to be a challenge with communications because under the normal arrangement, it's council gives direction to staff, staff provides support to the commission, and then backwards. And any time you're communicating something, and I've learned through two different marriages that normally when you try to explain what somebody else said, you're already in the hole. So it's better, lots of good fights over that. It's always better to say, hey, let's sit across from each other and talk about what the issues are to clarify what we think collectively is what you guys think and what staff's input. So collectively, I think we'll come up with better policy, and that's the whole point. So thank you, Chair Mallory, for bringing it up. I would endorse it.

Council Member Malamatina?

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you. You have done a great job. I do agree, better communication, more meetings, transparency. And we can't be everywhere in the community, so we need everyone to have eyes and ears and communicate that to us. Regarding the e-bikes, I'm an e-bike rider.

I have a horn, lights, brakes, a helmet.

But I'm a social worker. I drive around town and when the kids are out from school, I think we need better education because they are flying everywhere. And yes, lots of education out there regarding e-bikes. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lamartina. I'll accept the motion from someone on council to adopt the minute order for approving the Parks and Rec Service Commission's work plan for fiscal year 2026-2027.

I'll make the motion and clarify that item two should include e-scooters and other electronic vehicle type, I don't know, scooters and whatnot. as well as a new item 10, which is a monitoring of the progress towards the master plan, specifically relating to table 3.4.

OK. We have a motion.

I second that motion.

And a second. Madam Clerk, do the roll call, please. Do you have the additions that the Vice Mayor had? I do.

OK. Councilmember Brando-Cruz?

Yes.

Councilmember Melissa LaMartina? Yes. Council member David Oro?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Mark Joseph? Yes. Mayor Pierre Washington?

Yes. And I'd like to thank the Park Rec Service Commissioners for attending the night and being part of this joint commission. We've concluded this section of our special joint meeting. Thank you for all of the hard work. We'll take a pause for another one minute and a half as the Open Space Active Transportation and Sustainability Commission gathers up.

Do you like my pictures?

I do.

I told Karina, she's on there.

Oh, Alejandro. Good job. Hi, thank you. Go Parks. Go Parks. Yes. The place is green and serene.

I'm gonna go walk my dog. Thank you.

oh are these new they're like retro yeah i think what happened is they found a box of this stuff so they're from the from the from the dungeon library

You don't have one of those big ones, right? In the early, early days, there were these big ones with a picture of the council members with these great big pins.

Right.

Hey, do you guys want a slideshow? I don't think we're not doing slideshows tonight.

We're just like approving things.

Let's get rid of that stuff so you can do something interesting.

Like this. Hi. Hi.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, the other commissions all...

Okay.

All right. We have typos in here. How about I just delete every second? I'll just delete every second slide. I'll just delete every second slide. We'll be like, boop, boop. And I'd question some stuff.

You know, how it is. Juggles.

We prefer like, yeah. Juggling balls. We prefer like, yeah.

It's not that bad.

I will go quickly. Yeah. They've already heard it once. Yeah. Council hasn't seen it yet.

There's only one time. Oh, yeah. No, we have never heard it. You guys heard it three or four times.

We're going to, now that I've finished speaking, we're going to start looking for a house.

And we're going to be looking for a house. You can set it to like one and a half or two times speed.

My wife doesn't have a podcast yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I raised my...

He put a wand in the fold.

His brother used to run a car park.

So he lived there. And I raised my kids on my own. I forgot Mike. After he was asleep, he was about to get engaged. But yeah. Very true. I'll work on that next time. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

They got you on the first one.

No. Not the new one. I know.

I knew that's why you did it. That quick draw. That noise I had on my ring because I'm losing it. I love the one. I got this from Mexico and it was kind of costly. Yeah.

Leave any green tint on your hand. The peddlers always say it's real silver. And then run when it starts to race.

Yeah, because we don't wind up in Napa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're easy.

I don't want people to know we've got a cool relationship.

We can joke with each other. I know them all.

It is a creepy hotel. Okay, let's...

It's a great place.

So we will transition into our second special joint meeting with the City Council and the Open Space Activity Transportation and Sustainability Commission. Please join me as we rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and I'll ask my neighbor to start us with the Pledge of Allegiance, Tara.

To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Tara. Madam Clerk, can you do a roll call, please, with the commissioners first and then the council?

Commissioner Barry Christian? Here. Commissioner Sean Hughes is absent this evening. Let's see. Commissioner Nance Mattson? Here. Vice Chair Debbie Chavarria.

Here.

And Chair Tara McClinton Horner. Here. Council Member Brando Cruz. Here. Council Member Melissa LaMattina. Here. Council Member David Oro.

Here.

Vice Mayor Mark Joseph. Here. Mayor Pierre Washington.

Here. And thank you, Teresa. Public comments at this time. I'd like to open up public comment for any items that are not on tonight's agenda.

Is there anyone in the room who would like to make comments on items not on this agenda? Okay, seeing none, is there anyone online that would like to make comments? There are no public comments.

Thank you, Teresa. Well, Teresa, Nicole. We will transition to... Public hearing, we have one item on public hearing. Item number one is the active transportation plan, the general plan amendment.

And Mr. Cooper, you'll be doing the presentation for us. A brief presentation, but thank you, Mayor Washington and City Council and Open Space, Active Transportation and Sustainability Commission and members of the public. Brant Cooper Community Development Director, very pleased to present this milestone event amending the general plan for the American Canyon Active Transportation Plan. I'm really pleased here to introduce Patrick Ben from the NVTA. They actually prepared it and we get to put our name on it. But it is really a great service that the NVTA does. They're preparing an active transportation plan for every jurisdiction in Napa County, and they do it in a way so that each one can adopt it as their own. And this is going to be replacing older plans that were separately done for a bicycle and pedestrian and combining them into one, so it's just more sensible. And it's updated. It involves input from our community. So it's really exciting, and it's an important event. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Patrick, and we'll wrap it up and have questions.

Thank you very much, Director Cooper. Patrick Band, senior planner with the Napa Valley Transportation Authority. I will try to go fairly quickly through this slide deck, recognizing the relatively late hour, but please do stop me if you have any questions along the way. So as Director Cooper mentioned, NVTA developed this countywide version of the active transportation plan in part to update a 2016 countywide pedestrian plan and a 2019 countywide bicycle plan. to ensure that those documents were refreshed, aligned with current best practices. Since those plans were adopted, there were numerous changes to state law, best practices, and policy at both the state and regional level when it comes to bicycle pedestrian facilities and safety improvements addressing those users on our roadways. We also want to make sure that local jurisdictions maintain eligibility for funding opportunities, ensuring that plans are relatively recent, generally within about a five-year period, is often a requirement for particularly regional, state, and federal funding. We also wanted to make sure we have an established baseline of where are the facilities that we're talking about, where do we want to make sure we're investing in the future, Um, so we did significant data collection, uh, GIS mapping work. And of course, I think, uh, you know, most importantly to reflect, uh, the needs of each individual community, although this was developed as a countywide plan, um, it was definitely developed with the mindset that they would be adopted individually for each jurisdiction and each plan chapter for each community would be a little bit different and reflect the priorities and needs and characteristics, um, of those communities. In terms of timeline, this was about a two-year process to go from the initial project kickoff in fall of 2024 through data collection, existing conditions assessment, significant community stakeholder engagement, developing recommendations, and getting us to winter 26 or summer 26 with planned completion. Overall, we had nearly 2,000 interactions throughout the valley with local residents, business owners, community groups, sharing their input, sharing their thoughts and comments and concerns about both what are the strengths and weaknesses of our existing walking, biking, and rolling facilities, where are there opportunities to improve things, and how should we prioritize those improvements and those investments moving forward. Significantly, we did two in-person workshops, one at the Napa Valley College in the city of Napa, which a number of American Canyon residents attended. I know a couple of folks from this room were there. We attended all of the Meet Me in the Street events in 2025. We attended a career fair at American Canyon Middle School, soliciting feedback and engagement from middle school students about how they like to walk and bike to school or other destinations, whether it's you know, Starbucks or other places in the community, parks, et cetera, and did over 30 partner and community group presentations. We had significant online engagement through maps and surveys as well. So really a very robust set of public engagement to build this plan that's before you tonight. The plan is organized into, as Director Cooper mentioned earlier, into individual chapters for each jurisdiction. It also has a countywide section that addresses the overall plan goals to ensure consistency across our communities, establishing thresholds for the mode share or the number of people who are walking and biking in our communities, a county-wide set of policies, best practices toolkits that address safety, equity, accessibility, and connectivity throughout our communities. I do want to focus a little bit on the county-wide policy section. I think there's a lot of value in this section that we were able to develop, which builds on those existing plans, the bicycle and pedestrian plans from 2016-2019, as well as looking at the City of American Canyon's existing general plan, the local roadway safety plan that was developed by Public Works a couple of years ago, and other documents that have been developed by this community, building upon those and establishing really a floor countywide policies so that if you are walking or biking throughout the valley the way that we're addressing sidewalks the way that we're addressing bicycle facilities is the same community to community that a bike path or a bike trail doesn't look significantly different in American Canyon than it might in Yonkville We also developed an extensive treatment toolkit, about 87, I think, pages of documentation evaluating what are the best practices, what are the opportunities for, whether it's a public works department or local residents, to identify possible treatments to address concerns that they might have when they're walking or biking in their communities. That could be things like speed treatments, speed reduction, treatments. It can be intersection treatments to improve safety at intersections, maintaining the facilities that we have in our communities and ensuring that they are at a level that allows people to use them in a safe way. And this document really serves as a resource both for the public but also engineers, planners, and other members of city staff. We did an extensive needs assessment, which I'll get into a little bit here, focusing primarily on what we call level of traffic stress. Our goal with this plan was to ensure what we call all ages and abilities, ensuring that we have a network of corridors and pathways throughout our community where whether you're eight years old or 80 years old, you can get where you want to go on foot or by bike or on a scooter or other means of non-vehicular transportation. We did a significant level of traffic stress analysis looking at how stressful, how comfortable is it to travel on existing roadways based on the speeds that are out there today, based on the types of facilities, the sidewalks, the bike lanes or pathways that are out there, and what are the barriers to getting around in American Canyon. One of the things that we found was roughly 15% of roadway miles scored what we called levels of traffic stress three or four, which is a high-stress facility. So those are opportunity sites. One of the things you'll see here is that SR29, obviously Broadway, is a significant corridor with high levels of traffic stress. Again, it's high speed, high volume. NVTA's existing plans in coordination with Caltrans and the city to redevelop that quarter obviously will reduce the level of traffic stress for bikes and pedestrians by providing class one shared use pathways along that corridor We'll get in some tables here really quickly. For the City of American Canyon, we'll note that we have 2019 bike plan mileage and 2025, 26 mileage as well. Overall, for a built out bicycle network, we're looking at about 43, 44 miles of various bike lanes, bike paths, and other corridors that accommodate bicyclists at that lower level of traffic stress. We also identified and kind of broke out that network based on what is existing and what is proposed. A number of the proposed facility or the existing facilities that you'll see on this map, those green lines are actually what we call jumbo sidewalks or class one shared use pathways where bicyclists and pedestrians can use that path collectively. One of the areas that we also flagged was in the wetlands area. In the prior version of this document, we had identified those as Class 1 shared use pathways. Those don't meet the state's requirements, but we didn't want to ding the city for not having those, so we created a new classification of unclassified bike routes, recognizing that there's significant recreational opportunities out there, even if those gravel roads and pathways don't meet the state's requirements for these other bicycle classification criteria. skip this slide because it's a little bit technical here and we'll get into prioritization so one of the things we wanted to recognize is you know if we're looking at a full network of 40 plus miles of new bicycle facilities we have to prioritize that some way and so our project team in coordination with city staff looked at five key metrics safety equity, connectivity, the consistency with other adopted plans by that local jurisdiction and community support to prioritize a range of projects. This is not meant to bind the city and say you can only prioritize these or these are the only ones that are going to get funding, but rather to help identify what are some opportunity projects that could make a significant difference in walking and biking in the community. For pedestrian network gap closures, building new sidewalks, we took an approach that looked at key destinations. So that's parks, that's schools, it's transit stops, retail and medical facilities. And we basically drew a 500-foot circle around those destinations and said, you know what? These are places where we want to make sure people can walk. So that could be, again, the Safeway Shopping Center. at the intersection of American Canyon and 29. It could be, you know, local parks, et cetera. And we want to prioritize completing one side of the street with a complete sidewalk first rather than trying to piecemeal sidewalks together. Again, being efficient with taxpayer dollars and the resources that the city may have. And that got us to a proposed sidewalk network that closes about 1.7 miles of sidewalk gap, but also has about 10 new miles of class one shared use pathways for over 131 miles of pedestrian facilities citywide. So this map will show you those little red areas where we are prioritizing potential opportunities for sidewalk gap closures. I think we're going to pass it back to Brent to talk about kind of the next steps in adoption and environmental review.

So thank you, Patrick. The Planning Commission, at its last meeting, reviewed the active transportation plan. And so they are recommending it to the city council. And this happens to be statutorily exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act. So there's a real carve-out in state law, environmental, that really encourages cities having planning for active transportation. And with that, glad to answer any questions you have.

Okay.

Thank you, Brent, and thank you, Patrick, for allowing Brent to put his name on your slide. I appreciate that. As always, I won't go there. I'll go to council to see if there's any clarifying questions or a commission for any clarifying questions. Statements see enough on the Commission.

I'll go to you vice mayor yes, this gets back to the Prioritization of near-term projects. I think it's page 13 in the slide deck And I'm wondering one of the projects. Well if you One of the projects was Extending eucalypt or a shared path on eucalyptus Drive basically where it connects with new Napa Junction and And I noticed it's not on a priority list. And I'm wondering how did it, do we know how it shaped up based on the other criteria? You know, how did the extension of the eucalyptus shared path, how did it compete with the other five guys?

I DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER TO THAT SPECIFIC QUESTION AT THE MOMENT. AGAIN, THIS WAS A PROCESS THAT EVALUATED I THINK OVER 75 CORRIDORS THROUGHOUT THE CITY BASED ON THOSE METRICS THAT ARE ON THE SCREEN HERE. BUT I CAN CERTAINLY WORK WITH PUBLIC WORKS TO EVALUATE AND IDENTIFY WITHIN THE PLAN WHERE THAT PROJECT FITS AND WHETHER THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE CAN POTENTIALLY AMEND PRIOR TO ADOPTION.

I APPRECIATE the map that's evolving, and that is we've got some good connectors east-west at Kimberley, at American Canyon, Donaldson kind of, and then ultimately Eucalyptus. And so I think Eucalyptus has the best chance of being a really nice shared path. Donaldson and Rio are older parts of town, and you're just not going to get a nice, safe way to go there. But eucalyptus, on the other hand, does lend itself to having a nice shared use path. And for me, I think that ought to be a higher priority somehow. I'm guessing it's a lot more expensive than some of these others, and that might have been a factor. But I think in terms of connectivity, it might be a little higher. So that's my initial comment. Thank you. Council Member Orrell.

MR. BANN, THANK YOU FOR PREPARING THIS REPORT. MR. COOPER, THANK YOU FOR STAMPING YOUR NAME ON IT. THAT WAS DENSE, THE READING. SO I COMMEND YOU FOR DOING THAT AND PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER TO STUDY AND ANALYZE EVERY STREET POSSIBLE. AND I THINK IT'S ALL GREAT. But where I need your help, probably the Napa Bike Coalition's help, and I know they're doing this work too, is to get people on bikes. I would have rode my bike here tonight because I knew this was coming, but then I realized that I need to get a light for my bike. I don't know how late this is going to happen. and the iPhone light does not work. But it also kind of sucks to get here from the east side of town. The fastest way is down the highway, and I've done that a couple of times. It's just not comfortable. And I'm an experienced bike rider. I actually used to ride my bike in San Francisco all the time, going down the hills and making my way through downtown traffic. Absolutely loved it. I knew how to guide it, but on a highway at 55 miles an hour is a totally different story. But there was one part in the report that I read that was education. And that the younger, the sooner you get kids riding bikes, You create a culture of them riding bikes for a long time. And for me, I mean, it was what I was left to do when I grew up on military bases. They were almost the perfect microcosm of where to ride a bike because if you left the base, you were in trouble. But if you stayed within the base, you were okay. And so I just rode my Huffy around all the time. My dad's tripping out because I'm 53 years old and I'm still riding my bike around town.

Is it a Huffy?

Yeah, not a Huffy. I got a new one. I wish I had a Huffy. It's vintage now. But we need to get people to ride bikes. And in particular, I'm talking about the parents who drive their kids to school when they're like a mile away. I know we do education and stuff like that, but I would love... I think this is where the council and parks and open space becomes active in that role. And maybe that becomes a work plan item that we add on there as just an education piece. And those are my comments. I would love to hear your comments about that or the public's comments about that. But I really think that's the issue because we've done so much even now to just add more bike lanes and make it more safe along the way. And it really is. It really is a bikeable town.

Thank you for those comments. I will respond by saying all of the education, the encouragement, the evaluation, the engineering that goes into both building those facilities and getting people out using those facilities, all those things have to come together. And that's a really complicated mix to get right. One of the goals in developing the policy section of this plan was to be very clear about what are the opportunities for local jurisdictions to develop programs to support education, whether it's through the Bicycle Coalition or through local schools or Parks and Rec Department. to ensure that there is appropriate enforcement of laws and ensuring that people are using facilities correctly and ensuring that we are evaluating where our strengths, where our weaknesses on the evaluation front NVTA was really pleased to be able to partner with the city just a few months ago to install a new bicycle pedestrian counter on wetlands edge to evaluate How many people are actually using those facilities so that we know that we're spending taxpayer dollars to build out this network in the right places So all those things you need to come together and part of the policy section does specifically address those programs that education and encouragement That council member or you were discussing

Thank You Patrick Before I'll put it up councilmember Lambert, you know Thank you, and thank you for the presentation I'm an e-bike rider myself I'll be 55. It's a little scary trying to get across the highway I just say either you're gonna live or die basically and but what I see that's very concerning is our young folks just speeding around, not stopping at stop signs, their helmet is hanging off their scooter, they're not wearing it, things like that. So I agree with education. We definitely need to educate our parents and somehow try to enforce our youth to do what's right and not put themselves in harm's way. Thank you.

Thank you, madam. Before I open up the public comment, I want to give the commissioners opportunities while you have Patrick here to, you know, ask him questions or any clarifying questions that you might have for him. If not, I can move on to public comment.

Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. And I got to say, NVTA just does such an outstanding job getting these, bringing these plans together. One aspect of it though, is I understand that this is our plan. Each city got its own bicycle plan. So we're not, I think the only way we might be have obligated to follow all the priority recommendations is perhaps if it related to funding where we had difficulty getting funding. But to Vice Mayor Joseph's comments, if you see something here that you think should be a higher priority, I believe that you, the city council, has the ability to modify our bike plan and anything else that comes up. Really, I think you have the ability to do that. And to Council Member Oro's comments, I know from attending the Active Transportation Advisory Committee meetings for NVTA for a long time, the studies say that there's 10% of people that'll ride anywhere. And there's a large group that will not ride anywhere, that will never get on a bike. But the largest group that's so-called gettable somewhere around 50%, if I'm not mistaken, will ride if they feel safe. So if you wanna get more people on bikes, if you create more safe, and you connect them so that it makes sense that they can get to the grocery store, get to the pharmacy, get to the library, to school, to work. That is one way you can get people out on bikes. And then in terms of with kids getting ready, the Napa Bike Coalition does an outstanding job with using grants from the Safe Routes to School programs. They do kid rodeos and they come down here, they're all over Napa County. They're getting kids on bikes, they're doing bike rodeos, they're teaching them safety, they're giving them helmets. So they're doing great work too.

Thank you, Barry. Anyone else on the commission? Tara?

How does NBTA work with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and specifically once this plan is adopted, does NBTA work with them to make sure that our area in their plan is adopted?

Yeah, so that's a very good question. MTC, as well as Caltrans, both have significant planning efforts related to bicyclists, pedestrians, and other active transportation users. Again, this is beyond just bikes. I want to be really clear about that. This does include pedestrians, scooters, and other modes of transportation that are not personal vehicles or transit and so forth. So NVTA works very closely with both MTC and Caltrans and other agencies throughout the state to ensure that when we have adopted plans that our priorities and the corridors that we've identified and prioritized do get reflected in those other documents at either the regional or the statewide level.

Thank you.

Seeing no other comments from the commission. I'm open up the public comment for anything involving on item number one.

And it looks like we have care of Warner from the bicycle coalition.

Yeah, hi, I am Kara Verner with the Napa County Bicycle Coalition. Good evening, Mayor Washington and council members, and good evening, OSAT's commissioners. It's really great to see you. We love this plan, and I'm so impressed by the number of, like, the amount of class one paths, and it's just not at all surprising that American Canyon became a bike-friendly community this year. I think this plan moving forward reflects that, too, and lays the groundwork for higher and higher levels of recognition We gave a lot of input into the plan, and I want to thank Patrick from NVTA, Director Cooper, and Director Almond-Smithies for meeting with us about that and going through it. I just want to point out two of the things that rose to the top in importance for us. you've actually called out, which is getting across 29. So we were able to turn American Canyon Road crossing 29 into a steady corridor. It's great that there's a plan protected bike lane on American Canyon Road. There's a book called Don't Give Up at the Intersection, and that's what I had in my mind when I was giving that feedback about 29. So we're hoping that there are going to be ways to make that intersection safer to cross. It's a really important one, and the Vine Trail connects very close to it, so that's a priority. The other priority change we'd like to see is the connectivity of the Class 2 bike lane in front of donaldson elementary so you have it most of the way up donaldson but there's a segment where you don't and it might require removing some parking and i want to really encourage you to consider that and prioritize the safe ability for students to ride to school on their bikes there was a segment in the plan last in the last plan that didn't go in because folks decided that they couldn't remove any parking and they would have needed to do that on one side of the street, even though that was a very underutilized stretch of parking. So I really just want to encourage you to reconsider that, especially in front of an elementary school, how important that is to establish that connectivity of that bike lane. What else? I think that's about it. You really are on a great trajectory and I think you have some really sticky wickets with 29. So you know we want to lend all our support for trying to make that more crossable. We heard that from parents when we tabled at the schools as well. So I know that's a factor for a lot of people. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else in the room who would like to speak on this item. OK. We have Cindy Biederman.

Good evening again. I'm going to put two hats on. One is grandma, and the other one is going to be trustee for the Napa County Office of Education. Their plan is great. I love the connectivity, but there's a huge, you know, I feel like, you know, there's the elephant in the room. It is at Highway 29. I am part of that traffic problem because I, five days a week, I take my grandkids, I drop some off at middle school, and I take the other ones to high school. They're not going to walk. They want to hang out with their friends over there. They're not walking across that highway. They're not doing it. We can educate as many people as we want. That's not going to educate the cars that come flying down this highway. It's not going to educate the cars that are just, I watch in driving, I watch wrecks. I see cars running the lights hitting other cars. These are kids. I went to the NVTA meeting not too long ago, and Grant says, Michael, what happened to the pedestrian overpass? Oh, it's too costly. That's our priceless commodity, just going across that street and back. They're going to high school. Kids are coming back over here to go to middle school. The kids can ride bikes, my three grandkids ride the bikes around town all they want, but they can't cross the highway. So until we address that. Now we're gonna sit there and put a new, Highway 29 down here. There's no plans for a pedestrian overpass once they build it And if the city that comes up with the money one day to put it over there, there's no being no place to put it So why can't we end up in a kind of again? We have this great plan, but we have no connectivity between the east and the west you're 53 years old You're scared to go down there. What do you think a 12 year old is? So that's what I'm saying. So this is all great, but it doesn't work really because of the highway going down there. So I'm asking you guys, please, we know that once the NVTA gets done with that design, it's gone. We don't have that opportunity. So I don't know if there's some way that we could come together to make that happen to whether it's part city, part highway, part whatever, but let's get that pedestrian overpass back on that table just for the sake of our children. Thank you.

Thank you, Cindy.

Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak on this item? Okay, we'll go to Zoom and Justin Hamilton-Hall. Justin, please unmute yourself.

Thank you, Nicole, and see counting in open page. I am Justin Hall. I live here for 35 years. I think it's for safety that I was on a lot of I go on a lot of transportation for me on Zoom. There are a lot of safety stuff. I think we need to locate more safety up there for the kids when they go back to school and all this. But I want this just to shout out the transportation. Thank you. Thank you, Justin.

Okay. And we have Tonya. I'm going to apologize. I'm going to butcher your name, Mahalis. Please unmute yourself.

You said it perfectly.

I am Tonya Mahalis.

I just wanted to echo what Cindy said. I have two kids. One has graduated. The other one's a senior in high school. My daughter that's a senior has a friend that's been hit on his bicycle twice going to middle school. And he wasn't doing anything wrong. Thankfully, he had his helmet on. He did not end up in the emergency room with a traumatic brain injury. My other daughter who has graduated, we have seen a kid get hit on Highway 29. That is like etched in my memory. Some woman came around the... On Donaldson Way, well, she was on 29, but at the intersection of Donaldson Way, she came around the white striped area, blew through there and hit this kid and he landed in a way that no human should ever land with body parts facing the wrong way. So you want to know why parents drive their kids to school? Because it's terrifying to cross Highway 29. Thank you.

Thank you, Tanya. There is no more public comment.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. I'll close public comment for item number one and return to the council for any clarifying questions or even to make an adoption of the resolution. Also, given the commission an opportunity to speak once one more time, Vice Mayor.

Yes, and and I appreciate the reports and the comments and so I'd like to kind of weigh in on a couple of things The 29 corridor in particular the good news is what MBTA is doing is going to get us some good north-south Connectivity, they'll be shared lanes and you know class one walkways and bikeways So that is good news. But everybody's comment is right. Getting across the highway is still going to be an adventure. It will be better. The way the intersections will be designed, there will be some pedestrian refuse places or whatever they're called. But they are not as good as a pedestrian crossing. And I recognize the cost is prohibitive and I recognize they took that out of the plan. But I'm looking more towards the future and saying, OK, maybe the city needs to do a little bit of preliminary planning to look at the corridor and say, where would be the optimal point to put a pedestrian crossing? And because I have a driver's license, I think I'm a traffic engineer, and I'm going to throw out somewhere around the Crawford intersection seems optimal because it's kind of close to walking to the high school. and yet it's kind of midway, but I will defer to people who know better. I just think what we ought to be looking at is to do a little planning that says this is the best location. And either try to identify what the right-of-way needs to do that kind of a thing along the corridor so we begin to secure it or do something. Because I do think it's worth it to be in a position to say, hey, we are planning for this improvement. And maybe NVTA can't cover that cost. Maybe that's going to be our burden. And maybe someday with a sales tax increase, that can be something we identify. But I do think it ought to be plugged into the equation somehow. It ought to be something that we aspire to accomplish. The second one was what Kara brought up about Donaldson Elementary School and the idea of maybe eliminating some parking on the street for the sake of a Class II trail. Whereas on Rio, I think there were some extenuating circumstances. I kind of take the opposite view with Donaldson, and that is, A, when you're dealing with that many kids, the significance of a good trail goes up tenfold. But also, there's a huge parking lot. And so if we're talking about telling people, okay, you're going to have to walk half a you know to a parking lot where there's ample space instead of being able to park on the curb i don't know if that's a huge trade-off for most people and so that might be the kind of area where we want to revisit and look at that as some means by which we can have some class two trails along that alignment because there are so many kids, there is so much activity, we really ought to focus on making that a little safer. And the loss of parking in that particular situation isn't as severe because there's a giant parking lot next door. So those are my two comments on those two issues that came up.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. I actually had one question. When I was reading the plan, one of the things I noticed, and some of the kids that I spoke to from the high school kind of mentioned it to me, that they would ride their bikes to the stores and locations had there been adequate ways of parking their bikes. SO THAT WAS ONE OF THE THINGS THAT, YOU KNOW, I DIDN'T FIND IN THE PLAN, BUT I UNDERSTAND IT. IF YOU RIDE A BIKE TO SAFEWAY, WELL, SAFEWAY HAS THEM, BUT IF YOU RIDE A BIKE TO A LOCATION, YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU CAN GET OFF YOUR BIKE, IT'S GOING TO BE THERE WHEN YOU COME BACK. SO IS THERE PLANS OF MAKING PLANS FOR MORE EFFICIENT PARKING FOR THE BIKES?

I know that Mayor Washington, that bike parking is a required part of new development. Of course, we have old development that may not. I'll let Patrick comment on that.

uh... thank you mayor uh... there are maps in the plan that do show the location of existing uh... bicycle parking locations uh... actually that was a data collection effort at the bicycle coalition partnered with nbta on uh... that extensive work including uh... very christian doing some work uh... on our end The plan does not include identified locations for future bike parking, but that is certainly something that NVTA is more than happy to work with the city to develop moving forward and to help identify possible funding sources to supplement that need. As Director Cooper mentioned, You know, bike parking is a requirement for new development, but existing development, whether it's the Safeway, you know, and Starbucks or other locations that the kids or adults want to go to, is certainly a potential unmet need that NDT is more than happy to work with the city to address.

Okay, so it was something that you guys have considered.

Absolutely.

Okay. Council Member Morrow, did you change your mind? Okay. With that, I don't have any more questions. It doesn't appear that we have any more. I want to ask the Commission questions.

I just want to say, I was part of the information gathering for the bike parking, and I was shocked that our parks, some of them have bike parking, but not all of them. So we definitely have some room to grow there. Okay. And we've brought it up in OSATS meetings in the past, so I'm glad it brought it up. Thanks.

Anything else?

Yeah, thanks. On the Highway 29 issue, you may have noticed in our work plan, one of it is to advocate for getting the Paoli Loop into a Class 1. And it's listed on the map as a potential. So it's in the queue. I don't know how long it's going to take. But when the Green Island Road Class 1 on the north end comes out to hit Highway 29, it just stops there. There's nowhere to go. You're either gonna have to ride your bike on the street through Paoli Loop and deal with the trucks, or you have to get on Highway 29 and go up over the bridge to get to, but it is a safe crossing. It would be, it's below grade. You can't get hit by a car there. You're going underneath the freeway. Wouldn't that be cool if we had one of those at American Canyon Road? So to me, that's a valuable one, and it's worth, and it doesn't look like it would take that much money, because it's got the grading. I think there were pathways at one time, sidewalk, but in terms of the overcrossing, Our river comes by outside on the west, comes through American Canyon, doesn't come through the center. City of Napa, the Napa River goes right through the center of the city. So how did they deal with that? They built bridges. There's the Butler Bridge, Imola Bridge, Third Street, First Street, Lincoln Street, and Tranca Street. That's seven bridges to cross the Napa River. So they didn't let the river divide them. They figured out a way. Okay, they got bridges everywhere. There's no problem. We got none. We don't have a single bridge here. And we don't have to build it as a highway bridge for big trucks. We just need to build it as pedestrian bridge. I would like to have two, one at American Canyon Road and then one between there and the Paoli Loop crossing. I don't know what, maybe by the Walmart or something there. But I agree totally with Vice Mayor Joseph to start looking at that and coming up with the money. that'd be the i think that would be the proper way to do it long-term planning and and and get it done because yeah you never gonna you're never gonna tame the traffic the drivers thank you very uh... any other questions from the board if not i'd accept a motion to uh... adopt a resolution providing a general plan approving a general plan

if there's no one else i'll make a motion that we go ahead and adopt a resolution approving a general plan amendment to incorporate the american canyon active transportation plan as an appendix into the general plan mobility element i second that motion we have a second madam clerk can you do a roll call please yes

Council member Brando Cruz.

Yes.

Council member Melissa Lamatina. Yes. Council member David Oro. Yes. Vice Mayor Mark Joseph. Yes. Mayor Pierre Washington.

Here. That's it for public hearing. Next, we'll move to our business item. We have one business item, which is item number two. Item number two, a work plan for fiscal year 2026-2027.

Before we jump into that, Mayor, I also want to thank the Commission for their work and their support of NVTA's effort on this active transportation plan, also the Planning Commission. Like I mentioned before, this was kind of when we reimagined how our commissions would be serving the Council and advising the Council, we wanted to bring this kind of thing back to them and to see their hard work implemented. And although they don't get to participate in the vote per se, doing it in front of them I think is symbolic and important.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hawley. I agree 100%. Thank you. So item number two, the work plan fiscal year 2026, 2027. Deputy City Manager Ali Akita.

Thank you, Mayor. Each year, the Open Space, Active Transportation, and Sustainability Commission develops a proposed work plan outlining the priorities and initiatives they intend to focus on during the upcoming fiscal year. As an advisory body for the Council, the Commission's work centers on reviewing issues, exploring opportunities, and providing recommendations to support the Council's policy and decision-making related to open space, active transportation, and sustainability. This annual process provides an opportunity to reflect on the Commission's accomplishments over the past year, ensure that their work continues to align with the Council's priorities and community needs, and establishes a clear roadmap for the year ahead. This evening we'll begin highlighting some of the Commission's accomplishments during this fiscal year. First, tonight we adopted the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. We established trail courtesy signage to promote safe and shared use of trails throughout our park system. Staff is currently working on developing signage and rolling this out. We received presentations. We received a presentation from our public works team on the concept of complete streets and how it is applied to our capital improvement program, also referred to as CIP. and for street projects, as well as a presentation from the Napa Valley Transportation Authority on the combined bicycle and pedestrian plan, which was adopted this evening. We completed the league of American bicyclists application and received the bronze level award for being a bicycle friendly community. And the following projects have been completed or are in progress. The outdoor education project at the wetlands was completed and constructed with a new outdoor pavilion, restroom, interpretive garden, and new trails. The installation of a new rectangular rapid flashing beacon also referred to, referred to as an RRFB crossing and traffic calming on Melvin road. A new shade structure at Northampton Park was installed. The park restrooms at Northampton Park and Silver Oak Park opened this past weekend. The recycle water line was installed for the Little League complex. And the recycle water refill station project is currently underway. And construction continues on Green Island Road, including the installation of a Class 1 trail. We also received presentations on the BCDCC level rise report related to SB272 and the Regional Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, also referred to as the RCAP. We reviewed and mapped sustainability initiatives from the city's 2040 general plan and promoted the NAPA Climate Now through the city's website and social media pages. The Commission met on May 6th and drafted the draft work plan before you this evening for this upcoming fiscal year. And those items include working alongside the Parks and Community Services Commission to evaluate the need for an e-bike ordinance. And I would also like to add, since we've made the change to PCS, to add scooters and the other items that we added to their plan. And a trail and parkway finding opportunities to improve connectivity and support active transportation throughout American Canyon. They would like to advance sustainability initiatives to include evaluating a reusable food ware ordinance recommended by Napa County, develop a residential tree planting program similar to our cash for grass program, prepare the roadmap to 2030 to engage the American Canyon businesses and residents achieving the city's sustainability goals, engage with the youth of American Canyon through our Citizens Academy program, receive a presentation from Marin Clean Energy Deep Green program and our participation trends, and on a Tree City USA designation and the requirements and benefits and home energy savings. Additionally, the Commission will review the requirements related to the Room to Roam Act AB 1889 and evaluate the potential implications for city planning and policy, and then develop a project charter evaluating the feasibility for a Class 1 trail along Paoli Loop to improve connectivity and expand active transportation opportunities. I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge and thank our public works team and our community development team. They're also part of this commission here tonight and throughout the year. And as well as our partners, Kara Verner with the Napa Valley Bicycle Coalition and VTA and MCE. So we do want to do a special shout out to them because they have really helped advance our work plan this past year and into the future. And that concludes my staff report. Thank you.

Thank you for your recap deputy city manager Akina any clarifying questions from the council and or the commissioners I have five questions actually I

the evaluating the need for an e-bike ordinance kind of grew out of wanting to have more education of both children and adults on how to properly use bicycles and the discussion about e-bikes came up. So I think that item maybe is gonna be fleshed out a bit as we get more information. I think it's a pretty general statement. So I wanted to mention that. And I think that, I don't know if we're adding education into that item, or have we put that on the side with NCBC?

So how we've written it, because it is policy related, is we're going to evaluate a need for an ordinance. And so that would include outreach, education, enforcement, what the ordinance would look like, How all that stuff like what that means for the community public engagement all of that so it's it is that evaluation Period it doesn't mean that we would develop something but it would mean that we would look at all those things, and then provide a recommendation. Great, thanks.

Okay, moving on to the residential tree program. I think this started with Barry bringing up new and wetlands, and so I'm wondering where the new and wetlands additional tree planning will go into the, it's not residential, so how does that fit in our plan?

So it's part of the Tree City USA designation. So that was part of the idea was to look into that and what that means and looking at what we already have and kind of the same idea. Look at what we have. What does that tree designation look like? Where would additional trees go? What type of trees would we be planting? All that type of stuff.

Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. There's one item that was left off. We wanted to have presentations on where the sea level rise project is in terms of through the process of the project going on. So I'd like to add number 14.

Yes. So thank you for bringing that up, Chair Matson. We actually specifically left that off for a reason because we weren't confident that we would

have anything to bring back to this body at that time to provide an update so that's why it's so if it turns out it's possible it could just happen okay and then my last question because a lot of these I think are pretty straightforward but the roadmap to 2030 I know this has been on our work plan for a while what's entailed in that in terms of is there a plan you know Not planned yet. Okay, so it's a general kind of catch-all. Okay, great. That's it for me, thank you.

Thank you, Nance. Any other questions from the commissions?

Just a suggestion, it might, would it be helpful to think of, instead of an e-bike ordinance, maybe call it wheeled vehicles, because I think that includes scooters, skateboards, Segways, bicycles, and all that. E-bikes, the three classes are all legal, and they're like regular bicycles, but there's all this other stuff out there. Maybe if you think of it, I think of it in terms of wheels. Wheels with motors? Moving faster than pedestrians and can bang into you and hurt you.

I just have one question regarding the wildlife corridor planning analysis. Are we still going to look at that. That's on the work plan. Yes.

Any other questions from commission. Seeing none, I'll open up a public comment on item number two. Anybody have a comment card, Madam Clerk?

We don't have any comment cards, but it looks like Kara Varner is ready to go.

Go figure.

Sorry, me again. Kara with the Bicycle Coalition, hello again. I think it's a really great thing to have a conversation about micromobility, e-bikes, e-scooters, and to broaden that. E-scooters actually result in about twice the emergency room visits as e-bikes. So it's really something to consider. There's also a lot of misinformation. and that lands on legal e-bikes in a way it really shouldn't. Most of the things that people really are causing people fear and concern have to do with devices that are already illegal, e-motos. Thankfully, at the state level, they're working on something that will, I think, most likely pass because it has had so much support so far that will go a long way in helping to clarify those things. So it's a great community conversation to have. And I second sort of broadening that, especially to e-scooters. One item, and I apologize for bringing this up now and not bringing this up earlier to the commission and to staff, but one, if there's room for an additional work item, there was a state law that passed that will drop the speed limit in school zones to 20 miles an hour in five years. IT'S HAPPENING. ALL OF YOUR SCHOOL ZONE SPEED LIMITS WILL DROP TO 20 MILES AN HOUR. IT ALLOWS JURISDICTIONS TO ADOPT THAT EARLIER, AND THAT IS WHAT I WOULD LOVE TO SEE HERE IN AMERICAN CANYON. I KNOW THE CITY OF NAPA IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE HAVING THAT CONVERSATION NEXT YEAR WHEN THEY BRING UP THEIR REGULAR SPEED LIMIT REVIEW ABOUT WHETHER THEY WANT TO DROP IT EARLIER OR NOT, BUT SPEEDING IS THE NUMBER ONE CRASH FACTOR THROUGHOUT NAPA COUNTY, ACCORDING TO NVTA'S VISION ZERO REPORT, AND THEIR MICHELIN STUDY, WHICH LOOKED AT RISK, NOT JUST PAST CRASHES, BUT LIKE, YOU KNOW, RISK OF CRASH really identified speeding especially around American Canyon High School as a really high risk factor. But they said essentially that risk is elevated for vulnerable road users throughout Napa County. So one factor in getting students writing and getting students writing to school is that safety and it's only 500 feet within a school zone. It's not a really far away, but really drawing that attention to slowing down when youth are present, I think could go a long way in making folks feel safer and I'd love to see American Canyon consider and potentially adopt that earlier. Thank you.

Thank you, Karen.

Is there anyone else in the room who would like to speak on this item? Seeing no one, is there anyone on Zoom that would like to speak on this item? There's no additional public comment.

Thank you, Nicole. I want to provide the same opportunity I gave to the previous commission for you guys to kind of give us a little dialogue on what we could do better to be more supportive or anything that you would like to see us do to help you accomplish what you're trying to do as a commission. And I was going to hope I could go down the line starting with you, Tara. Just want to know what we can do as a council to be more supportive of what you what you Bring to the table. I mean anything from one-on-ones. I know we've done one-on-ones in the past What can we do to help you be more effective?

Yes, thank you. I feel that you are very approachable, so I really appreciate that. Thank you very much. And possibly meeting, I don't know, informally or formally every six months just to recap on where we're at would be, I think, helpful. me and possibly everyone so that's one idea I have and I think that we're just I really appreciate all of you and just you know we are doing a great job I think I'm really excited for the upcoming year and all of the points that we're going to try to meet and I believe we will because we did an amazing job last year that was my first year so I'm really impressed by how everything is running an American Canyon, although there's a lot that we can do. I'm really excited to see more trees coming in. I'm hoping that we can do that. I think it would bring a lot more beauty to the city as well. I hear a lot from our neighbors and just people that I talk to in American Canyon. Everyone's super you know, friendly has always been. I've been here for almost 25 years now. And, you know, that's one comment. There's a lot of comments. You know, I hear a lot. But I think your accessibility, you know, to hear us and to engage with us, amazing so thank you and thank you for putting on the dinner for appreciation and both of the dinners that we attended that was amazing as well and I wanted to also thank you for the sustainability analyst who's Lauren Webster looking really you know a lot forward to working with her so thank you for making that happen.

Thanks Debbie. Nance?

I want to say someone on PCS mentioned the gathering we had and I think that was incredible and I'd like to see that happen more often and I like the idea of every six months maybe all the commissions and council can get together and kind of where are we what's going on and I know You guys have a fair number of things on your agendas anyway, so I don't know how that fits in. I continue to be really impressed on how staff brings stuff to us. We work together and not just staff, but consultants and local partners and CBC. and VTA, et cetera. It just helps put together a better project and an activity that's just furthering the goals. I'm also excited about Lauren being on board and hoping we're gonna move the sustainability part a lot further this year. Thank you.

Thank you, Nance.

You guys are doing great. Thanks for letting us do this.

Thanks, Barry. And Tara, do you have enough time to think about it?

Thank you. Yeah, I think maybe taking a walk every now and then, you know, with the council member and kind of talking about some of the topics we've been chatting about. You know, I've been thinking about this for a while, maybe the commission's having like a booth at Meet Me in the Street where we could talk to a lot of people at one time about different things we're working on, answer questions to the community, and we could ask them how they feel about certain things too. Some way that makes it easier to just engage with the public. I think we get, we know our friends, we know the people that we know, but how do we catch all the other people. So I think helping us maybe get some kind of format, some kind of way to do that would be great too.

All right. Thank you, Tara. Vice Mayor Joseph.

First of all, I appreciate all your input and comments. And I think for me, the clear idea is that we need to meet more often. Maybe not as formalized as this, but something more informal, like I said. We could all sit out around, you know, move the chairs around and have a more informal discussion about where things stand, any problems you're having, any successes you're having, what can we do to help and vice versa. So I would like to hope that staff will get that message and begin looking at an agenda that allows for that because I think that is important. But then the other part of it is I really wanted to look at the draft work plan. First, from what I'll call a Diane Dillon perspective in which we get kind of picky about the structure, it might be useful to look at the draft plan because OSAT has three distinct functional areas to maybe break out the elements by open space, active transportation, and sustainability. Not to change anything, just to reorganize it so that you can say, okay, this is easier to look at. THAT'S JUST ME BEING A FORMER GRAMMAR TEACHER OR SOMETHING IN A PAST LIFE. BUT DRILLING DOWN MORE SPECIFICALLY TO NUMBER 11, EVALUATE TRAIL AND PARK WAYFINDING OPPORTUNITIES, WELL, I DIDN'T NOTICE THE WAYFINDING, TO IMPROVE CONNECTIVITY AND ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION, THAT'S WHERE I WAS GOING TO TRY TO PLUG IN THE PEDESTRIAN CROSSING ON 29 AND MAYBE CLASS 2 ALONG BENTON WAY. And if that was really intended to be just signage, then I would offer up a 14th item that says look at those two things. From SR 29 crossing, it's more look at the corridor and figure out where it may make the most sense so that we have some potential locations. And maybe, you know, That's probably the most important thing. I think Barry, your idea about the existing Green Island crossing makes sense. I think it's a relatively, well, I say relatively versus like two or three million dollars to do it from scratch. That may be something we can accomplish. It's kind of at the wrong end of town, but It's something. And if people are on bikes, it's not that much of a hassle to say go an extra half mile on a bike is no big deal. Walking is a challenge. But on a bike, it may not be that much of an obstacle if it saves your life. And so that might be the easiest, but there may be others. And like I said, the class two path along Menton Way, I think, given the amount of parking in the area and the potential risks, that might be worth revisiting as well. So those are the two areas I would like to see OSATs kind of invest some energy into. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. If there's no other comment, I will... Accept the motion to accept.

Before we make a motion, I just want to say thank you to all of you, to the commission. You guys do an awesome job. Again, I want to echo what I said with the other commission. I know it's a difficult job, and you guys are all volunteers. Our jobs are difficult, but you definitely make it easier because you lighten our loads for that. You're passionate about what you do. I know some of you have been on this commission since its inception, so thank you. You do it over and over and over again. I just want to recognize that. I want to name that, and I want to thank you for that.

DO WE WANT TO MAKE ANY FORMAL ACTION ON THE TWO ITEMS ABOUT THE SR 29 CROSSING AND THE CLASS 2 ON BENTON WAY? AND BY SAYING THAT, I ALSO ACKNOWLEDGE YOU HAVE A PRETTY ROBUST WORK PLAN.

VICE MAYOR JOSEPH, I MIGHT OFFER A COUPLE OF SUGGESTIONS ON THOSE IDEAS. FIRST, ON THE CLASS 2, I THINK WE CAN BRING THAT BACK. WE CAN BRING IT TO THE COMMISSION AND TAKE A LOOK AT IT. IT'S NOT TOTALLY CLEAR TO ME WHERE THAT GAP EXISTS. I THINK IT EXISTS IN FRONT OF HOUSES THROUGH A NARROW STRETCH JUST LIKE REAL DEL MAR. IN MY FIRST GLANCE OF THIS, IT'S REAL DEL MAR 2.0. BUT WE CAN TAKE A STUDY OF THAT AND BRING IT BACK TO THE COMMISSION AND GO THROUGH THAT SAME PROCESS. I DON'T THINK IT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE PARK. I DON'T THINK THAT'S WHERE THE GAP IS. THAT'S WHERE THE STREET IS ACTUALLY A LOT WIDER. AND TO YOUR POINT, ON STREET PARKING IN FRONT OF THE PARK, PROBABLY LESS VALUABLE THAN ON STREET PARKING IN FRONT OF SOMEBODY'S HOUSE AS FAR AS NEIGHBORHOOD COMPATIBILITY. As it relates to the overclassing question, there's a partner who's not here in the room who's going to have to be a part of that conversation at a minimum, NVTA and or Caltrans. So we are expecting for NVTA to come back. We're expecting to receive a letter from them related to the future phases of the project on the highway and funding of those. So we're expecting that in September. And that might be the opportunity to start the conversation with them about You know, we're wrapping up the environmental phase. There's, in the council's perspective, maybe something missing. How do we go about addressing it? And I think we would, that's not so much something I would bring back to this commission, because I think that's a much bigger issue we're gonna have to deal with with our co-op agreement partners in Caltrans and NVTA. And I'm sure the folks here would support that, but that's a much bigger conversation we're gonna have with NVTA.

That sounds good. I was wondering, I mean that is the kind of thing that, not to be disrespectful, but if OSATs came back and said this is what we ought to do, that and several millions of dollars and sign off by several state agencies and you might get a chance at it. So that may be a more prudent approach to take on the 29 crossing. And I appreciate the idea of looking at that class two scenario to see YOU KNOW, THERE ARE, IT IS A LITTLE DIFFERENT FROM RIO, BUT IT MAY NOT BE AT THE END OF THE DAY, BECAUSE I'M NOT VISUALIZING IT AS WELL AS OTHERS. BUT I THINK IT'S SOMETHING TO LOOK AT.

OKAY. AND ANNANCE, DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING ELSE?

YEAH, I LIKE CARA'S IDEA OF ADDING THE 20 MILES PER HOUR IN SCHOOL ZONES FASTER THAN THE FIVE YEARS, AND I DON'T KNOW IF THAT'S SOMETHING WE CAN ADD TO THE WORK PLAN OR IF THAT'S MORE OF A CITY PUBLIC WORKS ACTIVITY.

Yeah, we're actually, we need to go back and take a look. I don't know where we are in our cycle of engineering and traffic surveys. I'm not sure if Farragut knows off the top of her head. 2027. 2027 is when we're, yeah, so we're already sort of, I mean, that means we're going to be starting them pretty soon. So I'm fairly confident we're not going to be doing that next year because there's a whole host of enforcement issues. But if we're already in the cycle for 2027 to start doing those surveys, then it's coming up pretty quickly. There are some differences. So when you use radar, you have to have an engineering and traffic survey, right? You can't set up speed traps, particularly if you're on a drive and there's parts of it that are posted 35 and 40. And so dropping it to 20, you have to be very careful about the speed trap issues. And enforcing in prima facie areas is different than enforcing in areas that have speed limits set by engineering and traffic surveys. So that's something we're going to need to check with our public safety partners on and figure out what does that look like. And what does 20 miles an hour through that stretch look like? So different, I think, than perhaps some of our other schools, where I think, especially during school time, if I'm going faster than five miles an hour, but along that four-lane stretch of Newell, I think it's a conversation we need to involve our chief in. And so that's something... You know, I think what we would do is consult with those folks first and say, hey, here's our plan for these surveys, and then try and figure out if this is a couple years off, then maybe we look at, you know, maybe we're bringing this back to the commission for some advice. If we're looking at doing those in 27 anyway, then I think we're, you know, we're pretty much there. So that's kind of my recommendation.

Thank you, Ms. Ali. Were you still going to make a motion for the...

Well, okay. I'll make a motion that we adopt the work plan as proposed, including a review of the class two path along Benton way and the possibility of accelerating the 20 mile an hour speed limit in school zones.

Just to clarify, I think it's along Donaldson. I don't think it's on Benton.

Oh, well, that may explain why I thought it wasn't a problem. Because in my head it was on Denton Way.

We already have lanes along Benton so far as my memory is. Oh. That's almost a quick answer.

Okay, then if we're talking Long Donaldson.

We're talking Donaldson between Amarillo and Rio Del Mar is the gap. And so that's a new stretch of Donaldson with buses on both sides. And now you're drawing a memory of what that is.

Okay. Now, yeah, that is a Rio part two. Okay, look at it or don't look at it. I don't know. That may not come out as well. We still can.

I mean, I think it's a fair, I think it's what this body is for, right? We're not going to run away from challenging issues, and we addressed it at Rio de Mar, and they evaluated it and said, look, this is an important thing to look at. So I think we can bring it back. I think there's a lot of similarities there, and I think it's fair for this group to understand the obstacles. We don't have a, an eminent paving project in that area. We're still about two plus years out from kind of finishing some of the Rancho Fez stuff. So it would be good to get in advance of that. So I think it's appropriate for this body to take a look at it. I just wanted to kind of specify. I don't see a lot of difference.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Because like I said, in my head, I was on Benton Way. So that's a whole different story. Okay. Well, then I'm going to stick with my motion. And there's that.

So we have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

And a second. Madam Clerk, can you do a roll call, please?

Yes. Okay. Council Member Brando Cruz?

Yes.

Council Member Melissa LaMattina? Yes. Council Member David Oro?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Mark Joseph? Yes. Mayor Pierre Washington? Yes.

Yes. So tonight I just want to thank Karen from the Bike Coalition, Patrick Band from NVTA, the commissioners for being here tonight, and our staff and my colleagues for a job well done tonight. So thank you. We have concluded our business for this evening, and we are adjourned. Good night, American Canyon.