City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I would like to call to order the Elk Grove City Council regular meeting. Today is Wednesday, August 26, 2026. The time is 6 p.m. Clerk.

All right. Good evening, Mr. Clerk and my colleagues. I'm here. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Okay. Yes, I am. I'm here and there's nobody over the age of 18 or anyone else for that matter in my presence. Excellent.

All right. Thank you. Next up is our land acknowledgement. Assisting with that is Council Member Robles.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We honor, respect, and acknowledge Elk Grove's first inhabitants, the Plain Miwoks, who lived on sovereign caretakers of this land and these waters since time immemorial. We commemorate and advocate for their descendants, the Wilton Rancheria Tribe, the only federally recognized tribe in Sacramento County who endured because of their bravery, resilience, determination of their ancestors, tribal members, and leaders.

Thank you. Next up is our Pledge of Allegiance. Chief Davis, would you please assist this evening? Thank you. Next up is our moment of silence. Please join us for a brief moment of silence. All right. Thank you. Next up is our approval of the agenda.

Excellent. Thank you. Assisting with that will be Councilmember Brewer.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. If I could have the members of the Diversity and Inclusion Commission... COME UP. I want to thank you all for being here tonight and definitely want to thank you for serving our community as commissioners on the Diversity and Inclusion Commission. As we round into the second half of the year, Diversity Awareness Month is definitely important given the broad scope and largesse of our community. We have a lot of people that represent a lot of different backgrounds and to have all of you in capacity serving in that role is really commendable, and so I want to thank you for

Thank you. We'll come down and take a picture. But before we do, I just want to thank you and all of our commissioners for the great work that you do serving your city. Thank you. Well done. All right. Let's come down there.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, next up is public comment. We have a number of people signed up to speak. As a reminder, you have three minutes. We'll start with Lindsay Halsell, followed by Noah Arsala.

We need to conduct this meeting. Thank you. All right. Next up is Noah Arsala followed by George Doank. I'm sure I'm butchering it. Oh, sorry. I just saw the sign.

Thank you. Next up is George. After George is Omar Opiani.

Thank you. Next up. Order in chambers, please. Omar, oh, oh, yeah, hi, Omar. After Omar is Rob Hanson. How do you say your last name?

Next up is Rob Hanson, followed by Kevin Barnwell.

Thank you. Kevin Barnwell, followed by Ellen B.

Thank you. Next up is Ella B. followed by Shay. I don't have a last name.

Thank you, Shea. Shea, you're up. After Shea is Jim Wilson. Shay? There we go.

Thank you. Jim Wilson followed by Margarita.

Thank you. Samantha Brown followed by Jennifer Toon.

Jennifer Tune, Adela Sher, Adela, Adela?

Adela, or is it Adela? How do you say it? Adela. Adela, okay.

Thank you. Ricardo, followed by Alexander Bastin. Bastin.

Given the volume of speakers, I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. So you want me to move on? Unless Ricardo, are you here? OK. Not seeing a Ricardo. OK. OK. Andrea Ramirez, followed by Kayla Coates.

Thank you. Next up is Kayla Coates followed by Yevy Bergovy? Sorry for the butchering of the name. Hi.

Thank you. Yevy Bergovy, how do you say your name?

Thank you. Our last speaker in person is Jeff Toon.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. To the clerk, are there any online public comments?

Thank you. Are there any other public comments?

All right, then I'm going to close the public comment. And for those of you that are new to coming to a council meeting, just to let you know, general public comments are open to anyone to come and speak on non-agenda items, which this is. So the council cannot take any action on non-agenda items. So I just wanted to make sure for those of you who are coming for the first time. But thank you all for your passion and your advocacy and Also wanna recognize everyone that also sent in an email. Thank you very much. With that, we're gonna move on to our next item, our City Manager's Report.

All right, thank you for that report. Looking to the right, any questions, comments? Looking to the left, nope. All right, thank you. With that, I'll move on to our next item, our consent calendar items. At this time, I'll open up public comment. I don't have anyone in person. Anyone online?

All right, I'll close public comment and look for a motion to approve. Thank you. We have a motion and a second.

This is for one through, or seven through consent, correct? Yes. I just wanted to say thank you for supporting the 7.4 for the Sacramento Field Network.

Yeah, thank you for flagging that as well. I was gonna make some comments on that as well. Just as a, if you wanna go ahead and mention it, you can go ahead and do that.

So Sacramento Fuel Network provides services for our families in need and provides education for our immigrant families. And I know that last year we contributed, we did an increase on that. And I'm happy to see that we supported this again because it's definitely in need. And I believe that we, did several workshops with Elk Grove Unified, and we're going to continue doing that. I just want our community to know that we take our immigrant population very seriously, and we will stand with you, and this is one step that, as a city and as leadership, we're doing this together.

Yes, thank you. Thank you for bringing that up. All right, so the motion passes. We will go on to our next item, which is 8.1, public hearing. Public hearing to consider an ordinance imposing a moratorium on the issuance of new entitlement approvals for personal storage facilities in the City of Elk Grove.

All right, thank you for your presentation. At this time, I'll declare the public hearing is now open and open up public comment opportunity starting with in person. I do not have anyone sign up for this in person. Anybody online?

All right, then I will go ahead and close public comment on this and declare the public hearing is now closed and open it up for some discussions. We'll start to the left. Council Member Brewer.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank Ms. Kersinger for the presentation and for the information provided. Like I said, 19 personal storage facilities in Elk Grove is a good amount, especially for the growing community. I would say there's a lot of vacancy. I live near several of them. in Hampton Village and to see a lot of vacancy in those storage facilities is definitely points to whether we need more that are built in the city and there's another one on Waterman Road near the Elk Grove Water District office that is being built as well and so we have a good number of personal storage facilities

Yes, I thought I had this answer, but I didn't see it in the staff report, so I hope I don't get it wrong. This has, what is the length of time that this moratorium is?

There's no statute that limits the number of years or months?

uh for a more term like this okay do we have a guesstimate on when we intend to bring it back i mean i i don't want to have a moratorium forever while we study it um so is there some length of time you think it'll come back

Okay. I just want to be certain that we... While we're putting thought into it, that this doesn't become an endless moratorium where we're not actually doing the work of studying, right? So I have a little bit of concerns about doing this indefinitely. I'd rather have some time frame put on it. So I've changed. I probably will not be able to support this today because I don't have a time frame. Okay?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. No questions. I'm willing to support this project.

Yeah, I've had a number of complaints from the community over the last six years about the oversaturation of storage. And looking at the map, I do believe that we have, obviously not with any scientific analysis, but it appears that we have sufficient number at this time. I am in support of this. I trust staff to study this and bring it back as you see fit, but in terms of waiting indefinitely five, 10 years, I imagine you're gonna be monitoring this. I don't feel the urgency of putting a timeframe other than I'm much more interested in putting a moratorium. to at least stop any future project

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, this, you'd think this is straightforward. Cause I, I do agree that, uh, You know, we might be able to do some much better uses in certain places. I just worry that sometimes this, if this wasn't storage facilities, if it was something we did like, and we were going to put a moratorium on it. It, you know, the knife cuts both ways, so to speak. Right. And so. the uh i i would support a temporary moratorium just because they do take up so much land and so it is worth taking a look at the the uses around our city and whether we want to allow uh or where we want to allow

I know Mr. Jordan is going to work on bringing and staff are going to work on bringing it back. I suspect it's not going to take longer than a year, but whatever, when we bring it back, I guess what I would suggest is we put in there a time to revisit that moratorium each year or something to that effect so that we'll be sure to look at it again and it won't be something permanent automatically. I would suggest that modification or when you bring it back, CJ, maybe we have that included in there.

So from my understanding, staff will, if this should pass as is, you will study this and should any changes, whatever the study yields, you'll come back at that time with what the study shows.

And so thank you, Council Member Soon. I appreciate your meeting in the middle there. I can support the two years. I don't mind the renewing once, you know, if we do it for a year and then renew. But what's nice about doing the two years is that we don't have to have another action, another item. So I can certainly support the two years, and I certainly appreciate the – my concern is just to put in a moratorium which could – sit endlessly without resolution, right? Right, so we have some guardrails on. I appreciate the rest of the council and their consideration on that. I think you're striking the middle. Council Member Soon was very good, and I appreciate you, Mr. Hobbs. I think two years would work well for me.

Does two years work for you, Mr. Jordan? Is that proper time, or do you need a little more?

So the motion will be for a moratorium of two years? Yes. All right. All right, so then I will look for that motion.

Madam Mayor, I want to say thanks again. I'm really glad that as a group, we can work together to find solutions. Oh, absolutely.

I think having a guardrail in place is good. I think it meets really everybody's need. Most importantly, no storage units right now. All right. We will go ahead on to the next item, 9.1.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate all this information. Just curious, you know, we mentioned you met U.S. Treasuries and their bond yields. And, you know, recently Secretary Besson made some moves and caused yields to drop. How exposed are we to those kinds of actions by the federal government, or are we invested in – Are you managing it in such a way that the volatility is minimized?

All right. Thank you. At this time, I'm going to go ahead and open up public comment. We'll start with in person. I do not have anyone signed up on this item. Anybody online?

All right, I'll go ahead and close public comment. Questions, comments, I'll start to the right. Council Member Spitz.

Okay, first, thanks for the Ricola, appreciate it. It stopped me from doing a lot of coughing up here. I had to acknowledge the gift of a Ricola, right? Second, I wanted to, first of all, thank you very much, particularly in the, you know, noting the diversification of the portfolio, right? I mean, I am absolutely no expert in finance, but one of the things that I recognize that as, you know, being, trying to be conservative and be a good steward of of our finances that diversification is one of those hedges against being all in one type of investment. And so I appreciate that. It's important

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just want to say thank you for the presentation. I think for a lot of us who, or even the general public who doesn't have like kind of the idea of what's going on, you definitely, definitely presented that really well. So appreciate it.

Great job, Carlos. Thank you, Council Member. I want to thank you and Rajanil and the finance team for being very responsible over this past year and maintaining our AA plus rating. It's very intricate. And not a lot of people understand the balancing act that is taken to keep a well-balanced portfolio when you're diversifying, especially from where we came from, from the COVID era, where you had to focus on US Treasury bonds and money market accounts just to keep the ship going because everything was pretty much shut down. But now that things are running and running at a very high clip, the f

Thank you, Mary. Yeah, thank you. Carlos and Raj for the presentation and explanation. I think everyone will appreciate your presentation, Carlos and. recognizing that we're only trying to hit singles and doubles when we talk about government finance. versus our own personal portfolios for retirement or something like that. So in many ways, the goals are different when it comes to the local agencies. So thank you for explaining that to everybody.

Yep. Same general comments from my colleagues. Thank you for walking us through what could be very complex and making it very easy to understand. And your passion, it clearly shows on this subject as well.

It shows. Thank you very much. This is just a presentation item, so no action needed. We will move on to the next item, 9.2. Receive an update on the City Council Priority Projects.

Thank you for that excellent presentation. At this time, I will open up public comment opportunities, starting with in person. I don't have anyone in person. Anybody online?

All right, then I'll go ahead and close public comment. I'll start to the left. Any questions, comments?

No questions or comments, but I wanted to thank Ms. Kumar for the report. Have a lot of great progress that we're seeing on the priority projects and very excited to see some of these hit the full completion. So congratulations. Congratulations to everybody at the city staff and looking forward to seeing the other projects come into view.

Thank you. Vice Mayor, would you like to chime in?

Thank you, Mayor. Just echoing those sentiments. Thank you for the report. I would like to highlight, just because it wasn't mentioned, but I think it's important and worthy of mentioning, the Whitelock Interchange project, the planning process is continuing. So I know folks might be getting a little frustrated with traffic out there on Elk Grove Boulevard. We're definitely working as fast as we can to get that done. That's all. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Council Member Spies, anything?

Just very quickly, I know there's a lot of community interest in the, let's call it legacy library reuse. And so that's exciting. Glad to hear that. As well as looking forward to that overpass happening. It's going to be a very good benefit for Elk Grove residents. So thank you very much, Ms. Kumar.

Thank you, Ms. Kumar, for the presentation. And I echo what my council colleagues have been saying.

Yep, excellent presentation. It's always good to see where we're at, how things are moving along, and a lot to celebrate. There's a lot of progress on priority projects that will ultimately benefit the residents of Elk Grove, so thank you. This is just a presentation, no action, so we will move on to the next item.

Thank you for that presentation. At this time, I will open up public comment for in-person. I don't have anyone signed up to speak. Anybody online?

All right, I'm gonna close public comment on that. And questions, comments, we'll start to the right. Councilmember Robles, you can go.

Chief and LT, thank you for the presentation. I agree. I've seen several of these accidents take place at all times. Oftentimes when I'm going to do some military stuff, whether I'm coming back home or I've seen it done in the evening where there's been some accidents there, there is a lot of traffic and a lot of cars definitely speeding through that area. And I think this will, you know, deter people from actually blowing these lights and going on a speed force, especially as we're enforcing, making sure that, one, our students, when they're taking their e-scooters or e-bikes and, you know, t

All right, thank you, Chief. Thank you, Lieutenant Williams. I appreciate it. Thanks for the presentation. Yeah, so I'm supportive. One of the things that I've, and maybe it's just observation of when I've been out, but I've seen, I feel as though I have seen more people recently within the last six months, a year, maybe since COVID. I don't know exactly what the timeframe is, but there appear to be more people running stop signs, running street lights. And sometimes it just astounds me that they just blow right through. And so I think these particular cameras are very helpful. Personally, I w

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I wanna thank Chief Davis and Lieutenant Williams for providing the data and the information that supports the need for these new intersection locations. These are the high traffic areas throughout Elk Grove that are highly likely where we see accidents. And it's always helpful to have the lights up as a deterrent. They're not meant to make money. It's pretty much to educate, to inform, but to also keep people safe and to just basically be good stewards. I used to be one of those people with a heavy lead foot. But over time, you kind of come to the realization that it's

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, also thank you, Chief Davis and Lieutenant Williams. Appreciate the information. The numbers really tell a story. So appreciate your hard efforts in trying to keep us all safe and trying to change behavior.

Thank you. Thank you. I agree that this is needed. And I think we've all seen those bad behaviors. So hopefully we have changed behavior and it keeps everybody safe. So I'm definitely in support of this. All right. With that, I will look for a motion.

Thank you. Next item. Receive results of the National Community Survey.

Thank you for that excellent report. This time I'll open up public comment. I don't have anyone signed up to speak in person. Anybody online?

All right, then I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment. Questions or comments? Starting to the left, Council Member Brewer.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. No, I wanna thank you, Ms. Kumar, for providing the information for the report. Obviously, we sent out 5,000 postcards, the overall response rate is higher than what it was last year. Hopefully we can compel more folks in the public when they receive it to fill it out and return it. It's part of being a stakeholder in our city, all of our city. It's part of the process. It's like we wanna know where we can do better. in the spirit of continuous improvement. There's a lot of good marks in here, but there are some areas where we can obviously rebound and do better, but it

yeah no this is this is good information but as we see we can we can always strive to to be better and do better thank you thank you vice mayor thank you mayor and thank you miss kumar for the information i i do uh appreciate it and agree with what councilmember brewer said uh continuous improvement should continue to be our mantra i i will say i'm i'm pleased to see the the general trend of a lot of these categories i am you know i know there's some areas that that we uh we will continue to work on but uh they're you know people still um really enjoy living here and people do feel safe here a

Thank you, Ms. Kumar. I appreciate the presentation. I think, you know, just a couple of nuggets to take away from it is that yet again, it's further evidence that Elk Grove values public safety, right? It is an important concern for everyone, or I would say an overwhelming majority, right? That's what public safety is important to us. The other things that I wanted to, you know, obviously we're gonna talk a little bit about traffic later. And then, you know, it would be interesting to, we shouldn't just talk about all of the great things, but we recognize there are some blemishes as well. And

Thank you. Council Member Robles. Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. I'm excited to see that 91% of residents would recommend living here in Elk Grove. It speaks to just the services that we're providing, the streets that we're driving, and just making sure that families feel like they can live, work, and also do shop around and get to experience that. I'm looking forward, if all goes well, for the retreat, because we will definitely be talking about everything else that Councilman Sphees was saying when it comes to employment and looking at what Elk Grove will look li

Thank you. Excellent report. Always good to see some of the feedback. I'll echo the same comments when it comes towards continuous improvement. I think those are easy to identify. And I do know that we have a presentation just after this one on one of those key items. So we're paying attention to some of those areas that we can be better. But I, too, am very pleased with the response of 91%, which is just amazing, recommending our great city to live in. And I too wanna highlight as well the public safety. That was an overwhelming strong response for public safety. But the underlying theme is E

All right, thank you for that presentation. At this time, I will open up public comment. Nobody has signed up to speak on this in person. Anybody online?

Great, I'll close public comment. Council comments, questions, I'll start to the right this time. Council Member Spies.

All right, thank you, Mr. Gallardo. I appreciate your expertise. Mr. Werner didn't set you up very well, but he wasn't wrong. So the traffic and signalization and all that is kind of like, accounting, finance, right, where it's like, oh, I want to see the budget, right? And then when you see the budget, you go, oh, thanks a lot, I appreciate it. Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made. I guess that's what I'm trying to get towards, but I appreciate the lesson. One of the things that I think I would, what I would suggest or encourage us to do as a city is to, Thanks to the voters. Thank you

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Mr. Gallardo. I think this is your first presentation, great job. Thank you for shedding the light on the timing and then also what we're looking forward in the next coming years. Appreciate your presentation.

No, I have no comments. I just want to thank Mr. Gallardo for the presentation and really providing us with the information on what we're seeing in the central part of Elk Grove. A lot of strides have been made on the east side, especially when you're looking at historic Elk Grove and everything south of Elk Grove Boulevard. start, and it's really good to see, and I want to thank Jeff Werner and the Public Works team also, because it's starting to see the fruits of those benefits, because that's a high traffic area. There's really not a whole lot much more we could say regarding the train runn

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Mr. Gallardo and Jeff. Again, appreciate this information. And, you know, it's sadly there's only so much of that pie that we can work with. And if we want to move the majority of traffic, we're going to have to ask for patience for folks that are, you know, if you're going in the cross traffic, if you will, if you're not on Laguna or Elk Grove Boulevard and you're on the You're on the cross streets. We can just ask for some patients as we. Give give more green time to the to the bigger traffic flow, trying to move people through. The other thing is, I think. Y

Thank you. Excellent comments from my colleagues here. So when it comes to traffic congestion, it is probably the biggest thing that we all hear about. But the other flip side of it is when 91% of our respondents mentioned that they would recommend Elk Grove as a place to live. Well, people are listening and they're moving here because it is a great place to live. So synchronization I think is part of that innovation of moving traffic through our city. But I definitely would be supportive of other innovative ideas. But I do believe that our city looks to innovation as part of our real life, re

All right, opening up public comment. I don't have anyone signed up to speak on this in person. Do you have anybody online?

All right, and who is currently our delegate and alternate? Well, I'm not, so who is the delegate?

Well, I will not be attending. Is there a desire for someone, one of our council colleagues here, to be the delegate and then an alternate? You're interested in the delegate role? Anybody else attending that would now be interested in the alternate delegate? Because you're attending? Yes. Okay. Excellent. So... Excellent. Well, so our voting members, our voting member delegate will be Council Member Robles with the alternate being Council Member Brewer. Very good. All right. Council comments future agenda items. Council Member Robles, anything to report out?

Had a sewer meeting today and we'll be doing a Sacramento Art Quality Board tomorrow.

Library tomorrow and then cable television commission next Thursday. It'll be fun. Bring some popcorn.

Council Member Brewer. We had SAC RT board on Monday and we have Sacramento Public Library tomorrow. Thank you. Vice Mayor.

Nothing to report. We have SACOG. Well, I say that nothing to report. SACOG policy meeting next week.

Okay. So SACRT, one of the interesting items that we talked about as we looked at the Stockton Road, as they look at bus rapid transit, one of the things mentioned is the possibility of an autonomous vehicle, an autonomous bus, to serve that need. It's a possibility, but again, that going back to that earlier comment on innovation and looking at alternatives to move people through the community, that's something that SACRT is looking at to fulfill a possible need for the bus rapid transit project. So before I adjourn, I do wanna adjourn in the memory of someone who was near and dear to my hear