City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. It's Tuesday, September 1st, 2026. We're at Carmel-by-the-Sea City Hall on an absolutely beautiful day here. If you don't live here, you should come and see what it looks like sometime. And I'd like to call this regular meeting of the Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council to order at 4.30 p.m. City Clerk, could you please call the roll?

Just so everybody knows, we had a meeting just prior to this at 3.30. It was a special meeting to discuss an issue regarding the city administrator process, which we have on item three on this agenda. So we've been busy a little bit. Some of the people in the room were here for that meeting. But this is a new meeting with a new agenda. And before we begin, a reminder that this is a hybrid meeting. Members of the public may attend in person, participate via Zoom, or if you wish to make a comment on Zoom only. Watch the live stream on the city's YouTube page now or any time in the future. We'll

Thank you. If necessary, council will take a 30-minute break around 6.30 p.m. I think we're probably going to need it tonight. We're now going to do our extraordinary business. We have three items. Is somebody from Carmel High School here? I didn't get noticed on that. So we have two items. Hopefully they'll be back soon. They have very entertaining report outs and we enjoy it. So the first item we're going to have tonight is the nonprofit spotlight. Very excited to have Monterey Peninsula College Foundation here. We've been trying to get them on the agenda for a few months now. We keep gettin

You did great. That was a really good presentation.

I might add. Because there were only three people at the listening session at the gathering room. But it was a very good session. I had no idea how much space you have there, even though I took a class, because you don't see the whole thing. And they have two brand new buildings that are stunning. One of them, the music dance, that whole dance.

And then the other one, it was like an admissions office or something.

Things are happening. It's amazing, amazing. Go out there and walk around a little bit and And when you take a class, I had so much fun because I hadn't been to college in a long time. And I got on there, I felt like I was young again, right?

And it's low cost. It's fantastic. All right, thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, the next spotlight is the Childhood Cancer Awareness Month Proclamation, and Councilperson Dramoff has offered to read the proclamation, and I think you've done this before, right? This is something special for you, so go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. This is from the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea Council proclamation honoring Jacob's Heart Children's Cancer Support Services and declaring September 2026 as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Whereas the character of our community is revealed in how we treat our most vulnerable, and whereas each year 19.2 in every 100,000 children in our community will be diagnosed with cancer, Whereas cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease among children more than asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, congenital anomalies, and AIDS combined, and whereas Jacob's Heart has been keeping

Thank you. And thank you for reaching out. And you look like you're having a lot of fun with this.

How do we help you? How do we support you?

All right, we're now gonna go into public appearances. Nova, could you read the regular meeting public appearance notice?

Thank you. How many people plan on speaking tonight? Just a couple. Three. And we have one online. All right. So come on up. Three minutes.

They also have a lot of parking. Serious lot of parking.

It was especially spectacular today. It was. It really was.

Thank you. Anybody else here? Seeing none. Victoria had her hand up. Do you want to speak? Put your hand up if you do. Otherwise, we're going to be pulling it back. Maybe she's going to speak later. All right. Anybody else online want to speak? All right. I'm going to close public comment. And we're going to go to the next item, which is Announcements. City administrator, acting city administrator, do we have any announcements from you?

City Attorney, it's your turn. Do you have any announcements? That's pretty normal. Okay. Council people. Jeff, you have a comment? Bob? I do not. Alessandra?

Of course. Thank you, Brandon, first of all for the beach update and we certainly look forward to the more thorough expanded update next month. Shari, thank you for your work and service and congratulations to your promotion and Yanni, welcome aboard. We look forward to working with you. So just two quick announcements really quick. I wanted to thank our police chief, our officers, all of our public works crews for all the work that they did. During car week that was a tremendous effort and you all did a wonderful job so thank you for that and speaking of car week many of you know but just a r

Are you up for bribes? but I know that that's.

I've heard that that's part of the procedure.

I was wondering who signed up to be the judge. Congratulations. That's pretty good. I have a quick announcement. At yesterday's special council meeting, council approved two appointments to the building appeals board and approved moving one ADA member to the core group. That solidifies what has now become an important board these days and also means that all 37 positions on our boards and commissions are filled. I think that deserves a round of applause. I want to thank everyone who volunteers. And these are complete volunteers. We're sort of volunteers, but we get paid a little bit, not much.

Anybody have a question? I have sort of a comment slash question. And I don't mean this to be cynical. I don't know what the right word is. But I saw the response to the request for more flexibility in landscape plan fees was basically telling people just go buy the plants and put them in. Which I think is great I just want to make sure that that's really okay I'm doing more than that on my project and I did not ask for a refund because mine is a bigger project but I have seen situations where people wanted to do that and they ended up getting in trouble for it so if it's true that if you want

But it sounds like there's a fair amount of flexibility with that subject.

Okay. So I just want to encourage people, don't be afraid to do things. Come in and talk. Is it the front desk here? Do you have to call up the forestry department?

Okay, good. Keep an eye on my front yard. We'll see how it comes out. All right, good. And I appreciate the flexibility that you've had in changing some of these, not just this time, but the last time. And I've heard very positive comments from contractors who've really helped get more projects going. Thank you so much.

The other thing I wanted to ask about is I had mentioned large construction projects and the fee schedule on that because it hasn't been looked at in a long time. Is that something in the future that you might take a look at I think what we had talked about last time my reaction is we're going to bring that forward next year when we do the budget okay that's a much bigger discussion changing our rubric for assessing building valuation versus towers okay very good so I think we're ready we have to do a reading do you want to take us into that public public comment do we have any comments on thi Yeah, fee scheduled. Good, Nancy, I'm sorry about that. That's why I keep all these people up here, to keep me on schedule here.

Thank you. Our new public works director is here and he's listening. Any other comments? I'd like to make a comment back to you, Nancy, on that. This isn't just sidewalks. There are lots of courtyards like Anton and Michelle's courtyard. I know they hire pressure washers to go and clean their private areas that are in the commercial buildings. So it is very useful to them to keep their private property clean as well. But thank you for the comment. Anybody else? All right, bring it back here. Anybody have a comment about any of this? Ready to make a motion? Second reading?

It's a resolution, okay. Yeah, I'll make. Go ahead.

First of all, I actually completely agree with Nancy. Brandon, does the city do any power washing downtown? We don't.

One time with Carmel Cares, I got funding from the businesses, and we managed doing most of downtown.

Yeah, I think it would be interesting to have staff come back at some point with just a quick analysis of is there some way, what's the best way to get a contribution from the businesses? But to Nancy's point, have the efficiency of having the city do it. And then also, if we did add it to the budget, maybe think about like some offsets, some options for that so that it's not a budget buster.

Great idea. Anything else? Anybody want to make a motion? Jeff, you were going to.

I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2027-066, adopting revised fiscal year 2026-2027 fee schedule for citywide services.

Very good. So number two, urgency ordinance establishing interim home hardening regulation citywide. Go ahead, Brandon.

Thank you. Any questions? This is the second time we've seen this, so probably not. Public comment?

Thank you. Yes. Thank you for your comment. Okay. After everybody talks, you've got notes of that. Next. Anybody else? It's an important topic. Nobody online? Oh, yes. Come on up.

All right. Thank you. Nobody online? We'll bring it back for council discussion.

I have a question related to Tasha's comment. She mentioned DG. Oh, thank you. Does DG qualify along with gravel within the close proximity of the house?

And that takes effect immediately, correct? It is effective right now. Yes. Thank you. I love those. All right. Orders of business. We've got A big one. Number three, city administrator recruitment update and salary range. All right, we're going to take 10 minutes.

And Wendy. It's 525. We'll be back at 535.

OK, everybody, we're going to get going. We're back in session at 535. Okay, we're on item three, city administrator recruitment update and salary range. Item three is to receive an update regarding the status of the city administrator recruitment, provide direction to staff regarding the recruitment process, schedule and next steps and consider adoption of resolution 2026067, establishing a revised salary range for the city administrator position. Are you gonna kick this off and then have Wendy take over? And city attorney, do you want to recount what happened in our special meeting to get us

Sorry, not giving you a heads up on that. Yeah, let me check my notes. No hurry. Just take your time.

Basically we go back and start over, if you might say. Similarly, yes. From the prior two closed meetings. And we have Wendy Brown from WBCP, our recruiter that we hired. And it's been doing a great job. And we appreciate you being here tonight to lead us through this discussion.

It is. Great. We can see you. You're up on the big screen here. All right. Fantastic.

We want you to take us back how you started the discussion with us. So our comments can be heard and then we'll sort of work our way back to the current time by you layering in some of the information that you have. And we're going to also give you information here tonight. So then we can rebuild to something that may look like what we have and may not. So we'll see.

Just since you're not here and you're speaking to a group, there are four people online and there are seven people in the audience here, just so you know the number of people that are possibly going to participate in public comments. And council, do you have any other comments for Wendy before we get started?

My only comment was, you know, Wendy, we're trying to sort of thread an interesting needle here, but I think the thrust of the motion we made in the special meeting before this meeting was if you could, so instead of like approving the brochure, if you could basically I think that's kind of... I think that's kind of what we're going for here tonight. Does that make sense? And then you can go back and decide, hey, what should my brochure look like? And it might wind up looking very similar, and there may be some changes, but that's the idea.

Take us back to the conversation, please.

Okay. We have a lot of heads on the dais.

Yeah, why don't we actually have a discussion about each of these as we go? So we don't get too far removed. It's a lot of information. I know some of the council people have some ideas on timelines that they've been spending time on, and they'd probably like to present their ideas. All right, great. The question is, we need to go back to your initial suggestions to us, if you have something as similar as you can to that.

Yeah, so Councilperson Booter, I think on his own, has spent a lot of time thinking through this. He's pretty good at this sort of detailed stuff. Yeah. So I think I'm going to turn it over to him first. and then we can get comments from other council people. And then what I'd like to do is after we've had our discussion up here, we're going to go out to the public because if we go too far into these three different things you're doing, we're going to forget. So we'll get public comment on each of these as we go and then have our discussion again and then move on to the second item.

Yeah, I have a quick slide that I think might might be helpful. And then we can go back to your slide in a second.

And for the public standpoint, this was not a discussion as a group. We basically now are back to what you presented to us at our first meeting. And we had some discussions, but really not much came of it in terms of firm discussions. And I think Hans has been thinking about it ever since. So go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, so as As Wendy mentioned, one of the problems, just to frame this, that came up that Jeff did a great job of highlighting was that if we're going to have salary discussions with a potential, you know, with a potential candidate, it has to, those discussions have to occur even if it's a closed session, it has to occur on the date of a regular meeting. And so if We're aiming for December 8th as the date to approve a contract. If we wanted to provide any meaningful feedback on salary, other contract points, et cetera, that would have to happen at the month before November meeting, r

So I moved this to the 8th because of that. I also added a row, which was something we started to talk about in our last meeting, and the decision was to punt. But basically, this would start with the community meeting on Friday. And then my thought was it would be helpful for the council to like actually meet and just approve whatever the final brochure that Wendy sends out is. And maybe we could meet on, I think this is a Tuesday. Alessandra said she was available. And then maybe, you know, we open the recruitment as soon as you're able to turn it around, Wendy, right? Like what, based on wh

So one of the main differences is having the ad hoc committee to do work. Yeah, which we did very successfully the last time, I thought.

Okay. So, Jeff, do you have any comments? You must. Yeah. Let's try to keep it to questions just so we understand this.

I get it. Let's just make sure we understand what the options are. We'll go out to the public. We'll come back and discuss it.

Yeah. So I have two questions. One, Wendy, you talked about the risk of waiting. So for your information, I asked NOVA to print the proposed alternative timeline. And so you were talking about...

So we have copies of that. Sorry, I asked for the five of us. So to recap your comment before I ask the question, your question, your comment was that 1120 is kind of late to like, we keep people, we're sort of keeping people in the dark a little bit long for like, I'm sensing a little bit of discomfort on your part. And what you said was that The risk is that someone else is going to get a job offer in front of us and they're going to take that. And that's obviously a risk if they're our first candidate. You don't think there's a risk of the process being too drawn out? I think that is the on

So I'm depending on you for like, I don't know whether I should be concerned or not, like honestly. So I'm sort of depending on you, what you say to sort of evaluate my level of concern. So I'll save my comments for later. The second question is for, well, I don't know whether it's for you or Brian. I don't understand. So I'm just going to reference the Hans' schedule, which I kind of like in general, but I don't understand where, any of the salary negotiations happen. So we select a candidate. So Hans, on your schedule, so I'm looking at this slide that Hans produced. And Hans, this was the o

Where Hans, where did this come from? This first column. just the dates that were emailed to us. So it's not one of the things in the presentation?

I think it's option two. Yeah, my first column is her option two, I think.

Yeah, it was actually exactly. It is. I'm sorry. The contract review doesn't match option two. That's where I'm... So my question, Wendy, is... Sorry. Sorry. This is sorry. This is so confusing.

Let's go. So let's forget this. And let me just like add my questions. Can you put schedule back?

So my question is sort of this. So we have, my question is this. So we have final round interviews on 11-20. And on 11-20, we're going to see three people, three distinct individuals with maybe varying skill levels and varying salary requirements. Right, so we're setting a range, so we're gonna at some point set a range for the city administrator salary. And let's say we have, you know, to reduce everybody to a number, let's say we have one person with one year experience and one person with three and one person with five years experience and they have, so they bring different things and so th

But December 8th won't work because you have to publish the contract on the Wednesday before.

Right. So there's a disconnect. I'm trying to figure out where my disconnect is or whether it's the schedule's disconnect.

I think the disconnect is there are a lot of advantages to this schedule. The one thing that you give up is... You are basically outsourcing the salary negotiation. You create a range. You could even, in like October, provide more guidance on, you know, somebody with XYZ experience, we want to be in this part of the range. If we really like this candidate, we want to be in this part. You could do that in October in a closed session. Well, we could do that in November, right? Sure. Yeah, you could do it in November. Exactly. Whatever. But at the end of the day, you are outsourcing the negotiati

The other three find out when the packet comes out.

Okay, so I was gonna, I was gonna, I was gonna, make some comments on that but I'll wait I'll wait I'll wait until okay so no salary negotiations no salary conversations until December 8th By the full council? By the full council.

So the thing that I was going to say is we haven't selected the three finalists on this schedule until November 6. And that's after the November meeting. So that's what my, so we can have that, after we have public comment and we're having a conversation, we can go to these dates in this alternative schedule. Okay, thank you.

You think we understand it at this point? Okay, good. All right, so it sounds like we're through asking questions. We'll take it out for public comment. Anybody like, go ahead, Donna. How many people are going to say something?

This is just timeline, only timeline. We're going to give you a chance at each step.

That's all we're going to talk about right now. Sorry about that, but it gets complicated as you've seen.

Yeah, okay. So nobody else here? Okay, good. Ian, it looks like you're up.

Ian, you were breaking up a little bit. I'm not sure I heard the last part. Could you maybe put your phone in a... better position and restate your last two or three sentences?

Okay, we've got it. All right. Thank you. And thank you. Thank you for participating in this. It's important that we all right. Thank you so much. All right. Anybody else? Carolyn got a chamber person. This is your chance. All right. All right. We'll come back and we'll have our comments discussion.

That makes sense to me, but I'm open for input. I think that's what we're doing. I mean, I think otherwise this is going to get pretty muddy by the time we're through.

Jeff, it sounds like we're looking for some input from you to flesh out.

Yeah, so I have some, so I'm going to use, I like Hans's, I like the way Hans has sort of laid out the schedule. I'm fine with the, I'm fine with the... Could we have the schedule put up, Nova? I'm fine with the reference. Are we ready? Yes. I'm fine. So I have some, I have some, I guess, suggestions. I think this schedule, when I think about sort of how the schedule sort of progresses, so my first, to go back, my first issue is with not being able to discuss salary at all once it starts. And so I believe that we should have at some point, you know, there should be a placeholder in here for th

I'm sorry. I'm talking about the dates in the proposed alternative column. Are those are those old dates, too? And I'm going to ask you I'm going to ask you for some comments. This is a discussion I'm going to ask. I'm going to put some things out and then I'm going to ask you for some comments.

I updated that. I'm getting a little, I'm not frustrated at you, Wendy, but this is, we have, a ton of dates in front of us and five schedules. And I really need to talk to one schedule. So if you have a different schedule that I should be talking to, could you put it up? Otherwise I'm going to talk to the schedule that's in green on the sheet.

So which one am I talking about now? Option one.

Okay, so what I heard Jeff saying is he would like an 11-3 check-in with the council in closed session to talk salary.

Yeah, so I would like, so my comment, so okay, so I'm going to go, I'm going to do all my work over again.

So the interviews in option one that you have, and these are my comments, not the council's comments. So the interviews that you have in round one, so which are on 11-6, right? It says virtual all day.

Right. Can you move your cursor over there? So I know that you're looking at what I'm what I'm right here.

So that needs to happen. That needs to happen before eleven three. Right. because I'm interested in narrowing the candidates down to the list of people that are gonna come in so that we can talk about them and talk about salary on 11-3.

No, just finish the first round of interviews, the interviews round one before 11-3.

She's got an option too, it's 10-22. How about 10-30?

So I'm going to ask you a question in a second. Okay. Can you just bear with me for a second?

Okay. So if we do the first round of interviews, if we do the interviews that are now listed as 11-6 on, let's say, 10-30, which is one week before, can we do the shortlist meeting? Can we pull the shortlist meeting in a little bit from 10-27? and then close the recruitment after a standard 28 days. All the rest of the schedules are 29 days of recruitment. And you told us that you think four weeks is sufficient. So can we grab some time from the schedule in the 33-day section, in the 33 days, and just pull everything in so that we can have that discussion with a short list of candidates on Nov

What about with a 28-day open? Right now, we have the brochures. Right now, we have the recruitment opens on 9-9, and it ends on 10-12. Well, that's 33 days, according to your spreadsheet. Why can't we just do a standard 28-day open? Like we've had the conversation of, we've had a conversation about doing a three week open and a four week open, and you've stated to us that four weeks is fine. Can we not pull? Can we not pull?

Can I make a suggestion that maybe you just create another column with this proposal so that we can see it? Because I'm starting to get a little confused.

Yes. Can you just add the number of days in parentheses in the recruitment closes row? I think it's 27 days for the purple and 34 days for the option one.

It's 27 the same day we counted the 29, so if you keep it apples to apples.

Well, let me so let me go. OK, so now that we pick up the microphone again, now that we're on eleven third for the salary check in and then can we. So if we have done the first round of interviews on ten twenty seven, So if we have done the first round of interviews on 10-27, do we really need to wait until 11-20 to do the second round of interviews? Like that is 20... No, we don't. That's like three and a half weeks. And you were talking earlier about sort of malaise and people getting other offers. And I think that if we could do, if we could pull in the 11-20 date by a week to like just at

If back-to-back was an option, three weeks probably isn't necessary is what you're saying.

Yeah, so the mini references, you have 1027 to 1113, so you have two full weeks, two full weeks to do that.

I haven't had a chance to weigh in. I'm waiting until Jeff's comments are finished.

I may be negative. I'm waiting for Jeff to finish.

Well, we're in process here. She's looking, she's doing this a step at a time.

Okay, so I'm finished. Thank you. So you're okay?

They don't want to comment until we do. I'm okay with this.

The only thing I would say is It's basically a, you know, it's not terrible. I think it's actually like, the thing that I care the most about is having the two week period between the first and second round interviews so we can actually do some reference checks, which is preserved here. I do like the idea of having a longer open period for us to go and drum up candidates, because at the end of the day, you're only picking from the candidates that actually get into the pool. And so going to 27 days, to me, it's basically you're weighing, like full council weigh in on salary versus having an ext

Go ahead, give us your full comment. Sure, thank you.

I'm just going to begin with, we got a letter this afternoon from Carolyn Hardy, and she's not only a former city council member here in Carmel, but she had also been involved with a search for a city administrator. So she has experience and knowledge in what she's talking about, and I would just like to read part of her letter so it's entered into the record. So she begins, as you address the timeline and process of recruiting our next city administrator, I believe you are rushing the process too much. The push is being driven by two lame duck council members who want to say in the decision b

So are you saying you'd like option one?

Okay. Wendy? Yes. We have two options on the table right now. Can you weigh risk factors between option one and option two, which is purple?

Okay so Alessandra if I could ask you a question. You don't care about having the check-in on 11-3? You're willing to cede control completely of the salaries to the ad hoc committee?

Yes, I support the idea of the ad hoc. I think that Bob and Hans did a great job when it came to Brandon's contract negotiation, and I trust them. They're the most experienced members of this council in that sort of thing. I trust giving them the ability to do that.

Okay, the question was, you don't care about that 11-3 check-in?

if that needs to be quote unquote sacrificed, yeah, I'd rather have those extra days with having the recruitment open and not feel.

So you want to add that to the purple, Wendy, where the ad hoc is created?

So in terms of I'm listening to what Alessandra is saying, I mean, she's also running for office in terms of being lame ducks, but and, and, I might say that I have not been trying to rush this at all. So if you feel that way, that's just not true. I've agreed with some of the logic that's been put on the table, but my goal here is to run a fair process and have everybody's opinion included. And that's what we're doing tonight.

Plus putting the ad hoc committee under a lot of pressure over a holiday.

So it's basically a check-in period after we've seen the candidates.

And giving the ad hoc committee some guidance from all five of us. Instead of them just running with it from the beginning.

I wanted to raise one other point, which was, this discussion on 11-3, you will have narrowed the pool of candidates to three candidates. But it's not like you're actually getting feedback on the negotiation with a specific candidate. You just have three resumes in front of you that you just talk to somebody. And then in that meeting, I guess you say, hey, this is how much I would spend on this person. But you still have another interview left to go. And you haven't come into contact with reality in terms of negotiating with any person in that meeting. So I guess my only point is it's still a

So Jeff? How do you feel about it at this point? You brought up the check-in.

I think the check-in on November 3rd is important.

But like, what's your authority on relocation expenses, right? Or those kinds of things. But those are all, it's still a pretty general conversation on 11-3. And so maybe just have it in October and provide firmer guidance to the ad hoc.

So it's still an open meeting discussion like we're having tonight? Yes.

There's probably no reason to have it in closed session. Well, that means...

We're doing... We're doing the interviews in closed session. We don't have a candidate when we do first round interviews, and that's closed session. I'm asking him.

So how did you feel about, I know you're probably going to be on the ad hoc committee, so you're going to have a say either way, but in terms of being a group.

All right. I agree with Bob. As far as we don't, I don't think we absolutely need the November 3rd meeting.

All right? Sounds like we've got a majority of people that don't think we need it. Well, we already have a majority, but I could go either way. I could go either way. I mean, we're going to pick two good people to be on the ad hoc committee, and I think we've all worked pretty well together, so.

If we can, can we? Yes. Go ahead. I think Bob and Hans are highly qualified to do it and they've got experience doing it. I'd be good with that. Jeff? You want to do it? And they're also going to be here. Of the five of us, they're the two that are going to be here for sure. Sure. Bob and Hans are fine. Okay.

I've already stated that I support Bob and Hans.

Okay. All right. So. Is that good enough for you? Yes. Okay. All right. So it sounds like we could go with option one with the revisions that you've made. Great.

No, I don't. I'm sorry, Wendy. I'm going to cut you off because I have to talk to Brian. All right. The agenda for tonight says, we're going to approve the schedule, right? Is that, that's what's on the agenda, right?

Why is today not adequate community approval?

September 4th is really about the candidate profile. September 4th? September 4th is really about the candidate profile and I think we've had given people an opportunity based on how this is agendized. I think we can make a decision here about that. I don't really don't want to have another conversation about this calendar.

I'm not sure that public could participate in it because part of it is our schedules. I mean it gets highly complicated. It's a linear programming model to some extent. I think that Hans had another statement before we close this off.

Yeah, I did really quickly. I just wanted to flag that going back to the top of the schedule, there's a community meeting this Friday. We're about to give Wendy some feedback on a candidate profile here in open session. And then the community is going to provide feedback on a candidate profile. And so this notion of finalizing the brochure do we want to plug in a meeting for us to be able to just say, hey, we approve what you come back with on the brossure? It seems like that's an important step. I agree. Okay.

So that's actually a meeting, to be clear. Yes. Okay.

All right, everybody's as happy as they're going to be with option one.

Appreciate everybody's feedback in the public and from the diaspora. It's not an easy discussion.

So we've gone through the first of the three items we need to do on this order of business. And I think it's time for our dinner break. So we're gonna come back in 30 minutes. Can you stick, is Wendy sticking with us?

We'll be back here in 10 minutes to eight. Thank you for everybody's patience while we go get some PPE. We stand in recess until 7.50.

No I don't I'm not going to say you can't let that happen but I'm not hard that's true and I my fear is that if I was I was working with them I would yell at them and I'm not but I can't do that

It all started with the contract . The reason we're here is because we went out a few months ago.

Carrie says she was hearing my conversation with you.

Anything other than pepperoni is good. Thank you.

Oh, okay. All right. Oh, that's right. We're going to the salary. Sorry about that. We've got two salary things tonight. So we're back in session at 7.53. Thank you, everybody, for being patient while we had dinner, although there aren't many people here. Wendy, we have... four people online and two in the audience here, just so you know what you're talking to. And you can continue with our next item, whatever you want to pick off next.

Okay. Anybody from the council have any comments or questions at this point on this?

So, Wendy, could you just walk us through a little bit what the advantages would be if we went with that higher salary range and the difference with like a different caliber of candidate we could find? Or just sort of walk us through the advantages and, of course, potential disadvantages of that salary range. Thanks.

New speaker so in your opinion, lowering the maximum from 330 to 300 you think could limit us from getting the right person?

Do you have any idea how old these salaries are? I don't.

And since cities a little surprising for 400 people, it's an interesting city for sure.

Okay, so what I'm hearing you say is that the ones towards the top are probably a better model. Some of the ones towards the bottom, including ours, are pretty aged. They could be older.

Jeff, go ahead. Can you talk a little bit, Wendy, about the city of Monterey, which is number three on the list, which they just hired their city manager? Last year, the city is in somewhat of financial distress, worse than ours. And they have 10 times as many people as we do, and yet they're paying $320,000 a year. Do you think that $330,000 a year on our part is overstretch, given the 320 from Monterey?

NEW SPEAKER any other questions from the council? New speaker no. New speaker no. Okay. So let's go out for public comment. Anyone want to comment? Here? Nobody?

I knew Nancy, I knew I could get Nancy up here.

All right. Thank you. All right, I've got three hands going online. Nova, why don't you call them out?

Thank you, Victoria. Great comment. And that is potentially something we could do at a future meeting in the near future to talk about those issues. I think they came up earlier in our discussion. Okay, Carolyn.

Thank you, Carolyn. We greatly appreciate you being involved in this. Be nice to have more people on that list. Kelly. Can you hear me?

Thank you, Kelly. Anybody else? All right. Appreciate everybody being here at 815 and participating in the discussion. Let's bring it back to the council. Who would like to start?

So those are people hired a while back that are just getting bumped up.

Yeah. So if they went out to hire somebody right now, they'd probably be going higher.

Jeff? I'm having a little trouble with the upper end. I think, you know, we have made a big deal about the financial distress of the city. We know what Brandon and what Chip have made in the past. The reason I asked a question about Monterey was they did just do a recruitment and they found a good qualified candidate in a distressed city for 320. So 330 to me, like I appreciate that. I appreciate that it maybe, and I don't mean to disrespect Wendy, maybe it makes Wendy's job easier, but... I would like to see the range a little bit lower, 270 to 320 would be more to my liking. I think it would

Yeah, Seaside sort of represents that type of candidate that was hired last year. He's good. Alessandra?

Thanks, Mayor. I'm OK with the proposed salary range, just as we had discussed and Bob had said. It's nice to have that ability to go up to that level if there is somebody that is just spectacular, outstanding, with tons of experience. And it would make the difference in getting that person to come here. Certainly share the thoughts that Victoria and Carolyn brought up about housing and also incorporating that into some of the incentives of hiring the candidate. I'm certainly not saying we should go for that top salary, but I think at least let's have that range in while we're doing this searc

Yeah, I guess I would echo what was stated earlier about if we're trying to find somebody who's happy where they are and trying to pry them free and bring them here, you know, an extra five or ten thousand dollars might not be sufficient. Similarly, I think there's a reason when you look across companies, when you look across organizations and you see the CEO, et cetera, tend to have salaries that you're like, wow, that's really high compared to some of the other employees. that's not just because, that's not random, right? That's because people do recognize that that top person leadership mak

Okay, good. Yeah, the average tenure of a city manager in California is about three years. So people tend to move around quite a bit. It keeps Wendy busy. But that also is one of the reasons these salaries are going up because the good people are getting poached and taken to other places. And that's basically what we're trying to do here. I keep hearing from everybody that we want to get the best possible person. And I think if you want to get the best possible person, we need to get Wendy some tools to bring them in so that we can interview them. And then the the we with some advice to the ad

I think we do on this as a resolution. So I'll take a motion. Resolution 2026-067, establishing a revised salary range for the city administrator position, which will be 280,000 to 330,000. Do we need to fill in any more gaps in that?

I move to approve resolution 2026-07, that's 067, sorry.

I just have a comment. I'll be voting against it. For the reasons I stated earlier, I will absolutely support the council's decision to go to the range of 280 to 330. But I believe that I stated my reasons earlier.

OK. All right. Any other comments? Roll call, please.

All right. Thank you. All right. So I think that still leaves the qualifications discussion. Yes. And the brochure related to it. Just go ahead and lead us. Okay.

Could you take, that's the latest version of the brochure, correct? Correct. So if you could take that down because we're going to, we need to go back and walk through. Okay. Starting at the beginning again. although that picture is beautiful.

Nova, do you know, while Wendy's on hold, do you know where we can find earlier copies of the brochure?

New speaker hold on, Wendy. I hear some chit-chat here.

So Wendy, you can get clarification from the rest of the council. I'll just speak for myself here. I think the goal, like when I was making my motion, the goal was basically to go back to the discussion that we had downstairs in closed session, where you first came to us and said, hey, what is the profile of the candidate that you want, that discussion we had in closed session, to basically have that discussion de novo in public session, not through the lens of the brochure that emerged out of that process, So having that on screen is probably unhelpful for the needle we're trying to thread he

New speaker you gave us a starting point with the brochure based on our original comments and the public. We also got letters from the public that had things plus there's some also just motherhood and apple pie stuff that everybody's going to put on the list. Right.

That would be helpful. And then how you turn that into the first draft of the brochure.

The only thing I would add, Wendy, and thank you, that was a very comprehensive list, is sort of just a real understanding and appreciation of what a unique community we are, the one square mile, just the fact that we are hospitality-centered as far as what our revenues are to run the city, and just that kind of understanding with our historic background, artistic background, and that's the only thing I would add.

Yeah, so it's sort of an unusual agenda item because I'm not sure questions are really appropriate. You're really looking for input from us to see if we missed anything. So as opposed to questions, let's just go ahead. If any of the council people have some items that they didn't hear that they think should be on the list, I'll let you go ahead and do that now and then we'll get the same thing from the public through their public comments or we can do public comments first.

Let's have them join in on the fun here. I know Cindy's going to have a few. Because I know you, Cindy.

Anything else? Okay. Nancy, are you going to come up?

Thank you very much. So those of you who are online, could you put your hand up if you want to speak? We've got Ian as the only one currently. Ian?

Thank you. Good comments, Ian. Carolyn Hardy, do you have anything to say? Victoria, go ahead.

New speaker thank you. New speaker thank you. New speaker Carolyn. New speaker yes, I could speak and say, see, this is why we're doing this in the public. Carolyn, we can't hear you yet.

Thanks. Okay, great. Thanks, Carolyn. Thanks for sticking it out here. Anybody else? Last chance. Kelly, do you have anything to say? I guess not. All right. Let's bring it back and now we can put in our ideas, comments, priorities. Jeff, you want to start? Sure.

Go ahead. Question, are we talking about the brochure or just about the list that Wendy read?

There are things that are going to go into the brochure.

Okay. My comments to Wendy were all reflected in her comments, my individual comments I made to her in our one-on-one interview, so I don't have anything to add to that. I still don't know. I still don't believe that we have the original copy of the brochure because the original copy of the brochure had a picture of the Franklin White House on the front. And there was also a picture of Clint Eastwood in it. And I don't see that. I don't see those pictures in any of the copies that we have. But I will comment on the brochure, you know, given some of the comments that we have heard. I'll comment

Great comment. Hans, you want to go or you want to, Alessandra, you want to go? Hans, go ahead.

Yeah, I'd echo a lot of Bob's comments. I think that I'm looking for an experienced, proven leader. I think... that's like my preference. So I'm, again, I'm open to having a variety of different types of candidates coming through the pool. But my preference would not be for on the job training in the top slot specifically experienced as a city administrator, I think would be really valuable. Um, We want somebody not only who has experience in that role, but somebody where we have verified that they were running a high performance organization or potentially built one. And while that somebody w

Thank you. Basically, Bob and Hans really stated it well, so I don't want to repeat everything they said. I think leadership and experience are key, proven leadership, successful. And we did get into a bit of discussion about education levels, whether masters should be required or optional or encouraged, and the back and forth with the different word choice to kind of pinpoint what we're looking for so that we can also cast as wide a net as possible in the candidate.

All right, thank you. As usual, all the council people did an incredible job of encapsulating most of what I think. I love Hans's idea about the high performance organization I think demonstrating that that they know how to get things done efficiently and also communicating with council members in our weekly sessions to make sure that they're getting the feedback that we get from the community because we get a lot of it and being able to translate translate that into how to get things done clearly working down through their through the director level and this person coming in is going to have

Do you have any other things you need from us in order to move forward? I guess you're going to come up with a sample of the brochure to show to the group on Friday.

I don't know. What's the time range that we can work with? You can work with maybe Nova tomorrow on down. She'll get with all of us. Do we want to talk about the time right now? Some of us have more flexibility than others.

I won't be able to do the morning. I could basically do any time from noon to the rest of the afternoon until you've got your appointment at 3.30, I think you said.

New speaker I think we can do it in half an hour. New speaker I think so. New speaker all right. We'll just be really organized.

be the stick in the mud here. The idea that we're going to get through a brochure in half an hour is a little bit silly to me. Like I gave, yeah.

Are you going to send it to us in advance?

I heard a little bit, a lot of emphasis earlier on, on the character of the town and that sort of thing.

So, Mayor, I've got a comment. I think I think, Wendy, my request be we have photos like staff has photos from because we've been working on this project for how many years? Six. Staff has photos of what I was looking for. So, you know, so don't please don't get them off the Internet because that would just be more visit Carmel photos. Okay.

We have to send the agenda out. by around 11 on Monday. Can you get it to Nova by then?

So then everything, it just gets pushed over one day for when it goes live and gets sent out to everyone, right? So that would be on the 10th.

New speaker thank you for your patience. New speaker sure. New speaker I appreciate you.

New speaker bye-bye. I'd like to have a discussion about item four, the development of a streetscape plan for downtown. I know that Hans had put that on the agenda. I discussed it with him earlier. If we might want to push that off. Everybody okay? Everybody's okay with that? Okay. So we're going to put that on next month's agenda at this point, you think? All right. Do we need to vote on that? Do we need to vote on that? Brian?

Okay. I think we had consensus. All right. We're looking forward to that, though. It's going to be an interesting discussion. We're moving on to 5, at-will compensation benefits plan. It's a resolution 2026065, approving the fiscal year 2026-27 at-will or unrepresented compensation and benefits plans. The proposal includes, well, I'm not going to read all that. You're going to cover that in there. you're going to cover what I was about to read in your presentation. So go ahead and make the presentation.

Could you go back to the slide that showed, just go back a couple. Next, no, forward. Next one. How do you explain the Salinas, Sand City, the HR managers basically being so far below market median? I mean, they're bringing the market median down.

Salinas. I mean, they're 148 versus market median of 200,000. I mean, they're off by 25%.

I have no idea. On top of that, it's a large agency. It's a lot of work.

Okay. All right, well, that was my one first question. The data just looked wrong. Because if you take those out, the average is going to be a lot higher.

Also, Sand City, their city manager was, like, way up.

Do you have any questions? I do. So the documents that you gave us with the salary study provides what percentage above or below a certain position is relative to market median. I'm wondering if you average across all of the at-will employees, how far above or below market median is the entire classification of at-will employees?

Okay. And then similarly, I guess it's, you know, not what we're dealing with tonight, but where do the management and general classifications sit relative to market median?

So in layman's terms, our employees are paid roughly 10% are represented non-public safety employees are roughly 10% above market median, is that?

Okay. Okay, slightly different direction. So tell me about the 0% COLA. So because we obviously want to be treating our employees fairly, and when you hear the 0% COLA, it sounds a little harsh, honestly, but employees are actually getting a 3% increase in take-home pay. Can you just explain that a little bit more to folks? Sure.

Okay. And so to make that concrete, like say I'm an employee of the city and I'm getting $100,000 in take-home pay. Does that mean that with this arrangement, my take-home pay would go up to $103,000?

OK. All right. And then just maybe a little granular, but there's a couple, I was looking in the salary study, it strikes me if I was if I was an at-will employee, I would be very interested in what positions are selected for this comp study because it like directly, if we're saying you're gonna be at Market Media and here are these seven, it's really six, right? Cause we're one of the seven. I'm trying to see where it is on here.

But so go back to the one where we were looking at, maybe not even be on here. Is the finance director one on here somewhere?

So what I noticed that was interesting about this one is on this one, the comp study includes, like, three assistant finance directors and accounting services manager.

and only two like full on finance directors aside from us.

But then if I go to like go to the assistant city administrator one, these are all like assistant city administrators, right? So I get the argument is like, and something similar like on the police chief, for example, I get the argument that like maybe finances are not as complicated in Carmel as they are in some other slightly larger city, but presumably like, the public works, or sorry, the police chief's responsibilities are slightly less complicated and the assistant city administrator's position is slightly less complicated. So I would just be interested in making sure that it's truly equ

I hear what you're saying, and this is not supposed to be a comment period. I'll just say, like, I'm skeptical. Like, if you thought about what the assistant city administrator is handling or what the – again, there's a number in here where it's, like, the exact same role, and then there's some where it's, like, an assistant. And I'm just kind of skeptical about the logic carrying over across those categories.

This whole thing coming from the private sector is pretty interesting. I mean, I go back to my software days. It'd be interesting to know if you knew how much every one of your competitors in every key position was making.

Yeah. I know it's been interesting being involved with this. OK. Alessandra, do you have any questions?

So the market equity adjustments of 3%, 4.5%, and 8.3%, those affect the pay bands?

Do they affect, like, so you're the human resources manager. Are you going to get a 4.51% pay raise with pay band, or is that up to brand?

Is it a yes or no question? Like, are you going to, like, are there three people?

I'm only asking because I want to know what's going to happen when I vote on this thing.

But I'm gonna use the police chief as an example. Maybe I should use the building official. I'm gonna use the police chief as an example because he was hired more recently than you. He took his job, and I'm just making this number up, $200,000 a year. He's an at-will employee, unlike our unionized employees. The terms of his employment are he has a contract with the city administrator, with the city, and he accepted a job for $200,000 a year, and regardless of what the pay band was, he accepted the job. And so I think that my view, like I'm wondering why, yeah, I'll save that for comments. Oka

All right. Bob, you didn't have a comment or a question. All right. So let's go to public comment then. Unless, Alessandra, do you have any questions? Okay. Any public comments on this? Anybody online? No one. No one. Okay. All right. We'll bring it back. Jeff, go ahead and follow through on your comment then.

Yeah, I'll just follow through by, you know, by saying what I, by finishing what my thought was earlier that, you know, our employees have a contract. And you, you know, you sign up for the dollar amount. You negotiate your contract every year or every third year, however it is your contract is written. And it's up to the Atwell employee to figure out to negotiate with their manager or the city acting city administrator. where they are in the salary band and what their market is. And to me, that's how that game works. It's a completely different pay experience than being a union employee. Thes

One thought I had was that we want to give some thought to eliminating these pay bans. So apparently this is something that, like, these folks just kind of inherited, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to tether, for example, like the police chief and the assistant city administrators' salaries together. They're like two totally different labor markets. Similarly, I think the public works director and the community planning and building directors salaries are tethered together. Again, it could be two very totally different labor markets. And if our salary philosophy is to be a market med

So I think you actually said there were two different ideas you had, eliminating the pay bands and untethering the positions that somehow got locked together, even though they're different markets. I mean, maybe you could at least do one of those, like untethering the positions that somehow got the same.

I think it's kind of the same thing, really.

Yeah. Is it? Those are the same thing. OK. Basically.

But I think what he was saying is the library directors are competing in a different market

If you're going to hire somebody, you're competing in that market, not artificially.

Is there some level of research that you could do on a staff level and bring back a report?

Well, sorry, I just cranked my neck. If we, if these pay bands didn't exist though, right, there would only be two market equity adjustments, right? Not three?

Thanks, Mayor. I'm just going to keep it really brief. So it may not be a perfect system, but the market median seems to be the best practical, realistic way of doing it. But I would support Hans's idea of eliminating the pay bands and untethering. So perhaps it's something that we could look into in the future.

Is there a general agreement that we'd like to look into that?

I definitely welcome it. Okay, so why don't you find out what kind of report would be good to educate us a little more so it's perfectly clear, and then we can have that discussion. Thanks for bringing that up, Hans. So I think we're in agreement that we want to... go with the resolution that's in front of us tonight? I think there was general agreement, so does somebody want to make a motion?

Sorry, I'm asking a question. With the caveat that it does not affect contracts other than those that are at the...

OK, so I'll make a motion to adopt resolution. So we're all OK with that before I? Yes. I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2026-065 approving the fiscal year 2026-2027 compensation and benefit adjustments for at-will employees with the caveat that the raises in this resolution do not automatically raise the salaries of any at-will employees unless the lower end of the new raise pushes up their salary. Second. Roll call please.

Thank you for that interesting discussion. And we're now going to have future agenda items. Anybody want to add something? And I always will remind you that we're Mayor Pro Tem Delves and I are always open for suggestions from you at any time that we will bring it up at our meetings. But if you have something tonight, Nothing? Nothing. I'm not. I'm looking at council person Barron.

Jeff? I'm trying to think if I have any last minute wishes. I have one. An urgency ordinance prohibiting the installation of electrical appliances in the public driveway.

Okay, he's not serious. All right, with that, and there's no other business to handle tonight, we stand adjourned. Thank you very much, everybody.