City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. We have no ladies and gentlemen, but we have one gentleman. Thank you for coming. Because of a lack of council members tonight, we are going to ask the city clerk to call the roll so that there'll be a record of that.

We do expect Council Member Polipotti perhaps at some time.

Wonderful. Thank you very much, Stacey. A meeting is adjourned.

All right. Can you go ahead and read our TV announcement, please?

I'm going to go ahead and have everyone stand and we're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance. And if you can, stay remaining standing as we call up Elizabeth Brick from United Methodist Church of Rancho Cordova.

That's awesome. That's the first prayer about roads. I like that. I'm gonna have you come to STA and do road prayers. All right. Public comment. We now move to public comment. Members wishing, members of public wishing to address the accounts for any matter not in the agenda may do so at this time. This public comment period is limited to the matters that fall within the city council's authority, known as council's subject matter jurisdiction. For items that are not on the agenda, speakers will be called on by the mayor at the point on the agenda when the item will be heard. Speakers are asked

You have full council You have full council representation but you have representation but you have to wait a few more months to wait a few more months before you actually have a

Just chopped up two years ago. And so you will have a district rep in about three years. I'm sorry, three months, three years. Dang. It's a lot. Listen, we wait a long time to choose our council.

That lady right there, she's going to answer that question for you.

But for that second question, let's send you back to, Darcy, can you raise your hand? Can you help her answer some of the questions? She's our expert to answer those questions for you.

Send me an email. I'm the last of the council members at large, so I represent everybody. I'll take it on. But the guy that's going to be your council member that's for your district is Elliott Stevenson. But you've got to remember, like, Rancho Cordova doesn't care about districts. We care about that our community is well. So if you have questions like that, well, then shoot it to MICA. Like, we'll get the process started. Or if you're worried about, like, something with – policing, then we have Russ.

We started there and we work our way through because that might have something to do with the school district, something to do with the city as a whole. We want to hear all about it. It's not like you need to go find somebody. Any council member will take your email. Shoot us an email. We'll talk about it.

We're all neighbors. Email all five. Screw it.

None of us, if Joe had something in his district, I would not go help his district out. That's still part of Rancho.

We're happy to have you. We're just part of the community. We all live in Rancho Cordova, so there's nothing except for this cute little dais we sit on. So in the end, shoot us an email. I want to hear your concerns. I always want to see if we can do something to better Rancho.

That, yes, 100%. Okay, okay. And then, you know, keep us appraised. All right, thank you for coming. Thanks. All right, number two.

All right. So we're going to move on to council reports. And I'm going to start with Joe. Joe, how have things been going over the last two weeks? Crazy.

Yeah, I have a headache today, so I'm going to keep it even shorter than short usual. But the one real memorable one that comes to mind since our last meeting was at the youth basketball camp at Rockball, which is right off Sunrise and Folsom. It was an anti-gun violence camp. And I think you were supposed to be there, but you couldn't go. And so I got called up from the bullpen. And yeah, it was cool. The Chiefs already heard this joke, but I got to warm up with all the kids. So they saw me building a brick house with all my missed shots. Had to say the joke again. But yeah, it was a good tim

Lots of fun little things going on. I have had a couple of really interesting meetings with some people interested in developing property in Rancho Cordova. That's been a pleasure. I met with one of our old friends, Coach Roz, last week. I don't know if any of you actually remember Coach Roz. Coach Roz did a youth program at Meadows Elementary for us. It was sort of an after school football program, but it was really a reading program disguised as football. In other words, you had to do your extra reading stuff. You had to do your reading evaluation. You had to sit with your tutor or the perso

Okay, I'll go over my highlights as well. Attended the elected officials' reception hosted by the Chamber of Commerce. That was a very well-attended event at a really good location, the Maither Jet Center. So this was the Labor Day weekend. I did receive a lot of complaints and even posts on social media regarding kids and their use of e-bikes. More so on the e-bikes in our peer cities, but in our city I heard a lot about kids going about doing Ding Dong Ditch. Apparently it's a TikTok trend that's going about. But I wanted to make sure that Rancho Cordova gets ahead of the e-bike issue before

Thank you All right I'll jump to me and I'll jump back to our illustrious mrs. Budge I met the owner of Pizza Guys, which I didn't realize that corporate pizza guys is in Rancho Cordoba. And they actually have built a small pizza guy in the office. So you go in and you actually see this thing. So I heard a long time ago, I worked with a group that was helping out round tables. I heard the cheese was like, when they're doing it on TV or pizza places, they use like glue and stuff like that. So I asked guys like, hey, What's your secret to make your pizza look so good online? And he's like, if I

Well, you know what? Tell us what we can. Yeah, tell us the good stuff.

All right. I'm making this up on the fly. So we all had to learn about financial management today. But we had to learn about it from the state of California, who doesn't seem to do very good in the world of financial management. And the chamber's elected officials reception was just delightful. There is no question about it. I know that the Sacramento Valley Manufacturers Association met here at City Hall. And I was not able to attend that one. So the only other thing I can contribute to the party. Georgia beat Tennessee 63 to 3.

It was a good day. And you all are going to the Notre Dame game, and I'm happy for you. So that's my report. Micah.

Excellent. So just so you know, if you guys didn't know this, we're going to adjourn this meeting in memory of Ted Smith. He was the pastor of River City Christian, our first covenant. He passed away, leaves thousands upon thousands. He's the one that created Bayside Church. He actually went out of the state, found somebody, and then grew the Bayside into what it is. All those years ago. Yeah, it actually just comes from Rancho Cordova. And so what's fun about that church, and God bless him because I know he's in the right space, it's an old Swedish church. and he had to talk them in to stop d

David will remind me, but in 2008 or 2013, We celebrated their 150th anniversary. I think it was 150. It might have been 200, but I think it was 150.

It was. That Swedish congregation you referred to was very old. It's been in Sacramento a very long time.

Yeah. They used to be over on Howe Avenue.

All right, we're gonna move on now to consent calendar items. Consent calendar items, consistent matters deemed routine and non-controversial by staff, unless a member of the council wishes to pull an item. For individual consideration, all items may be approved with one motion. Are there any items the council wishes to pull? Seeing none, I'm gonna ask the clerk, is there any public comment related to consent calendar items?

Then I will move approval of items 13.1 through 13.7.

Yes. Motion passes. Excellent. We're going to move on to consent public hearing items. Consent public hearing items consist of matters deemed routine and non-controversial by staff unless a member of the council wishes to pull an item. For individual considerations, all item may be approved in one motion. I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing item very quietly and ask the clerk, is there any public comment?

Go ahead and close the public hearing and ask, are there any items that council wishes to pull?

No, and I will move approval with the comment for the staff that are in the room that this 14.1 is one of those kinds of things that we talked about today in talking about fees and bonds and that kind of thing.

Excellent. All right. Regular calendar items. Discussion and direction on Growing Strong Neighborhoods Commercial Corridor. Receive a report on possible of establishing a commercial corridor improvement program provided staff feedback direction on corridor selection and or request additional information to be brought back at a later meeting for further discussion. So brought back later for further discussion. Stacy, can you, oh, I did, I announced the subject. Darcy, can you go, Darcy, Russ, staff report, please.

ALL RIGHT. WELL STARTED OFF. Because when I was out meeting with some of the CEOs and the business owners, they really had an opinion on corridors because they said they have trouble when they bring their business in about the look and feel of the corridors. And I didn't really grasp how important it is when you pull off a 50 and you start going down there, how that greets somebody. And I really think that if I was going to choose a corridor to start with that would have the biggest bang for the buck would be would be the 50 Sunrise, off of 50 Sunrise Corridor and that when you go in, you star

You know how we make the 50, you're getting ready to go on Sunrise Boulevard, you make the turn off of 50, you're coming into the city.

You go towards Costco and you have that, the light rail that runs through and, you know, that, if we could beautify that, that's like probably the heaviest, one of the heaviest, okay, not the heaviest, but one of the heaviest in and out thoroughfares. And if we could make that placemake a little bit or even talk to them about putting SIGNS UP. I DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE THAT I DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE THAT UNTIL ONE OF THE BUSINESS OWNERS UNTIL ONE OF THE BUSINESS OWNERS POINTED OUT. POINTED OUT. IT WOULD BE NICE IF THEY KNEW IT IT WOULD BE NICE IF THEY KNEW IT LOOKED A CERTAIN WAY AND WAS LOOKED A CERT

I can understand you're making a case for that particular area. From my perspective, there is nothing that draws as many people to Rancho Cordova as the airship. And so I would personally support, and besides it's small and doable, and I would support their goal of using the Merthyr Field corridor first. It's got a couple of things in there that really need cleaning up. And it's also, unfortunately, a hub simply because of the bike trail. But any way you look at it, nothing else brings in 200,000 people, even though it's one event. It just strikes me that we have a huge opportunity for getting

David, what you thinking? Too many thoughts to be able to share in a meeting. But I can summarize. I think these corridors suffer from death by a thousand cuts. right, all these little things break. It's as simple as people don't get rid of weeds in their landscaping in their parking lots, so they don't paint the parking lot or reseal it, or they put duct tape up to make a sign instead of fixing the sign. It creates just an environment where other businesses may not want to locate or people may not want to shop because there are too many things that feel broken. Everything that feels broken is

No, no, no, behind them, diagonally into that neighborhood. There's like, you know, RVs parked where you should have mobile homes, but people are just living in the RV that's sort of falling apart in place. So you've got, I mean, this is sort of the surroundings. And then on the other side, you've got a business that's on that corner that's been a problem for a long time and has been under remodel for, I don't know, three, four years, something. Total mess, right? And homelessness is now very present in that neighborhood because of all these other little cuts that have happened. That trail is

Did you mean Ethan Conrad? Yep. You know, this is, I don't think it's easy on any one of us to pick one for a lot of the reasons stated. The one that makes the most sense is the one we're working hardest on right now, which is Mather Field, although that long-term plan needs to have a plan for the liquor store and the blighted. I apologize, Adam, but we have to buy the thing because that corridor enhancement is not going to be complete without dealing with that mega blighted corner. We could have the prettiest wall, sound wall, the nicest shrubs, median with the red brick, but as long as that

Well, and it runs behind people's houses.

Which is why it came up so much. I bet you a lot of the people that talked about it actually had no interest in using it, but it's there. And it's the same thing with Bradshaw, you know, these corridors, how much we're willing to invest in them and the things that they attract. So I would say finish what you started, Mather Field, but have a plan for the liquor store. I would say Bradshaw is going to be the most challenging, not only because it's a border street, but the need there is very, very high. So I wouldn't want to do a pilot for that. And, you know, maybe then we go to the back of the

Well, really good comments by my colleagues, and I agree with all of them. My vote, though, if I had to pick one, was on Folsom Boulevard, because from the day I started on this council, we've always been looking at how to revitalize Folsom Boulevard. What do we do to make our face, our entry to the city better? What can we do to make sure that when the Uber drivers come, when everybody goes to the city, that statement remains that this is a great place to be, but the roads are also really great. So, you know, especially with the Mayter Airshow, people come in. We have 65 businesses that will

No, that was it. That was the end of it. Go ahead.

Joe had some really good points, especially about the county.

The one negative thing I say, and you have to say that's the best point.

What about the positive comments? It's really something that's important to remember.

Because David and I will remember from the chamber days when the county did a commercial corridor study for the entire north area that was about four inches thick, and it sat on a shelf, and it's still sitting on a shelf. So they never put either the time or the effort or the thought into it that we wanted them to. And they actually, Folsom Boulevard was one of them, which is part of why it was so difficult to get started on Folsom Boulevard. But we also have to remember, again from the chamber days, Between Rod Beaudry and McGregor, there are 278 individual parcels on the north side of Folsom

Think of that number, 240 billboards in that stretch.

Four by eights. But nothing else ever happened. And we still have a lot of that dynamic that staff would be up against, all those little parcels. I've actually worked for some developers who are really good at assembling parcels, like at the intersection of Stockton and Fruit Ridge and building a Rite Aid. And you can't do that when you've got a string of little parcels that are only this deep. What do you do with it? So anything that we try to do on Folsom Boulevard is going to take an awful lot of really deep thought. consolidation of parcels, figuring out what to do about it, and how to do

Well, it sounds like, guys, that your direction was for the Mather Field Corridor. You have three votes to do get that one started. I would also like to caveat, because Folsom Boulevard, like Siri, I agree with that one, entirely important because it is where the DOVA project does come in and where the people are going to see it, the DOVA and Sunrise. But I actually like Joe's idea is that whatever we put in place, we probably should look at the safety side LIGHTS, HAVING A BIKE COP DOESN'T SOUND LIKE A BAD IDEA TO ME OR MAYBE JUST SEEING WHAT THE COST WOULD BE BECAUSE IT'S ONE THING TO CLEAN

Could be at the drone rate. I mean, we could contract one of the downtown SACCHP bike co-ops they have from Procter & Noble City.

Not for you to ride. Not for you. We've seen that. Now, horses up and down would really... I don't know what that's going to cost.

No, I don't think we want to plan it anymore. Correct.

You know the big lot between Harbor Freight and Pet Boys? Chamber staff actually went down and knocked on the owner's door, and nobody would answer.

As a long-time owner, has no interest in developing, just pays the taxes and holds it.

But you know what you get good? You can go down there and get tugboat, and it's delicious. You can get tugboat. It's the only place you get, like, fish and chips.

Yeah, tugboats are supposed to be really good.

I have one last comment. You said partnerships were sort of buried in there. I think we really need to focus, like in all things at Rancho Cordova, we focus on what partners can we bring in to be the most efficient, make the bucks go the farthest. The Chamber has been a great partner in the past. on trying to figure out how to revitalize corridors. So trying to figure out partnerships. Maybe there are partners that can do things as well, like almost in a public works kind of area or adjacent area on private property. Yeah, like work on private property that's harder for the city to do. No, no, no. Or bulldozer accidents in strategic locations. No, what is happening? Arsonists.

The other comment was maintenance of effort, which I think is a really important concept. Because in most jurisdictions in California, you'll see a new roadway or something built. The landscape is going to be great. It'll be alive. And then about a year later, you realize they didn't put in any irrigation or something like that, right? Or it failed and they didn't fix it. So great, you just spent millions of dollars on new landscaping and it's all kind of dead.

Yes. And finally, you talked about the doorstep and how important it is. The one that's not really here but it is a corridor in the same sense as Highway 50 and the interchanges. Our interchanges look awful. Terrible. How do we get that much litter on a daily basis into those interchanges? I do not understand.

Because that's where I camp at. That's Rancho Cordova camping areas. It's called the corridors.

I mean, just coming to City Hall just now, off 50, off Zinfandel, exiting at Zinfandel, look to the right. I mean, that's a trash truck load that is spread out there over that stretch. It's just ridiculous amounts of trash. You behave. You behave. Ridiculous amounts of trash. We have to find, that's our doorstep. I mean, somebody comes to Rancho Cordova, the first thing they're going to see, I'm exiting here. Oh my gosh, what is all this trash doing here?

And why is there graffiti patches on the wall here? I mean, all that little stuff. Why are there weeds growing up through this chain link fence? It's just all that little stuff is going to matter.

Hopefully when we have the new art walk and all that, people feel less bad throwing trash there. I would hope. I'm not being funny. Maybe you'll be like, oh, this is not a trash can, so I won't throw my trash here.

Yeah, because that broken windows theory always works. It gets nicer. You don't want to be the person that makes it look worse. So you're like, cool, I'll just go down. I won't do it there, but I'll do it on Hazel.

But that presumes a litterer is a rational actor. So I don't know if that's the case.

Yes, we were making a motion to recommend that staff pursue as an initial corridor revitalization project the Mather Field Road corridor from Folsom Boulevard down to at least the intersection with International or all the way to Mather. Yeah, down to Peter McEwen. Perfect. Works for me.

Great. Do I have a second? to have a roll call.

Guys, one last thing. There's a lot of people that are coming into Rancho Cordova now that want to invest in Rancho. We need to have packets and ability for them to invest in Rancho. So I know people that are coming in that are millionaires and they want to be engaged because the ecosphere and all this stuff is happening. This is an excellent chance for them to be like, buy this piece of property. And the city wants to come alongside you and help you to make it successful. Because they're just looking at places where they can invest their money. And that land is very affordable right now. So i

Can we just have him? He's right there. Can we just swap?

So what's the... So they think Capital Village and Prospect Park are in a low-income census tract.

Prospect Park, nobody lives there. And Capital Village does not look low income.

That makes sense, sort of. I think people who live there would be insulted, but it makes sense. I doubt seriously that the people who live in Mills Ranch think they qualify, but I guess nobody asked them.

Mr. City Attorney, I didn't realize you're a left-handed batter.

There was a vehicle involved, yeah. And as I remember, my very small son at the time attacked that wall with a hammer.

You know, Folsom Cordova used to do ESL. the adult education. They still do. It was in a little building on Rockingham. They still do. So maybe we should add Folsom Cordova.

Where's this crossway? That's Folsom Boulevard? Yes. All right, okay, now you went into the Twilight Zone. They're gonna have a small family walking their dog across Folsom Boulevard?

Yeah, dodge. Dodge is like, watch out for yourself. It's crazy. One second, we're just gonna get this proposal and then we'll have public comment.

Well, it's about, we don't understand where this is. We have no idea.

Do you know where the, I'll tell you exactly where it is, just so you know. Do you know where the college is, Folsom Lake College? Yes. Right next to that. There's that big, you know the big piece of land that had the Mexican restaurant next to it? Got it. There you go. Yep, you nailed it.

Let's go ahead and get some public comment, is there any?

Excellent, we'll move on. Planner, extraordinaire, Linda, bless us with your knowledge.

I have to say that the last two proposals don't do anything for me at all, period. Your housing concept renderings are beautiful by themselves, but they don't look anything like the project we approved over there. So how would you go about integrating the architecture that's been adopted for that project into something that looked like this? And then we really have to have a conversation. I mean, granted, We decided we didn't want to do all of that mixed use, but we haven't decided specifically what we do want to do at Mills Crossing. So it seems to me that we need a conversation about that fi

Honestly, I think Linda covered all my comments. Good.

I DON'T HAVE ANY SPECIFIC I DON'T HAVE ANY SPECIFIC OBJECTIONS. OBJECTIONS. I CAN'T SPEAK TO THE DESIGN I CAN'T SPEAK TO THE DESIGN ELEMENTS BUT SOME OF THEM ARE I ELEMENTS BUT SOME OF THEM ARE I THINK PRETTY IN LINE WITH THE THINK PRETTY IN LINE WITH THE LAST DIRECTION WE GAVE YOU. LAST DIRECTION WE GAVE YOU. SO I DO THINK YOU DID WHAT WE SO I DO THINK YOU DID WHAT WE ASKED.

ASKED. DAVID? DAVID? I GUESS I ALSO IDENTIFY I GUESS I ALSO IDENTIFY WITH LINDA'S COMMENTS. proposed housing development there just gives me pause it's probably something we need to think more about um before committing ourselves to any particular path there that particular treatment of the edge of the parking lot at the light rail station has not occurred to me before so that's an interesting thing i worry about what impact it would have on the paucity of parking that we're already dealing with and sort of had an impact on our previous discussion of what to do with Mills Crossing. That would

Go ahead. Obviously, we want to do everything right and take as much time as we need, but do we risk our competitiveness for grants the more we wait? I just want to know, I'm sure we want to know, is there like a timeline that we should be knowing about?

It looks like we need to come, sorry to cut you off, but I realize you put it up on the screen. It looks like we need to come back pretty quickly about this if applications do soon.

I think demonstrating that for sale housing works on Folsom Boulevard would be a major landmark for us if that could happen. Certainly in Mills Crossing we saw an awful lot of challenges around trying to accommodate that or trying to allow that to happen. Just economically, I mean, even not rent controlled apartments were deemed not functional at Mills Crossing, right? Everything had to be subsidy. So, you know, for sale housing could potentially be that spark that lights other property owners up saying, oh, wait a second, I can actually make money with this parcel instead of sitting on it for

Well, this is kind of a place-making question. You know, why would anybody want to live, want to buy a house on Folsom Boulevard right now? For all the reasons that we've been talking about all night with this commercial. Trick of the day, right? Yeah, with these commercial corridor things. You know, what have you got? A bunch of parking lots and, you know, an old veterinary and a gas station and used cars and a restaurant that changes hands every six months and so on and so forth. The only thing respectable out there is really the college. And actually the little lube thing across the street

Well, but that's a long way down that way.

I just feel like it's a moving target, so I wish you guys best luck. All right, thank you.

All right, I'm going to go ahead and we're going to go ahead and adjourn this into closed session. Recording in progress. Before we adjourn into closed session, there are some public, are there any public comments on 21.1?

Do you want me to ask for future agenda items? Is there any future agenda items, guys? Meeting adjourned into closed session.

I'm going to go ahead and join this meeting into the amazing Pastor Ted. Ted Smith was faithfully served for more than 30 years as Senior Pastor of First Covenant and River City Christian. Following these years as Senior Pastor, he continues serving the Rancho del Corvo community to its being an amazing pastor, gospel, developing Christian leaders, strengthening families, helping people become fully devoted followers of Christ. This amazing man actually helped when I was at a low point in my life to help me take on and become a council member here in Rancho Cordova. Matthew 25, 23 says, well d