City Council - Special Meeting

This is the regularly scheduled City Council meeting for the City of Vacaville. It's September 8th, 2026. It's 6 p.m. May I have a roll call?

Here. Will you please join me for a moment of silence.

Council Member Chapman, will you lead us in pledge of allegiance? Please join me.

So we were in closed session at 5 o'clock and we had two items. The second item 1B was a conference with legal counsel. The city council met in closed session pursuant to government code section 54956.9. to discuss conference with legal counsel regarding the initiation of litigation seeking appointment of a receiver for the property located at 107 Elmenore Drive, Vacaville, California. By a vote of 7 to 0, the City Council authorized the City Attorney's Office to initiate litigation seeking the appointment of a receiver for the property at 107 Elmenore Drive pursuant to Health and Safety Code

We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. With that, we'll move on to report to the City Council. Any updates from the Council since the last time we met or anything to share? Council Member Chapman.

Thank you. The CSC Citizens Advisory Committee met last week. They continue to do outstanding work with the incarcerated population. I am I would like to share that it took a year, but however, they now have a bachelor's degree offering at the prison. The first cohort, they had 36 to sign up, and 35 showed up for the orientation. And I want to make mention that a local paper, the recorder, had an individual to go there on site and take a tour and they, I believe it might have been Sunday's paper, but they were on the front page and they were so happy that time was taken to come in and see the

And I believe, Council Member Wiley, you were next. Is that right?

Thank you. Just a quick note. It was two weeks ago I went to the Cal City's North Bay meeting in American Canyon, and it was kind of interesting because it was in the American Canyon Council Chambers, so I've never been in there before. And we had guest speakers from several different counties, Napa, Solana, Sonoma, and Yolo, and they talked about the impacts of HR1 for the counties and mostly... in the medical realm and how it is going to really affect a lot of residents and how we can try to prevent some of the worst of the impacts of that. So it was interesting and a city manager was also i

Yes, there's just a couple events coming up that I thought the public might want to know about. This Saturday on September 12th is the Downtown Shakedown Car Event, which is always a really good time. It's heavily attended. There's lots of opportunities to check out some really neat classic cars and motorcycles and other stuff that's going to be out there, as well as support a downtown business, whether you're going to go and eat somewhere, go shopping, come downtown and check out all of that. And then also September 18th is the national POW MIA recognition day Ceremony from 10 to 1 that they

other than their normal meeting we do have a joint committee meeting for uh highway 12 and 113 and so mr burton i'll be seeing you tomorrow as well and i know you're going to share a few updates here tonight um interestingly enough we're always talking in our community about meeting activities for our community for our families And I was able to attend the grand opening for, it's called the club. And if you haven't been there, it's pretty impressive. And so while the city sometimes is looking to create opportunities through parks and recreation and activities, sometimes what we need to do is j

Is it like a gym where you have to have a membership?

There is a membership to it. However, what they're looking to also do is as partners with programs that the city may have. And so that's something that I'm sure can be explored to say, how do we overlap a benefit that's already in our community that's in addition to what they have? What is also interesting, they're open 24 hours a day. So there's real pickleball fans out there. Anyway, when people are asking the city to build more pickleball courts, you go inside there and there's 12 of them and everyone's playing all the same time. Playing at 2 a.m. Playing at 2 a.m. With that, we'll go ahead

Yeah, thank you. We'll move on to presentations. We do have a presentation from the Director of Projects of the Solano Transportation Authority, Nick Burton. This is on the I-80 Solano Express Lanes Operations and Weekend Pilot Update. I'm glad you're here tonight because I get a lot of questions and it's probably coming straight from the source. You can tell us what's going on.

Yeah, thank you. I really do appreciate this and I know the change sometimes is hard and certainly that's a question. If you have three or more people, it doesn't cost you anything. That's correct. I think that's the advantage and I think also as part of the STA, one of the things that we as the SDA board understood is to pilot the weekends really benefited Salama County because to have movement that we've seen here, especially on the weekends, anyone who knows what back of the hill would look like going westbound and you're not sitting, usually you're not sitting in traffic the way we used to

So two questions. How is it determined and verified the occupancy of the vehicles?

So it sounds like an honor system, there's not like a plate reader or occupancy reader?

Thank you. And the next question is, or just to clarify, the tolls that are collected from this, what exactly does that go to again?

Thanks for the information. So you keep talking about the weekend pilot, the weekend pilot. So the weekend pilot looks just like the weekday. So it's 5 to 8. So in some plans, they don't have any charges on the weekend. Is that the plan? And so because we're charging, that's the pilot part of it?

And so then when the sign is up there and it says, you know, $1.75 to Manuel Campos or whatever, that means if I get over there now and I get off at Manuel Campos or if I keep going and it's added on to the next piece and the next section and the next section?

In some places, like in Southern California, you can only go in when there's not a double yacht line, but there's not ever any double yacht line, so you can go anytime you want over there, and then you're just not sure what the charge is going to be when you get off, correct?

And so when billing people, I mean, you'll get a bill that has like all your trips on it. So you would see that or you just get the bill and have to trust that's what got charged?

Every 30 days, you'll be billing every 30 days or something?

So the last time I was driving, I was in the next to that lane, and someone went around and went back in. So once you enter that lane, are you going to charge till the end, even if you bop back over?

Okay. Well, I just wondered how the cost was. So thank you.

And I think just to add to that, I've heard this many times, but for clarity for our audience, old fast tracks did not have the dial. And so this is why some of the questions come up. If you're driving, if you're in the city, we know what congestion looks like on the weekend. The real value also that we're studying is having a lane that is open on the weekend. People work on the weekends. And so it really does go between mega cities to allow for that, plus for emergency responders to not just be stacking up with all lanes congestion, I think part of this is, you know, what did we learn from it

And this is the first time that I've heard that HOV-3 is free. So I don't know, I saw these pictures in your video, but I haven't seen them on the road. So I don't know if I've just missed them or they're not all in place yet.

But I hadn't seen that before anywhere, yeah.

Right. And it was real easy to get the one with the 1, 2, and 3, the Fast Track. All people have to do is send it in and get it, so that was easy.

Yeah, thank you. Council Member Chapman?

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Fast Track. I have one of the original Fast Track devices, and there is a new one that's out now. Is there a difference between the two?

You sure want to know? I'll forget to set the thing in. Okay, the other thing is, in your presentation you mentioned that individuals are traveling faster. within Fairfield, Vacaville, you know, on I-80. And with that, we've had significant accidents similar to what we had prior to the expansion, the additional lengths. And I understand that you will be doing your official evaluation next year. However, Because of the number of accidents that are occurring, are you thinking about maybe doing an analysis to see if there is something that can be done? And I understand and I even see how the CHP

Yes, thank you for the presentation. I know our council has had pretty robust discussions about digital signage and signage along the highway, and then we put up all these signs for this fast track lane. Are we done putting up signs? Are there going to be any more additional checkpoints that block our beautiful view? Okay, and if there is some sort of like need for that later on, would that go back to STA?

Okay. And then I had some questions about enforcement. So my background is law enforcement, just like the mayor's. And I guess my question is, are they only doing enforcement for on-viewed violations or is there somebody that is... reading detections from license plate readers that they're, you know, basically or photographs or thermal imagery to determine how many occupants are in there and what they have the thing set to and then mailing out citations to people or is it only showing what it shows on the sign and then if there's an officer that sees it, they're able to verify how many occupan

Okay, so just to be clear, it's only being on viewed by actual CHP officers that witness a violation? Correct. Okay, and then... Do you know if they are using the fast track lanes in the license plate readers and camera imagery for like flock or anything like that?

Well, a license plate reader and a flock camera is different. But I'm just trying to verify whether or not CHP is utilizing those for flock. No, no.

Fast-track operations. Exactly. Thank you.

That would be similar to how fast-track is used for the tolls on the bridge. It's the same technology. Yeah. Well, I appreciate this update. I know that it is an interesting takeaway to see with speeds coming up over time. Is there a pattern of accidents in the future? So thank you very much for this. I appreciate you bringing this tour to our city and I'll see you tomorrow. Thank you. All right, we're going to go ahead and move on. To our consent calendar, we have four items, 9A through 9D. Any member of the public or this council? And anyone on the line wishing to pull an item for discussion

He said no. Yeah. We have a motion over here. Yes. And there was a second. I think it was Council Member Ritchie. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right, we'll go ahead and move on. Next is the business from the floor. This is an opportunity for any member of the public wishing to address the council on an item that's not on tonight's agenda, but it is in our jurisdiction and within our purview. So this would be the opportunity to come forward. I'll give you three minutes and please come forward.

Thank you. All right. Anyone else from the public wishing to speak? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and close. the business from the floor and we will move on to our first public hearing item 11a.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation and for taking time this afternoon to answer my questions. I think what stood out to me the most was something that I think we see a lot at the council level is why such an increase. But I think it would be helpful from the consultant's perspective Because what I understand is that KC Farms is an actual transaction that was fairly consistent with what the findings of the study was. And it would be great to actually have our consultant explain why that matters. Because otherwise it just looks like an 87% increase. And I know that oftentimes we get behind sev

Yeah, thank you for that. I think it's helpful to note. From the Sloan Land Trust perspective, I think part of the, yeah please come forward, part of the interest in this is creating an alternative in the development world for mitigation other than the developer going out and doing it themselves. Is there, I mean I know with your board, is there the ability to come to the council, I don't know, maybe I'm not saying start doing this annually, but it's part of a program that in many cities they associated to a CPI. What's the progress? How's it done? Especially with some of these projects to eit

Thank you for that and it would be nice at some point for you to come and give a presentation. That would be great. Appreciate all the work that you and your staff are doing.

So this is also a question for you probably. So is there a time frame on the easement or is it in perpetuity?

So the reason it came up was so the young family who's getting started, so they're never planning to in the future farm that or use that because it will be set for mitigation and they will not be using it.

Oh, so in my past, the land had to be fallow for a while. So they can fuse it, and also then the birds can use it, and the people can use it.

Well, you can see it's a program that we use here and it's of interest. So I appreciate you being able to answer some of these questions. You may not want to leave, but there might be more questions.

Council Member Stockton? Just wondering if the land trust would be interested in some of that prime ag land right around our PG&E substation. I'm just curious. I've looked at any of that.

And what are some of the best ways for people to get a hold of you if that's something they want to do?

Tracy at Solano land trust org Could you maybe elaborate more it's kind of coming up in here, but can you elaborate more on the impact of farming farming operations as residential developments come up next to Yeah, thanks for asking the question and again, I'm here for you guys and I'm here for the community So thank you for the opportunity

Are there any, well with that, this is still part of the presentation, so this has answered all of our questions. I'm going to go ahead and open it up to the public for any comments.

So here's how this will work. You have the next two and a half minutes and so I'll take those questions and we'll have staff answer them afterwards. So if you have more things you'd like to share, we'll make sure that we answer that question.

Thank you. Appreciate you taking the time to come out and ask questions and to sit through a council meeting. So it means a lot. Anyone else? Anyone online? All right, I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment of this hearing and bring it back to the council and say I thank you for making this clear. I'd like to see in the future maybe a presentation to the council, maybe the same way we had a presentation from SEA. I think it's important to see how a program works in the future and the effects of it, because especially as the city does go into an urban growth boundary area, our city,

Oh, yeah. Sorry. I appreciate that. I'm always kept on my toes. But, staff, would you like to maybe explain a little bit more about what a mitigation program is and how this does affect in the development world?

Did you want to, you can answer it now if you'd like.

Thank you for the answer. It actually helps. And thank you for the question. You just allowed everybody else to be educated, sometimes unwilling to get up and have the risk to ask the question. So thank you. appreciate that so now i'll bring this back around we would be unless there's any further comments all right so we have a motion okay we have a question online now we have someone okay there wasn't somebody online i had already closed it but i'll go ahead and allow go ahead miss minion hi it's alicia minion can you hear me okay yes yes

have to question whether the mitigation provides any additionality if that makes sense anyway those are my comments thank you thank you all right i'm going to re-close the public portion of the comment and there is a motion and i believe there was a second i don't recall who do you have it recorded i think okay okay so we have a motion in the second all in favor aye opposed I appreciate it. Thank you. I think we got a little bit of an education tonight. So with that, we'll go ahead and move on to our only business item, 12A.

Yeah, thank you. I don't see any questions. So since there are no questions, I will go ahead and open this up to the public for any comment. Anyone online?

All right, I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment. You got it? Okay, come forward.

Yeah, thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak?

All right, seeing no one else, I'm going to go ahead and close the comment portion of this item, bring it back. And if staff could maybe further explain that. I know there's a lot to unpack, but try to simplify it.

And I think that's sometimes hard to understand. What does it mean? And I think there was another piece of the question, is it affordable for developers? It's really the affordability for the individuals who are applying to occupy one of these locations, but it's a good question because that's the important part is it's harder and harder for individuals to afford, especially as rents. can be challenged and also the affordability isn't always about what is the cost to build it. It's what is going to be paid by the tenants. So thank you for the question. Council Member Wyeth?

Just to follow up on that. So what is right now Solano County's AMI?

And the average of this, so you might have some at 70 and some at 30, but the average can be no higher than 60% overall.

All right, thank you. And right now do we know how many, are there mostly like one and two bedrooms or was that in there that I missed?

And just I'll make one comment on the prevailing wage. And you were giving us, I really appreciated that, the requirements that would trigger prevailing wage. just there have been a lot of conversations lately, sometimes even if prevailing wage is not triggered, you pay more if you're trying to not pay prevailing wage because it's not done correctly or they're paying people out of classification and they have to make corrections to some of the mistakes. So I just wanted to say, you know, even if we don't, hit the trigger for prevailing wage, it would be wonderful if we could pay prevailing wag

And I think since you're on that subject, this is surplus land from the city, so that would also impact prevailing wage.

The comment I had was on the prevailing wage topic. If the two stipulations that you shared uh, don't come through. Can we as a council state, because, well, first of all, I'm basing this on we're, we're wanting, I'm thinking that we're wanting livable wages here in the area for our people. And with that, um, can we, um, at or share with you that that may, if it's the consensus of the council, that we would like for that to be considered when they are putting together their specific plan?

But for tonight, tonight we're just, Authorizing the the NRA motion to approve and so I was looking for a motion. So I'll take your motion We have a second all in favor. Aye Opposed All right. Thank you, and we'll see how this project unfolds and appreciate staff times working on this. There's no more items So we will move to the adjournment. Good night back at all