City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. It's Tuesday, October 6th, 2026. We're at Carmel-by-the-Sea City Hall, 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?

Thank you. Before we begin, a reminder that this is a hybrid meeting. Members of the public may attend in person, participate via Zoom, or if they wish to make a comment, they have to be on Zoom, and watch the live stream on the city's YouTube page now or at any time in the future. There's lots of good stuff on YouTube from last night's meeting, so please go on and watch it. It's very good. We're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance. Would everybody please rise? Thank you. We have three extraordinary business items this evening. And the first one is a Carmel High School report out. And we have

I heard your water polo team's doing pretty well too. Yeah. It's exciting. And how did the lights work?

That's good. Good to hear after all that. All right. Thank you. And we look forward to seeing you next month. All right. Next is the nonprofit spotlight. And we have an interesting one tonight. It's Opera Carmel. You're here, right? Okay, come on up. This is Daniel Henrichs, and it's a little bit different from all the other ones we've had so far, because in essence, this is almost like a startup business. So we're all here sort of at the beginning of an exciting new chapter in music. It's not completely startup. You're going to explain it, but it's really exciting, and I can't wait to go see one of your shows, but you're going to tel

Thank you, Daniel. We will all be at Forest Theater. If you missed their E. Contari show last year, how many people got to see it? It was unbelievable. Unbelievable under the stars. Thank you. Hopefully you can outdo yourself on that one.

All right. Item C is Carmel Art Association Centennial Proclamation. Would the Carmel Art Association people come on forward, please? You have some people here? A couple of them? You can all come up. Maybe just one of you can introduce yourself, and then we'll kick off the proclamation.

All right. So since we have limited time, I've, and Councilperson Dremhoff loves the history and the music and the art of Carmel. I'm going to have her read the proclamation.

Thank you. If you all want to gather around, we'll get a nice picture of you, all the whole group. Thank you for making such a nice group picture for us today. Got it. Thank you. How many of you have been to the Art Association the last six months? All right. A lot of opportunities. Get over there. It's unbelievable. Every time I go there, I'm just blown away by the incredible art. Thank you. Congratulations on your almost 100 years. All right, moving right on to public appearances. We're going to open it up for public appearances. And Nova, could you read the regular meeting public appearance

Thank you. I'd like to ask everybody tonight, because we've got a pretty extensive agenda and some of the items we're not sure how long they're going to go. We were here for over five hours last night. If you could keep your points as succinct as you can. You get three minutes, but if you could just cut it a little short if you could. We had a couple good examples of that last night, actually, and I'd like to thank them. So let's get going. How many people are going to speak? Okay, great. If you could keep the line up, come on up, Beth. And if you could keep lining up behind her so we can keep

Beth, could you tell us one more time when that is?

That's a good time to do it. All right, next. Do you have a presentation?

And all under three minutes. You jumped the gun a little bit on our paid parking discussion, but it's general comment. It's legal. Thanks. Great job.

Thank you. It was very successful last year, if I remember right. Yes. It was. Artists loved it. Yes. Come on up.

Thank you. How many people went to the last meeting? How many people are going on Thursday? Wow, that's a good showing. How many people took the survey? That was quite a survey. It really was. All right. We look forward to the results. Interesting results.

And all the other hundred and some people in the room. All right, we'll see you Thursday. Hey, Donna.

Thank you, it was a lot of fun. And I had to take the chairs down at seven o'clock this morning. You gotta love it when you're at the council meeting and Tina goes, by the way, Dale, could you take the chairs down tomorrow morning before the cleaning lady gets there? I've gotten to know Anna pretty well, the cleaning leader. Anyways, lots of fun.

They just camped out at the Golden Bough all day long. I did camp out. A few days in a row. Yeah. I went to the opening party at the Mission Bistro, and it was really a lot of people. Let's just leave it at that. Okay, who's next? There were more hands in that, weren't there? Laura, you're not going to speak? Wow. How about that? We don't have anybody online. Last chance online, people. Okay. Thank you, everybody, for speaking. A lot of nice things. We're going to now do announcements. Let's start with city administrator announcements.

That's all? So many things happening and that's all you have? Okay. City Attorney.

We were hoping for some action. All right. Hans, why don't you go next? Nothing? Oh, come on. You're busy, too. Bob?

Are you enjoying your time on the Tour House board?

It was really something last year. It's hard to believe it's been a year since that happened. Go to the event at Tour House. They have food and wine. It's a fantastic time, incredible view, and you get to see everything in the house. Nice tours going on. Jeff?

Okay, I've got a few. It was pretty amazing this morning. I was going for a beach walk with the pups, and it was pretty amazing watching those two tractors push our incredible, perfectly white sand around. It's a lot of it. It's a lot of it. They've been working really hard. Thank you for the team's effort on that. It's going to be interesting to see what happens when the storms come. Hopefully they won't, but nice job. Go down and look at how beautiful the sand is because when they push it up, It's all the stuff underneath. It's absolutely spectacular. So Carmel Cares is planning on starting

It's huge. It's a huge trade show. I love trade shows because I used to do it with my software companies. Hans, what did you think about it?

But we are all going to sessions all day long. It's fantastic. So that's my comment. So anybody else have anything before we close it out? All right. Very good. Moving right along. We're in orders of business. We've got... a number of them today, some of which haven't. We're going to be here a while. So first one is an exciting thing and it's going to be an interesting discussion. I know there's multiple viewpoints on this and we love that because we love to have really thorough discussions and make a decision at the end, hopefully. It's the first Murphy House and it's proposed shared use. Do

Very good. Thank you for that presentation. Turning it back to me? Okay. Any questions from the council? Go Hans.

Jeff? It seems I might just say things for the discussion. Is your goal to have it open during business hours, Monday, seven days a week eventually? Is that the goal? Yes, yes. Which would be pretty nice. Because even some of us can't ever get there at the time that you're open, so we don't see it very often. We get to look in the window like Hans did. Is the idea to just make the whole place more alive? I mean, it seems like a vibrant place. because it's open instead of sort of a mystery house.

I know when I worked at the Visitor Center, which is my first volunteer job in Carmel, and it was a lot of fun. I know that if I was an executive director, I would never get any work done. Seriously, there are people coming all the time, and they want to talk about everything.

It seems like you are also breathing life into the Heritage Society period. I mean, thank you. Thank you for taking the job.

Okay, so again, running a nonprofit, you're working 25 hours and being a tour guide the whole time that you're there. Exactly. So I think in terms of looking at the value of this relationship, that's a big value for your organization. Yes. All right, just want to point that out to everybody. Definitely. All right, might have been more discussion than question, but all right, I think we're done up here. Let's get some public comments. You two can sit down, and if we need some questions later, we'll bring you back. How many people are going to be speaking on this subject? All right, good. So we'

We appreciate your dedication to First Murphy and all things Murphy over the years. Enid Sales, if people in the audience don't know who she was, was an incredible ambassador for Carmel's history, and she was quite a character. I never got to meet her, and I'm very sad about that.

I can guarantee you we read it, but you can read it again.

Thank you, Cindy. Cindy, by the way, I would have to say, along with Donna, is probably our most diligent and and consistent participant in the city hall process here.

Thank you. That was short and sweet. Let's see if I can beat that. That was quick. We don't see you that often, so you can have more time.

Thank you. Thank you, and good to see you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service on the board. All right, I think we're done here. Correct? All right, we're gonna go online. We have two. Anybody else that's online that wants to speak, put up your hand. All right, we have two. Go ahead, Nova.

Thank you, Ian. Appreciate it. Christy, your turn.

You're still muted, Christy. There you go.

Thank you. What I heard, Christy, what I heard you and Ian saying was you're not against it, but just do it carefully. So you don't need to talk, but I think that's good advice, actually, in anything that you do. All right, I don't see anybody else that wants to speak, so let's bring it back for a discussion. Who'd like to kick it off? Bob, you did a good job last night kicking things off.

Thank you. I'd say that was on par with your opening last night a couple times. Alessandra, I'll have you go last, actually. Jeff?

I'm a little bit torn. I'm more torn. I come down with Bob. I'm more torn than Bob. I appreciate both Robin and Cindy's comments and the tension between, and these are my words, getting into bed with the Chamber of Commerce as we see the historic nature of this building But what we hear from the Heritage Society is that, you know, this is the path to get, as Bob says, this is the path to getting the building open more. And so the choice is, you know, on one hand sort of, doing business with, again, this is my words, doing business with the enemy versus not having, versus just letting the build

Are you making a decision, or are you going to wait? I'm with Bob. OK, good. Not good, but you made a decision. All right, Hans, go ahead.

Thank you. So the Heritage Society's house tour, how many of you people went to that? It's unbelievable. You did it at two doors. You did the ends thing too, right? It was two doors down from me one day, and I was washing my truck in the driveway. And hundreds of people walked by and talked to me. I was already mayor, so I wasn't running for office. But it would have been perfect if I was. It's unbelievable what you do with that house tour and to know that the chamber helped you make that happen shows what this partnership could be when you have numbers like that one plus one equals five in th

I think we'd also like to make the point strongly that if there are some ideas that could be put in there with the two parties working together to listen to Ian, to listen to Christy, to listen to Cindy and so on, to make sure we have some guardrails in there so this doesn't get out of control and become a chamber function. Please do that. I think, Hans, you've made that point pretty clearly, so make sure that happens. Understood. Okay, so we need a roll call, right? Okay, we'll make a motion. Give us a motion.

Yes. Motion carries. All right. Congratulations, everybody. Does anybody know why KSBW is here? What's the story you're here for?

But that is an exciting subject. Do you think we should take a break now?

Let's just, can we do a bio break? Just since it's going to be another half hour. Let's do a bio break. We'll be back in at 6.15.

We've got a great presentation on El Nino storm preparedness and shoreline projects. Are you going to kick this off too? Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Go ahead.

Thank you. Beautiful presentation. You're doing a lot of work. That's all I can say. You guys have been busy. Thank you. It's important. Any questions? Go ahead.

They have been doing a lot of work by my house on San Antonio. They've been closing the street down, and they are going way up. It's shocking how high they're going. It's pretty scary. No, they are way up there. So they are already doing that. I imagine they're going to do some more on scenic, but good question, because that does happen during storms. All right, public comment. How many people want to say something? All right, come on up.

I think he just volunteered to help out in any way that he can, if you're interested.

If there's an answer, Brandon would have it.

You can answer the question. Okay. Yeah, we need to keep this moving.

It's a really good one. Great place for it. Thank you for bringing that up. That is a big deal. Anybody else? One online. Scott, who is an absolute expert at subjects like this. We appreciate all your work, Scott. Go ahead.

Thank you, Scott. And when Scott says something, we should probably listen. I don't know if anybody has looked at the public, the information that he said, but he has done some incredible research on the revetments, beautiful pictures. All right, I don't see anybody else. We'll bring it back for a discussion if there is any. Anybody have something to say? Go ahead.

All right. Thank you. Anybody else? Did you get the direction or comments that you were looking for?

One of the most amazing things about our beach is that a lot of it disappears every year. And I guess we're lucky that for some reason it did not disappear last year for the first time in a long time. But it's probably going to. So we're lucky we got the sand while it's still there. All right, thank you very much for that presentation. And I think we're probably getting as prepared as we can for the El Nino when it happens. All right, we're gonna move on to another El Nino subject. Number three item, local emergency anticipated El Nino event. And I think that, Brandon, you're probably going to

The vice mayor said we should have dinner, so let's go have dinner. We're going to come back in half an hour. Sorry for everybody, but we have to eat at some point. We'll come back at 7.45, and we stand in recess.

We're back in session at 7.48. And we're item number 11, local emergency anticipated El Nino event. And I'm going to turn this over to Brandon. Yep. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

All right, we'll go out to public comment. Anyone here want to speak on this? Anybody online? There's no hands raised on Zoom. All right, bring it back for discussion. Anybody have a comment on this? Want to bring any issues up?

BRENDAN COLLINS- It is. No, it's not inconsequential. That was my point.

Jeff, do you have anything? Alessandra? Bob? All right. Sounds like we're ready for someone to make a motion.

I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2026-076, ratifying the proclamation of existence of a local emergency by the acting city administrator due to anticipated El Nino event 2026-2027.

All right, you're empowered, Brandon. officially. All right now then the main event apparently for tonight is Chief Treyers on camera and we're going to cover the 2026 Car Week After Action Report which has a lot of interesting information. Go ahead.

Thank you, great presentation. Thank you for all the time you put into it. It's clear that that was a lot of time. Yeah. Especially all the data analysis. Sounds like you had some fun with it, too, though.

Not bad at all. Not bad at all. Who wants to start with questions? Anybody reaching for your light?

Thank you, Chief, for the presentation and for all the work that I know your entire department and I know your staff participated as well, Brendan. And especially for, you know, it sounds like the social media stuff really worked out well. So kudos for that. Thank you. I have a couple questions about the Cars and Coffee and the Fortain events. So the Fortain event, it was 11 spots. Was it every day? Or just like 11 days of rentals or 33 days of rentals?

It was crowded with pedestrians every day. So every day they had 11 cars in the 11 spots and those cars stayed there all day?

Thank you for, for that. But there is a, there is a clause that says they're not allowed to switch out the cars. Right? So a car arrived at the beginning of the day. It's like that one car is supposed to stay in that space all day. Is that what happened?

Yeah, in the staff report, I remember we had a conversation about this. And then page 35 of the packet, so whatever page this is of the staff report, there's a list of the three bullet items. And it says, last year, council approved additional restrictions on these rentals. And the very first one is vehicles placed in the rented parking stalls remain in that stall for the entire day. So that's my, so they're not like mobile car shows. They're like, you know, you get one shot to put a car there and then the car has to stay there all day.

So I'm, yeah, right. So we sort of agree on that. And I'm just going back to this clause that they shouldn't have been swapping out the cars. There shouldn't have been a different car show every hour. It should have been the same car show for the entire day. Okay. And then cars and coffee, like what was that? They didn't rent any stalls at all. And they just, it was just an ad hoc car show.

Yes. And then you went and talked to Mad Dogs and Englishmen about it?

And so so they didn't rent any, any stalls at all. They just had that car show. Yeah. Street in the parking spots in the street.

So it wasn't in the parking lot behind. It wasn't in that alley behind. It was effectively on the street. On Ocean or on?

Hans? Nothing? We have some questions. The Range Rover event, they took every space around Stillwell Hotel, correct?

What happened on Thursday night that was such a big deal?

And the music stages, what did you think about that? Tuesday.

Yeah the noise complaints were like setting them up at four o'clock in the morning.

I got complaints about the setup. Oh, you did, yeah. Because the people that live there in their hotels right next to where they were setting the stages up. I'll tell you about my feelings about that. Okay. Tell me about the Wednesday and Thursday events. What did you think about those?

All right. Anybody else have a question? All right. Public comment, please. How many people want to make a comment? Anybody? Two.

Thank you. Anybody else? All right, there's nobody online. So let's bring it back for a discussion. Who'd like to kick it off? Bob doesn't have anything.

Good comments. Go ahead. Nothing? Jeff, go ahead.

I have a few comments. Where to start? Hi. So we've talked about the parking spots and the 11 spots and the rules on the 11 spots. Joe DiNucci talked about parking spot rental being a bad idea. And I have to say, I'm at that point. I struggle with, it started with... sort of the Aston Martin thing in front of the gallery on Monteverdean Ocean. And they've sort of grown in size. And maybe it's time to just sort of end that practice on the sort of belief that everything is kind of a mess during the week. And we've just made the decision not to rent parking stalls for the entire week. The Mad Dog

Wow, those are some great comments. Jeff, thank you for bringing up the issue of downtown. Everybody forgets that. There really are more people downtown than any other neighborhood. Like in my, most people leave during car week, but most of the people downtown work there and have interests there and they can't leave. So thank you for that. I think we should limit the number of stalls to two or something, just two. So Pepe can get his Ferraris in front of his store, and 14 can have two in front of their store. Basically, that's how many would fit in front of their store, and that's their event.

Okay, well, whatever you have, you have something. It's good. And you're not going to give us the detail of it, but you could get a feel for what's going on. There's always semi-gridlock around the Forest Theater during all shows, and that's something that we should evaluate and figure out because it's not safe. And I'm not sure we can tell PACREP don't have a show It was a good show. I don't even know if anybody showed up during that week. The Range Rover event just is weird to me. It belongs in Pebble Beach, I think. And Mark Stilwell, I'm sure, is listening to this. And I love Mark, and I l

Okay, great. And I want to thank you and your team, Jack. The first year I got involved with the whole fields at Mission Field, the Mission Fields. I called up with about a month ago and asked National Parking, like, what's going on? They said, we got it. City took care of everything. Yeah, the shuttle was fixed and all things. So that's got in a process now. So that's good. Thank you. Okay. All right.

Let me see a show of hands. How many people want to do the housing element tonight? I figured you would. You don't care? Hear the vote.

Yeah Well how many of us think they're gonna have a lot of comments on it I Mean are you gonna talk about it? I'm not gonna talk about it I don't think I have a lot of comments on that. Yeah, so it's basically going through the process.

And the at-will compensation does need to be done tonight? That needs to be done. Okay, well, let's get with it. Let's see how long at-will takes, and then we'll make a decision.

unlock my iPad. Yeah, we're on number five at-will compensation. Yeah, thank you.

No, that's a different point. That's the salary range.

Okay. Nothing. I'd be for that. I'd be for that. Anybody else interested in that? I think you've got three votes.

Okay, good. Next year. So I have some questions. And thank you, you already brought up the 3%. We don't know how it got there. I think it got there because when they went to the PEPRA system, they wanted to really make a point that this is really going to help us as a city. And I think some cities decided to pile on the 3%. My concern is basically it's like giving a 3% raise in a different way that is better for the city. and in some ways probably better for the employee. On the other hand, we're going to give it in the policy, and it's there. We're basically taking out the paragraph that adde

Well, three of us, well, at least two of us, probably three of us will remember this conversation.

What I'm suggesting is that this gets documented in the policy that there used to be this paragraph. I think that's a really good idea. And we're taking it out on this day. And everybody should remember that we did this because you're getting this forever. Otherwise, someday we won't be here and they won't even know that we did it.

It's not nothing. It's not a lot either, but all these little things add up over time to be a big number, and that's why we have a CalPERS.

I have a question. Go ahead. Do your contracts with your reports and other unrepresented employees have salary adjustments in them?

Like your contract with, I'll use Yami because he's gone. Does he get an automatic cost of living raise every year? No. According to his contract? No.

So the numbers are in his contract. There's no automatic thing. That's right. So why is this? Why are we voting on something that says no cost of living adjustment when that's basically irrelevant for unrepresented employees?

So in previous years when we did that, Now, I'm embarrassed I didn't ask this in previous years. In previous years when we did that, so if Yanni was an employee and he was making just $100,000 a year and his contract specified he's making this and he's entitled to these kinds of merit raises and whatever, the council would have just granted him a 4% raise. It would have overridden whatever was in his contract. That's right.

Okay, I think we're getting into discussion. Any public comment on this? All right, then let's get back into discussion. I'd like to point out as well, I've been doing a lot of research on this because I'm on a panel at the end of the month on CalPERS. This is it. We can take the 3%, but you can't go lower. It's in the contract for the PEPRA system.

To your point, I'm wondering why we should give them the 3%. You have contracts with your employees that were executed in good faith negotiations when you hired your employees. And they were given a particular salary. So they were given $100,000 a year. So it's up to you. You have the authority to give them the 3% raise. But I'm wondering, but this seems like we're giving them a 3% raise by reducing their CalPERS contributions. So what I feel like, and I'm working this out in my head as we sit here. What I feel like is I should take 3% from their salary and give them the 3% CalPERS

Do we adjust the bans? I'm sorry for that. Do we adjust the bans every year? I'm OK adjusting the bans.

In past years when I wasn't apparently doing my homework, when we gave a 3%, when we approved a 3% increase? Did the bans change or did the salaries change? When you guys approved a cost of living adjustment change, it changed the salaries. But it didn't automatically change the bans.

But this is my, I think the thing I'm having, like the thing I'm having kind of an issue with is that you enter into employment agreements. Like when we all worked in private enterprise, like we entered into employment agreements and we had contracts, like those of us that weren't unionized had contracts that said you get paid a hundred thousand dollars a year. And every year I got, you know, maybe if I was a good employee, got some sort of raise, but it was never a, like I'm okay with you having the leeway to give your employees raises, for sure. Within the bands, within like sort of establis

To be fair to you, this is deja vu all over again. We had this discussion and Jeff brought up the excellent points he's bringing up. Yeah. And basically you brought us what you think we need to do to be competitive in the market that we're operating in. And we agreed to do that. And you're bringing back a document for us to approve. Yeah. That's what's happening.

His point is good, but you already did that with Marissa, and you decided this is what needs to be done to be competitive, and this is your recommendation. But we have to approve. what you end up deciding, you can't just do it on your own, correct?

Because we're actually changing the compensation policy. Yeah, that's right. If we were given cost of living adjustments, would you have to do that? You have to authorize the cost of living adjustments.

Do you want us to, like, we definitely had, so... I'm definitely okay with number three.

Like that's the conversation that we had a lot of conversation with Lex last month. So we could approve number three and. The market equity adjustments. Yeah. What we've been calling pay bans. The pay bans, which is what we were just talking about.

Is there any value in us approving that? and not the other tonight? Or do you want to just leave them all together? I'm sorry, Mayor, what? Is there any value in approving that and not the others? Or do you want to just keep them all together?

Can you make a motion on that? I'm looking at the documentation with the resolution. We would have to modify it. It can't be picked apart on the dais. You could.

There are a lot of pages in here. There's a lot of warehouses that would have to be changed.

Like, it's like a couple thousand pages. Okay.

We'll come back next month. We're going to come back next month. I apologize, Brandon. It sounds like we didn't. No apologies needed. We probably needed more vetting last time. Sorry.

We're going to continue item five at will, compensation and benefits plan to next month, regular meeting. so we can have a more thorough discussion about this and have the correct person representing this issue at that meeting.

No, this is a very interesting and important subject, and the more I dig into it, the more it gets more confusing, the more you understand about it. Okay. Okay. We're into public hearing. Number six, housing element implementation ordinance.

Okay. Thank you. All right, we're going out for public comment. Anyone have a comment? Anybody online?

Marnie, do you want to answer that? Sounds like you have some knowledge of it too, Hans. I'm going to defer to our director.

Okay, you're answered. Is the question answered? Yes. Okay, thank you for that question. This will be the last speaker. We're past our curfew. Hi.

All right, thank you, Donna. Thank you. All right, any discussion?

Good job, Marnie. First step is over. All right. So we're on to future agenda items. Anybody have one? Go ahead, Jeff.

Yes. I have two things on my list since I only have two months left. One is to get the parking out in front of us in the next few months. Is that on the list? Next month?

Yeah. Okay. Well, this is my request to see that. We'll push for it for next month. Okay. And the second question is, we saw, I'm sorry, the woman who, Cathy Redder came and talked about the better destinations. I call her the survey lady. I had a nice conversation with her six or eight weeks ago. And she told me that this presentation was going to be given to us. Is that like? She told me that the results of the survey that the council paid for over my objections were going to be given to the council.

So I participated in that, just for the record. I participated in that. an exercise that I'm not comfortable with on the, you know, I was given assurances that the results of that exercise would be presented to my council, the council that I am on, so that I could comment on that. So I could comment on that.

I'm really adamant that I want that opportunity to.

I talked to Rob about it. It's still hard. They're pushing hard. That's why we're having the meeting this week.

Okay, thank you for bringing it up. Anybody else? You're always welcome to provide input outside of this venue, so if you have anything, please let us know before Tuesday.

Looks like there's no other business tonight, so... This regular meeting of the Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council is adjourned at... We need to dedicate it to... Oh, that's right. I'm going to let you end this. Go ahead.

Let's take a little moment of silence for them. Okay, the regular meeting of the Carmel by the Sea City Council is adjourned at 9.47 p.m. Thank you, everybody, for your attendance.