City Council - Regular Meeting

of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I had a quick question. The Ashenta Park, that's the one across the, on the east side of the highway, is that right? Correct. Are there any plans to open that to the public at some point?

Thank you, Mayor. Just a very quick but big thank you to the Public Works crew. Recently, I'm sure many of you saw them out on Carmel Beach pushing up the sand as part of the annual routine maintenance that we as a city actually should be doing every year as per our general plan. We haven't done it for quite some time, so I'm very happy and pleased that we have done it. It's very much needed and appreciated. And we also will be doing it again later on this summer in preparation for a possible large El Nino storm season that's being predicted. So thank you to everyone who was involved in actual

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Marty, for your presentation. That was excellent. Along the same vein of what Jeff was asking, I have some questions about the religious facilities, the churches. It's on slide 15, just over two more. Has there been any more progress other than the initial interest? And then my second question is also, where would it go on those three properties that you gave? as an example?

Okay, excellent. And so those are still ongoing conversations that the city is having on a regular basis?

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to thank Brandon for offering to reach out to Ms. Bardsley and helping resolve her issue. So we hear you, Ms. Bardsley, and we are sorry for the situation that you're in. I just have a quick question, Marnie. There's some misinformation that we just heard about the builder's remedy and when it kicks in. Could you please clarify that for people? Because the way we have understood it, as long as we are making a diligent effort under this housing or amended housing element, that the builder's remedy will not kick in. So could you clarify that for us and when it wou

Sure, Mayor. Thank you. My comments are actually going to be quite brief. I agree with Victoria. This has been an incredible Carmel collaborative effort. The community group that came together was just amazing. It was a two-year, quite labor-intensive process, and Marnie was a key role. in that whole group and the process. And I think it's tremendous. I think this is something very positive. It's huge. It's a very big accomplishment and I think we should celebrate it and I certainly support it. As we heard from the Toomeys and others, obviously it's a planning document and it's part of a ongoi

So from the very beginning, we were sort of told that this was mission impossible. You know, amending a housing element, we were told is not allowed and we proved the doubters wrong. Then they told us you'll never find enough units to put in the plan. And we proved the doubters wrong. Then they told us, well, the state will never sign off on it. And we proved the doubters wrong. And now we hear no property owners will participate. So I know where I'm putting my money. I also wanted to say, you have to think about some of the sources here. You know, never listen to the special interests. When y

I move to approve Resolution 2026-053, and I move to approve Resolution 2026-054, amending the general plan by adopting the six-cycle housing element amendment. My recommendation is you treat those as two motions and vote on them one at a time. I move to approve resolution 2026-053.

And the second one? I move to approve resolution 2026-054, amending the general plan by adopting the six cycle housing element amendment.

So I completely appreciate the sentiment. And I'm normally interested in doing that and having these votes be 4-1 or 5-0. I think you and I have been talking about this for quite a long time. And I think there are things that we can do that don't have to be in the housing element, one. But then second, I think there are You, in fairness, have been talking about some of these things for a while, but the level of detail on some of the things that have been mentioned sort of really kind of just showed up in some ways. Like this conversation is the conversation we should have had kind of over a ye

Could I just interject? Yes. The whole purpose of our resolution back in 2024 with the previous council and the whole reason the AHA group formed was to take the parking lots off because the public outcry. They didn't want it and the neighbors were concerned. They didn't want it and Sunset Center was concerned. So now we're going to turn ourselves around in a circle and go back to where we were? It makes no sense. You're trying to get the parking lots back in because you want to help your developer friend.

Organize these to make sure we get through the most important ones. The city administrator one first? What? The city administrator one first? Mm-hmm.

I have a question. Nova, this is actually a question for you. We put in here as sort of a placeholder measure X and then measure Y. Is the letter given to us by Monterey County Elections?

No, but did we ever get a chance to determine whether the line breaks are okay with the city's

Yeah, I mean, preferably not because your eye doesn't pick it up in the same way, but anyway. Okay, public comment?

Since this is your project. Yeah, no, it was very intentional, the way that the list was developed. I'm good with keeping it. I appreciate Lance's comment because he's absolutely right, but I think this is the right list. You've had that discussion already? Yeah, this is a super minor thing, but it may just be the way that it should have been this packet. There's kind of a weird line break. Sorry, I guess this isn't the sales tax version, so sorry. I'll defer that comment.

I had a question on the language on one of the next slides. It's the one that talks about the food purchased in grocery stores. It's clear like this, most food purchased in grocery stores is exempt, but we could also put most food.

Most food purchased in grocery stores is tax-exempt. Just put it tax with a dash exempt. Does that make it a little bit clearer? I mean, it's fine, but I'm just trying to make it a little bit clearer.

If we put a dash, though, it wouldn't count.

But it won't really add a word, because if you put a dash, it's still considered one word.

No, if it's in the dictionary, as a dash between it, it really does count as one word. It's not two. It's fine if we leave it. I'm not trying to get into the weeds here.

I think she's right, too. Nova, do you know if we write tax hyphen exempt, if it's going to come as two words or one?

I don't think there's a... I spent two and a half hours trying to cut like three words at the end, so I don't think that we're going to get there. Okay.

I've got another option. I was doing some research and actually a very common way that these things are dealt with is with you send a couple of council members to go and do it. And so one hybrid option here could be to have Marissa go through and score, provide initial scoring, and then have a couple of council members in an ad hoc who would at least have the benefit of seeing the full universe of all of the search firms. And ideally that lowers the, degree of difficulty on us because she's already provided to sort of an initial stab at scoring. And it prevents us from what Jeff was talking ab

No, actually neither of those things. So my, my thought was if you go through and you have an ad hoc just take it from whatever, 20 to three. And again, have Morissette provide some initial scoring, but you at least get a couple of council members who get a chance to see the full universe of the search firms. And that might give the public some additional confidence that we've been involved the whole way.

I don't mind doing it the way Hans suggested, but I am worried about the time because we're still talking about choosing the firm. We're not even actually talking about getting candidates yet. So I do feel we do need to move on with that.

Actually, I would rather not because I didn't write notes on what we were saying.

Yeah, I mean, you've got to interview them. You can't just read their RFP response. So you want to see them? Yeah, you've got to talk to the human being there and try to get a feel for them, and we've got to talk to the actual people. Alessandra?

I'm questioning then if maybe we should just do a special session with just this topic, and then we can bring the three firms in rather than doing it at a regular council meeting.

Well, that's what I'm saying. Yes, a special meeting with them in person.

My only other question was, I think Alessandra actually did have a good question about if the firms can't hit that specific time for the August meeting, should we provide some flexibility so that we could do a special meeting if we need to? I think that's not a bad idea.

Can I clarify, is your motion to do it as a special meeting during working hours or to do it potentially as a special meeting? I honestly don't.

Brandon, how have you seen... this play out in other cities? Give us the palette of options here on getting, when you're interviewing an architect, but it could be, you know, another vendor like this. What have you seen in terms of how this could play out the different ways?

Thank you, Mayor. I agree with a lot of what Jeff said. I do believe we should keep moving forward and not pause or slow down, because we do have momentum. And just the thought of stopping or slowing down a project, harm us as a city and certainly it would make us lose credibility with these firms because it always has been quite a process. And just to fill the public in on a little bit of what happened is Ken from Public Works had been part of our group initially. And so we did review, I believe, at least three firms, possibly four, early on with him. And then when he left in May, Shari came

It's 10 o'clock. It definitely was a mix. I didn't finish what I was saying. Pardon? I didn't finish my sentence. I just wanted to confirm what Jeff was saying is that it was a mix, that some of them did have the subcontractors as part of their proposal.

So... I think this is an important project for some of the reasons that Alessandra mentioned in terms of just dollar amount. Well, let me actually back up. First of all, I want to thank Jeff and Alessandra. There's a this work here on the city council is like an ice cube. And like, you see the top of the ice cube and then there's this whole part under the water line, which is like 95% of the work. And these two have really been putting in some work on this the number of hours per application. And then they go and they review it. They reviewed three of these applications twice. So thank you. It

Sure, if that's the direction we're going in. I mean, we've been very responsible, very thorough.

You had the same comment, it sounds like. I don't know.

Yeah, sure. Let me be clear. I trust them to do a good job. Okay. Like, that's not the issue. The question is, your point, you said you had 19 people on a board. Yeah. They presented to 20 people. And... One of them was like a clear winner. So you all walked out of that arm and arm feeling like, yes, we got our man. And that's what I want the community to feel like.

I agree. And if it comes to, we're tied with the top two and can't make a decision, I could see us saying, let's go take it to the council.