City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, I'm gonna go ahead and call this meeting to order and ask Stacy for roll call.

Here. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and stand and ask Maria's daughter to do the Pledge of Allegiance. You have to.

I pledge allegiance to the flag 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. Can you guys stay standing? We're going to have our invocation by Walter Little. Come on, Pastor.

Thank you very much. I WANT TO GO AHEAD AND SIT DOWN. NOW LET'S HAVE PRESENTATIONS BY THE SHINING A LIGHT ON THE SERVICE. SPRING DAY SERVICE HIGHLIGHTS FOR RANCHO PEDROVA MAY 16, 2026. AND WE CAN GO AHEAD. Okay. All right, and this presentation is by Lorianne, and behind her is, of course, the city of Rancho Cordova's boss.

And obviously you had far more people show up there than anticipated. Because I think you ran out of t-shirts, which normally that would not be a thing that would happen. And I know we ran out of food as well. That would also not normally happen at a Rancho Cordova event. So did you have unexpectedly large day of turnout of volunteers?

Super. OK, so I can say that one of the lesser known projects was painting fire hydrants. And if you see red, white, and blue fire hydrants sprouting around Rancho Cordova, that was a project that was started by one of the ladies who is a 1976 graduate of Cordova High. got together with the class of 2026. And then all these volunteers, because when you're out painting fire hydrants, people show up and they say, oh, I'd like to participate. And so she puts them together with a kit. I just ran into one of our artists on Saturday who would like to do the same thing for the fire hydrant in her fro

we can waste more time if you want no I would love to hear mayor if you have any comment well I mean like it was an amazing event I got to go to a couple but my favorite was going to of course the mineshaft and then seeing one of our volunteers with a broken ankle still try to go around and do the volunteering that's how much If you know him, Lee loves the city. Like, he literally had his ankle separated and was like, it's fine. I took some aspirin. I'm just going to knock this out real quick. I'm going to knock out, fixing the entire. I was like, go home. He's like, no. He said, then who's go

This is the third annual Spring Service Day here in Rancho Cordova, and we've got volunteers from the community coming to help other organizations and people in the community. That tells everyone that we love this place.

Can I say something? You wanna say something about your wife? You know, we're all watching.

There you got your kudos. All right, thank you guys. Moving on, so let's get Brenda Roach up here and you can talk about all the people we've tricked into staying with us for over a decade.

All right, before you go on, Maria, I've been here a decade, and you came in with me, and so I've always appreciated someone that can be like, please don't say that out loud. And honestly, you really took, and this is just from someone on the outside that actually had a company that basically did this type of communication, you truly took us from a different level. The way you communicate, the way you engage us, the way you keep us counseled, engaged on what's going on with police and fire is truly amazing, and I appreciate everything you've done for our city.

All right, moving on. Public comment. We will now move to public comment. Members of the public wishing to address the council for any matter not on the agenda may do so at this time. Public comment period is limited to matters that fall within the council's authority, known as councils for subject matter jurisdiction. It's new. For the items that are on the agenda, speakers will be called by the mayor at the point on the agenda when the item is heard. Speakers are asked to keep their comments to three minutes or less and asked at the beginning by stating their name for the record. To submit p

Thank you, that was awesome. And good job on this.

Don't we have to have a request for a special dispensation for not being in the room?

Yes, can you hear us? There he is. All right, go ahead.

Thank you. All right, who's next? that is it we do not have any additional public comment let me just follow up I think his name is Marcel and Jermaine yes all right good news is and just so you know this right now the city is pursuing a full stadium inside the stadium there's going to be fine dining in the area along with other cool hotels possibly if you've read it maybe movie theater possibly bowling alleys but Increasingly number of fine dining will become into the area with that So keep your ear to the ground and we have some pretty amazing stuff getting ready to get announced in the next

Thank you. Thank you, sir. All right. I'm going to move on to council reports, and we're going to start with David. David, what's going on?

Well, it has been an interestingly quiet couple of weeks as most agencies are on summer break. And so I have had not too many duties that call me away to other meetings. So I am going to limit my report to just hoping everyone had a great vacation season this summer. And that will be my report.

Somebody needs to tell us where the summer went.

You're back. Yeah, I'm back. I've been out for a few weeks, but the 10 days that I've been back, this is my second council meeting. So it looks like we're having council meetings, and that's not stopping. You guys maybe took a pause while I was away, so it's back in full swing. I was telling Micah I bought this upon myself, coming here in 110-degree weather.

Thanks for bringing that back from India for us. Really appreciate that. Yeah, I know. Couldn't bring food back. At least you didn't bring the humidity.

Yeah, that would have been better. It's raining, actually, back there. It's rainy season. We have a season called. Well, go bring the rain with you. So yeah, I've been back, got over my jet lag. So two council meetings and I attended an event over the weekend called Meraki 2026. This was by a young woman who started this program to empower other young ladies and women in leadership. So I got to talk about my journey and to encourage more young ladies to step into public office and in the field of STEM. So that was a good event.

Well, I can't believe David got a holiday because I didn't. I mean, it's been a month since we met. So we got a really nice little letter from Splash about sponsoring their youth environmental leadership program. They always draw. I heard the presentation from kids at City Hall back on the 7th. And Garrett heard it the other night, so he can talk about that. But the cool thing about kids at City Hall is they always do these presentations. And they talk about what they think, what kinds of principles or projects they think the city should be involved in. And it ranged in everything from quality

I should report on my non-holiday, I guess. I did do one little mission on behalf of the city, and that is a self-directed tour of libraries in Yolo and Sacramento County. So I visited three in Yolo County and three in Sacramento County. I specifically focused on middle to small size libraries, looking for unique things they did. And I've noticed a distinct cultural difference between the Yolo County library system and the Sacramento County library system. And it's my recommendation that we join the Yolo County system. They are very innovative and kind of edgy in all of their locations, meetin

Did you go to the West Sacramento Library? Okay, because it's right there behind their community center.

That's a really nice mid-sized design. That's the best design I've seen so far.

The big issue, and if Kim were here, she'd be seconding this. The big issue is the the split between the old City of Sacramento library system and the county's library system and the fact that one of them is dramatically underfunded. And that's going to be an issue that is not going to go away and it will need to be addressed because it will impact what we're able to do here in Rancho Cordova.

All right, moving on to me. I had a very, lots of stuff. All right, met with the California Black Chamber of Commerce. They are very interested with all the stuff that we're doing on jobs and job placement and technology, and they want to know how they can get involved to help people get jobs. I got to see the animal barn. It was cool. It's kind of unique that we... It was funny because Sean came to me. He's like, hey, I really want a good long speech, even though you were told to do a small speech. And so I went to Maria, and I was like, he wants a really in-depth speech because he wants to t

We can name the goats after the employees. So rancher of the goats? Yeah. And the fire ones could have fire caps.

The police one could have policeman hats. And this is what we do with unmowed lawns? Yeah.

So if the managers are upset with their employees, they can go shout at the goat? Yeah.

If you have a problem, the goat will listen to you. They will also leave fertilizer behind.

Yeah, council could be on there. I could have a cool-looking goat. I like this idea. Well, fertilizers, they go. They fertilizers do it.

As long as we don't plate them red and black. In Scotland, they paint their sheep. No, they do. Instead of branding something, they paint the sheep.

Oh, fun thing. They started talking about people were getting in line to read to the sheep because of that movie at the thing. And I was like, that's fabulous. But the sheep. There's no goat yoga. You know what? Moving on. Congratulations to Walk Your Place.

They're a new technology. Siri has a new industry for us.

It's already there in the same farm that you went to.

They do goat yoga? Really? No, they don't. They're delicious. Anyways, Walk Your Place is an amazing facility where they take your drawings and they blow it up in real life and you can actually walk the area. Congratulations to my young ones from City Hall. That was awesome. to see people wanting to learn about how government gets done in the city and all the different groups we have. And I think it's cool.

Congratulations to North Valley Specialty Group. They opened up their facility. What they do is they kind of, it kind of reminds me of a facility that basically takes like senior care and brings it back to where they come to where you are instead of making you go to them. So they take their facilities out there and treat you so you can stay in your house even longer. So it's awesome that they're opening a Rancho and it's another business. Coffee with the mayor was cool. Very interesting everybody that showed up, always saying, And whoever shows up, listen, Rancho Cordova is one of the most div

Absolutely. All my kids went through it. And I got to see the mad magician.

Thank you. All right. We're going to go ahead and move on to consent calendar items. 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 council wishes to pull from consent calendar? Seeing none, I'll ask the city clerk, is there any specific comment related to consent calendar?

then I will move approval of consent calendar items 9.1 through 9.15. Second.

Excellent. Let's go on to consent public hearing items. Sent public hearing items that consist of managed, deemed routine, and not controversial by staff. Unless the member of council wishes to pull an item for individual consideration, all items will be approved by one motion. I'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearing very quietly. And ask the city clerk, is there any public comment?

Seeing no public comment, we'll close the public hearing. And ask the council, is there any items they wish to pull?

I will move approval of 10.1. Are we doing just 10.1 or both? 10.1, 10.2. And 10.2.

Awesome. And can I have a roll call, please?

Excellent. There's no public hearing items tonight, so we're going to go to regular calendar items and... Can I go ahead and ask Stacy for the subject?

They were really fast. And the best was the dad in the front, he turns on a bubbler, and all the little kids try to follow behind the bubbler. It's the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life.

His only way to keep those kids, listen, he's got a lot of little, very rambunctious kids behind him, and they're like, ready to explode, and then the bubbles come, and then they try to hit every bubble with their bike. It's fabulous.

OK. First of all, you know that Connect Card is transitioning. Yes. It's not going to be called Connect Card anymore. I forget. I didn't find it.

Right now, there's a lot of discussion about it because members of the Mobility Advisory Committee are concerned that they not lose access. And they may be better with something physical than something on a phone.

Yeah. So my other question is just kind of out of the blue. So across the street from me, And I'm basically at the corner of Disc and Prospect Park. The office building over there, every morning at 930, between 9 and 930, there are several vans that drive up and they let people off. And every afternoon at 330, they come back and pick up those people. So are you involved in that?

It's obviously a carpool service of some sort, but I don't know where they come from. They all get off. They've all got backpacks. They all go in and go to work. It's apparently a call center of some sort. But economic development, and I have talked about it, and we're still scratching our heads.

No, other than it's a call center. This is one of the buildings owned by Palmer West. And the vehicles are all different. Some of them will say something on the side, but a lot of them are just plain vans.

That's not creepy at all. Go get on the bus some morning and see what happens.

I just want to congratulate you on this. It's very attractive and fun. I think I'll try to post it to Facebook or something to share it.

The fact that you included alcohol is special to us.

Yeah, that's nice. You've grown this organization a lot since the last time I sort of paid attention to what you guys were doing. And it's been a while, like almost pandemic era probably. What has been the source of funding that has allowed you to grow to the size I saw?

That's good. What would you say is your best measure of success? Because it's been said if you can't measure what you're doing, you don't know what you're doing. So it's always a challenge in government to figure out exactly how do we measure what we do. So we're not selling widgets, but we are doing things, most of which should be measurable, although it may be hard to do so. But if I challenge you to that, what is the measure of your success? How do we know what we're getting for our dollar?

So Albert, the transportation tax started with the approval of Stone Creek. And I'm thinking that a bunch of that went towards the Cordova when we first started it.

So given that we have implemented the transit tax in new growth areas as well as office buildings that have come on board, so it's probable that we're still using it for the expanded RANCHO CORDOVA. RANCHO CORDOVA. THAT'S ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.

Cheryl, I'd really like to thank you for your efforts on sustainable travel. Council Member Sanders, I think one of this we have as a success story is the kids in Anatolia area were having a really tough time to go to Elk Grove. It was more than our commute. And so we tried to do a backup. We tried to work with this Elk Grove school board. But I think Cheryl worked a lot with the parents and the school board to create this option for kids to go on this when we're 27. I remember when we initially first started it, I think we'd gotten like nine kids But we said, let's still go ahead with the pil

Seeing none, I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn this meeting. Recording in progress. Future agenda item, I have one.

Uh-oh, hold on. The National League of Cities has a civility pledge, which a lot of cities nationwide are signing up for this particular year. I think we've actually talked about it and not done it, so I'm gonna ask for this on a future agenda item, as a future agenda item.

We'll go ahead. Let's do it. It's always good to be civil. We're going to go ahead and close. We're going to adjourn this meeting, and we're going to adjourn to closed session.

Just let me finish reading. When I look up, then you correct me. Before we adjourn to closed session, are there any public comments related to this closed session 16.7? Then I look up, and then you're like, Garrett, you missed it.

order and ask our lawyer to read out a closed session.

All right. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and adjourn this meeting in the name of Jamila Farr. Ms. J, happy birthday. Thank you for what you do for our community.