City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good morning. Good morning to everyone. Welcome to City Hall. Paging the council members that are sprinkled throughout the audience. I saw a couple. Come on down. We'll go ahead and call our meeting to order here, 9.06 a.m. Clerk, would you please call the roll?

All right, great. So we're going to move on to our invocation, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Our invocation this morning is going to be by Chaplain Matt Markarian. Come on down. I'll ask everyone to please stand for the invocation, if you can, and stay standing afterwards for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Council Member Vang, would you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Ready, salute.

All right, move on to approving the agenda. Clerk, do we have any announcements or changes to announce?

Bernard, what was the one pulled by Council Member Arias? Again, can you say that? I missed that.

All right, Council, any additional changes to the agenda at this point? I'll go and order Council Member Perea. Council member Vargas? None. Council member Vang? None. Richardson? None. Barbasi? None, Mr. President, thank you. Okay, all right. Motion to approve. First, second, and a third. Any opposition to approving the agenda? All right, seeing none, agenda is approved. We have a couple of contested consent items. Before we get to the regular order of business, we do have several folks here for our favorite part of the day is the ceremonial presentations, the proclamations. So we do have, we

Well, thank you. I'd love to thank Council President Nelson Esparza, but also I'd like to give a chance for my team and my new medical director, Dr. Dillon, to say a few words.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So it is my pleasure to read the last, I'll have the clerk read the entire proclamation, but just to read this last part. Now, therefore, be it resolved that we, Mayor Jerry P. Dyer, Council President Nelson Esparza, and the entire Fresno City Council, do hereby proclaim the month of August 2026 as Immunization Awareness Month, and it's our honor to present it to you and your team. Thank you. Give him a round of applause. All right, clerk, you please read the proclamation.

All right, fantastic. Our next proclamation is sponsored by both Council Members Carbasi and Council Member Perea, and it's a proclamation for Oliver Browner Day.

All right, Oliver, you want to join us? Come on up. You want to introduce yourself?

Fresno, that's right. So I have the honor of standing next to the third place finisher of the 2026 National Yo-Yo Contest. Let's give him a round of applause. Now, Oliver, when I was younger, I had one of those yo-yos where you just throw it down and it does all the tricks by itself, and all I had to do was stand there, and it just did the tricks by itself, but You don't use those yo-yos, right? You use kind of the old-school yo-yos where you actually have to practice over and over and over again. You have to perfect your skills. You love it. I think it's probably even a little therapeutic, ri

Thank you, council member. Okay, so tomorrow's a big day. You're 11. How does it feel to be the man at 11 already? You're the coolest person in the room.

I'm not going to yo-yo against you. You'll beat me every day. Let me ask you a question. What's your yo-yo nickname?

Oh my gosh, yo-yo god, the confidence in this kid, I love it. Oliver, it means so much to the council member and I and our colleagues that you're here today and you're going to school us in yo-yoing. I do want to say one thing. Sydney Charles, who was the reporter that interviewed you, wanted to be here today, but she had a family emergency. But she says hello and she's so proud of you. So we're going to see some skills? All right. Put us to shame. Under pressure, look at that. And how long have you been doing this?

Oh my gosh, one and a half years. I go five years, I couldn't even do that. That's wonderful.

All right, before we have the city clerk read the proclamation, we are going to declare it Oliver Day in the city of Fresno. So not only do you get your entire day... But we're also going to sing happy birthday to Oliver. So you get two cool things that happen this week, which is you get to celebrate your birthday, and you're going to get sung to by all of these incredible people. We have a cake for you, and you get your own proclamation in the city. Oh, you get two cakes? Oh, my God.

Great council minds think alike. All right. Ready? One, two, three. Happy birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YO-YO GOD. ALL RIGHT. WE'RE GOING TO TAKE SOME PICTURES. AND CITY CLERK, WILL YOU PLEASE READ THE PROCLAMATION.

HOLD ON. COUNCILMEMBER PERREA, WHAT FLAVOR OF CAKES AND WHAT DO I GOT TO DO TO GET A PIECE?

YOU GOT TO SHOW US YOUR YO-YO SKILLS. All right. That's my thought. Okay. Thank you, city clerk.

All right, congratulations again to Oliver. Our next proclamation is gonna be sponsored by Council Member Perea. And this is a proclamation for the Fresno Young Leaders Academy.

All right, so last year, last year, last week, we kicked off the Family Affordability and Child Care Access Commission. And today is day one of our Fresno Young Leaders Academy. And so I want to start by thanking my colleagues. This is the first class that I'm going to have come up here and join me. Actually, let's get you guys up here. It'll take a minute or two and I'll keep talking. But for those of you who are familiar with the Leadership Fresno Program that is hosted by the Fresno Chamber of Commerce, you'll know that the Leadership Fresno Program is the premier program to participate in.

So congratulations to you all. Your journey has just begun. And if I could give one advice, just soak it all up. You're about to be on the most incredible journey so far in your lifetime. And I just couldn't be more excited to see what will come from this. As you're going through the different council offices, don't be afraid to ask, is anyone hiring? We're always hiring for interns. So if anyone's looking for a job, I heard they pay pretty well. So, um, with that being said, I'm going to hand the mic to CEO of chamber of commerce, Scott Miller.

All right. City Clerk, will you please read the proclamation?

Council Member Perea woke up hungry for the proclamations this morning. You're the sponsor of the next one, and this is a proclamation for Young Parents Day.

Okay, so I'm going to have my friends from Shine Fresno come down.

So we all know, or some of us know, that being a parent is one of the most difficult things that you can encounter in life. Am I right, parents? It's hard. It's difficult. But it's even harder for our younger parents, our younger parents who are still trying to figure out how to get through school. our young parents that are trying to figure out how to balance being a new parent, being a young person themselves, going to school, working a job to support their young family. And so when I had the opportunity to tour the Shine Together nonprofit, I was very astonished to see the resources that ar

Thank you, Cheyenne, for all the work you do for our young parents. City Clerk.

All right, great. We'll move on to council member reports and comments. We'll take it in the order we have up here. Council member Ving, any reports or comments this morning?

Thank you very much, Council President. Good morning, everybody. Just a few updates on the infrastructure projects going on in District 5. The Cedar Avenue repaving project is almost complete. I want to thank Public Works Department, the community there, the residents there. for their patience and again, thank you everybody for their patience, in particular the schools and students who utilized that stretch of the road on Cedar Avenue south of Kings Canyon. Another concrete project repair is underway on the eastern side of District 5. This time is near Belmont and Fowler Avenues. And I wanna t

Council Member Karbasi, any report or comments this morning?

Oh, sure, Mr. President, thank you. I'll be very brief. Just wanted to recognize for Leadership Fresno, the tallest person among that group was one of my interns and he is a legacy for District 2. Alexander Borges, I don't know if he's listening, but very proud of him in his work. His family has been very supportive and his dad really schooled me and taught me a lot about politics and how to win a successful election. I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been for his dad. So again, thank you, Alexander. I wouldn't be surprised if you're sitting up here one day. And yes, I have a yo-yo now. I am

Yeah, don't hurt yourself with the yo-yo. Council Member Richardson.

Thank you, Council President. It was a warm day in District 6 this morning. Okay, so first I wanted to point this out. This wasn't actually in my comments, but I wanted to point this out. You may not be able to see this from here, but this is a Starbucks cup. I got it this morning. On top is a hole where you drink the coffee. And right here in front of the spot where you drink the coffee, there's a gigantic hole right in the front of the lid. It's sabotage. This means when you go to drink your coffee, what happens, it all spills down the front of your nice shirt your mom bought for you for you

Really quick. So, for Leadership President for the class, right before you came in here, I was giving my comments, and I did mention one thing. I don't know if you guys get a chance to actually choose a president of your class, but Alexander Borges, would you please stand up? He was my intern. He is a legacy in District 2. His father had the distinction of serving in my seat. And this is your guy. So I'm very proud of you and glad to see you here. I'm just mad that you're taller than me. That's all. Good to see you.

All right, Council, Vice President, you didn't have anything. I'll go ahead and go. I had the privilege of attending the grand opening of AWAS Las Rancheritas at First McKinley this past weekend. Congratulations to Bernice and Susanna on their exciting milestone. Always great to see new businesses pop up and open their doors, create jobs, and add overall to the vibrancy of our neighborhoods. Additionally, I also want to recognize the Beautify Fresno team for their continued work to keep our neighborhoods clean and beautiful. My team recently joined them for a cleanup over in the neighborhood n

Okay, great. Let's see here. We'll move on to a few of the timed items. I think we have a couple of them. We have the 9.10 a.m. This is a hearing to vacate a portion of the street right away at Brawley and West Buckingham. This is in D1. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing for this and take public comments on the items. So at this time, is there anybody in the public, either on Zoom or in the chamber, who would like to speak with respect to the 9.10 a.m. item vacating a portion of the street at Brawley in West Buckingham? All right, seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public comm

You are correct. Go ahead and cross that off. Good catch. All right. We do have a 10 a.m., but we'll give that a few more minutes. Meanwhile, what I'll do is I'll begin the public comments for... Consent agenda, contested consent, closed session. So we'll have a couple speakers there, and then we'll get back to the 10 a.m. 10 a.m. item. So I do have a stack of cards, and the first card I had was for Sherry Chavarria regarding item 2CC. Come on down, Sherry. You'll have three minutes.

Thank you. Next card I had was for Elijah Davila regarding item 2Y.

Thank you. It's 9.59, so we'll give it just a few seconds here. But the next 10 a.m. item we have is an appearance by resident Neil O'Brien regarding Republic Services, resident of District 6. So we're here right at 10 a.m., which is extraordinary. Welcome, Mr. O'Brien. You'll have three minutes. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mr. O'Brien. All right, we're going to snap back into the public comments regarding consents, contested consents, or closed session. So next card I have is for Mr. Balwinder Singh. Mr. Singh? All right, we'll move on to another card. Card for Sonny. Sonny.

All right. Thank you. MR. SINGH, YOU'RE BACK.

Next speaker is going to be Andy Shikara.

Next speaker is going to be Bill Bonnell.

Thank you, Bill. All right. Next speaker is going to be Sukhbir Bandal.

All right, next speaker I have is gonna be Viola Xiong.

All right, gonna go over to Zoom. On Zoom we have Robert Park.

All right. Thank you. Next on Zoom is going to be Joseph Rodriguez. Hello. Hello. Good morning, Joseph. You have three minutes. We're on consent, contested consent, or closed session.

Thank you. Next speaker is going to be Lisa Flores on Zoom.

All right, thank you, Lisa. I don't have any more cards or folks on Zoom, but again, last opportunity for comments on consent agenda, contested consent or closed session. All right, I have Gurinder Singh on Zoom.

Welcome. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. You have three minutes.

All right. Next speaker on Zoom is Alice Sims.

I don't have any additional yellow cards. I don't have any additional speakers on Zoom. I'll go ahead and close. Actually, we have one more person, Jamie Morgan on Zoom.

All right, next speaker on Zoom is going to be Nikki Real.

All right, and hello back to you from City Hall. Thank you. Any additional speakers, consent, contested consents, closed session? Seeing none, we're going to close public comment for contested consent and closed session. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Really quick, I just want to make some very brief comments on item 2CC. This is the item to rename a park in Northwest Fresno. after someone who is from the Valley. Cruz Bustamante grew up on the west side in San Joaquin, went to Tranquility High, went to Fresno State, my alma mater, which is why I'm where, oh, I had my other pin on earlier today. And he's a person who, while he has not been in office for just over a couple of decades, He rose from the ranks of assembly, quickly becoming the speaker, serving this community in Fresno at the state, and then became Lieutenant Governor under Gover

All right, thank you. With that, is there any opposition to approving the consent agenda? Seeing none, the consent passes seven to zero. We have a couple of contested items. What we're gonna do, we're going to, let's see, we're going to do the 2N, 2N first. Pulled by Council Member Arias.

Thank you, Council President. This item in essence is a lease agreement between Fresno Economics Opportunities Commission and the City of Fresno for utilization of our community centers. My issue and my concerns are not with the Mosquera Community Center. My concern is that this item as written also includes termination of the Head Start program in West Fresno, and it's the first time that I received notice that such plans were under BEING UNDERTAKEN. HAVE WE FORMALLY RECEIVED NOTICE FROM PRESIDENT OF ELC THAT THEY PLAN TO TERMINATE HEAD START?

So this agreement also calls for them to eliminate the Romaine facility? That is correct, and they have moved out of there as well. So they've officially moved out of both community centers? They have, yes.

And if you could, is there anybody from ELC here today? I do not believe so, no. Before we go and proceed with this, is this item time sensitive? Does it need to be approved today? I'd really like to hear from ELC, because I don't want to put you guys in a position to explain or justify their decision making on head starts. We're simply the landlord at this point. Does this need to be approved today?

Yeah, and I don't want to be disruptive to District 5 and Mosqueda Center and their lease or any other lease that's on here. So this lease is basically for Mosqueda Center and what other community center where they plan to expand? Willow and Balch. Willow, is that D? That's D5, I believe. D5? I'd like to table this to the next council meeting. What is the significant exposure if they're out of lease for a week or so?

And here's my other concern, city manager. I don't want the public, I don't want to have to entertain criticism and concerns from the public that the city is shutting down these Head Start programs. From my understanding, ELC has not notified the public of their plans to shut them down. They're out. I know. They are gone. They're gone. And nobody's aware of it. They have not notified people.

So why are you informing us of this now then, if they moved out months ago?

Correct. So did I miss a memo somewhere where you guys communicate to us that we're shutting down Marietta Brown?

Thank you, those are my questions. I appreciate you guys' work. I did not realize that this has gone that far along and that the move out had already occurred. So my secondary question is, what's the plan for the space now? So I'm gonna turn that over to the Director of Parks. And, Director, if you don't have plans yet, that's a fair response, too. I don't want to have you make programming decisions on the fly. When do you anticipate having programming operations in that vacant space?

So it's fair to say that since they've moved out officially, you guys will start the minor tenant improvements before you start programming?

Thank you again for your time and clarification. With that, Council President, I'll make a motion to approve. Yeah, I'll second that.

I do have Council Member Vang punched up.

Just a quick clarification during the exchange between my colleague and the directors. Refer to the Willow and Bulge Park site as in D5. I believe that is in D7. It's in D7, correct. It's very close to D5. There it is.

Yeah, I believe so. So Mosqueda is in D5, but the Willow and Bulge site is in D7 then? That is correct, yes. I just wanted to clarify that on the record. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Willow and Bulge Park with the new playground and such. It's looking good out there. All right, we have a motion. We have a second. Is there any opposition to approving item 2N7? Seeing none, the item passes. Council, here's what we're going to do. We are going to break to knock out some closed session items. And regardless of whether we finish or not, we'll come back squarely at 1.30 for the tobacco discussion. Hear that item. 2Y at 1.30. So we're going to break for closed and then come back at 1.30 and we'll do the tobacco retail license item. City Attorney,

All right, we are back and in session. We're going to take on the tobacco retail license item. It was on consent agenda. It got pulled from the consent agenda. We've heard public comments on it already from earlier this morning. So given that we've heard the public comments and We'll just come up to the dais for a discussion up here, pulled by Council Member Richardson, but as one of the sponsors, I'm gonna say kind of a few things. I do wanna hear Council Member Richardson's thoughts as well. You know, as I indicated at the last meeting, the last time we discussed this item, we met with a num

Thank you, Council Vice President. We'll go over to Councilman Richardson who pulled the item. And I know you had some thoughts, pretty extensive thoughts at the last time we discussed this as well.

I did, and thank you. So I appreciate this being pushed off and reheard at this meeting for a few reasons, but I think overall it shows that there's a desire right or else we would have pushed it harder than last meeting the desire to get to a better solution here right a more accurate a more tailored solution to the problem that we're trying to fix and i think both of you in your own right spoke to the problem that we're trying to fix uh or the problem that we're trying to address rather in very well i think that YOURSELF, COUNCIL PRESIDENT, YOU SPOKE TO TOBACCO BEING TAKEN OFF THE SHELL. IT'

So math for Marines real quick. That's $817 multiplied by the number of tobacco retailers equals roughly the amount of the grant that we receive minus staff hours. Is that the correct algorithm? That is correct. Okay. Thanks. If you smell anything burning in the room, it's my brain trying to work through that. Okay. Okay. Appreciate that. Is that all you had for me?

The square is a rectangle, a rectangle is a square. Exactly, yep.

The definition of a smoke shop, again, a smoke shop is a tobacco retailer. A tobacco retailer is not a smoke shop. But there are also, within the category of tobacco retailers, there are more categories. You've got a Save Mart. And somebody asked me what the Save Mart down the street from my house is. My response is not a tobacco retailer. It's a grocery store. Yes, they do happen to also sell tobacco products. But I think that's an important distinction, too, that in here it does not make. If we look on page 5 of 24... Correction, six of 24. It talks about tobacco retailers. No distinction. I

Okay. I'm looking at that now, 3806. That is, and I see the part about advertisement, which would make probably both sides happy out there. And it doesn't, except for its tie to Chapter 15, Article 26, it doesn't tie it to retail activity, just advertisement. Is that correct?

See, I disagree that that's specific, not only because it talks about specifically administrative violations, administrative penalties, but it doesn't break down responsibility and who is to be held accountable for them in delineating the responsibility between the person making the point of sale, sale, right? And the person who is the owner and probably, you know, acquirer for the establishment.

No, Angela, I agree with you. it is written down out there it doesn't delineate responsibility for different types of violations that's my issue not that it's not spoken to it's that we haven't specifically looked at these are different types of violations of varying degrees of problem i think we can all agree right that's not delineated that's the issue and i'm not honestly i'm not going to make you stand up here and defend it because it's not your idea council member i can i can address it uh i think a little bit better um in in the sense that i i think and i'll let the authors jump in um

So that is- And I get that, but we're not asking for a consideration of every possible outcome. I'm saying there are four categories that every violation falls into. It's either you have stuff you're not supposed to, You're selling stuff in a way you're not supposed to. I mean, that's a whole business right there. Or you did your paperwork wrong, or your building is wrong. I mean, I can cut off my most offensive finger and still be able to count to four.

Do you guys have the mechanisms to be able to punish a teller and not punish the owner of the business under this legislation?

and revoking or having an infraction against their tobacco retail license.

If, if I'm going to take your word for this, if you're comfortable with the delineation there on how to hold people accountable and responsible, and we've got the ability not to have marks or infractions against the tobacco retail license, but rather to hold the employee responsible when appropriate. We have that discretion right now as it stands. If that's going to fluctuate at all or not be in the, in the spirit of this, maybe that's something that we talk about at our one year review, if they're amicable to that. Um, I think we're almost there. I think we're almost there. I would like to he

Yeah. Thanks. Councilman Richardson, you know, and it was lively discussion last meeting around. I don't want you to think that I didn't take any of your ideas and consider them. Obviously, there's already three co-sponsors on the item, so I couldn't go talk to you directly, but I did take notes of your suggestions. I talked about a number. I consulted legal counsel on a number of them. And there was just, you know, and maybe you did too. Maybe you had the same conversation. I have no idea. But as you're entitled to the same information, but it was tough. Some of them were tough to incorporate

I just wanted to call the question, Mr. President.

That was my comment. Thank you. Lots of discussion already. Thank you. Council Member Perea.

Thank you, Council President. I'll be quick. I know the folks from APCA weren't able to be here this afternoon. They had a conflict, but there was some good clarifying information about how that $1,000 fee was generated. I know their questions were, you know, how did we get to this number and what will it be used for and how is it broken down? And so I appreciate the information about how exactly that fee was, how we arrived at that. And it sounds like that cost will cover the license administration, education, training, and enforcement. So there's no money making off of this. We're not in the

So that would not be counted against them?

Okay, and I think that was perhaps one of your concerns, Councilmember Richardson, is will every dean be created equally, be handled and be punished equally because I agree that if somebody sells illegal product that is different, that is not as curable as it would be to simply re-put back your TRL that just perhaps fell off the wall.

Yeah, I think it's fair to say that some things are dingable and some things aren't, but I'd like that iterated as opposed to putting that weight of decision on every single code enforcement officer with the ability to be very clear.

Yeah. And it will, it sounds like, go up to the level of our city attorney who does have discretion when we are the other. Is that right, Andrew?

I do too. And I don't see that being abused. And I do appreciate the flexibility for our code enforcement officers to be able to do that and use their discretion to determine what should be dingable versus not. I did have a chance to meet with, I don't want to say both sides either, just everyone, everyone that asked to meet with me. And one of the questions that came up was, what is the annual renewal look like? And the way I read it is it's going to be the burden of the business to take initiative and to come to us every year to renew their TRL. Is that correct?

Thank you. And then it does, I did read that at any point our officers could go and randomly inspect, do their inspection to ensure that these smoke shops, these retailers are in compliance with this ordinance. Is that correct?

Okay. So I think there is a good bridge between accountability holding these businesses accountable to this ordinance. I think there's flexibility in it to where our code enforcement officers do have the discretion not to perhaps inappropriately deem more of the, I'll say minor offenses, but to give our small business owners a little bit more wiggle room when it comes to conducting business. And these are mostly family operated businesses, and so I'm sensitive to that as well. And so while I know that this ordinance in its current form does not 100% appease everyone, I think there's good compr

Thank you, Council Member Perea. Council Member Karabasi, followed by Council Member Arias.

Yeah, so there's been lots of discussion on this issue, and the problem is there's perception versus fact. And I think the issue of fees, it's really important to be very clear. The fee is set up by a study. It is not meant for profit. We're not in the business of profit. We are in the business, though, of making sure we do recover whatever costs go into this measure or any measure. I wish the state would do that, but Fresno does, and I think it's really important to get that note out there. Another issue is I'm very sensitive to the issue of transferring licenses to kids. We have multi-genera

Council Member Arias, followed by Council Member Vang. Thank you, Council President. I want to kind of pivot a little bit to the types of questions we've been kind of going through so far. Not so much into the substance of the policy, but more into the implementation of it. I know that there's been some reference to the fees that will be captured for execution. Can staff walk me through, one, is this item, when would it take effect? Is it this traditional 30 days after adoption? Two, is the item vetoable by the mayor? THREE, HOW SOON WOULD STAFF BE READY TO EXECUTE THIS NEW POLICY FROM INSPECT

Just slow down for a bit. I want to be able to get timing right because the public's probably hearing this for the first time. So if this goes gets approved today or going to affect 30 days from now. Basically end of September.

So are we talking effective January 1st where there is a portal for them to be able to apply?

When will a system be ready to accept the first application for a license? Because that's what this is about. It's a license. It's not about inspections. Is that more of a finance question? Because we currently have the authority to do inspections on these issues already. So this is requiring a new license. At least on the city attorney's end, we'll be ready in 121 days. I don't know administration-wise what needs to happen. So from the administration side, I'm assuming somebody's going to be able to go to the business office and apply for a license permit?

It's fine if we don't know then that's fine.

Got it. So we anticipate that sometime in January we will have the infrastructure set up where a business can begin applying for a license. Is that correct?

And what about allocation of funds? Does this work require additional positions over time? Filling of positions that are currently vacant that we've, you know, held vacant intentionally to solve our budgetary problems? Are we talking no additional people, existing people? Do you guys have enough capacity? You don't have enough work with the current enforcement duties?

And given the proposed fee license that we have on this ordinance, how much revenue do we anticipate generating on day one, assuming everybody comes and applies for a license? whenever they're ready.

So if the fee is $5 and we have 500 businesses that we anticipate would require a tobacco license, how much revenue do we anticipate generating just from the fee itself? Aaron, was this the math that you did earlier? Not the fines, just the application fee. Yeah.

WHAT'S THE COST OF A CODE ENFORCEMENT OFFICER? IS IT MORE THAN $75,000?

SO A YEAR, WE ONLY ANTICIPATE ABOUT $75,000 IN REVENUE FROM THE LICENSE FEES, WHICH IS LESS THAN THE COST OF ONE CODE ENFORCEMENT OFFICER. CORRECT. SO IN ESSENCE, WE WOULD JUST ADD THIS TO THE EXISTING DUTIES OF CODE ENFORCEMENT AND CHARGE AGAINST THAT $75,000.

Yeah, that's what the offset of the grant. And the grant.

What I'm trying to process from my own head, I'm on my way out. So I don't want to leave this place in the worst place that I found it financially. I want to make sure that whatever commitments we're making as I exit the council, that there's sufficient revenue to cover those commitments in terms of execution of the work. That come January, you guys don't have to do a budget amendment slash from Peter to pay Paul to cover this body of work because we didn't have the money set aside. So that's what I'm trying to get clear in my head is are we ready to essentially execute on day one, which seems

We're in year two. Starting in year two? So it ends when?

So come next October, you won't have any grant funds to charge us against. You would have to get general fund or you'd have to raise fees significantly to cover the cost.

And what's the funding source for the grant? Do we know what the funding source is? Okay, so it's not like the tobacco tax that's dwindling every year. It's DOJ? Correct.

The other questions, city attorney, is there an end period for this ordinance? Or if it doesn't work out, can the next council, through one action, simply cease the program? Or is this kind of baked in permanently?

So the council can sunset it. It is not working out as envisioned. All right. Those are all my questions for the moment. Thank you.

With respect to the council member's questions about the fee, obviously we have sort of the full cost as determined. That was 972, I think. and then that's subsidized heavily by the grant. If the grant is not renewed, if we are not successful, would then the full fee be charged to the retailers?

Yeah, because right now, I mean, it's effectively subsidized by the grant, effectively, right? We're subsidizing the retailers because of the state grant. They keep it relatively low, but the full cost, we know what that is. Okay. All right, Council Member Vang.

Thank you very much, Council President. The enforcement... Logistic and financial part of this legislation has been discussed by my colleagues. I'll make my statement brief. But first a question for staff. There are 550 tobacco retailer sites in the city of Fresno. Do you have a breakdown of how many sites are in each district? One, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. If not, that's fine. I just wanted to see if there is a concentration of tobacco retailer in certain parts of the city or certain district comparable to liquor stores.

Okay, appreciate that. Thank you very much. It's not often that this body have legislation that focuses on the most vulnerable members of our community who are our kids. And as a father of four adult kids, I know what it's like as a parent to talk to your child about the dangers of again, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, et cetera, out there. And so I want to thank my three colleagues for bringing this legislation here today. This is the third time that this body has extensively discussed this, and I'm ready to move forward in support of this legislation. But at the same time, I am glad that today we

YES, THAT WAS IN YOUR COMMENT EARLIER. SO I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO EVERY YEAR TO IMPROVE UPON THIS LEGISLATION. I UNDERSTAND THAT MOVING FORWARD IS THE BEST PRACTICE that I'm looking at and most legislations when in its inception, there may be opportunities that we fail to see or the discussion is not robust enough where we will miss certain aspects of that. And so having that opportunity to review this on an annual basis will give us an opportunity whether this body, these people here or different bodies here in a year from now to add or to change to better have a legislation. Again, at the en

Thank you, Council Member Vang. I don't have anyone else punched up. Going once, going twice. I appreciate the thorough discussion and did go back and take a look at the language. It looks like the question I had asked about the fee being adjusted, it wouldn't be an amendment to the ordinance. It would be adjusted in the Master Fee Schedule for the future council. I will not be here if or when that occurs based on what grants may continue to be received or not received anymore. All right, we're gonna call the question. Is there any opposition to approving item, what item number is this? Two- T

Are there any amendments have been added to this or no?

There have not been, it is the language as presented. Okay, I am opposed to the language as written. Item passes six to one. Thank you, council. I think the last component of the open session that we have this afternoon is going to be unscheduled communication. So we'll go ahead and move over to unscheduled communication before we go back to closed session. I have one card for Emily Hanson. Is Emily with us? No, I don't see anybody coming forward. That's the only yellow card I had. If you have a card, yeah, come on down. Meanwhile, we'll go over to, well, actually we have a card coming. Harman

It was on the consent agenda and passed in the morning.

Yeah, briefly, I just want to state for the record because facts do matter. When we named Puppy Love Dog Park, our Achillean family kennels offer Pia Vang Police Station, which may rest in peace, Rashad Al-Hakim Jr. Trail, Chief Kerry Donnis Regional Fire Center, Les Kimber Park, Dolores Huerta Park, and the Paul Capriolio Community Center, we followed the same procedure. Let's remember the council holds the final authority. Thank you.

We're gonna move over to Zoom. I don't have any additional yellow cards, but if there is anyone in the chamber, you're welcome to fill out a yellow card for unscheduled communication. So moving over to Zoom, we have Lisa Flores.

Council President, would you mind real quick if I ask one question of the Planning Director who's sitting out there just to address some of the concerns? Appreciate that. Jennifer. Director Clark, would you mind just joining us? I have a single answer question for you. And it will sound familiar from an email that we discussed earlier this week.

Now, I don't want to spoil the punch before we drink it, but is data center a currently listed allowable use for any zone, any zone code in the city of Fresno?