City Council/Public Finance and Economic Development Authority/Parking Authority - Regular Meeting

Ration, housing and homelessness and city beautification.

Okay. Good morning, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members. I actually wrote comments today, may be the kiss of death. I usually just wing it. So my wife said, don't screw it up this morning. Be prepared. So here we go. Okay, I want to take a few moments to set the stage and discuss the background expectations for our time together. As you know, recently embarked on a little bit of discussion about your goals and priorities and budget setting as part of your your kind of a revamping how we do business and so we talked about a multi year budget. We went into the goals and priorities we talked about resetting some of the deliverables for you and that included some things that you've recently.

So as you're aware our departments prepared and we recently shared with you are proposed 2627 what we call our MGO's the management goals and objectives and we did that in advance of today's meeting. And that was purposeful we want you to see the items that our departments are working on and what they felt the need to focus on for continuity of operations going into the next year. Additionally we also shared with you publicly the draft 2627 capital improvement items and these are again requests are not final these are request. These are new items of the department felt are necessary for again operational needs in meeting the essential operations to keep. I'm already off base I should have never written these things down it made sense at 08:00 this morning okay but again we did share these with you in advance one thing I wanted to acknowledge today is the business is going to provide you some budget and- targets not about targets but funding that we have for.

Roads in for capital improvement projects. And finally we also provided you a update on where we are currently with regard to twenty five twenty six goals and priorities. We provided a scorecard and actually that's provided for you with. In the background here. We went through each of your currently adopted goals and priorities we give you a little bit of an update.

And we want to acknowledge where we are with those. We did we did I identify that on many of these are multi year or going to take a year long to accomplish. And so with that in mind we recognize that some of these might become the foundation for starting your 2627 list. Since some of these were just not gonna be able to complete in the time frame we have for the rest of the year. Just for background to for today as you know we held a series of town hall meetings and I want to acknowledge something I have we hear consistently from the council members of the town hall meetings are not the only way you receive feedback from your constituents right.

You've got meetings in the community. You've got emails. You've got calls. You've got any numerous opportunities to get feedback from those that you serve to know about what's important to them in your community. I think all those become priorities today that you can reflect back And help influence what we do to make decisions going forward.

Before today we ask each of you to come forward and provide what you thought might be good priorities for the next next fiscal year and so we're in the process of providing those appear on the wall and so it's okay if you don't have them prepared Jennifer's putting some some more room together will bring him down later this morning. Also want to acknowledge that fiscal constraints become part of what we have to look at going forward. And so we're going to spend some time this morning a little bit different. We're going to have Venus give you a preview of our forecast and a few of a few of you we've already met with and gone over this but not all be of a chance to see this you're going to see a lot more of this in detail on the meeting on Monday evening we felt there's a few slides a few high priority areas that are worth discussing to that today already mentioned the fact that one of the areas where you do have discretion are going to be your capital improvement budgets in your road budgets where you do have some discretion. But you're going to see later.

On my book of your funding is really committed to your your personnel budgets we've got a lot of constraints and so- they're obviously trade offs to do new things obviously there the consequences for trade offs. I just want to kind of acknowledge to that. What can I skip through real quick look at talking too much? The staff is here to help you. We've done a lot of work to prepare for today as you have as well.

I think that where your resource? We asked them to prepare quite a bit to get ready for today. We're actually probably ahead of schedule for budget process compared to prior years. We provided a lot of background information for you in advance of today. It's there's a resource we can reflect on that today as well and so I want to encourage you if you have got questions if you got things that you want to discuss with them.

They're all here today representing different areas let's let's rely on their expertise. As well as the ones who are sitting up here And so we want to make today as productive as we can to achieve your goals, to achieve your needs, to serve the community. Marylis has any questions of me at this point, I'd like to turn over to Venus for her presentation.

Okay. Thank you, Scott. Any questions for our city manager? Scott, what are you looking for from us today?

Well, the one thing I would just point out that I skipped over here and that's a very good question is, it's probably naive to think we're going to get all the priorities done today. And so I think last year was very productive in terms of how we had great concepts. Set a subcommittee platform to work through those work through those and we came back to the council. I think that could work again. I like that format very much.

I don't know if it's something you might want to consider again going forward. It's just very difficult to take all your carryovers anything new to get to some conclusion by the end of today. I would really encourage you to think about that process to come up with it and you know it's February starting what tomorrow so we've got some time to put this together and just and just keep in mind to that the goals and priorities in the budget are probably your two main policy documents for the for the year they they they rely on each other tremendously right like you can't really have your your budget without your priorities and you can't budget well if you don't know what you have to work with so these these rely on their so integral to one another and so it's very important that we're doing them concurrently

you think kind of bigger overall concepts and then when it comes to specifics then all that had needs to be hashed out either via subcommittee or you know and the council dies later Make sense? Alright. Anybody else? Any questions? Being none, Venus, five year forecast.

Good morning, Mayor, members of the council. As Scott mentioned today, we're going to give you just a kind of smaller preview of what we will be giving on Monday evening and just to go over some bigger highlights. So just to start with some of the forecast revenue assumptions that we made in creating the five year forecast is projections are based on historical actuals. We do discuss with sales tax consultants, economic we look at economic forecasts. We talked to investment advisor to come up with certain numbers.

Most of the revenues, smaller revenues are anywhere from a 1% to 3% increase. Some of them we keep flat because they tend to be flat. And then sales tax, we did include a 3% increase per year. Property taxes 5% to 6% in each of the years. We started to add additional RDA residual in this budget, so we're including a 2% increase to that residual.

We're not including any new grants. We had the stopgap agreement with the county for fire services and that expires in December and we did not include anything after that time period because we're not sure where that will go. Merced College, High School District and Middle School contract for SROs. We are assuming that they'll continue over the next five years in this forecast. Community Facility Districts, Development Services, Construction and Tax, they're all included based on projected building growth that is given to us by Development Services.

And Parks Community Program increases were based on the council approved fees in December 2025. So those were approved. We did make estimates for increases in revenue to parks and recreation programs based on those approved rates. And we assume that there will be annual savings of 1,500,000 in each of the years at the end of each of the years. On the expenditure side, we start with the current year's budget as a base.

We don't add any additional positions or programs. Labor increases, those MOUs expire for next fiscal year. So in the first year, we do include those increases per the MOU agreements. But in the last four years of the forecast, there are no labor increases estimated in this forecast. So that's always a big part of what expenses increase. So you just have to remember that it could make things worse. Benefit insurances, we're estimating 10% to 11% increase. We actually increased this because of the 15% increase we saw this year. Workers' comp, 8% increase. General liability, we're assuming 10% to 12 increase.

And CalPERS, they're charging us for the unfunded liability anywhere from 29% to 50% of our salaries in each of the years. Most non personnel, which is your supplies and services, we are estimating a 2% increase just to try to keep in line with inflation. No new grant fund expenditures, no one time expenses. So this really does become operating budget. There's not really any additions, any one time kind of things in here.

General fund transfers to Park and Community Services, we add 4% increase per year. The general fund transfers to the airport, which we started doing again this year, it's either 4% or less each year, just depending on what their need. They have a little bit of a smaller budget, so some of the revenue does help the increases each year. So it doesn't need so much transfer from the general fund. We also calculate what the 25 general fund reserve set aside would be for each of the years, and that's also included.

What is not included again is PC replacement costs, your fleet replacement costs, and then the set asides for economic development opportunity, the Trust one hundred fifteen and affordable housing is not part of this because those numbers are based on a savings from the end of a previous year. So it would be hard to factor that in. Just a little bit on sales tax. So we had been seeing very small drops in the last few years. We did get positive increase in twenty four-twenty five on the general fund side, 0.8% increase.

We still saw a little bit of a reduction in Measure C. But we are seeing good numbers in the first quarter, which I talked about in one of the town halls. So we're hoping that trend will continue. We did include in the budget a little bit of an increase on both of those. And so in the forecast, we are estimating increases each year.

Some of the operating concerns, these aren't very different from when I presented forecast last year, right? So the SAFR grant is expiring in March 2027. So this forecast has revenue for the first nine months of twenty six-twenty seven, and then that grant revenue goes away. So that's approximately 3,000,000 to $4,000,000 a year. That covers 24 full time firefighters.

We removed the county fire agreement, that's a little over 300,000 a year. There's still a lot of uncertainty around CP 42. We're not sure what those maintenance costs are, what is the revenue will bring in, how will the JPA work. And just in general, expenditures are outpacing revenue. In Parks and Recreation, so we have a full time position that's about $120,000 annually.

So that position started with a Prop 64 grant. Once that expired we were able to leverage CalBIT for outdoor programming to continue and that ended this past December 2025 so moving forward that position having to fund it in in there was a zookeeper that had half of a person being funded in the in the last few years that expired and Parks and Recreation was able to secure a private donation to be used over three years of $200,000 It would fund that full time position over three years. That is actually not in the forecast so that could help it a little bit moving moving forward in the next couple years. Then after that, there is a full time position that would not be funded. Measure why cannabis taxes continue to decrease slightly.

So just based on where all of this goes, right, it could require additional general fund support. In airport, again, we're just seeing that expenditures in some years are outpacing revenue and so it could potentially require additional general fund support there. And although I don't have a slide for projection for housing admin, I just wanted to highlight that they will continue to have or not be able to support themselves with just the activity delivery costs from the HUD programming. So it is likely that they will continue to need support from either the Affordable Housing Fund or from the general fund in order to make that fund balance. So just to go over a little bit about cannabis tax, is what we've seen in the past few years.

Or looks like they might start to be leveling out a little bit here in the last couple years, but we'll have to kind of keep an eye on that monitor. And this is just quarter over quarter, so you're still seeing slight decreases every quarter on cannabis tax. I'm hoping we'll see positive soon, but as of right now, it's just a lot of reductions. So here we start with Parks and Community Services Fund. So again, we're estimating a 4% increase per year from the general fund as revenue.

So that's your top line. Your measure y stays steady, assuming that measure y at least will stay steady. We can assume $750,000 coming from that. Other revenue, it's their programming type of things, sponsorships and so you can see their revenue increases anywhere from three to four sometimes 6% moving forward expenditures are increasing anywhere from two to 3%. And again, no labor increases are in here.

So in the first two years, you're seeing that their receipts over expenses are negative. But that fund balance is short, right? So you would have to add additional transfer to the general fund, or you'd have to cut costs in some way in order to make that fund balance. Here we have development services. And although their revenue is increasing a little bit expenditures are too, they are still receipts over expense by about $1,500,000 a year.

So Development Services is working on a fee study that should be coming to council soon for review in order to increase their fees. And based on that study, there's a potential of increasing fees by about $1,000,000 So that would definitely help offset those negative numbers. But it clear the 1,500,000 So you would have to figure out if you wanted to reduce expenditures or add some general fund supplement to make this fund balance. So during the budget for measure C, there was a recommendation to unfund seven public safety positions and the council chose not to do that and to move them into measure C. So here I combined the old measure C fund to leverage some of the balance there and the new public safety Measure C.

And with the new seven positions, as you can see, going out to twenty seven-twenty eight, you would not be able to support that moving forward. So we would need to do something with those additional positions. And then in all five years, we're not meeting the GFOA recommended minimum. So this is CFD fire. So CFD fire looks good based on the additional permits that are estimated.

We're they're estimating 200 single family and and 150 multifamily each year. And in the fifth year, but it would take until the fifth year to be able to either add or absorb a position, a fire position into Measure C. So in this area, on Monday, there will be a study session on a new CFD rate might be proposed for a new CFD for services. So that could definitely help this area and to be able to leverage some more revenue and maybe get positions in here sooner. So very similar on the police side for CFD, only here we are estimating that we could add a position every other year starting in the next year.

So whether that's moving one over or adding one, With Measure C looking the way it does, it would probably be moving one over from measure c. CFD parks so of the CFD services taxes police and fire get the bulk of it Other services get some of it, and parks gets a little bit, but definitely not as much as the other areas. So in this area, you start to see a lot of red because expenditures are increasing higher than we're getting revenue. So we would need to either reduce revenue. The only other area to fund parks maintenance is in the general fund.

So either you're moving expenditures back into the general fund or you're just reducing costs. This is the airport. So again, we talked about the airport. We're transferring either 4% less a year from the general fund to help this work. We're basically just bringing in what it takes to make them balance which is why you see your fund balances as zero.

In the first year we're still seeing receipts sorry expense over receipts after that because of the general fund transfer we're making that balance If you look at other revenue compared to the expenditures, really is your shortfall, It's probably 50% or maybe a little less. And I know that the airport is looking at increasing their fees out there, hangar fees, and those types of things to help offset this revenue I'm sorry, this expense. And then here, last, is your general fund forecast. So as you can see the general fund in the first year that revenue change is it goes down right and that's really is because you're safer is coming out in the last quarter of the year and then in 2728 it comes out a 100% and so that's why you see such a little bit of change in your revenues moving forward you're you're about a four percent increase a year your expenditures are anywhere from a 2% to 5% increase a year. So you're seeing receipts over I'm sorry, expense over receipts of anywhere from 5,000,000 to $6,000,000 Three to four of that is going to be your 24 firefighters, But you're still going to see that because maintenance supplies and services are just it's forecasting increases.

So as you can see your estimated balance in the first two years, you'll still have a little bit left there. In the last three, you won't have any balance to cover any of that overage and expenses. Once you set aside your 5% reserve contingency, you're seeing basically in your '27, '28, and future year, that general fund just won't balance. And this is just to show typically the types of expenditures in the general fund. 75% of that will be personnel.

Everything else is very minimal. So when it comes to reducing costs, likely it will impact personnel. This just shows what would be needed to aside to meet your 25 reserves set aside each year. The first year, we don't need anything since you reduced the general fund reserve last year. We did leave a little bit there.

Budget, so there's enough there that you wouldn't have to move in more. But moving future years you'd have to move in a little bit more in order to meet that reserve requirement. So this slide is last year when we presented forecast we gave this list of like how can we mitigate gate certain things and these were the options that were listed so I just wanted to look at the options that we provided and then what happened right so for the first one we we had been unfunded three police officers. So we recommended keeping those vacant. So during the budget process, we actually added those three police officers and then moved in an additional four public positions from the general fund to measure C.

We talked about eliminating CalVIP programming because that grant was going away. So they did actually expire in the budget and in the forecast. We eliminated CalVIP in the general fund. But the only thing that has remained in this forecast is the recreation coordinator. We left that in the forecast. We talked about increasing development services fees. Development services has been working on that in the last few months. It's in progress. It'll be presented to council soon. We discussed no increase in tomato supplies and services.

We did try to manage that as much as we could during the budget process, and there was mostly no increases. There were a few things that we did have to just out of our control types of costs, But we did maintain no increases mostly there. We discussed no additions to fleet, only replacements. I know people talk about one time costs about fleet, but they really are not one time costs. When you purchase fleet vehicles, there's maintenance, there's gas, there's ongoing costs that are associated.

But we did allow some additions in the budget process. We discussed evaluating the use of RDA in Trust 01/2015, and we did add $1,000,000 of RDA residual in the budget for this year in order to help that balance. And then we discussed revising the general fund reserve. The council chose to reduce the general fund reserve requirement from 35% to 30%. And that allowed us to help balance the budget on a one time basis.

So now moving forward for 2026, what are some of the mitigation options that we could implement? So again, increasing the development services fees. Again, that'll come to you soon. That will likely hit in next fiscal year, more than this year now. Increasing the airport fees, I know the airport is working on that.

Again, we talked about the study session on Monday regarding the CFD and the special tax rate. So if we form a new CFD with a new special tax rate a little bit higher, that could help, again, continue to manage the increased demand in supplies and services during the budget process. Monday, there's an agreement on the council to look at business license audit and tax structure. So hopefully with the tax restructure, there'll be a little bit of increased fees there. And then the business license audit will help to increase fees by finding businesses that don't currently have business licenses and should, continuing to manage the fleet additions and continuing to evaluate the use of the RDA residual.

Now that the DOF settlement agreement is paid off, which is what we had been using the residual on, we could look at leveraging that a little bit more in future budgets and then evaluating the feasibility of a ballot measure. That's the forecast. And then we talked about the CIP funding that's available. So every year, finance puts together this list that's provided to engineering in their evaluation of what types of projects we could possibly recommend for the next budget year. And so as you can see, we have at the top is your PFFP balances.

We have a city portion. When city does projects, it could help with those projects. And then we have a developer portion which is supposed to be used for when developers put in the projects, we can reimburse the developers for those projects. And then below is your total roads funding. So these are all the roads funding that we get and what could be available for capital.

So you have your SB1, your Measure V, Alternative Mode, Measure V Local Transportation, Measure C Roads, RSTP, and LTF. And so the first column is what we think will carry over from the current year. And then the second column is budget that we are expecting in those areas. And so the total is kind of what we use as what we can factor into the budget for next year. So as you can see, for roads, we're at about $9,900,000 available.

And then below is kind of all the other types of capitals. So we have airport industrial park, public safety, wastewater, water, all your facility charges, and water and wastewater, and your PEG access fee. So in total, it's about 125,000,000 So that is the presentation. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer those.

Thank you, Venus. Any questions for Venus on the five year forecast? We'll hear more at the next council meeting or?

This is the bulk of it and but yes there'll be more on like the CalPERS update and just some educational slides in the beginning that I typically do but this really is the bulk of it.

Thank you for as always for all your work putting this together and are there any questions?

Thank you. Thank you, Venus. Two questions. One, going back to the Measure C situation, is Measure C underfunded because we're funding positions by itself or are there are there some positions that are funded but don't have they're not actually staffed

so the forecast makes assumption that the positions are are filled right but we do have positions that are vacant currently

They're still being funded and they're accounted for in your budget projections?

Yes, correct.

Okay. And in terms of Measure Y, I mean it almost seems like it's unforecastable because the bottom just continues to fall out of the Correct.

Yeah

quote unquote legal cannabis market have you made some conservative assumptions about what that fund will generate are you still kind of following a trend line from prior years

at this point were probably in this year, we'll probably lower a little bit more. But the trend line is not falling considerably. It's slight. So until we get like a better trend on it, we just have to make some back you know some assumption

so we're now thank god four years ending and climbing from the pandemic is it is it worth kind of recalibrating by throwing out 2020 and 2021

For cannabis?

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

In terms of creating a trend line?

Definitely. So we don't look at that higher those higher numbers we don't look at that at all.

You already threw it out?

Yes.

Yes.

All right. Thank you.

You saw what I mean people joke but you saw what happened during the pandemic when everybody had a lot of time on their hands, measure why revenue spiked.

Speaking from experience? I wish. I'm just kidding.

There are actually could we have just a brief discussion of where we're at with SAFR and when SAFR expires in March '27? What are the current options? You know, either extending the grant, you know, what sort of step down, what alternatives are we

looking at right now?

I know the Public Safety Committee has probably been discussing this quite a bit. Just for everybody's edification, what the current options and the status are, what's going to happen in March once the grant expires.

Absolutely. Good morning, everyone. Casey Wilson, fire chief. So regarding SAFR, so, the grant expires March 2027. So we currently have 24 positions that are funded through SAFR.

So, we don't although we're currently filling all of the safer positions we do have general fund positions that are vacant so we are working on the recruitment process to backfill those as required by the grant eight vacancies actually it's seven eighth will be in a couple weeks so theoretically 16 of the 24 safer positions are essentially eight of those will transition into general fund CFD or or measure c positions. So I call it managing our liability. So right now, we're not we don't have the full 24 positions to fund doing a snapshot of today's staffing. That makes sense. So the other thing we're looking at a staffing models, what we need to move forward in the organization.

In my opinion, 24 is not the number. That's more staffing than we need. So to open Station 6 and to maintain the current staffing that we have, including the addition of squad fifty three that we added last year, we would need somewhere between sixteen and nineteen of those personnel. So as far as sustainability for funding, the SAFR 25 grant will be opening in April. So we're keeping an eye out for that NOFO we'll review that NOFO and explore that as an option will come to council for approval to apply for that grant certainly not something that we're banking on it's not very common that you receive back to back safer grants but it's certainly something we're going to put a significant amount of effort into and apply for.

Currently, get the eight vacancies and then what you think with the expansion once we expand at Station 6 then set a 24 the needle be more 16 to 19.

In line 16 to 19. So it takes about 12 to staff Station Station 56 and we would be very hard pressed this open Station 6 without keeping those safer personnel. It's not we can always hire firefighters, but right now what we have is 24 firefighters that are trained to the level actually to the level of engineer level, so that will allow us capacity to promote folks into the captains and engineer positions to open that station. So we would if if we lost all that safer staffing, we would be very hard pressed to open a new station and and staff it. And then the from the 12, you add the six personnel for the squad that staffs out of Station 53.

And then you wanna anytime you add staff, you wanna add a little bit of over staffing. That's where that 16 to 19 personnel number comes in. So you have vacation relief, sick leave relief, work comp relief, things like that.

One of the things I think I will be bringing back to council but also just discussing is this year, One Voice has decided not to go to DC. And there will be no One Voice trip. So we internally need to have a discussion as well as a full counsel of what our policy decision will be to either go to the federal government, go to DC ourselves to have the conversation with not only FEMA but with projects like at the FAA and stuff like that. So I think it's worth noting as well that that's on the horizon. Yeah.

Think we could. Who else? You and I think we still could. We're not going make that decision today, but I think given each council member's travel budget, given everything else, think certainly we could still send folks to be there. Think that's probably a good thing if we do that. Just a thought.

Mayor, on the topic of SAFR, obviously some conditions have changed. You currently have a contract to provide mutual aid to the county. That could factor perhaps into the application. So you know we would with your support intend to reapply you know as an extension but we would also use that as part of our justification And that may have some merit to it. So we'll have to factor that into it when it becomes time.

Just briefly, I mean, fluid situation, obviously, with when Station six is going to open, potential new revenue sources, be it a ballot measure, be it something else. The county contract, what's that going look like going forward? Is that once SAFR expires, how does that change the math for us? How does that change a lot of the economics for us as well, too? I think there's a couple We've talked about budget and all the moving pieces and putting the puzzle together. Certainly a couple of moving pieces there. And then SAFR, I mean are we going to get another SAFR grant? Are there going to be what other options for us?

May I forget, yes to discuss point, yes absolutely thank you for bringing that up. Having safer staffing was absolutely critical to allowing us the ability to provide that service to the county. And that is why the contract expires in the 2026 because we wanted to have a better idea of what safer staffing or staffing with safer personnel was going look like into that agreement. So that is a critical piece to it. And then the other piece is now that we have a new ambulance provider in Merced County, we have advanced life support services, which will be at all five stations mid this year.

We are currently starting the conversations with AMR for partnerships to partner with AMR for service to the community and I expect that there will be some time at least reimbursement to offset some of our costs with that program as well so.

What's the timeline for the contract with the county? You said it expires around the same

It expires at the end of this calendar year, '26. So they've expressed most recently to start discussions of what that looks like. So if they would have to reopen that station, they wanted plenty of time to do that.

Negotiations are about to

Probably starting very soon,

yeah. Okay. Any other question?

Can I piggyback on that?

Sure.

Matt was talking about kind of staffing and resource needs in the in your department. What about moving Station 54 to the Southeast? Is there a timeline on that?

Timeline on that one, certainly not we have property for the fire station, but we do know how to have funding to build that station. So significantly under funded to relocate that station. One of the things I'm working on this year is doing a study to determine what the impacts of relocating that station will be. I know for a fact there will be some, but we need to further study exactly what, you know, how impactful that will be by relocating that station, what impact it's gonna have on station fifty one, and and more importantly, the response times within where station fifty four currently is. But, it's definitely a rising priority for me.

If station fifty four moved, would there be the potential to increase staffing and apparatus at the new station?

If if we re there now. If we reload, utilizing our current station? Or

No. You know, Magic Wand, there's a new station in Southeast Merced that becomes the new fifty four. Would the operational footprint be the same, or would you think about expanding in terms of staffing and apparatus?

Yeah. I think we would build the station looking at the twenty to fifty year time frame, meaning it would it would have the ability to staff engine and a truck. We don't really need a truck at at this point out there. But if we see significant growth with, you know, high rise buildings, large motels, and things like that, there's definitely a potential that a truck would be needed out there. But right now, I would say that it'd be relocating the staffing from Station 54 to the new 54.

So no increase in apparatus, no increase in staffing needed. What we have to study is what impact is that gonna have to the current Station 54 area, specifically looking at the the end of that district, is like Bear Creek and McKee area. So something we might have to do as a mitigating measure is keep that station open possibly with a squad or something like that to make sure we we still have response times maintained in there. But that's the piece I really need to study more.

Okay. Thank you, chief.

Mayor, if I could, at your last council meeting, you just entered into a deposit reimbursement agreement for environmental studies and some other work that would look to change some of the land use designations in that corridor. That may be the precursor for seeing new development proposals and more development in that area, which could kind of push forward the need for that to happen more quickly. We've been focused mostly on 56 trying to kind of bridge that funding gap, but 54 is right on the hills of that. And we're honestly not too far away from having to look at the need for the BSC station as well. So we're focused on 5654 is behind it, but then the other one is not far from that.

The issue we're running into is not that there isn't a need, it's the funding to do this.

Casey, do you anticipate $50 cost in terms of the structure to what $56,000,000 to $20,000,000 range?

Yeah. Mr. McBride and I have talked about that pretty recently. In fact, minus the EOC portion of Station 56, the fire station would likely be designed exactly the same. So long term in the city, we would have a truck in the in the very north end to help serve the UC and that community around the UC, the VST.

We'd have a central truck, and then long term planning would be have a truck up the south end of town to support that development. Again, not not something we need to staff today or or probably even in the next ten years. But looking at that twenty, thirty year time frame, there's a potential needed truck out there. So utilizing the plans from Station fifty six, we could probably have a significant cost savings on that station just by utilizing the exact same plans for Station 50 relocation of 54.

Scott, you guys think 5654 and then potentially VST that's kind of the order?

Think so. Sorry. Know you asked Scott that question, but 54 is we're already seeing that growth there. 56 is going to be able to provide some capacity into the VST in the UC area. We're going to have rather decent response times into that area. As we start getting growth, we're going to see a density issue. So it won't necessarily be our distances, but so much density and growth around the university and that community around the university. That's I think going to be the trigger point for fifty seven with that significant growth there.

Anybody else? All right. Takes us to our break. I think we can skip that. Then go to council member discussions of goals and priorities.

Think we just If I could, let's explain what we have on the walls around you. I'm looking for Jennifer. Know that she's been a busy bee. Oh, here's Jennifer. Thank you. Jennifer, do you want to explain what we got up on the walls just so we can walk through it? I know you've been extremely busy doing a lot of work here.

Good morning. So on this side we have council priorities, and on this side we have the priorities from last year, the goals and priorities from last year. And we just did an update at a couple council meetings ago, so that includes all of the notes and the status of all of the projects. And then we'll display it on the screen as well.

So, Mayor, one thing we've been working on recently is, as I mentioned earlier, I know you've a got lot of carryover, some things that we knew would not get done in one time periods, so we're going to show those for you today. And I actually probably have four or five things that maybe need to be thought about as interim updates for goals and priorities. We're talking about safer as an example. We talked about potentially the county contract for mutual aid. Another thing talking about county cooperation would be potentially working on the extension of the tax sharing agreement that actually expires in August, waiting until July is too late.

We need to start working on that now. So there's just a few things that I think we probably want to start addressing this spring. We can't really wait till the next fiscal year. So we want to highlight those for you too. So they're not part of your current goals and priorities, and I think waiting till the next year is too late. So we want to discuss those at some point this morning as well.

How would you like to proceed from here?

It's up to you. If you want to take a short break to review what we've got up and take a refresher, we can do that or we can proceed. At some point we do want to have an opportunity for each of you to kind of discuss what you wanted to bring forward. It's really up to you. We're way ahead of schedule, but I know it's been once we get into the meat of this Darren's looking to be saying we're going to be off schedule. I can see it already. Once we start the discussion I know it's going to take up time so it might be good to take a quick break now and then kind of review what we have and let you guys talk about what you brought forward. That might be a good way to do this.

Quick five minutes. We'll come back and everybody will have a chance to review what's on the board. And it's 09:53. We'll come back at ten and then we'll resume at ten with counsel discussion. Yeah.

It's a balance. There's specifics. Alright, we'll reconvene. Reconvene and bring the meeting back to order. Social hour, social five minutes is included.

Scott I think just turn it over to each council member and we'll go. Two important points again. One is the big picture stuff, you know, what direction the ship is going. And then two, a lot of little things. A little things we obviously can't work out today, we can have some discussion and council members can propose ideas that will lead to follow-up discussions and potentially being agendized on council meetings. All right. So we'll start with Council Member DuPont. Thank

you, Mayor. So I took some time to kinda go through the mission goals and objectives of each department, and I started there since departments did all the work to tell us kinda what their mission goals and objectives for this next budget cycle is. And I condensed instead of, I would say, using the five headers here. I condensed it into the, like, five priorities that I saw through the goals, missions, and objectives. And within those GMOs, stop stop saying goals, missions, objectives.

That's gonna get old. The GMOs, and I put

yeah. Sorry. No. It's okay.

I put what I found from those objectives and put it into the five categories. And I did this is kind of like the overlook of all those objectives, but there are specific things that the departments pointed out that I saw fit within these objectives. And I have more more detailed Excel sheets that I went through that showed me CIP projects or projects that the departments have identified. And it's kind of shown in the multiyear capital improvement, like, kind of forecast that I put together. And that shows the actual investment projects that the departments had put out that I would say align with a lot of what council has been discussing over not only the past past year but the previous years as well.

And what we've heard not only from town town halls and from constituents nowadays but how we see the city moving forward as well. So I started with kind of this overarching goals. And from these goals, the specific projects that the departments pointed out that I think met these goals and met the goals of or the priorities that I I thought at least counsel has expressed over over the past year. This so I'll start with priority one. Ethical leadership, open government, public engagement, compliance with law.

So you have a lot of departments that are looking to be more not only engaged with the public, but have better management systems. Like, for example, we have records management and agenda systems. We have council chambers, AV and PG upgrades. We have council meeting broadcast equipment, audio visual modernization, cybersecurity, and data governance and infrastructure. So a lot of things that meet this transparency that allows us to implement these transparencies.

And a lot of those, I would say, meet in line with seven zero seven that will be coming online this year as well. We look at priority two, high quality core services and public safety, police, fire, emergency response, reliable daily services, customer service excellence. So a lot of the things I saw within this priority are police vehicles and equipment, fire apparatus and station improvements, fire station upgrades, police facility improvements, CAD upgrade, radio and network infrastructure, and public safety equipment and training. All of which that I'm not gonna take credit for really any of these. These are all within our objectives the departments have put out.

All aligned with, I think, objectives that council has talked about and are pushing forward. So I think the the the goal of this is to find those common areas that we can work together.

Right?

Priority three, infrastructure maintenance and asset stewardship, street utilities and facilities, preventative maintenance, long term asset protection. So you see a lot of these in the road maintenance or rehabilitation, water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure, fleet replacement program, water sewer main replacement, sidewalk, and ADA improvements. Go to priority four, housing construction, community wellness, economic viability, inclusive growth. So you have a lot of housing constructions, general plan update, zoning housing element implementation, and then you have our CDBG home key projects and home projects. Then you also have the airport here as well, terminal improvements, runway and aviation facilities, parking community facility improvements.

We get to our last one, priority five, long term fiscal health, workforce stability, and risk reduction and resilience. You have an IT resilience and cybersecurity again. You have insurance and liability mitigation programs. And we saw in the past couple of years kind of those benefit insurance go up in in forms of percentage medical, but also liability insurance as well. And then you have what I said labor negotiations and succession workforce planning, facility condition, life cycle upgrades.

So I thought instead of reinventing the wheel and saying this is what I'm seeing as counsel, I said, where can I find common goals with the departments, what they think is their objectives, and what I think those objectives, meet with my objectives and priorities as an individual, as as the member of district one? So this is the overview, but there's a lot of detailed work that I think the departments and department heads and directors have done to find programs that fit within these kind of five core priorities. And I think we should take a look at those objectives and see how can we fit. I mean, a lot of them I look on the board will fit within those five priority objectives, But we also need to ensure that is not something that we're continuing to over overdue to our departments, but how we can work together with our departments as well. So happy to answer any questions or discussion you'd like, but that's what I put together.

Thank you, sir. Any questions for Councilmember DuPont? Any follow-up? Any conversation on guidance you bring? No, I think I'm certainly in agreement like the big kind of ship, right? The big picture things that we do, what direction are we going in, what are the main things we're focused on. Think getting all of us together here and making sure we're all aligned, or at least there's a majority or significant majority of the council that's aligned on that, working in harmony with staff is super important. That's what this is about in a big way. Anybody else on this? Nothing else?

I'll chime in. I appreciate the effort and the tremendous thought that went into synthesizing this, kind of like what also Fu has presented. I like sort of the constitutional language, like the big picture concept as opposed to drilling down to specific projects. That's the city manager's province, not ours. I don't know if we are going to be able to go line by line, but I mean just kind of looking at it.

There's a lot of things that the city is doing. And I think doing well, maybe we could improve. But I would agree with what is probably your overall sentiment to pick the important things that our residents appreciate and we're doing well and continue them as opposed to add a bunch of new and potentially unfettered directions. I think overall favorable.

Okay, Councilmember Chap. District 2.

All right. So first, thank you to CD staff and each department. I review it too. And you guys did a lot of great works, it's very detailed. So what I did was I just kind of list out some very simple things that as I look at it, I'm going to just quickly go over better lightings for public safety, key parts cleans and safe, improved roads, improved sidewalk, improved drainage, improved crosswalk and pedestrian safety, improved by lane safety.

I kind of list out some of these short term because as I look at District 2 and we're growing and we're talking about the new parts coming in and then we're about District 1 growing. And a lot of things that we I mentioned here because if you look at I noticed that residential kind of brought up concerns that Martin Luther King on 11th Street and 12th Street right there Crosswalk there is kind of not safe to them. I even went out there myself to test it out and look at it during traffic hours. You see a lot of older folks walking there, children walking there, crossing from one side to the other side to the full grocery store right there. So I think can you know stack and kind of look at that area right there see if we can put you know a better crossing visible light crossing there.

Talking about some improving drainage that every single year one thing is that we didn't get a lot of big rain this year but the years that when we get a lot of rains or heavy rains right there on Canal And Chow, there's always flood, right? If you look at on M Street and Chow, it's always flood in that area right there. So I think that for future long term that we can kind of look at that area and see how can we improve the drainage so that way it's better to be prepared than to have that air flood. And then if you look at our shoe right there on the corner of that liquor store right there too, it's always flood during rainy season too. And then our sidewalk is also important.

Improving road, H Street is also a street that I know is heavily busy, it's always traveling. Tanaya Middle School is right there, growing up there. That street, think an engineer can take a look at it to see if the years of that street to see if we can improve it or we can figure out a way to fund it and fix that road. I also take a look at it let's say right now District 2 has a lot of people who doesn't drive, right, parents and kids and as we improve parts a lot of these kids I see that they're going to start walking to the new sport complex and that's something that we wanted to make sure that we improve sidewalks and lightings and making sure that a lot of these kids are going to be walking so safety is important. McNamara Parks and a lot of areas in District 2, it's pretty dark and we need to improve those lighting too for safety concerns.

I also wanted to just point out that public safety is important in every district especially the whole city of Merced. That's why it's important that we have increased our police staffing, make sure we have more police out there patrolling, pushing what's going on throughout the industry one and two too. And then also parts important because it will be building parts. We need to maintain improving quality of life for people in District 1 and District 2 and throughout the whole city, throughout all the six districts. I also wanted to mention that moving forward we also want to figure out ways how can we fund or have budgets to fund for youth development, Because we want to put youths in, they're going to school all day, come home, we want to make sure that we have programs for all these youth so we can develop them in terms of whether it's sports, it's in leadership, or whether it's a civic engagement.

So I think it's important to have those programs for the youth. That's what I just kind of put into some goals and priorities for short term. So I want to just bring that up because I understand that my residents, my constituents, and my district are concerned about it too. So yeah. Thank you,

Thank you, Councilmember Tao. Questions, comments, discussion? Questions for Councilmember Tao? Any discussions on? Councilmember Harris.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilmember Tao. Your detailed knowledge of your district makes me extremely happy that we appointed somebody from within the district. This is why we did that. I wanna endorse what you're saying about better lighting and improving sidewalks. I think those are high priorities that need to be put at the top of the list of things to do. They're certainly within our grasp, and I know that you'll be able to identify the priorities within those areas. So thank you.

Anything else? Smith.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Councilor Member Tao. I echo what my colleague Mr. Harris just said. I have also, for the last three plus years, talked about needing to find a way to get streetlights in neighborhoods that don't have any. I've said this many times before. District 4, there are neighborhoods in the Alexander Olive core that don't have street lights. There are others where it looks like somebody tacked a Lowe's or Home Depot light up to a street pole and ran a line to an overhead power source which doesn't seem like the best way to do that. We don't build street lights because it's expensive and there's no real pathway for it.

I might suggest you know not to be presumptuous but I feel like you all have been very supportive unanimously of the standing committee concept. Mean this is a kind of thing that a public resource you know roads and utilities committee can dig their hands into and develop a structure. What would it look like if the city provided a pathway for our residents and others to decide that they wanted streetlights? What is the cost so we can have some more meaningful conversations as opposed to once a year goals and priorities just talking about streetlights and then moved away so I fully support finding a way to address the absence of streetlights and I agree with you that it should be a top priority like it is on your list.

And thank you for the support and I also wanted to bring out that you know we improve public safety and improve infrastructures that also attracts business coming in too you know and I know that the residents there or even South San Jose always talk about grocery store but you know that's that's out of our control right but then you know if we improve all this then this possibility business might want to move into so yeah.

On the topic of street life or Scott or Daryl the evaluation of a lighting district and what would that look like, some sort of maintenance district but focused on lighting and the possibility of how would that look in the Prop two eighteen context and then potentially to get the revenue bond against it and then have that revenue stream that'll pay for the lights. What's the there been any evaluations of that done yet?

I'm not aware of any formal evaluations, but you're saying all the right magical words. You've got kind of two parts you've got the cost to install right so someone's got to say I want to have the assessment put on my bill so it's I'm gonna I'm gonna say put several $100 a year over decades on my bill. And then I want the cost for annual maintenance on my bill to write so it's really all property tracks tax driven so I'm just gonna remind everyone we just had 12 maintenance districts that we went out to the to the community to get relief on and we got five of the 12 saying we're willing to increase our rates. So you need to do here to make this work is we'd have to go out and analyze what the capital costs are to install the lights and what the annual costs are going to be to energize and maintain the lights and say community if you want lights is going to cost you X $100 per year for so many years for the cost to put them up. And then so many dollars per year for the cost and then if they want to do it there's there's a way to have it done.

You need to be a maintenance district but you have the assessment for the costs like a debt service and then the assessment so I mean it's it's pretty straightforward it's not complicated it's just a matter that the public needs to say we're willing to do it the the methodology is not not hard And I would think

I'm deferring to customer account, counselor Smith I think there'd be support for that, but we just obviously got to do the legwork and put it together.

Yeah. That is a way in which to fund it. But I also think we need to figure out if there's other ways not to go out and ask the public for more money. I mean, we've gone through this month of we went through the maintenance districts. Now we went through a water rate information study. We went through a sewer rate information study. We went through a refuse information study. We're gonna have possibly higher fees of development services. There's fees on top of fees on top of fees that are being tacked on. I agree.

Let the voters decide if they want more fees or not. But I don't think that's the one stop shop solution to providing lighting services to residents if we can't find other solutions as well.

Do you have a better idea? Do you have a better solution?

Do I have a better solution right now? No. But we can't always like, that can't always be our answer is, well, let's go out to the voters and ask them to be taxed more. It's I mean, we get the impact as well because we live within the city, but that cannot be the solution. And we've now we're talking about a ballot measure as well. We just saw the possible ways in which to help on our forecast. Again, all way all all things asking the public to pay more money.

So Mayor, if I could, right now your streetlights are paid for three different ways. They're paid for maintenance districts, CFDs, general fund. So you can't add streetlights to a CFD or maintenance districts unless voters to amend them. But you could put them in the general fund if you've got more capacity for them. So that's for ongoing cost.

The issue that you're running into is the cost to do the installation. One thing that I might suggest that we could look into is I'm not sure if the street lights could qualify as a block grant project but that may be one area we can look into so in certain areas if they meet certain criteria they might be a block grant project. And I think these areas we're talking about may fit the criteria. That may be one of the areas that we could look into. But that will cover the big hurdle, which is getting the initial cost up. The other issue you're going to run into is how do you want to pay for the ongoing maintenance?

Matt, if I could jump in.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean in my mind it's a balance of all these different revenue sources. It's not just asking the residents. It's not just the general fund. It's not just the grant. But you know, again, reality is we don't know yet. We have to actually study and come back with a proposed answer. And I think it'll help the community dialogue too, right? And when we get folks come to the podium and they kind of just want the city to build it, Well, we'd like to just do a lot of things. But it takes actual work, and council needs to drive it forward.

I think it's good discussion. Obviously, you raised the big point. How do we fees, taxes, services? Do we if we build it, then do we have to cut from other areas and find new revenue sources or finding ways to save and just putting that puzzle together. Certainly support having that. I've had a serious discussion on that as well. We've talked about it for a long, long time. But at the end of the day, mean, how are we going to make it happen? Additional thoughts, comments for Councilmember Tao? Councilmember Harris, your turn, sir.

Thank you mayor. Going back to the five year forecast preview, I had a takeaway from that. And those were two slides. One slide showed revenue increases all in the low single digits. And the other slide showed expenses mostly double digit with one high single digit. That's a formula for treading water. That doesn't get us close to any of our goals that we really want to get to. It just keeps our head above water. Which brings me to point number one, increase revenue. It's not raining money.

We have to go out and find revenue. We have to develop it. The high speed rail discussions and the discussions about moving of the possibility of moving a station to Southeast Merced really got me got me thinking about revenue sources. And I was pointed to the city of Turlock and the city of Manteca whose sale tax revenues are bounding. And how does Turlock, a city with three quarters of our population, do better in revenue than we do?

To me the answer is the commerce along Highway 99 that we don't have. We couldn't have it because of the elevated highway. I understand that. But with the Campus Parkway and the possibility of a high speed rail station, I think we have the opportunity to start developing that revenue source along 99. And don't get me don't get me wrong.

This is not a binary decision Southeast versus downtown. Downtown has revitalization that we should invest in, but downtown is not gonna provide the kind of revenue we need to move forward as a city of a 100,000 people. Downtown will attract people regardless of where the station is. If anybody travels when you fly into St. Louis or Dallas, you're not flying into the city.

You're getting your luggage and you're going out. You're getting into an Uber or you're getting into a taxi and you're going into the city. Why would the high speed rail station be that different? What is the the main objection to having the station outside of downtown? People who are coming to Merced are still gonna come to Merced. If that's their objective, they're just gonna get into buses or trolleys and come into the city. If they wanna stay at the Hilton, they're gonna stay at the Hilton. If they wanna stay in a downtown hotel, they'll do that. So downtown is downtown. It's I love downtown.

The way it looks now is so different than the way it was five years ago, ten years ago. And it's and it's growing and it's looking good, but we have to look at real sources of revenue that are going to take us to the next step, and I think that is a long 99. Granted unique funding opportunities. I just did a search right now based on based on lighting, and I came up with the Department of Transportation Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program. Anybody familiar with that?

Be a nice project for a grant writer to get working on. There's an extra billion dollars still available for the next funding round. They had 5,000,000,000 appropriated funds over five years, 2020 through to 2026, and they ended up having more funds than they thought. Again, this is my annual plea for a grant writer. We have an RFP out or an RFQ out for social media manager. I think that's great. But I think a full time grant writer is going to bring in money. And if not, then we kick it to the curb. But I think it's had success in other places and I don't see why it wouldn't have success in Merced.

Nice to real and Grant Ryder.

Off of soapbox on that. Road investment long term plan. I look forward to the end of the year when we get that report that has all our roads listed, all the conditions and all the estimates to fix them. But again, magic wands don't fix them, money does. All this stuff we need, we need to do these things.

Southeast Merced development, I think I discussed that both in the Campus Parkway area and if we do the high speed rail station. Something that helps downtown, I think the thing that helps downtown most is UC Merced. I've I've said this before, we are not a college town, we're a town with a college. And there's a difference. You go downtown and except for a couple of buildings, you don't see the presence of UC Merced there.

You go to UC Berkeley, you go to UC Davis, and you can't walk down Main Street without seeing in almost every window signs that say 20% off with student ID and have the university merch there and events and stuff, and businesses that stay open after 8PM. So we need to we need to partner, and that's both ways. That's our reaching out to them and them reaching out to us to make downtown a vital part of UC Merced. Refocus revitalization. There's areas that still need to be revitalized downtown, and we should support that.

Public safety partnerships and facilities. I have no idea what I meant by that. I'm sure I'll think of it at some point. Oh, thank you.

Sounds very good. Sounds good. Sounds very good.

I was probably a genius for thinking about it. And it was early in the morning. But partnerships with the sheriff's department, possibly consolidated dispatch centers, things like that that save money and improve services, big part saving money. Station fifty six plan to finance that and expand on that. The sheriff's department has has expressed interest in a coordinated and joint public safety building up in that area. I think we should be looking at that. What did I mean by community events, Scott?

Nobody comes out against partnerships and community events.

Right. Yeah, it's mom and apple pie.

I think we talked about working on the special events ordinance but also having more community events throughout the community that highlight unique things about the city.

Yeah, I want to announce the planning for a Renaissance Fair at Applegate Park. Today's the first day that we're going to start working on that. But things like that, things that we can actually do events that that highlight the city and bring things in. People come to Renaissance Fairs from everywhere. You go out to Casa De Fruta, and people come from everywhere, Sacramento, San Francisco, to go to that. It's huge. And I think Applegate Park is a perfect, perfect venue for that.

So that's my

plan for District 3.

Questions for Councilor Harris? Comments on public safety partnerships at Renaissance Fairs? All good stuff.

So if you want to know the moment at which we lost the goals and priorities meeting, here we go. A lot of good stuff to unpack and also appreciate the fact that most of these are kind of like guiding principles as opposed to specific projects. I think the downtown versus North Merced versus Southeast Merced policy discussion is going be ongoing for several councils. I do think that Mayor Murphy, Stephanie Dietz era was really kind of visionary along with Adam Gray and others in making Campus Parkway a reality. It gave us this opportunity.

I mean, agree we need to continue to invest in that as an area for future growth and tax revenue and making it a part of our community and not just something that's sort of over the hill a little bit because there are some physical and transportation barriers. So I think continued focus on that is important. Downtown revitalization, it's going to be tough I think without state legislature support. I mean the reality is a lot of downtown has been purchased and being held. And I don't know that there's really the demand to redevelop it yet.

Maybe there is. I haven't done the study, but we're kind of waiting for some of these properties to get back into circulation. And I don't know that council can do anything about that. Station 56, yes, I think that really needs to be a huge priority. It's way overdue for all the reasons we've discussed. But as Chief Wilson can explain, I mean, we're kind of down to that last $3,000,000, which is a lot, it's not particularly when cost of construction keeps going up. So I would agree with you, Mike, that Station 56 should be a priority for the rest of this year and the next year too.

Anybody else? Alright. Councilor Smith, segue into your Thank you. Close priority, sir.

So I appreciate the professional courtesy of leaving the empty spot on the wall for my written goals and priorities. It's just been a tough week with a lot of other council stuff going on. And I got three trials in the next five to six weeks. But also with one thing I want to bring up with you guys, I kind of also didn't submit goals and priorities because I really think given the budget picture and all the work that's going on and frankly the continuing bandwidth constraints of our team that this is not the time to suggest new initiatives without a really good reason unless it's serving a long standing need. So I did last year I came back with a huge list this year.

I'm really not you know let me put my money where my mouth is. I think we need to really look at continuing things at this not we're no longer like the last council it's like this council has set some initiatives in place that we're not really moving forward And I think we need to keep focusing on that. Things like County Island annexation, Station 56 I just talked about. We've got this new issue coming at us externally about high speed rail. I mean those three things right there are going to take a lot of effort.

And our planning department is now under I'm excited about the new leadership, but we also are need to shore up some resources. And it looks like it may not have enough money coming in to support its operation. And that's who's going to be driving county annexation. So for all these reasons, I'm in favor of doing the task we've already set for ourselves and not adding new things absent good reason. One thing I do want to raise though to consider, because we've talked about this quite a bit, is I think it's really time, and I'll let Scott talk about this, it's really time to get an internship program going.

You know, we talk a lot about youth. I think it's implicit in our role that we are representing the community. So by charter, we're not kind of tasked with things like job and youth development, but it's something we should be doing. We're really missing an opportunity, even if it's just a summer intern program for high school and college students to work with us. And I got to tell you, I could use the help.

I'm not asking for more salary, but I could use the help. And so for the fourth year, I'll ask for an internship program. And along the same lines, I think it's probably time for council to take a look at whether we're actually serving the goals of the Youth Council. To the extent that the Youth Council in the 2010s was an innovation to create another point of pressure on council and the city manager I'm not sure we need it if the idea is to give a group of young people in our community a chance to get some boardsmanship and professional opportunities you know the last two meetings I was asked to come speak to the Youth Council and it was canceled for a lack of a quorum. So if the people on the Youth Council are not interested in participating in Youth Council, I don't know why we have to be asking the staff to be driving it forward.

I would rather give those people a chance to be our interns. So I'd ask us to think about that, support the city manager in his efforts to create that internship program for us. But I don't think the I think the Youth Council's innovation has probably passed its time. And those resources we better put into an internship program that I'm talking about. Thank you for that.

If I could, she and I had an opportunity to talk earlier this week and we've been using the College Corps program. Know Chris has been a big advocate. He's had really good success with that. That's a UC Merced program and any department can use that now if they wanted to. The nice thing about that is they will screen, they will pay.

There's a good program that exists. One of the problems we've had in the past with interns is that we didn't have a job description, we didn't have a salary range. So if we wanted to bring somebody on board, we had to pay them only if we had we basically had to have a vacant position to do it, right? And we had to pay them on whatever salary range was open. So I actually have tasked Jennifer here, who's doing amazing work in all of our different areas, to work with HR to kind of create a new position, new range, that reflects what an internship program should look like.

So we found examples of what that could look like, and it's going to be like a free floating description so basically like an admin assistant can be named department and her community department. So we're already working on that. The charter already set up where the council is policy driven and then administrative operational is really under the city manager so we'd have to have interns you know report. Under us but we can assign them to provide support can work out the mechanism to do that. But we hear you, and we're already working on this.

Thank you, Scott.

Just on the topic of interns, too, probably get a number of folks who will reach out about potential internships. Some of them will refer to city staff. But a number of them over the years just kind of in an informal capacity. I had probably a half dozen. I had one kid who he did a lot of work for me, and he ended up worked on a number of things and projects and ended up going to, I think, UC Berkeley. So there's a number of local students, either high school students or UC students. We had a couple people from the UC help us last night with an event. One girl who's looked interested in some sort of internship. So just I could I could start referring more to you guys. And then I think a lot of them are they're just they're looking for something more informal where it doesn't they don't have to you know, it's not twenty hours a week here and there.

They want something where they can, you know, kinda get a little do some work and then just for relatively informal, different times, short period of time, whenever it fits their schedule. So happy to refer more to you guys if you want.

I mean, that would be helpful. I do get a fair bit of requests to take people on as interns, whether it's from the Matty Institute, UC Merced, some of our local heritage based groups, particularly in the summertime. Like when we've had our campaigns or even in the past, I've worked with younger people on an informal basis. But maybe just because I'm an attorney and I understand the labor and employment risks, I'm not willing to take on somebody in an official capacity under my counsel role without the protection of it being through the city with insurance provided, with knowing that all rules and laws are being complied with, that I'm properly trained to be a supervisor. Because again, I see the cases all the time.

You're not planning for something bad to go wrong, but all it takes is one complaint, and here we are on the front page of the news. So I want to make sure we're doing it, but I want to make sure we're doing it right. And I wouldn't want any of us to be taking on that risk.

Mayor, if I could. Yes. Yeah. I'm in support of an internship program. That's how I cut my teeth as a younger individual than I already am, I guess.

You said it.

Yeah, that's how I started it. Interned for a state senator, interned for a county supervisor. It creates great opportunity. This pay range is a is a new era, I guess, of have to have a pay range because I never got paid for any of those roles. But the experience alone not only is good, but it helps us as well.

And I get requests pretty frequently, especially during the summer times of interns. I mean, I carry the same sentiment of liability. I guess it's just the attorney and me as well of having that liability and not wanting also that liability be put on my private firm as well if that's the case. So just knowing how employment law is in the state of California. But I join in any effort or discussion on an internship program for the council.

Those were tough.

So I also support the intern program. I think that's a great idea. But if we were to implement a program like that in place, Scott, how many interns are we looking at?

Additional comments? Any questions for council member Smith? Okay. Thank you, sir. Alright. Mayor Pro Temboa, your turn. Thank

you, mayor.

So Renaissance fair.

I don't have Renaissance fair on my goals and priorities list. So this is my sixth year doing this. And I met with Scott yesterday to go over my list. And I told him I purposely made my list short this year because if you look on the other wall of all the things that we still wanna accomplish from previous year and years, I just wanted to be mindful of that. So the bike path lighting, this has actually been on my list in previous years, but I really wanna make a focus this year.

The lighting, down Black Rascal Creek under the bridges of G, M, And R, They need to be replaced or looked at or something, but it's just even in daylight, it's extremely dark down there, and it's not safe. It's not just at the town halls, but just throughout the year and years, code enforcement. I mean, we've all heard it. Even yesterday, I got an email from a constituent, which it is a code enforcement issue. During the town halls, we had heard that code enforcement attorney's office, they meet once a month.

I think we just need to have our staff revisit what that process is. And I would hope our counsel supports us. I just think that we've heard on numerous occasions of all these different issues what code enforcement is doing. I mean, I support the chief and what he needs for that department as well. But I think if we can really focus on that department, I think our residents will be extremely happy.

In light of the conversations we've had of, like, the legal food vendors around town. I would actually like to host some kind of Scott put doing business with the city workshop and resources. But making it a one day where individuals of whatever kind of business they're wanting, they can come in, learn how they can get the business license. They can get the business license the day of, bring in other resources from the community, whether it's CBDC or the county or whoever. Once someone gets a business license, where do we send them off to next?

Bring the county times in so they can sign up so that they can have their business license added to the newspaper, all those steps of what it takes. So I think that if we're going to continue to say that we are a business friendly city, we need to make sure we're doing that for everyone and not just some of the big corporations coming to town. They know how to do this. But it's the individuals that have a dream of wanting to run a business. They might get afraid or shy of how do I do this, how do I start this. But I think that if we were to be more upfront about this and hosting this, I think it's a huge benefit. We're already doing the employment affairs. So I think for those that want to be their own employer, this just highlights that more, and that's what I have.

I mean, the county I saw a flyer for the county doing one

of those. Yeah.

This is

with

the state count.

Alright. Questions for our mayor pro tem?

Councilor Stick. No. I appreciate your approach as well, like I just said. And thank you for bringing up code enforcement. Totally spaced.

Just to remind everybody, the results announced from our first potential initiative poll showed code enforcement as one of the very few items that tested to passability. So I would agree looking at ways our residents tell us all the time, how can we support the department and the city attorney's office in doing a bigger and better job with code enforcement? But also, if the voters are willing to give us extra resources for that, perhaps not only can we do a better job, but it'll free up some funds to do other things. So I would agree that needs to be a point of emphasis. And I do think it's worth having a discussion perhaps at the committee level.

What might it look like more of a shared pathway between city attorney's office and PD? I know in bigger cities, it's city attorney that drives code enforcement. I'm not saying that's the right model for Merced. But if we needed to find a way to staff one more mid level or junior attorney in the city attorney's office So that element of the the process is more responsive. Maybe we should look at that too.

Anybody else? Hey. Thank you, mayor pro, Tim Boyle. Councilman Ruzanne.

Alright. So my approach to you, my goals and priorities here are different than other council members. I looked at it at a more specific, like, that we need to do, incorporating what we did last year, carryover items, and then listening to community members, and my thoughts in terms of what direction the city should go in. So starting off, we already had this conversation here, but I think we still need that larger conversation in terms of what's gonna happen after safer grants expires. What's our actual direction here?

And then as was mentioned previously, High Speed Rail, that's a big one this year and ongoing. And so I think that's something we need to really focus on, Kind of like, well, how is that going to impact our economic growth here in Merced. Governance, I'm thinking more of, hey, I know our financial what Venus just presented, right? But I would love to see departments grow. Right?

Some of our departments have been stagnant, lost people. So in my opinion, to do good work for the city, we need more people. Whether or not that's financially possible is a different question. Similar to council member Harris, I think it's important to have dedicated staff that does grant writing, applying, administering them. I think that's a way in which we don't use local money and we look for outside money.

And then as was mentioned in our town halls, holding the city a bit more accountable, right, in terms of how we do business, customer services to our community. In this case, I wrote Merced Connect app. Future planning from last year as well, annexing County Islands. I know we already had that discussions at the council, but I would love to see that materialize and steps in which we're moving in that direction. I've heard a lot of talk about EV charging stations. I know the city has installed some as well. And I think it would be in the best interest of the public if we start making some of

those

public facing as well. Let's see. High speed rail is up there again. Public safety we've had the discussion before in terms of special events ordinance. And so I want to see that materialize in which we reduce the number of overtime hours and costs to RPD.

Graffiti abatement, we heard about this at the town hall in LCAP. I think it's important to hire locally or hire city staff to do this work during that meeting where Chief Stanfield basically said, hey, we'll get it done. I think that's something that is more accountable for us where we could easily just get it done. I'm a true believer that arts are a deterrent for vandalism, and so I would love to see our budget for art go up. I think our graffiti contract was $1,300,000 for five years or so.

I would love arts to get anywhere near that number. Again, our forecast is not so good, But it'll be great if we could deter graffiti and we don't have to spend as much on abatement. Pedestrian safety it was mentioned before street lights, sidewalks, full support of that. We've had this conversation before but never really developed that mechanism. This is how we're going to actually do it.

And think that's something we really should focus on this year. In terms of my district, folks have been really talking about going up and down G Street, how folks coming down the Cordella area going to Kerchshank. There's no sidewalks there. So I think it's important that we at least put sidewalks there. That's a big street.

Economic development, the Youth Jobs Program, if I'm not mistaken, funding ends this year in December. We had a presentation, a council meeting or two ago. I think it's important to invest in young people, ensuring that one, they have funding. They're not on the streets doing anything stupid. I think that this helps I don't know where I'm going, but it helps with the economy of Merced.

As was mentioned before, partner with Merced College, with UC Merced for internships. I think it's important to get an update on Valley's Children's Hospital and what's going on with that property. It's come up multiple times. And I think we need to just hold them accountable for developing.

I think it's closed session Monday. Oh, my

mistake. Affordable housing. So simplest thing and again, in the survey that we have the city, homelessness is one of the major item. I think the simplest thing we can do here is just providing more trash bins across the city. And not just that, it will just beautify the city with less trash about.

The second one pertains to affordable housing and future development. Folks have asked me in terms of, Okay, how is the city growing and what's going on? Is there specific websites and whatnot? And I can't really point them to it. I have this picture here of annexations, future annexation and pending annexations.

But it doesn't tell you the details of what's going on with each of these, their timelines, and so forth. And so I think having a location where all that information is located would be great. The last point I have in there, where I'm not coming up with solutions for this, but folks have asked in terms of how do we keep homes here locally owned. Their concern with the UC growing and potentially with high speed rail is that our market is going to become more of a rental investment. And so how do we ensure that there's local home ownership?

Parks and community services, just reading it, empower and finance parks and community services to be the face of events. So from the survey that we had previously, I think it's a shame that parks and community service rate is so low in terms of how the community sees them relative to police, relative to fire, relative to even Matt when you were on there. Chris and their department, they do a lot of good work. And so I think that we need to have them be the face of these community events. I think the next point I have there is relative to, for example, when PD is at Mercado, I think it should really be Parks and Community Service at Mercado.

And they should be the one holding down and representing the city at almost any event that's done with community. Again, toy drive, food drive, Halloween, any of these items. Again, great work that PD is doing this, but my opinion is that this should really be in a different department. Parks. We've had the discussion before in terms of restrooms.

I think we need more restrooms at park, more drinking fountains. Kind of back to the accountability portion, posting maintenance schedule and having those before and after pictures. Again, I think it's good to let community know when our parks or even public property are damaged and then showing them how we repaired it. And not just holding ourselves accountable for that repair, but also holding community accountable for, hey, here are the damages that are happening and it keeps recurring so that they know and they keep each other I keep saying it accountable. I think it's important to install more lights at parks.

I know folks have tend to say that that would encourage people to stay late at parks, which I don't think is a bad thing, especially when there's lights. I think lights at parks actually deter any source of suspicious activities. And I think more events at parks are a good thing. And again, I'm thinking here of skate parks, basketball courts. I go to Tanaya whenever I want to play at night.

And I don't think that should be the only option. Roads and pedestrian, I think it's important that we reevaluate the intersection off of M and Buena Vista, M And Donna. Those intersections, in my opinion, they're not the best. Folks tend to speed through those intersections if you're coming off of Dona or Buena Vista. I know there's a discussion one of the lists.

It had a roundabout at one of those intersections. And even right now, I'm not sure that's the right thing. I'm always in favor of closing off these streets so that folks are not going into M if M is an arterial road. And on top of that, I think we need to reevaluate the purpose of the M Street bike path. The only way to get onto that bike path is to cross, again, an arterial road. And then when you're on it, you're going up and down. And again, you're going through intersections as well. And so I just don't really see the purpose of this bike path. Yeah, so I have quite a bit on here.

Appreciate it. Any questions for Councilor Jean? Comments? Councilor Harris.

Thank you. That was very detailed and appreciate the effort you put into that. I do have to say that the Halloween party that came off of the PD this year, mayor Pro Tem Boyle and I were there, and we were pretty sure that Superman was actually Chief Stanfield. We couldn't couldn't prove it, but we we think and he would he was very he was very popular. I'm not sure director Jensen would be that popular in that role. It's possible, but I don't know. The police chief was very popular there. Did a great job with

that. You. Chairperson Boyle.

Thank you. Just a few notes. So I support the EV charging stations during our legislative platform review. That was one thing I did bring up, looking for possible grant money as well to install these As a future of EVs, we're going to need charging stations. And if people are going up and down the 99, I think that if they can stop here in some of our parking lots and charge here, stop in Downtown Merced, do some shopping, we can get some tax revenue. So I do support that. Regarding M Street, Buena Vista, and Donna, this has been on my list, I think, since 2022. The roundabout was just something to throw out. It's still on the list. Not saying that the roundabout was a solution.

Previous engineer said that because Rivera is so close, it makes it hard to figure out what's going to happen. So I know it's still on the CIP list, or it should be, but it definitely needs to be discussed and what that plan will be. So I support that as well. And regarding the Halloween party, PD and I don't want to say a party, but that is because they have to buy is the grant that you receive or federal law, they have to you want to come up here and I mean, it's a great it's a great

utilize the the Halloween event as our once a year AB as 49 requirement by law to do a open house at the police department. We have to share all of our what they call military equipment. So that is kind of a two fold event. So we utilize that as our open house to share our equipment event, but we do the trunk or treat. And and, you know, I just wanna acknowledge that that Chris's team and Parks and Rec partner with us on that. That that's not we do it at the PD, but it's not just a PD event. We do do that in partnership with our other teams. And so they're just a huge part of making that just as much as the PD is. So it's not solely a PD event even though it's at the PD, so it looks that way. But yeah.

And we, oh yeah, thank you. And we utilize the funds from that for the zoo. So that's one of our goals is that we utilize the funds for the car registrations and the fees to that all go the zoo, right? We give all that money to the zoo. So that's another partnership event. So to your point, it is a partnership. I don't want to take full credit for that.

You, Chief.

Yes, the manager of Brad.

Just realized I think we were going to try to provide you a copy of the current Road CIP list. We can definitely do that unless we've got Couple comments. We definitely need traffic engineering help to look at those intersections to figure out solutions. I think it's going to require deceleration lanes to make them work properly. Think that's one of the problems.

I do agree with some of the comments about the bike path through there it's it's I'm not sure why we have it there. It's problematic to get access to it and I saw Juan nodding his head. I think we all have some concerns about the Eucalyptus trees and the potential harm they can cause too. Yeah, I understand.

So I noticed that I didn't have three items up there, which I have on my paper here. And one, again, going back to code enforcement, I think that's something we really should focus on this year with the repeated housing code violator ordinance. So that's a big one. Another one is with regards to separating bike lanes or delineating them. So I'm talking about off of 59th and Yosemite.

Folks, that bike lane is huge if anybody has ever turned off of 59th onto Yosemite. And so I've seen people just literally driving it down the bike lane as though it's a lane. And so delineating that, just putting something that separates it out. And then the last item tying to Councilmember Smith's proposal in terms of subcommittees or standing committees would be a soft Merced plan. I would hope we will work on that this year as well.

Mayor, if I may. I think I've brought this up before, but if high speed rail wants to go to Southeast Merced, then that downtown area plan needs to move to more of a substantial South Merced area plan.

Yes, agreed. I agree with and support majority of what I think it's there's a lot of good specifics in there and certain things we need to get moving on. Think I encourage you guys to agenda, especially the M and Donna stuff as well for a discussion on that. What are we going to do exactly with that? Just nitpicking a little bit, one with the police at public events.

I think strongly disagree with that. I think it's really important to have our police officers out in the community. People really enjoyed all the events where the police officers are present, so I think it's really a good way to do a lot of things and build trust, humanize the police officers, and then the police get involved in the community as well. I think that's really important. And then with housing and the homeownership rate, most of you guys have seen this nationwide study in percent change in homeownership from 2010 to 2013, Merced ranked eleventh in the entire country. The only other Valley city that was ranked was Clovis. Clovis was seventh in the country. And then out of 500 large cities, they qualified us. So they counted us to that. We were eleventh in the country.

The point is, there's good work being done. There's been good work being done over the last fifteen years during the period of that study. We just need to continue doing it and get that homeownership rate up as well.

One: I'll just add one more thing about homeownership. I know in the past we used to have Lauren Ganella come in and do kind of a real estate overview of what it looks like in Merced. And I don't know if it's something that we could do. I know there's first time homebuyer programs. And I think homeownership is just a scary thing.

You don't know where to start. And maybe it's something that the Merced County Realtors Association, I don't think it's something that we should do, but I think it's something maybe a partnership that they host some kind of become a home buyer workshop and just educate people. Because if you don't know what the first step is, it's just just daunting. So I would be happy to discuss more about what that could look like too, if that's something of interest.

Mayor, if I may, please. Coincidentally, we met with Mr. Gonala this week. He plans to do his annual state of the county in real estate. I believe his first one's going to be February 9. And he's collecting data from us. And I think that's an excellent idea where we merge it with home ownership opportunities. So if you'd like, we definitely could reach out to him and see how we incorporate that too. That's a good idea.

And there were potentially a report, too, on the status of our first time homebuyer program. That'd a good thing to have a council as well to see exactly where we're at with that. Anybody else?

Can you just weigh in briefly? Yeah. And Jennifer, can you go back to Fu's list? Just me going from memory is a bad idea. So like my comments about Darren's list, I really appreciate the effort that you put in. I mean, this took a lot of thought. And I just want to say there's a lot I agree with. And I think there's a lot of agreement on the council with some of the things that Fu is proposing. County Island annexation, improving lighting where there aren't lights, partnering with UC, empowering parks, reducing staff time in support of events. I mean, are all things I'm in favor of.

EV charging, I think our city needs better charging infrastructure, although I was going turn it to Matt in a second. That's kind of something that the Merced County Association of Governments is driving. I don't know there's something for the city to do independently. A couple of things I don't necessarily agree with, and maybe it's difference of opinion with you and with Mike. I mean, don't think we need to necessarily hire more staff to do new things.

I think we need to figure out how to get more staff bandwidth to do the things that we're doing. And I do think that we can't, on the one hand, tell our police department to be more connected to the community and then say they can't do community events. But I mean, there's a lot to like in here, and I think there's a lot of overlap that should be carried forward. And in terms of M Street, I mean, you know, we're all in violent agreement. I'm not the transportation engineer.

But it seems to me that unless we're willing to tear out the historic feature of the eucalyptus trees and kind of what it's meant to that part of town going back generations, there's going be an issue that I'm not sure we can engineer around. So maybe that's where we start the discussion. You know, there's drag racing on that strip. It's unsafe for pedestrians. There's a lot of kids. And you're right to point out G Street too. There's like that deathly quarter mile. You know? When I went from the parent of a crook shank tiger to an El Capitan gaucho, it really kind of opened my eyes how many kids are riding scooters or walking. Like literally, the car is going 65 miles an hour right next to them.

So there's probably some speed enforcement issues. But I don't know what the timeline is for development in that parcel, and maybe we shouldn't wait. I'd agree with you there.

Yeah. That portion of M2 with it, you have bike path, intersections, people walking, riding bikes, fast cars. There's something we can do there to improve it. That's a big priority. Right. Anybody else for Council Member Jean? All right. On. Everybody's been waiting or not. I'm taking naps. First, thank everybody for their work. I think it's really important to see kind of what's going on as your priorities and to get everybody aligned as best as possible. I think we have that. I think we're doing that. And in terms of the big which direction the city's going, we're aligned.

And I think we're moving in the right direction. And I want to kind of incorporate by reference everything you guys have spoken about already in terms of the big priorities. And the big priorities, again, being housing, public safety, addressing homelessness, roads, parks, all that, the big things we need to continue focusing on. I think our town halls really made it clear, too, that we are focused on the needs of the community. I think the big take home, at least for me from the town halls, was that we're focused on the right things. We're focused on the right track. It's just people want more. And the needs oftentimes are outweighed. The needs are always bigger than the resource. We live in that world.

So a few kind of other things as well that weren't mentioned. And I go into detail on items that were brought up already. We've had a lot of discussion on other things. But animal control, how do we do better with that? How do we do better partnering with all the different volunteer groups that are out there that do a lot of good work on animal control?

Sarah just actually had a picture of this. The bridge under G Street at Bear Creek, huge safety issue, a little specific thing where you have people under there who camp and a number of people who think there's gold in the rocks. And they're out there, they take the rocks out, and they're breaking them up. We could find out. It's just a big safety issue because that's bike path underneath creek as well.

So Caltrans did some good things underneath 16th Street Bridge, installing safety improvements. So whether it's part of the Bear Creek Rehab project or another project, I think there's some small things we could do that could really make a big difference down there. Bellevue Ranch Park is always a big topic of conversation. We've had Bellevue Ranch improvements with the landscaping over the last few years and then with Vang Pao Park coming soon, but still multiple vacant park sites. Applegate Zoo and Kiddyland as those improvements come.

I know Chris and his team in particular have a lot of good ideas, a lot of good ways to improve that area similar to what we're we've some really good plans for Joherd Park coming this year. Excited about that. And then potentially turning to that area and how do we increase the parking and really create that as a focal point for the community, which is what it'll be once the zoo's revitalized and especially when Kitteland is upgraded as well. Downtown parking enhancements, big. I think we've had a good improvement in downtown with added parking.

I believe 96 new spots with the diagonal conversions. Lost a few with Ballpark Square, roughly 10. So I think we're plus 86 roughly with the downtown parking enhancements. How can we continue that? I think it's made a big difference for downtown. I've had a number of people just in the last week come up to me and say downtown's looked as good as it has in forever, twenty five, fifty years, they would say. So how do we continue that momentum? How does, again, the high speed rail discussion is another big part of it as well. 18th Street, for example, is a big area of opportunity. How can we potentially add street parking on 18th Street?

Bear Creek, the continual battle on Bear Creek to keep it clean and addressing transient activity on Bear Creek. Similar to what we have downtown with the downtown ambassadors, can we expand that to our creeks and have our ambassadors walking the creeks as well, addressing litter, and then also students and outreach there, too, like they do downtown. Downtown road management projects, an idea that's been kicked around for a long time, too, about ways to, in certain select areas, in particular between MLK and G And 0 To R, expanding some of the lot sizes which will enable potentially better development by abandoning certain sections of road. Code enforcement roads, obviously big perennial issues. I think we have an opportunity to and there's a huge need, it's one of the top needs, expand our code enforcement capacity.

So we need to focus on that. As you come into downtown on Martin Luther King addressing that area, I think that'll be a good way to beautify downtown and then potentially activating some of the spaces there. Oftentimes private investment is going to follow good public investment. So we can make some smart investments in that area, especially with potentially development of Chick fil A and other businesses in the area, too. How do we make smart public investments that will fuel private investments and unlock some of those properties that maybe have been underused for some time?

Disposing of surplus land and property, we made good progress on this. There's a transpose center, Bell Station. These are ways to make the city more efficient, way to save money, a way to take staff time away from dealing with projects such as that and focus more on priorities. How do we continue doing that? The wrong way of bicyclists, that's been a big issue, big safety issue.

Some cities, I think the city of Ceres in particular, just redid their ordinance. Is that something we look at to have an ordinance that can better control that growing trend of bicyclists riding the wrong way on streets? Park rangers is a way to increase park security, get some of that burden off of the police department. Chief Stanfield, in conversations with him, he helped develop Modesto's program. Is that a better way to more efficiently help public safety in our parks?

Something we mentioned just briefly in our subcommittee on the County Island annexations and this is going to relate back, and, Kelvin, you were talking about this a little bit that land that we own in that area that's dedicated for Parsons, it's kind of sitting vacant. It's little

bit of

it's blighted in a bit of an eyesore. Do we continue saying we want to hold that land for potentially having Parsons go from 140 to Bear Creek? Or do we make that decision that we'd abandon that idea and sell some of that city property and activate those properties? But I think if we're ready for that discussion, is that a conversation we have? And I think a couple more little things.

Police facilities is an ongoing topic as well. Turning Ballpark Square really into a focal point with multiple events there. There should be multiple events there every week. And then one thing top of mind, which I forgot to mention on that list, too, was an anti violence program as well, too. We've had in the past our CalVet program that's expired. The youth jobs program, that's expiring. But as a community, what can we do to get to those kids and try to do a better job of keeping them out of gangs, away from violence? There's tons of resources already dedicated to that countywide. You have probation, which a huge portion of that's dedicated to it. A lot of stuff in the schools going on, juvenile justice commission, all that.

But how in the city can we do our part, apart from what the police does? And the police, they have to bring the heavy hand of enforcement, I think, on that topic. But how can we a community or how can we help activate the community to do a better job in general? In the past, we've had the convict. There were convict meetings, for example, the violence intervention program. But just working together and activating those resources that are already there to do better in that arena. So those are just some thoughts. And again, I think our focus always needs to be on the quality of life of our residents and our city. I want to thank everybody for everything they've done. I think, again, these are some smaller things.

But I think the big focus is what we're all focused on already, what we've been focused on. And that needs to continue to go and be the priority. Any questions? Or we can move on. There.

Thank you, Matt. So thank you for bringing up the G Street Bridge. Like Matt had mentioned, I just showed him a photo. I walked to the Makita G Circle last weekend and took a picture, because I was just shocked to see what it looked like. And I know that you just have G Street, but I think we also need to look at M And R as well.

I don't think that they need to be at the same. Everything needs to be done in one year, but they do need to be looked at as well. The ambassadors, or the Creek ambassadors cleanup, I appreciate that you brought that up. It's another thing that I hear on a constant basis of, especially if you grew up here in Merced, Bear Creek didn't look like this when we grew up. So I think that is a great area of focus.

And then you had mentioned the MLK entry. I brought this up a few years ago, but I think it's all entry points into Merced. I mean G Street and Olive is another one. 16th Street, when you get off Highway 99, I purposely will go when I come from either Fresno or coming northbound or southbound, I purposely will go different ways coming into Merced to see what does this look like for visitors. And next thing you know, I'm on the Connect app. Contacting Caltrans because you just never know what it's going to be. But I think we really need to be looking at these entry points because if people are coming to Merced, what's going to make them want to stop? Glad you brought these up.

Yeah, we don't always put our best foot forward on our entry points. More comments? Again, nothing to decide today. Matt, if I could. Yeah.

So again, a lot of overlap, lot of things to like. I think you've got a different base of knowledge with your leadership of cleanups and things. Think it's important to point out Bear Creek, which is a gathering point for our community, north, central, and south. There are some things that probably dovetail with a larger topic of dealing with the impacts of homelessness, the need to get people into services, but also stepping up and protecting our community and cleaning up our community. I don't know which under crossing is worse than another, But I would agree that there are some safety concerns for our walkers and bicyclists who have to go under our major North South thoroughfares.

Whether it's a Creek ambassador or a Park Ranger program, I mean, I'm kind of agnostic. I maintain my concern about adding new programs right now. Maybe that's something for community groups to do. I like you pointing out animal control. We'd want to maybe get in the weeds, but some sort of targeted investment in Merced SPCA could probably go a long way without having the city to staff up.

Parsons is a third rail of Merced politics. I tend to think that we kind of always want to make decisions about surplus land. As a D4 rep, I'm not in favor of making land use decisions that basically give away the chance to have a Parsons thoroughfare in the future. I'm not in favor of billing anything now. But I think in twenty years, our town is going to be very different.

And we're going to need that North South corridor. Probably some of the resistance from our existing residents will have abated by then. And Casey was talking about response times at Station 54. That discussion gets a lot easier if there's a way across the creek at Parsons. So I tend to think we don't want to create nuisances, but this is not the time to be getting rid of the opportunity to have a Parsons thoroughfare at some point in the future. But other than that, I think this is a very community focused infrastructure kind of project list that I would expect. And I appreciate you putting your time into it.

Thank you. Yeah, think with the and again, these are things that could be added. Would and of the creek ambassadors, like the way we fund Restore Merced, potentially out of refuse. That's one way to do it. Park rangers would be more CSO type positions that would require expansion of the police department.

Well, mean, maybe that's part of this ballot initiative that's kind of circulating, right? It fit within the categories of things that the community wants to see more of.

Yes. I may need some help from Juan, but don't think we have a fixed maintenance location for Restore Merced. So theoretically, they could be doing maintenance along Bear Creek now. So I think we could just assign them wherever we need to so I don't think that prohibits us from doing that currently so I think I think actually right now they even do some work in those areas I think what you're talking about would be more like what you're seeing we kind of forget like right now they're providing services to the city which is bulky item and litter cleanup versus for the downtown partnership so same provider doing different work they're not providing that level of work for the city that's for different thing that's where you're seeing a much more intensive level of service for the downtown That's a far different level than what we're driving. That's not what we're getting for our dollars.

I think you'd want to see that. That's not the level that we're driving for the city right now.

Yeah, different conversation. The difference that has made, that focus on downtown where they're there and they can take ownership and they see it day after day, and what difference that's made for downtown versus the sporadic kind of take care of this area, take care of that area. I think having that same level of attention to our creeks would make a big, big difference.

I actually saw Restore Merced on the section between G And M on the North Side Of Bear Creek on January 8. So they are doing it, but I just don't know what the routine is. So I think maybe that's really the question is, how often are they going out there?

I think if regular and daily, then there's more of a deterrent aspect of it too at that point. And we can be a little more proactive.

Right, onward. Go ahead. So I appreciate the Bellevue Ranch Parks. I think it's important as we do one park at a time with General Ying Powell. And I think there's still two more in that area as well.

I think the broader conversation needs to be regarding how do we deter developers or ensuring that these parks are not abandoned. And how do we ensure that they continue to be built out? Because as you kind of mentioned goodness, mine is not here. Simply the fact that these parks weren't originally developed, I think that's something that we need to ensure that we don't allow that to happen next time at future developments. And so I think sometimes it's out of our control, but we need to ensure that they are built concurrently with the development of the homes. So that's just a larger conversation regarding parks. Yep. I want to caution Eric

Tail. Anything else? Seeing none, we'll go to our questions. Scott, do you have in mind presentations from our departments?

Mayor, they're really here to provide any assistance that you need they can respond any questions that you have we didn't have them kind of prepare a second slate of priorities just because there's so many carryovers so many things that you prepared for them but one thing I did want to do is you've got your scorecard, which is kind of an analysis of where you are today on your goals and priorities. I think what Jennifer's got up here is kind of what I wrote down as carryovers. Kind of dissected down these into a real simple format. I actually want to skip to the bottom of these. I put together a list of keep going keep going.

Here we go. Scroll. This top section I just put together a few things of potential maybe new ads for the current list. I don't need to read them for you, but these are things that I think we're gonna need to work on before we get into the next fiscal year. I already mentioned the first one.

The second one I think goes without saying we just brought on a consultant team to assist in this area. It ties back in the kind of new revenue sources but this is more focused the third one we are bringing on board someone help us with social media but I don't want to overstate the need that we're gonna need to provide a lot more hands on support to engage and make that work. Think Sarah mentioned that strongly and some of my one on one meetings with her as well. Actually, the fourth bullet I think is something that that Councilor Harris and I had mentioned is that you have the option if you want to focus on some large road projects you can bond against your major V allocation. And so we've been doing pay as you go with our major V which is only gonna give you a certain amount every year, but if you wanted to look at bonding against your allocation for the remainder, you could theoretically do that.

You can get a quick, I don't know what the number might be, but let's say it's $10.15, $12,000,000, that is an option you have there, but that's gonna be a one time commitment and then those funds are pretty much can be retired, right? We talked about station 56 and the $3,000,000 gap, I think that's a good number. I think that we can work that down if we put off the EOC for another phase and we actually have a way to probably get to that number through the section hud 108 program which we haven't used in a long time it's been used in the past it's probably not a term you've heard us talk about in a while, but that's a program that's available to us as a HUD and Talmud community. We'd like to explore that in the near future and see if that's a viable option for us. Maintenance districts.

So we were able to get five of the seven. The community supported you on that. The question is, what do you want do in the other seven? Do we want to reassess, revisit, refocus? I don't know that doing nothing makes sense, but maybe there's a strategy to let it pause for a while, and that can be a perfectly good plan, come back later, but I think there should be a discussion what we want to do in the remainder of those.

Merced Connect app, know it came up during town halls, I know we've been discussing it internally. I sent some information to you all this week about kind of what we've discussed about deficiencies in the current app work that actually did occur in those park locations it's a very imperfect system that we have, but we're committed to try to make the user experience better and do better on our side, but there's not a perfect solution for everything unfortunately. And then last thing is we've been engaged with the school districts for years about trying to do better for pedestrian projects. Heard a lot about pedestrian safety. We take the projects around schools very, very significant and so we do have some opportunities to apply for funding in the spring and we didn't know if that this one might be an important topic to bring forward.

These are things that we just discussed just from some some meetings recently about topical items that might want to be more immediate. And then the last thing I have on the list here are some items that I think might be worth consideration for the upcoming fiscal year for additional items as well.

Thank you, Scott. Any questions for our city manager or for any of our department heads?

Scott, any suggestions on how to lower our insurance bill? If I'm from myself as well. What's the magic?

Don't have a Renaissance Faire. It's going

to increase insurance. Councilmember, I think that's going to have to work in concert with labor negotiations that you see up there. I think that we're probably going to need to look at a tiered benefit program. I think that there's interest from them to do that. And so I think those two are going have to go hand in hand.

Deputy manager Quintero.

If I may, thank you. We do have what's called an employee benefits committee. And as we went through this recent exercise, for lack of better terms, assisting with the cost of the insurance increases, that was one of their comments from every group was let's get together and look and see if there are other programs that will fulfill the need but at a lower cost. And the city manager is correct. They are looking for a program that they may be able to buy down versus right now we just have buy up. So that's one of the factors they're looking at. But they definitely want that on the table.

There's actually four bullet points there that are really all connected, they're all personnel related. And they're going to have to be addressed this upcoming year so I don't want to overlook the significant amount of time it's going to take to work through those the classification compensation plan I think is due this time Personnel rules I think the last time they're looked at was 1989. That predates a lot of us even by birth date. So they all connect they're all intertwined and they need to be addressed and so they don't get a lot of publicity but it's the people in this room and the people we talk about outside this room that perform the services that are important for what you do and we have to have these things in place to keep those continuity services going

Alright. Any other comments, questions for our department heads?

Okay.

Alright. Takes us to next steps and actions. Mr. McBride, what are you requesting in terms of next steps and actions?

We've clearly heard a lot of good ideas today. And as thought earlier in the morning, you're not going to get together a list here in the time constraints with all the amazing thoughts that are out there so I think this is really probably better spent to discuss amongst yourselves like how you'd like to organize to work down through a list and then go from there

okay Thank you, sir. Are there closing comments? Backwards. Council Member Jean.

I don't know. I think it's a good, what, two and a half hours, three and a half hours? Time flies for me here. But hearing folks share their thoughts and goals and priorities for the city this year, I think a lot of us resonate the same feeling. And we're all pretty much in agreement on some of these major items. And I think, yeah, we just got to get to it now. I

was like, I'm not next.

Yeah,

thank you guys. I think today's discussion was great seeing what you guys would like to accomplish this next year. The discussion was good. I think we're well aligned in a lot of the goals and priorities, which I think will help the staff a lot. So I look forward to this next year.

Councilmember Smith. Counting down.

Thank you everybody. Just point out, I think you heard it, there's actually significant agreement of what we should be doing. So I really appreciate that. I appreciate that everybody here has nothing but the best interest of the city at heart. Thank you for department leadership for giving up part of your Saturday. And I'm a little bit unclear how we're going to hammer this out into a page or two of priorities but look forward to doing my part in that process.

Mr.

Harris. Thank you mayor. You know our council meetings are so structured We don't get to have talks like this very often and this is very worthwhile. It's a good amount of time spent. Almost thinking about asking to do it mid year also just to see where we are and see if we're on track for further

discussion. RUTTAPP. Well,

thank you to city manager and city staff department leader. Thank you to all your leadership. And it was a great discussion today a lot of great goals and you know discussion so looking forward to accomplish all this in the future so thank you. Thank

you mayor. Thank you to city staff not only for your work on the front end for the objectives really helped me at least put in perspective how to move forward this year without adding more on top of what I think is already appropriate to to kinda what the city is doing. But as well as just a closing comment, I I I think the ad hoc committee with council member Zhang last year was fruitful and and it worked out well and working through the goals and priorities last year. I'm not asking to be on it again, but

Sounds like it helped. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. But

I think that's a fruitful way to kind of tack down some of or pare down some of the pages that we have moving forward.

I want to thank everybody for their time this morning. I think we have a very good group. We have a very good council. Everybody's smart, dedicated, and I just applaud you all for that work. Thanks again to all our department heads. I think we're in great hands. Scott, your team is fantastic, all of you are just good people doing great work. We appreciate all of you. And I think the big thing, is we're I think through this, through our town halls, everything, I think we see that there's broad consensus and alignment on the vast majority of where the city's going and what the needs are, what the priorities should be. And then there's all the stuff on the edges and whether or not those are things we can fight about, argue about, discuss.

And then also, too, how are we going to be selective and strategic in terms of where we make investments with the remaining resources, remaining time we got, and how do we keep driving the city in a good direction with smart strategic investment on our end. That's all for me. And I guess with that, absent any other additional comments, Scott, anything we missed or any additional thoughts? All right. We need a motion or we adjourned? We're adjourned, 11:38.