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

We'll start in a few seconds, ladies and gentlemen. Regen.

Hey, good evening everyone. Want to welcome everybody to the May 18th, 2026 meeting of the Merced Council. We're going to begin with an invitation from Pastor Caesar Johnson from Christian Life Center in Merced. And then after that, uh, Council Member Ta will lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Pastor Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Ask everyone to please bow your heads. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your presence. We thank you that you are alive and you hear us. You care for us and you hold all authority this evening. Lord, we thank you for the blessings that are in the city of Merced. It's diverse, beautiful people, the resources, the parks, the bike paths, businesses, farms, schools, the artists and creatives that give this community life and expression. Lord, we recognize that leadership is stewardship and we don't take that responsibility lightly. So we ask for your blessing and direction over this meeting tonight. Bless our council members, our state city staff members, the volunteers, the first responders, community leaders, and not just them, but Lord, bless their families. Lord, bless their marriages. Father, we ask that you remind us that God, we know we don't all agree in here. And Lord, there's times that we'll have tension and disagreement and division. But yet, despite our differences, God, you have placed us together in the city of Merced. And you've called us to work together for the good of our community. So help us to remember the humanity in one another in a world that's increasingly divided. Let us actively pursue unity for the betterment of this city and those that dwell in it. Lord, your ways are higher than our ways and your thoughts are better than our thoughts. And you've guided his in

history kings and leaders and nations. So Lord, we need your wisdom today. You've said in your word that you will give us wisdom in James 15 if we lack it. So Lord, we ask for your wisdom. And Lord, we recognize that we're just humans trying to do our best. And we want to be sensitive to what's right and what's just. In a world that's full of darkness. May your light shine in this room. Guide our motives, purify our hearts, and let the decisions made reflect integrity, compassion, and truth. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Pastor John. Okay. Agenda item D. Roll call. Council member Deont, present. Tao, present. Harris Smith Jeang here. Mayor Pro Timbo here and Mayor Sorado present.

Mayor, I'd like to remind the audience if they wish to address the city council, they must submit a green request to speak form located at the podium in the back of the chamber. Additionally, citizens can submit public comment to the city council electronically no later than 1 p.m. on the day of the meeting. Comments received before the deadline will be sent to the city council and will be part of the record and will be mentioned as part of the written petitions and communications portion of the agenda. and they will also be posted on the city's website. Material may be emailed to city clerk@city ofmer.gov and any correspondence received after 1 pm will be distributed to the city council and retained for the official record. Also, for those audience members who wish to hear the council meeting translated into Spanish, please let our interpreters know. Good evening. In accordance with government code 54952.3, it is hereby announced Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Okay. Okay. In accordance with government code 54952.3, it is hereby announced that the city council sits either simultaneously or serially as a public financing and economic development authority, parking authority, and or successor agency to the redevelopment agency. City council members receive a monthly stipen of $500 by charter for sitting as a city council. And the mayor receives an additional $100 each month as part of the adopted budget and resolution 2024-78. The public financing and economic development authority, parking authority, and successor agency to the redevelopment agency received no compensation. Agenda item E, report out of close session.

There is no report out of close session. Agenda item F, special presentations. F1, project update from race communications. Thank you, Jennifer. All right. All right. Welcome, sir. Our first special presentation item F1 is a project update from race communications. Good evening.

Good evening. Excuse me. One second here. Sorry. Good evening, honorable mayor, council members, and city staff. Um, my name is Jim Miller. I'm the vice president of government affairs for race communications. I want to sincerely thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak here tonight and give you guys an update on the project. We understand that projects of this size can create concerns, frustrations within the community. And I want the council and the residents to know that we've listened carefully to all these concerns feedback that we've received. We recognize the importance of being very responsive, transparent, and accountable through this process because this is just not a construction project. It's a long-term investment in the city of Merrcett. Over the last several months, we made some important operational changes locally, including changes to our project management team. Also, through collaboration with the city staff, we recently created additional door hangers for information on the construction process that'll be passed out to the residents in the current and future construction areas. Those changes have helped improve communication coordination with the city staff as well as residents. And I'm pleased to say that we are now working together in a much more collaborative and productive manner. Our teams now meet regularly. They're communicating more effectively and jointly working through our challenges so that we can move this project forward responsibly and efficiently. Together, we're building an infrastructure that's going to keep Merced connected to the world for the next 50 to 100 years. Fiber infrastructure is critical for education, health care, remote work, business growth, public safety, and most important, the long-term economic future of the community. To provide you with an update of where we're at, we are currently working in uh nine sections. Half of those sections have completed the restoration and are getting

scheduled for the final walkthrough with the city inspector. Our goal is to complete the restoration and the remaining constructed sections by the end of July or sooner if possible. We did experience delays during the winter months due to weather conditions which impacted our construction but also the asphalt restoration schedules and we do apologize. This was not properly communicated um to the city or to the residents. At this time, we're targeting mid late mid to late summer for initial activation. And that'll be on the downtown area and the east side of the city or east side of Highway 99. I'm sorry, west side of Highway 99. Construction activities are expected to continue through the remainder of the year with a goal of substantial completion by the end of December. And obviously, that's pending permit approvals and fall weather conditions. Uh we do hear it's going to be an El Nino year, so it could be a a rainy fall. We appreciate the partnership with the city and the patience of the community as we work through the project of this scale. At the end of the day, we all share the same goal. We want to deliver a world worldclass fiber network to the residents of Merrced and the businesses of Merced while doing the work the right way. And doing the work the right way is key to race. We know mistakes have been made and we want to make sure that we're doing it the right way moving forward. Thank you again for your time tonight and I look forward to continuing to work together with the city and the community. We also want to open it up if you have any questions for myself.

Okay. Thank you, sir. Um just quick backing up a bit. What's the purpose of the project for someone who doesn't know anything about it? What's this going to bring to the community? Uh what's the what's the purpose of this project?

Absolutely. Um so this project is a fiber optic project. Race backing all way up. Brace Communications is a licensed phone company and internet provider in the state of California. We are a uh California-based company and u just building throughout the state of California that is our focus of our company as well as the investment company behind us and what this is for not to get into the technical details but currently nowadays you're being delivered your services over copper um that has a mixture of some fiber in it and that is copper as a technology is at end of life it's reached its capacity on what it can do and so fiber is the future future. And so Race builds a pure fiber network that brings fiber straight into your home. So what that means is reliability, quality, speed, and price. Race is very competitive um compared to what the current market conditions are. And then in addition to the ISP side of our business, like I said, we are a licensed phone company. So we have $10 phone lines that give you unlimited nationwide calling. as well as u being a phone company, we're registered um all the phone lines with the E911 so that each address is properly documented if they call 911.

Thanks. And I'm sure you've heard it, but yeah, the two big complaints I think are one you notice and communication. You guys got a lot of people to talk to and a lot of communication to do. That's one we hear. And then just putting things back together the way you found it. you guys got to open up streets and do some things and just, you know, making sure our our infrastructure is is protected or at least put back the way it was is really important to us as well.

And that is 100% our goal. Um, and like I said, I do we do apologize through the winter months um with the rain. You can have rain for a week and then you have three days of sunny, but that doesn't mean that the contractor can get back out here to do the asphalt during those three days. So, it really pushed the project out on the restoration side. and our previous project manager did not communicate that properly to the city. So going forward, I feel that working with your city staff, we we've night and day difference since we made those changes. Wonderful. We appreciate questions from council. Council Dupont.

Thank you, mayor. Um, a lot of questions that I get um or comments that I get is, you know, there's asphalt patches in our sidewalks. Can you explain um what that is and and the process that race communications is going to go through uh to repair all that the asphalt patches?

Absolutely. That's a great question. It it does come up a lot as well on our side. Um so when we do the work out in the streets, we try not to break what's called a flag of the concrete and the sidewalk. However, there are certain conditions and areas where that we have no other choice but to do that. So once it's done to make the area secure and safe, they'll temporarily use a cold patch asphalt and compact it and level it off. And then once that street has enough work for a full cement truck to come out and do the work, they'll come back and do that cement repair. So, we are probably at this point, I don't know the percentages, but I know that we have more cement restoration completed than we do asphalt restoration because the cement work wasn't as drastically affected by the the cold and the rain like the asphalt was. And the reason we use the cold patch, it's a much safer um process versus putting plates down that have lifts and bumps and trip hazards on the sidewalks.

Thank you. Um, if individuals have questions or want to communicate or get in contact with race communications, what's the best way to do that? So, the best way is definitely to contact us first and they can do that at our website www.race.com. They can chat with a support technician. They can call in. There's also our telephone number listed there. And when they have a concern, when that call comes into our support center, they automatically get a um one, they'll get a response, but two, on our side, it opens up a trouble ticket. So then we can then track that job from start to completion to make sure that every resident's taken care of and concerns addressed. So sometimes the concerns can be handled just by talking with our support reps. Other times, that's why we have a local project manager here that will go out to the home and actually visit with the resident.

Thank you. Yes. All right. Anyone else? Okay, seeing none. Thank you, sir. I appreciate uh your work and investment and looking forward to the project being done. And thank you, too. That's good good information, too. Just it makes sense on your end that you'd have to wait till there's a you know, enough for a full cement truck or full make much more that makes sense, but being able to communicate that to our residents is is important as well. So, it is key and you you'll see a lot faster things happening now. We're hoping, like I said, to have our first service turned up by midsummer. Once that's done, each neighborhood can then be connected and turned up much quicker than the initial process. We have to build our backbone into our facility and that's what takes the longest. Okay, Mayor Prompo,

thank you. Thank you for the presentation and coming out tonight. I know that asphalt has definitely been a topic of conversation with our community. Um, I just want to point out there was some comments on uh social media of the intersection of Olive and Austin Avenue that the signal um was damaged and just want to bring note to that. I went through it the other day and it still is not fixed, but I'm hoping that our staff and your staff can remedy that as soon as possible because Olive Avenue is one of our main uh corridors in our city. So, yes. Is that over by Lowe's? Correct. On the cross street there. Okay. I know that is being worked out um with city staff and our I believe the the consultant or the traffic company that you guys utilize on the city as well.

Great. Thank you. Yes. Thanks sir. Appreciate it. Thank you. Take care of our roads. Okay. Agenda item F2, Merced Arts Festival presentation. We have Patricia Pratt and Irvin Mendoza going to tell us about the Mercedes Art Festival. All right, welcome to you both.

Hi, good evening everyone. My name is Eva Mendoza and I am Patty Prep. Uh, do I do I have to uh control this right here? Just press Okay. All right. Sorry, guys. Let me set this up real quick. It's for the the documentary we're working on. I think Patty can start. Sure.

All right. Um, we're here to talk to you about the Merced Art Festival, which started today. It kicked off at around 6:00 a.m. this morning with local artist Eddie Rodriguez painting live on the historic Schaefer building. Um, and Merced Art Festival. It's a wingong festival in downtown Merced. Um, one of the largest parts of it are five large scale murals being painted from Peace Street down to close to Martin Luther King. Um, it also includes workshops, performances, all kinds of great things going on downtown. So, we're not only highlighting what's already planned downtown, but we partnered with other arts um artists and organizations downtown to bring additional um creative happenings throughout the week. There's also a photo exhibit where if you walked into city hall today, it's already up. Um those are five local photographers who we are highlighting their work and that'll be part of a beautifification project downtown after the festival. Um there's going to be a mural photo walk on Saturday followed by a downtown takeover with artists and vendors. Um and we'll tell you a little bit more about that. And then this is um this isn't just an art festival. This is about trying to bring everybody in Mercer together to connect and celebrate each other. Oh, you can skip that.

Oh, all right. So, uh, to break it down, we have five murals. Uh, one of them is located at O'Reilly's Tavern in, uh, 1730 Canal Street. We also have another one at the Schaefer Building, 1726 M Street. We have another one at Bell Luna, 350 West Main Street. That's going to be two murals in one location. We have the sensory lab at 847 West Main Street, Merrced. And uh the five murals pretty much they total to 8,600 or actually over 8,600 square feet of impact. Uh the reason why we picked these locations is because we want to increase uh visibility in some of these alleyways because sometimes when walking through there, especially at night, it might not be the most pleasant place to go to, but sometimes when you have art, it kind of creates a place for people to pretty much admire. And it also creates a visibility for community to be seen. So that's one of the reasons why we decided to paint the murals here in these locations. Okay. So our first mural is going to be done by Daniel Munoz um aka Thor and Robin Raman who are both from Merced. Um they're great amazing artists. This is going to be Robin's first mural so he's being mentored through the process. Um, part of our festival is not just bringing in season artists, but allowing opportunity to new artists as well. And we have the Schaefer building. This is being painted by the Urbanist Collective team. Um, they're going a lot higher because their building is taller than it is wide. So, that's going to be really interesting to see. And also, um, painting begins Wednesday, so anybody is welcome to come while we're painting, um, and ask questions or just observe. It's it's a really interesting process to watch. The next one is O'Reilly's Tavern that's

being painted by myself and a women. So, it's a basically a women led team. And then we have Bella Luna, which is our favorite local artist, Ha Agular. And uh his friend Fasm from New York or sorry, not New York, from Adesto. And he uh he actually coordinates the Domo art walls. So he's he's also a mentor helping helping us with our festival.

So uh on top of the amazing murals that we're painting, we're also including another medium which is photography. Um I am one of the pretty much the founder of Central Valley Film Club which holds a lot of uh different photographers here in the Central Valley. A lot of them are from Modesto, Fresno, Patterson and some of them even come from the Bay Area. Whenever we have meetings here, uh we have a gallery that will be at the mag here. And this gallery is called Cen Photos. We're pretty much can photos uh which is uh Spanish. It translates to 100 photos. It is a collective photo exhibition bringing together 100 photographers from across the central valley to showcase their p their perspective of the region through photography. So from small towns to city streets, the exhibition highlights the people, places, culture, and moments that make the Central Valley unique through through us. Pretty much a lot of the photographers that have been submitting is pretty much their first time ever submitting to a gallery. And we've been getting a lot of people who have been driving over an hour away to bring their photos. And this exhibit will be showcasing from uh at the MAC from May 23rd uh May 22nd till the 23rd. All right, this is our downtown takeover. We have um we the map says 40, but we now have 41 businesses and venues participating in the night. Um and then collectively through this, our total is over 200 artists um participating for the night. We don't have everybody updated yet, but I'm pretty sure we're going to get close to 300. We do have artists that are traveling from as far as Los Angeles and Sacramento to participate in our art flop downtown.

And the art flop that's happening on Saturday, so that is from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. Um, that is pretty much one of our big days. The the week-long festival, there's a lot of activities going on and you can look it up on our uh Instagram, Merced AF. But if you are, you know, short on time and you don't know what day to show up, Saturday is our big day because most of the murals will be almost completed and downtown takeover will be happening. Uh so these are some of the activities that we have but we have been adding a lot more um pretty much like almost every other day. Uh so for the whole week we have different workshops. A lot of them are free. Some of them are donation based. And starting today, we did the um the beautifification painting. One of them was done by our local artists also. His name is Eddie over here at the Schaefer building. Uh we put the photo panels up today. Uh which was uh five photographers here from the Central Valley. Tomorrow we have the poetry slam at the MAC. And then starting Wednesday, we are going to start the murals, which is going to be a big day for us. We also have uh pottery demos and a sound bath and that's going to be through earthwork clay space that's located that workshop is going to be at the MAC. We also have uh an event called breaks beats and blackbooks uh which is happening at Cenohos. That's a dance workshop live beats and blackbooks is pretty much where you show up draw. That's something that uh Patty uh coined here uh at Cenohos. We also have um I don't

uh ignore the placemaker lab. We're not doing that no more. Uh we're doing junk journaling on Friday. We're having our exhibit on Friday here at the MAC. And then May 23rd, like I mentioned before, that's our our big day where a lot of the businesses will be participating. Um that really is something of its own because we originally when we wanted to do this festival, we were thinking about closing the street. We were thinking about possibly closing Canal and we decided to go this route instead where we're just we were just like well instead of bringing everybody to Canal Street and let's have businesses also get some of the tourism and let's have businesses also create their own sort of event so that way everybody that comes into Merrced for the first time will be able to look at our map and see all the activations that are taking place for that night. And May 24th is pretty much we're wrapping up everything where the murals will be completed and we're having a workshop at uh Luna Luna 209 which is a a pottery event and a collaboration with the artworks.

Uh we can probably skip that. It's boring. Um and we've already told you this. That's the kind of stuff that that council members get all excited about. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Don't worry about data right now. We're not we're not talking that. Um do you want to talk about your documentary? Sure. Yeah.

So, eventually I'm going to reach out to uh all of you here uh at the council. I would like to interview you for the for the documentary that we're we're taking place. Um pretty much the entire festival will be documented um by myself and some of the people at the Central Valley Film Club. We're going to be capturing the people, the process, and energy behind each moment. We're going to be covering the artists, local businesses, and key leaders who help bring it all together. This story will come together at the full documentary set to premiere in September at the Central Valley Film Festival. We have uh this will be our second annual film festival in in uh September, but we're trying to capture everything. So, facing from the beginning where we weren't sure what was going to happen with the the new ordinance and we've been working really well with the city. So, you know, don't worry, we're not going to create anything uh negative for the city. We want to promote this in a good way. Um, but uh everything that we're doing is going to be displayed towards the end of September and uh you know we're trying to get everybody involved uh so everybody can have like their you know their own chance to speak. So if you haven't got an email from me um expected expected soon.

All right. Maybe lastly we're still accepting donations. Uh you can follow our Zephy page or look it up on our Instagram. Um, we're also accepting donations of like water, sunscreen, stuff like that for our volunteers. I also want to note that we have over 40 volunteers throughout the week. Um, so Merced really came through for us. They they're at our studio right now and they've been there since about 12:00 p.m. today helping us organize things. Oh, that's where you can donate. Scan that. Everybody get your phones out. Um, but yeah, that's it. Thank you. All right. Yeah.

Thank you guys. Any questions, comments, questions from the council? Mayor Prom Boy. No questions, but thank you for everything you guys are doing. I know it's not easy and I'm very excited. I know it started today, but very excited to see everything that pans out this week and I'm very excited and thank you for doing all the hard work to make this possible. Thanks, sir. Council Dupont, I'll echo that. Thank you. Um as well and then if because I will not remember every single thing that's going on. Where else could we find the information um of what events are going on throughout the week?

Uh most of our information is on our Instagram at uh Merced AF. We have the event schedule for pretty much every day until Sunday. So if you're trying to figure out like what day you should show up or what's going on, check the Instagram page for for the info. Sure. Sorry, one more thing. I just want to say great job on all the marketing. It is just a It's fun. It's energetic. So, good job. I want to thank you guys. Very exciting. Thank you for all the love you show me and all the great things you do for Merced. Can I add one more thing? Go.

I think uh when it comes to Merced obviously I think something that we really have going here is community. I feel like a lot of the artists here have been here for a long time and I just want everyone to know that we're not, you know, taking credit for putting on something that has already been here. We've just been doing our best to highlight artists that have been some might been struggling to showcase or been struggling to find a platform and I think it's beautiful seeing everyone take pride in their town. You know, Merrced is a upcoming city and we've known that since day one, but I think it's time that everybody else sees that too. Yeah, agreed. Thank you. All right, round of applause.

Agenda item F3, Merrced Fire Department Advanced Life Support Update, recognition of National EMS 2026 and presentation of clinical excellence awards.

Mr. Brunelli, All right, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Mr. McBride, thank you guys for your time. Um, just want to take an opportunity, this opportunity to give you guys a quick update on what's been happening with our EMS program so that you can see the the strong work that's being done by our members out there and I want you to see the benefits of the community due to all your support moving forward. Um so every year the third week of May is designated as National EMS week and and the goal of that is is really dedicated towards recognizing the work that is performed by all EMS um personnel throughout the United States. Whether it's your your your first responders, the dispatchers sitting in the dispatch center taking the call, um even the nurses at the hospital, we want to take this opportunity to recognize the good work they're doing um for our communities and the lives that they're saving. Um, so to kick off EMS week this this year, I'd like to provide you with just a quick update on the advancements to our EMS program, uh, really as it pertains to the ALS program. Um, share with you some of the partnership opportunities that have been flourishing with our new ambulance provider, AMR. Um, and then I want to take more most importantly, I want to take this opportunity to recognize a couple of our members and the outstanding work that they're doing to advance this program. So, as you guys are aware, uh January 1st of 2025, uh for the first time in department history and the first time in the city of Merced history, um your fire department started offering advanced life support services to the community. Um shortly after that, in March, uh we stood up a second ALS unit with the with two uh units with paramedics running on them. And then in September, we added that additional unit by expanding that level of service to provide advanced life support out of station 51. in the calendar year of 2025 with those three ALS units, we were able to provide uh advanced life support service to over 1,500 patients here within the city of Merced. Um, which was huge in a time that the system was under a lot of strain. As we move forward into 2026, uh, January 1st of this year, we expanded

that service even further and we started providing advanced life support out of Station 55 uh, in North Merrced. Currently, we are on pace within the next uh, 14 to 21 days. We should be adding advanced life support to station 54. And ultimately, as the remainder of our paramedics who just completed training come online and get their lure completed, we will be adding advanced life support service out of station 52. This means that by uh mid July of 2026 of this year, every single fire station in the city of Merced will have a paramedic operating out of it when it goes to emergency medical responses. So, I think that's a that's a testament to the support from this council um and and the work that our folks have put in to get this this level of service increased. Currently, that puts us at 18 firefighter paramedics on staff and we have three more that are currently undergoing training. Um they should be completed midspring of 2027. Currently to date, you can see as we expand that level of service, we're able to actually provide service to more uh more residents. Um, so as of the end of April, the numbers that you see up here from January 1st through April 30th this year, our paramedics have already provided uh advanced level support or advanced life support level of service to over a thousand residents in the city of Merced um including uh almost 1,200 ALS interventions. So a pretty significant increase and again that's that's a testament to the work that they're doing um and to the support that you guys have shown this program. So, with that, we would be remiss if we didn't take this opportunity to to recognize some of some of our folks and uh three three of our paramedics in particular. Um, if I can get paramedic Chakosa and paramedic Kelly to come up to the front here, please. As they come up here, um, what I want to do is recognize their professionalism and really the exceptional clinical skills that these these individuals have brought to the Merced Fire Department. um the effort that they've put in um and their dedication to growing this program

has had a significant impact on on our department on our new paramedics who are who are just starting to provide this level of service into the community that we serve. I think it's important that everybody in here understands that before a paramedic can provide uh care on the streets of Merced and wearing a Merced fire uniform, they have to pass their test. So they are vetted through these individuals right here who have a considerable amount of clinical experience um as paramedics um and and they put their heart and their soul into making sure that we are providing the highest level of service possible uh to the members of the community. Um so with that I want to I want to thank the I want to thank the council want to thank city manager thank all city staff and again thank the residents for supporting us as we we took this journey down the path of advancing our level of service. Um, I think as you can see through the stats there, um, we are having a we are making a considerable impact out there in the community. I think the patients that have been treated by these individuals right here and our other paramedics can attest to the the level of care they're receiving from these folks. Um, and with that, Mr. Mayor, um, I'd like to let's formally recognize them for their great work.

Thank you. Um, Battalion Chief Brunell, he's also got brought you guys in uh, showed the the awards up there on the screen, but we also got some plaques for you guys, too. So, Jennifer, before you start taking pictures, if you don't mind, I'll uh come down and give these plaques to the gentlemen.

Thank you. Thank you guys. You guys want to say anything? I don't have a speech. Yeah. Thank you for your support and we're here for the citizens of our community. So, thank you for everything.

Yeah, just this has been a great advance for us, I think, and Battalion Chief Reell's been right in the middle of it. uh building out our paramedic program which through these guys really allows us to provide a much higher quality of service to our residents when especially this is the biggest thing we can do when it comes to addressing the medical care of our community. And so these guys are on the front lines doing it and we thank you for all your hard work.

Okay. And item G, ceremonial matters, G1, proclamation, bike month. All right. No proclamation for bike month. Lisa, I see you there. If you want to come on down. You're

welcome to come on down if you want, but we're here for bike month. Uh our annual May bike month proclamation. So, I'll turn it over Dean and uh give us a few words about bike month. Uh what it means and why it's important. Do you want to come speak about bike? Sorry.

Sorry. No one told me how to prepare a speech. Sorry.

Sure. So this is U. Carolina Morazz, the new chairperson of the Merced Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission. And um and so yeah, bike month, we just want to emphasize the importance of a different form of transportation than what most of us are used to. Uh riding bicycles is easy. It's clean. It's healthy. Most trips to around town or just a mile or two that's easily done on a bicycle. And um um we want to appreciate that the work that the city is doing to make bicycling safer and more convenient in our town. It's a long long project, but it's ongoing and the city has some um ability enthusiasm for it. We really appreciate that and um so this is a really appropriate time to say thank you very much. I see some of the city staff here that are involved. Um and let's keep on going and making it even better. For more than a century, the bicycle has been an important part of the lives of many Americans. And today, millions of Americans engage in bicycling to commute to work or school, to achieve and maintain physical fitness, and to recreate with family and friends. And whereas the education of cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists as the proper and safe interaction of traffic is important to ensure the safety and comfort of all roadway users and to reduce accidents, injuries, and fatalities for all. And whereas in 2009 the state the city established a bicycle advisory commission to serve as an advisory body to improve conditions for bicyclists to promote bicycling as a means of transportation to improve safety conditions for bicyclists and help implement policy programs and bikeway infrastructure for all ages and users which now acts as a bicycle and pedestrian advisory commission serving users of all modes of active transportation in Merrced. And whereas the city seeks to increase the visibility of the benefits of bicycling, including but not limited to improved fitness for cyclists and an overall reduction in motorized trips, which

leads to reductions in greenhouse gases and noise, as well as improved traffic flow and air quality for all. And whereas the Merced Bicycle Coalition and independent cyclists throughout our city are promoting greater public awareness of bicycle operation and safety education in an effort to make bicycling a safe and normal means of transportation. Now therefore, I, Matthew Sorado, mayor of the city of Merced, on behalf of the city council, and also on behalf of the city of Merced Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, to hereby proclaim the month of May 2026 as bike months throughout the city, and urge all citizens of Merced to recognize the importance of bicycling for transportation and recreation and urge everyone to be more aware of cyclists using our public streets. Thank you. There you go. Agenda item H, written petitions and communications. Mayor the clerk's office received an email from Ramro MSUS regarding agenda item K2. The email was received by the 1pm deadline. It was sent to council and post on the city's website. Any emails received after the 1pm deadline will be sent to council. Agenda item I, public comments. Members of the public who wish to speak on any matter not listed on the agenda may speak during this portion of the meeting and will be allotted three minutes. The mayor may propose a further limit to the time available for all speakers at the discretion of the city council in order to make in order to accommodate as many speakers as possible. State law prohibits the city council from acting at this meeting on any matter raised during the public comment period. Members of the public who wish to speak

on a matter that is listed on the agenda will be called upon to speak during the discussion of that item. and mayor I currently have I believe nine request to speak forms. Okay. Thank you, Jennifer. If you want to call the first several speakers. Okay. If I can get the first five speakers to the podium to my left. Um Glenn Galman, Eli Sache, Gloria Sandival, Steve Russos, and EJ Lorenzi.

Go ahead. All right. All right. Well, good evening, mayor, city council, city staff, uh, fellow recidians. My name is Glenn Gman. I'm a military retiree and a resident of District 6. Tonight, I would like to draw attention to two other significant observances. First, Memorial Day observed this year on May 25th is a solemn time to mourn, reflect upon, and honor the American service members who gave their lives in defense of our nation. For many veterans, many veterans and their families, however, Memorial Day also carries another burden. the remembrance of those who have lost who we have lost after the battle ended to the invisible wounds of war such as PTSD, depression, and suicide. That reflection connects directly to the second observance, May as National Mental Health Awareness Month. This year's theme, more good days together, reminds us that hope, healing, and prevention are strengthened through community. With that spirit in mind, I want to raise awareness of a growing grassroots coalition of federal, state, and local partners working together to reduce military and veteran suicide here in our community. The reality is simple. The VA cannot do all of this work alone. Reducing military and veteran suicide requires a whole of community approach. community partners including the Veterans Administration, the California Department of Employment, the Merced County Veteran Service Office, Sanwaqin Valley Veterans, and Westare, just to name a few, have begun collaborating to improve coordination, expand access, and deliver timely,

effective support to our military and veteran community. Additionally, I'm grateful for ongoing dialogue with the directors of the Merced County Behavioral Health and Human Service agencies as we explore innovative solutions to better serve our veterans, particularly in light of the anticipated impacts of Proposition One on local services and funding. Coalitions matter because they unite diverse partners around one shared purpose and in this case, saving and improving lives. If you would like to learn more about the coalition, please contact the Merced County Veteran Service Office. I'll also be in the back afterwards to answer any questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate your comment and your warning. All right. Good evening.

Hey, good evening. My name is Eli Saxs. I'm a registered nurse living in Merrced and I volunteer for a lot of orgs in town, including American Red Cross and LGBTQ Merrced. I came today because I learned about the bike month proclamation from finally being able to attend a bike and pedestrian advisory committee meeting or BPAC meeting, which I'd been trying to do for two years, but they kept getting cancelled for administrative reasons. Uh over the course of these two years though, I've also done research into what Mercedy's doing to improve bikability and what might be possible for our future. I've had meetings with staff at MCAG, put in a bike safety request at traffic committee and gone through that process. And I've spoken several times with city engineer Daryl Jordan, and I've learned that by law, cities are supposed to spend 20% of Measure V funds on bike and pedestrian safety improvements. Unfortunately, the research I've been able to do has shown that Merced has not come close to this benchmark. Instead, using those funds to pave Yusede Avenue on the north side recently, for example. This makes me truly insensed as a lifelong bike rider while there's still a huge sunken in crater on the Bear Creek bike path at our street since it caved in in the floods in 2023. I believe there are very few bikable uh thoroughares from the north and south ends of town uh also which makes the bike uh proclamation bike month proclamation feel quite hollow to me. Uh, I was doubly dismayed at the BPAC meeting where uh, Daryl Jordan was truly adversarial with the commissioner's constructive comments, making it very clear that he does not take direction from BPAC. He only takes direction from the city council, hence me being here today. Uh, there's so much potential for Merced to be a very bike and pedestrian friendly city if only BPAC were given a seat at the table ensuring that Measure V money is spent on smart bike and pedestrian safety improvements for Merced. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, Gloria.

Good evening, council and staff and members of the public. Um, what I want to just give you some comments of some of my worry that is happening right now. There's a a real dangerous global landscape that we're living in right now. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, issues of war, issues of starvation in different places. Um, our voting rights are being challenged. Um, you're entering a budget process that is going to, you know, be really challenging to all of you. um cost of living, cost of gas, lack of affordable housing, um uh artificial intelligence taking jobs away. I believe uh Zuckerberg had announced 8,000 uh people being laid off, uh just in his company. Uh the reason that I'm bringing this up is because I was uh able to watch the presentations at the county level. three directors of the county uh presented from their three different uh divi departments the you know impacts of HR1 which was the big somebody calls them beautiful I say ugly bill and it's you know that was part of the presentation that they gave it was a projection of what the eligibility changes are the changes in in numbers and the re uh receiving of monies. Um I I'd like to ask you and I think that we need a more educated audience and um so people understand how our city is not um exempt from being affected by some of these things that are coming down. It's

not all going to happen at the same time. There's going to be some work for eligibility of services. There's going to be only a threemonth SNAP or food stamps in three years. There's a work eligibility. Medical health care costs not only going to be going up, but some people aren't even going to have it. But this brings me just to my suggestion that the city consider having presentations that give that kind of projection, you know, to our community. we need to know what's going to be considered by you. So, um there's always a lot of things to have to cover with our budget. Um I I I understand that part of it is parks and, you know, community services already increased their fees. Uh so there's going to be, you know, less opportunity for us. But just some thoughts for you. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss. All right, Dr. Russos. Uh good evening council staff uh community members. Steve Russos. I'm here representing our organization Hulu Mung Center and who means love and m and I just want to say uh on May 9th we had our third annual M American Day at Bob Hart Square and it was fantastic. Uh I want to thank uh the city uh Chris Jensen uh Alva Mahia others public works several of you were there. Thank you for your support. What was amazing for us is we've been doing these kinds of events for years and this was one of the first times as we walked around and talked to people and they said that they did not know enough about our Mong community and this was a chance because it was downtown and people were walking around with their Cold Stone ice cream or coming out of 510 Beastro whatever you know they were coming out and they were seeing things that sometimes they don't have a chance to do because our events happen in in further places that are closed and I just never considered how powerful it would be to have a public venue like that that's open from all sides um and to bring the community together. It was incredible and many people loved it. So, we're planning for next year. Many, many thanks and I hope other uh groups consider doing their events at Bob House Square as well. Thank you.

Thanks, sir. You guys did a wonderful job, especially the Mondo building in the museum. That was fantastic.

Thank you, Mr. EJ Lorenz. Thank you uh Mayor Sado and to the city council. I'm here this evening to invite the city council at our booster club function on May 27th at uh the new AIM Square building on 26th and our M Street. Uh we're going to be announcing at that time our new plaza AGM Plaza and we'd love to have the city council there to be our guest. So um if uh at the same time I would like to comment uh Saturday evening I was at Bob Hart Square uh a development that the also that the Lorenzi family put together and I saw the beautiful function of the Mong community and I couldn't believe how many people and how much fun and everything else was there in the plaza And so what's I see is that Bob Hart Square today is really taking the position of being the center of downtown. And uh so we look forward to having the city council and the staff Scott and and uh and all there that evening for a little bit of pasta and Italian celebration. God bless.

Thanks, sir. What time on the 27th? Oh, I'm sorry. 5:30. 5:30. Yeah. All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Next group of speakers. J. Okay. If I can get Eli Torres, Marcus Ariano, Joe Braso, Brcella. Uh, Gino Kui, and Agie Freeman. What's your name? I just called him. I can't believe I'm following Elmer Morenzi. This is uh I think our next speaker, Eli Torres. Am I okay? I think uh Mr. Torres was next.

I'm sorry. I'm hard of hearing. I did I blow it? I can't hear where. I'm sorry. Mr. Torres, would you be willing to uh We appreciate it. All right. Go ahead, sir. Whenever you're ready. $1,500 for these. Sorry. No, go ahead, sir. You go ahead. Are you going to let me go? Yeah, you go.

I'm sorry. I'm Joe Brucha. I am a former executive director of the instructional programs for Merced Union High School District. I'm now retired for over 20 years and I'm spending all my time walking on the bike paths and riding the bike. My daily walk is a bit scary. Passing me and others within inches are adults and youth with traditional and electric bikes, scooters, and those fast skateboards. All without any warning. No, on your left or I'm passing through. And after a walk, we get together with other walkers and same thing happens with them. There is a problem. And to improve this problem, I've handed out a comprehensive program that you can take a look at and uh and work from there. By the way, I researched a lot of cities. They have education programs on teaching kids bike etiquette and bike and the bike laws. Um, if you get a chance, go on the internet. You'll find all kinds of, uh, wonderful programs anywhere from, uh, Marin County, uh, Sacramento, San Diego, and so on. I urge you to review and start some kind of review and start some kind of communications with our citizens. And you can start with the school districts. Now is a great time to see them now. It' be a great summer job for somebody in the school district to put something together where we can teach some kids and adults some adequate just to say something as simple as on your left when they pass. Another immediate thing and on the handout you have out there on the second page is a handout that when you send the

bill out there's a little handout for adults just reminding them the etiquette of saying on your left a warrant or giving a toque or something like that it goes in your bill doesn't even c it doesn't even cost an extra stamp a matter of fact you used to have something called Merced connects connecting or something like that a little newsletter that went out that's a couple of the solutions s uh other things are involving the SRO's at the campuses and um and be aware I read the Fresno B they are accidents every week or two with an electric bike usually and and 14year-old parents giving their kids an electric scooter which are scare more scarier than the electric bikes if you're walking they come by they can't control those very Well, as I leave you, I just want to remind you one thing. Leadership is knowledge, communication skills, and caring, in this case, caring for your citizens. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Rush. I think we'll return either June on our June 1st or June 15th meeting to to talk more about some of the some of the items you just brought up. And I'm going to pass these flyers out to some of those kids downtown who are always swerving at everybody's trucks. Mr.

Okay. Sorry. It's okay. All right. Who's next? Mr. Arato. Good evening, Marcus.

Good evening. Good evening, mayor, council, staff, and the public. My name is Marcus Ariano with Treehouse Tutoring, and today I'm here on behalf of the Mongamerican Day organizational committee. As uh Steve Russos already iterated, just want to reiterate some of his points. May 9th, we had an amazing turnout to our Mongamerican Day event downtown. And one of the reasons for this amazing turnout was due to having it at the heart of Merced right at Bob Hart Square. So, just wanted to have some thank yous. one to the city of Merrced. One specific thank you to the director of parks and wreck, Chris Jensen. We started this process with him back in October of last year and very quickly determined that Bob Hart Square would be a perfect perfect location for it. One for bringing out a lot of the community that might not know about certain events like these and two to highlight the strength of the Merced community at large. And I did just want to say thank you to the council on their their leadership when it comes to the street closure ordinance. I know some of the matters there are still up in the air, but I just did want to say that events like this one, events like Lao New Year of last week, uh the Merced Arts Festival this week, all show the vibrance of the Merced community and how much our citizens really want to come out and support these things. And so any legislation moving forward, I think should be made with this in mind. And once again, thank you to everyone who came out. And if you didn't get a chance to go this year, we are already planning for next year and hope to have an even stronger collaboration with the city to make it better than ever. Thank you.

Thank you, Marcus. Thank you for a fantastic event. All right, Jean, I think you were next. Good evening.

Good evening, mayor, council, and public. and I haven't been here for a few months but uh it's always a joy to come and I love to hear what happens at the meetings and I love to stay to the end and hear comments of what everyone is doing. So this is great opportunity and um I would like to start by saying I'd like to follow up with Dr. Bruce is uh building community so important. We need to work together. We need to have the public and the council work together. So that's what I'm hoping and I want to con comment on Mr. Tho and Mr. Shong. Uh we did what you call Jacob's Rock, but it was with also with um it was actually promoted um by another group about with the housing and concerns with South Merrced. We walked for about 45 minutes. Do you remember? And um at the end we we we started at child at um at the um center there on Child's Avenue, Golden Valley. And uh we walked along Child's Avenue and and on a couple side streets so we could see what was there. And Mr. Tho said at the end, may I quote you and you can say maybe I don't get exactly right, but he said, you know, if I hadn't gone with the public, I wouldn't have seen some of these things. So, I think it's really important that we get together with the public. You know, you're doing your thing and we're doing our thing. And by the way, the the bicycle coalition, I think there were seven months we didn't have meetings and I thought it just seems to be a box to check off. And I'm hoping that we'll that will change and it's bike month. So, um I think that's really a good opportunity for us work together. And I would like to challenge you. Let's do it again. I did it with Mr. Harris. I see he's not here tonight, but uh Council Member Harris on 23rd Street because there were concerns with the public about safety on that road uh going from 140 highway 140 on 21st. People had to

cross over to town and it's residential and the property owners said they can't even get out of their driveways. And it was really eye opening. It was very eye openening. We had three people. I'm I'm a property owner there in that area in his district, District Three. and and uh we had two other people from that district and Mr. Harris and it was it was very good that we get together. I think we need to build community in whatever we do and so um I'd like to challenge you to walk. I did a 45minute walk from the bus stop. Actually I talked to a bus somebody that got off a bus with a bicycle and he told me about how he was riding on um Olive Avenue. I can't remember the side street but he was hit by a car. had a $100,000 settlement. The person were driving was speeding and ran into him. So safety is is number one. And if we have I think there are seven miles of bike paths. Do I time it?

You got a few more minutes. Seven miles of bike paths that are on busy roads. I used to come to the city to ride on the you know along the the the um the bike paths. But anyway, let's get together. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome back. Miss Freeman, Mr. Mayor.

I do. Jennifer, do we have any other speakers? I believe she's the last one. Thank you. Agie, whenever you're ready.

Mr. Mayor, council, staff. My name is Agie Freeman. I'm here representing District 6 as a community leader on behalf of our veterans in our community and on behalf of all of those in our community that support the ME Merced Field of Honor. A few weeks ago, um, the city recognized some volunteers of the year and I was coralled by the veterans who were in attendance that day in the lobby downstairs and they asked me, "Did you see it? District 6 Councilman, you remain seated during the flag salute, so we see you. Our veterans see you." So, I was inspired to write a letter to you, Mr. Jeang. this letter. I'm writing this letter to you as a community leader alongside Mercer citizens who pay attention to the leadership and conduct demonstrated on the Merced City Council Deis. Leadership is demonstrated through integrity and respect for the institutions, traditions, and freedoms that unite our community and our nation. When city council members take office, each swears an oath, a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, and to faithfully discharge the duties of public office. The integrity of that oath matters. Public office carries integrity beyond politics and personal preference. At the beginning of each city council meeting, the chamber rises for prayer and recites the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Week after week, while we stand to honor the American flag, you remain seated. Council member Jeang, while no one questions your constitutional right to make your own personal and political choices, the

citizens of Merced absolutely do have the right to question your message. While our citizens stand and you remain seated, our question is who are you representing at that moment? This is about Mercedes respect. Respect for the flag, respect for the sacrifices made under the flag, respect for the office you hold, and respect for the community who elected you to serve us. Councilman Jong, respectfully and unmistakably, the people of Merced want you to know we see you. Our veterans see you. And we stand for the flag because it represents to us duty, integrity, citizenship, unity, honor, respect, sacrifice, service, and freedom. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Jennifer. Jennifer, anyone else? I think that's all we had. Mayor. Okay. Takes us to consent. Agenda item J. Consent calendar. All right. Any items that any members of the council wish to have poll for separate consideration? Council member Tao. Yeah. Mayor, um I would like to uh recuse myself for J uh five because I uh was on the planning commission and the vote for that. Okay. Mayor, I will also need to recuse myself for J5. Okay.

All right. Have two recusals for J5 which takes us to three. We have one of quorum for J5. So, attorney city attorney. Yes. Uh, mayor council, excuse me. Uh, with the lack of a quorum, we cannot conduct business. Um, the interesting part is it's for the item, but we cannot conduct business under our quorum. Okay. For J5. For J5 of four.

Okay. So, we'll um uh Okay. Well, two recusals on J5. Any uh other items that anyone would like to see pull for separate consideration? All right, Jennifer, anything from the public? I do have one from RSLi Okmpo for agenda item J4. Okay. Okay, we'll pull that and nothing else. That was it. Just J4. That was it. Discussion or motion with respect to the balance. Motion. Second. We have a motion by council member Bole or mayor prom and a second by council member Dupont. Mayor and council. Please cast your votes.

Okay. The motion passes unanimously. All right. Thank you, Jennifer. Move to J4. And if Good evening.

Good afternoon. My name is Saraselio Campo. I work with Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability. We are encouraged by the city doing its due diligence on preparing for the implementation of the legal requirements of SB77 or government California government code 54953.4 by the July 1st deadline and thank for working to find the best conference technology to support the public in being ci civically engaged. While today's decision is specifically to approve the legislative body members to use remote participation in cases of disability, SB77 is intended to diversify and increase public engagement in local government to ensure that regardless of location, residents are able to participate in democratic processes and help guide policy and programs that impact their everyday life. Public participation is a crucial component for the body as it makes decisions impacting the entire city. As public servants, please use SB77 requirements as an opportunity to improve the public ability to give input as it contributes to govern good governance and improves your ability to better serve the city. In addition to the SB77 requirements, please ensure that the upcoming plan does not decrease speaking time and that a minimum of of 3 minutes per person is allowed and that any public member has the right to their allotted time without limits to the number of speakers per agenda item. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome. Additional uh Jennifer. Anything else from the public on J4? That's all we have. Mayor. All right. Back to council for discussion or a motion. Motion. Second. Okay. I have a motion by council member Dupont and a second by council member Tao. The motion will include the adoption of resolution 2026-22, a resolution of the city council, the city of Merced, California, adopting administrative policy and procedure C9, legislative body reasonable accommodation policy for remote participation at meetings subject to the Brown Act. Meritt and council, please cast your votes. Okay, the motion passes unanimously.

All right, thank you, Jennifer. Um, J5 takes the J5, but J5 will have to be rescheduled uh for a future date due to lack of a quorum. And that takes us to our public hearing and our first public hearing item K1. Okay. Agenda item K, public hearings. K1, public hearing, request to open and continue the scheduled public hearing, receipt of final public comment and final review and approval of the US housing and urban development 2026 annual action plan to the June 1st, 2026 city council meeting, including approval and award of funding for projects and activities listed in the draft final plan.

Thank you, Jeff. All right, Kim. Welcome. Good evening, city council. Um, I don't have a presentation uh prepared for tonight. I'm not sure we need one. It's pretty fast and simple item. Um, but I wanted to just go through a few things. Um, the reasons for the continuence. Um, we are recalculating some of our home funds. Um right now um after the conditional commitment letter was approved for link housing um we are simultaneously working with Mercy Village on the home walk home ARP documents. So that's kept us a little uh busy um sidelined uh and not able to spend as much time on the annual plan as we probably should. Um um and then we're also finalizing the pro the project list with CDBG funds. um and uh working out the final funding whether to use home or CDBG for certain projects. Um we did get the HUD allocations announced on April 3rd. Um our home allocation will be 1 million45,361 and home funds will be 452,365. Um it's an overall net reduction of about 39,000 um from last year and uh currently we are on time with HUD timeline. Um the submittal deadline is June 3rd. Um we are slightly behind our own timeline that we set. Um but the timeline that we set builds in this flexibility to be able to move items to different meetings. All right. So, what we're asking uh council to do is open the public hearing, uh accept any public comment that might be here in attendance tonight and

willing to provide their comment and then continue it to the next meeting uh June 1st. Thank you, Miss Nut. First, any questions for Kim? All right, seeing none, we'll open the public hearing at this time. Uh Jennifer, do we have any requests to speak from the public? I do have two. Um, one from Leticia Le and Sheila Garcia.

Leticia, I think you were first. Yes. I need to see. Good afternoon. Um, my name is Leticia Luki and I am the warehouse supervisor at Harvest Time. Uh, we have a video for you guys to watch. Maybe you timed it just perfectly so the delay went Oh, you got it.

Harvest Time is a food ministry that is here for the community. We gather food from different vendors around Merrced and we get food together and we have sometimes up to 30 volunteers that come in and help put it all together and hand it out to our community. Right now we are helping 330 families every two weeks. My name is Mika Martinez. I am the assistant supervisor of uh Harvest Time Warehouse. I have been here a little over three years. We have a good partnership not only with our food bank but with Catholic Charities, with Target, with SaveMart, and then we have um local people that come that have harvested their trees, their fruit trees at home, and they've brought it here to us. So yeah, we we have a good partnership with a lot of people in our mission. It says that we are filling the um food gap or the food insecurities in our community. Harvest time is for those that have food insecurity or lack of food. if they're having to make choices between um paying the rent or buying groceries. From the very beginning, it's all been volunteers that had a heart for the community and to serve others. So, we're trying to help fill in the gaps. I'm Patricia. I work at the Atwater Super Target. I actually reached out to Harvest Time. we were looking for a secondary place to donate food because we were getting so much that we needed to get out of the store and didn't want

to waste. And then just from working with them, I've learned like they're very passionate about the community and giving um to those in need. They always ask us for anything that they need. It's a great community, very nice people. They care about you. You you can't go wrong. That's it. Thank you very much. You guys have been a big support for us. So, we appreciate it.

You guys are a blessing and thank you. And you and you time the video to the second perfectly. That was pretty good. So, thank you all for your work, Sheila. Just push the side.

That's the last one. How do I get back to the first? That's the last slide. Okay, good evening, mayor and city council members and staff. The food box distribution that you saw in the video is the culmination of hard work and long hours throughout the month. Just driving by the warehouse when we're closed and it's all quiet, it's difficult to imagine what takes place inside. So, we're grateful to the RISE team at United Way for putting together that video for us. We have the two distributions that are listed here. Food box is twice a month, while the perishable pickup is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Harvest Time was conducting food recovery long before it became a mandate. By definition, it is the practice of capturing surplus edible food from businesses or farms that would otherwise be discarded and redirecting it to feed people in need. It acts to alleviate hunger and reduce landfill waste. Harvest Time recovers an average of 50,000 pounds per month. In addition to the food we recover, we also purchase dry and refrigerated items from the food bank to help make the boxes uniform as much as possible. All on a food bank or a food budget of about $750 a month. This slide shows the number of individuals we served last month to a 20% increase from just a couple years ago. Here we have Diane and Ruby. Two of our volunteers are preparing homeless bagged lunches for our program and they're delivered Monday and Wednesday and Friday to the rescue mission. It's a great partnership. We provide the

lunches and the mission provides the programs to help people get off of the streets. Then in January of this year, the rescue mission asked if we could provide even more bagged lunches for their village of hope. We now deliver a 100 lunches per month to help with their respbit care program. Our volunteers are vital to our operation. We simply couldn't exist without them. Whether they drive, sort food, or distribute every task is important. Here we have Buster handing out orange juice and one minute and moving stacks of pallets the next. And here in the red hat is Carlos getting ready. He gets a quite a workout on distribution days as the the boxes weigh between 45 and 50 pounds each. Our mission statement is to bridge the gap of food insecurity in our community one family at a time. It's difficult for people to feel hopeful when they are hungry. So that's what we provide, hope. One box or one lunch at a time. And with your help, we'll be able to continue. Thank you. Thank you, Sheila. Jennifer,

anything else from the PO? That's all we have. Mayor, so the request is to uh continue the public hearing. So, leave the public hearing open and then and continue it to the next meeting. Is there uh we need a motion to that effect? Kim's nod. Motion. Second. Okay. Okay. I have a motion by council member Deont and a second by Mayor Pro Tim Bole. Mayor and council, please cast your votes. And the motion passes unanimously. Thank you everyone.

See you back June 1st. Agenda item K2, public hearing, site plan review permit number 26-000018 and minor use permit number 26-000030 initiated by Eric Gonzolves on behalf of Euseite 1380 LLC property owner. The project site is a 3.19 acre portion of a 5.7 acre parcel. The subject site is generally located on the south side of Eastman Avenue approximately 460 ft west of Parsons Avenue. at 1380 East Avenue. This request would allow the development of a self-s storage facility, approximately 500 storage units at a site zone plan development number 20 and designated business park and the general plan.

Thank you, Jennifer. Before we begin, we have city attorney Cornwell, council, councelor Dupont, city Mr. City. Well, we can start with our uh conflicts. Okay, council. Yeah. Um recuse myself with this item. I was on the plenty commission for this item. Okay. Council member Dupont. Mayor, I need to recuse myself from this item as the applicant is a client of my law firm.

Mr. Mayor, that would bring us down to three. Um, for lack of a quorum like the other item, um, we cannot conduct business on this item this evening. uh staff is to uh contact the clerk's office and we can renotice um for a public hearing for a future date. Sounds good. And on the on on the agenda today, it said the staff recommendation was to continue this possibly to June the 1st. So, um could be then most likely June 1st. Yeah. Okay. And then we do have public comment. Do we want to take that now or can we take that June 1st?

June 1st. We can't take the public comment with um three council members. Gotcha. Great. All right. Apologize to everybody who is here tonight for that item. Due to lack of a quorum, we can't take any action tonight. Um but we'll be ready on June the 1st. Okay. Agenda item K3, adoption of an urgency ordinance extending a temporary moratorum on street closure encroachment permits pursuant to California government code section 65858. Thank you, Jennifer. Miss Lucas.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Madame Mayor Pro Tim, council members, Mr. City Manager, and Mr. City Attorney. Um, I'm Rhonda Lucas, and I am presenting tonight, but this really is the Rhonda Sam and Chris show. This is a joint collaborative effort currently amongst city planning um city attorney's office and parks and recreation department. Little bit of background on how we got here. As you all may recall, you adopted an urg urgency ordinance um which placed a moratorum on the mechanism by which we allowed events um to take place. It was the street closure ordinance at chapter 12.42 um of Merced Municipal Code. as more and more um events were occurring, which is wonderful for our community. We we found out in the administration of those that there were inconsistencies with in the ordinance and existing policies. we weren't um consistently applying and that was leading to a concern about public health and safety and welfare and um opening ourselves up to allegations of of being arbitrary and capriccious. None of that is good. So we we wanted to take a step back, assess what the demands actually were and and come up with um a workable solution. again you adopted urgency ordinance number 2590 that created this moratorum um on April 20th 2026 um importantly since you've created that moratorum the

ordinance contained an administrative discretionary process to allow uh events to occur and events have occurred um with some success um actually with amazing success. I don't think we've had uh really any negative feedback up to this point and you heard about Mong New Year and the Lao celebration and those are just a few examples. Um this uh exception the the rules under which we've been operating would also be extended under tonight's proposed ordinance. Um, importantly, um, let me go back one. Without this extension, um, the moratorum will expire June 4th, 2026, and we will not have an opportunity to revisit this issue without a moratorum. We will just have to reinstitute 12.42 and and try and figure out the answers. And the reason for that is because the government code provision under which we're operating. Um if you pass tonight's proposed urgency ordinance, we will get an extension for 10 months and 15 days. Um again, that is the very specific provision of the code. We don't get to ask for a different time frame. It's 10 months and 15 days. It is our desire um to continue working diligently and have a proposed solution prior to the expiration of those 10 months and 15 days, but that that's kind of the only option the government code gives us. Um and lastly, we have been working both internally from all of our departments as well as um doing some public outreach and we will continue those efforts and that's part of the reason we're

requesting uh that you extend the moratorum. Um, again, you allow the city manager to administratively approve the street closure uh encroachment permits specifically in the downtown area. Just as a case study, if an event utilizes Bob Hart Square and the square is available, the event will be approved. If the event needs additional space um and we can facilitate it by closing canal that likewise will in all likelihood be approved um outside the downtown area. We want to apply that same model. If the event can be utili can utilize any available city-owned spaces reservable and suitable for housing events, the events will be approved. Um, examples of these spaces outside of downtown include the Senior Community Center, Rotary Scout Hut, Merced Open Air Theater, Park Picnic Shelters, Moat, and those types of venues. Um, staff's thought behind this is that you, the council, have invested funds and resources and made policy decisions to create spaces to host community events. and we need to be consistent with those both fiscal and policy decisions and direction that you've given us. Um in addition to you have other spaces for other public needs such as ingress and egress and we need to balance all of those competing demands to the extent that we have a publicly available space that the council has designated and invested in. we should be utilizing that we believe rather than imposing on or infringing upon for example a street closure that's really primary purpose is ingress and

eress um the city policy A25 is a outdated policy candidly um it was last touched in 1997 it is entitled use of city and redevelopment agencyowned real property. We don't have a redevelopment agency anymore. Um, it references aspects of the Merced Municipal Code that are no longer in existence and that I couldn't find even using our resources and the clerk's office. So, it's very hard to truly ascertain what the overall intent was. Um based on all of our discussions internally and uh under the guidance of city manager staff is going to be recommending that we remove this policy altogether that we resend it. This policy was adopted by resolution. So we will request the rescion by resolution as well. We are taking the aspects of this policy that work and are still applicable and make sense and incorporating our plan is to incorporate them into the new program that we hope to have in front of you before 10 days and 15 or 10 months and 15 days. So what's the new concept of the new ordinance? Number one, it focuses on the event. Um prior to this endeavor um the focus was on closing streets. That was the mechanism. Staff has taken a holistic approach looking at again across all departments and looking at um our municipal code and saying the focus should be on the event. What does the event demand and how best do we facilitate the event? maximize our city um utilities. Um it requires events to be held in city

created reservable spaces if those spaces are available and appropriate for the proposed event. It allows for street closure encroachment permits but limits our reliance on street closures again by placing the events in areas that are created to house such events. um Bob Hart Square, Applegate Park, the moat, for example. We heard loudly from the community, uh those who did attend, and thank you for those in the downtown area who attended the one community outreach meeting. They would like one-stop shopping. That's what I'm calling it, my words, nobody else's. where in the past because we uh focused on the street closure many of our event organizers they were at planning then they were sent to parks and recck sometimes they were sent to public works or PD and that got frustrating and it really wasn't efficient at all. We're trying to fix that which is part of the reason we need the extension. We're trying to take a broad-based approach and figure out how to make it all fit and work together with hopefully one application, a clear set fee and permit structure. And then on the back end, we staff, it's up to us to to to go to each department. We're not going to burden the citizenry is our hope. Continued again, a standardized approach to fees. Um, event organizers must coordinate with affected businesses associated with the approved event location and the parks and recck department. What we mean by that, the concept that we have right now is that if for example, you're hosting an event, you you close canal, you need to reach and I'm I shouldn't say you. I'm going to host an event at Bobart Square and close Canal. I need to reach out to the con now business owners and let them

know of the event and offer them an opportunity to participate in the event if they so choose free of cost. Likewise, I need to um work through parks and wreck because they will be the point on this new policy, this new ordinance, and give them a table or a space to promote whatever the city wants to promote as part of the event. We are recommending and we would very much like your feedback on this that we stop allowing as a general rule or routine practice event organizers to utilize city-owned parking structures to house their events. Um, under policy A25 in part, we allowed that for a nominal fee. I believe it was $35. Um some of our thought and rationale behind this is as we've seen in recent events or in recent past with the events that have been occurring as we direct people into Bob Hart Square and sometimes closed canal we have increased demand for the existing parking structures because you're taking away some parking. You're you're you're channeling people in. So, we want to use those parking facilities for the purpose for which they were intended and you all invested in them. Parking, not hosting events. Also, um a couple council meetings ago, you approved a pretty substantial budget item for elevator repair and whatnot. in talking to city staff. Um utilizing our parking structures to house events and other purposes for which they weren't primarily um designed for greatly increases maintenance, wear and tear. And our hope is again to focus on

the primary purpose that you all created things for. And we are recommending or will be recommending unless you tell us you don't like the idea um that as a general rule we stop allowing the rental of a parking structure. Um city council will be given the right to approve very unique or large events. This is a concept that we kicked around. It also came out of our um public outreach meeting that we had in the downtown area. If we'd like a set of rules, we'd like a set of ordinances, but if there's an exception out there, there's an event that we just didn't think of or it's a once in a-lifetime occasion and it's too good of an opportunity to pass up, but we never contemplated it. We want to provide an opportunity wherein we process the application, we get the the staff report ready, but ultimately the decision would rest with you, the city council, as to whether or not you want to for that one event uh utilize um additional street closures or greater access. Um, in general, we um hope that you give us the additional time to come up with a thoughtful holistic approach. Um, that is what if you pass the uh urgency ordinance tonight, you will allow us to do. If not, we we'll figure it out. We'll make do. Um, and so what are we asking for? We would really love your input on these concepts. Um, and secondly, we would like to for you to move to adopt tonight's urgency ordinance and extend the city's temporary moratorum on street closures for a period of 10 months and 15 days. I

know that this extends us through Veterans Day and the holiday and Christmas. Um, hopefully we'll get it done by then, but if we don't, we we already uh know that we will be hosting our Veterans Day parade. we will be hosting our Christmas event via the exception allowed and um at that point if you have any questions or comments for Sam, Chris or I um have at it. Okay. Thank you, Ron. Any questions for our for our team for our chief deputy city attorney also for Mr. Rashet, Mr. Jensen?

Okay, seeing none at this time and Ron again before Snider two, you have two requests. One, most importantly, consideration of the extension of the emergency uh ordinance to extend the temporary moratorium on street closures for 10 months, 15 days. And then second, uh possible you want input, discussion, direction, but we're not making any decisions tonight. Uh you're going to come back at some point and staff will come back with a final

Absolutely, Mr. Mayor. Um the the decision point tonight is whether or not you will uh pass an urgency ordinance that gives us that extension. Um with or without the extension, you will have at some point in time in front of you uh an ordinance that makes all of the necessary changes and you full public hearing and and the normal ordinance uh adoption process at that point in time. All right. Any questions before before we open the public hearing? Okay, seeing none, Jennifer will open the public hearing. Are there any request to speak from the public?

I do have one request to speak form from Eli Torres.

Thank you, Mr. Torres. Okay, ready. Thank you. Good evening everybody. My name is Gloria Valdinos. I am the executive director to the downtown Merced Partnership as well as Visit Merrsed, which is the new tourism improvement district here for Merced. First, I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to city staff for the work that they've been doing on this ordinance and for how collaborative and responsive um they've been throughout this process. I know that it's not um that I know that it's important and complex issue and I appreciate the time and thought put into this. I love and support a lot that was said in the ordinance concept today and again, thank you staff for working on this. I wanted to make a comment on the proposed no longer allowing the parking structure to routinely be used to house events. While I don't specifically um have a stance on that specific operational matter, I did want to encourage council and staff as part of this ordinance development process to continue exploring pathways for events like the supermarket and other future largescale community events to continue occurring in downtown. Events like these create opportunities for younger generations to build a connection with downtown. We've seen these events bring thousands of people into the community, including many young attendees and visitors from outside of Merced. And I think those experiences really matter long term. As Merrced continues to grow outwardly, I think it's important now more than ever that we continue intentionally nurturing downtown Mercured and how people experience it, especially for younger audiences who are still forming their relationships with our city and our community spaces. These um events have happened in other places like Applegate

Park and now at the Merced Law Merced Mall parking lot. And while those locations can absolutely host these events, I think events like these deserve a home with an environment that creates broader connection and experience, it's different when they're part of an ecosystem like downtown Merced where attendees are surrounded by local businesses, restaurants, art, and the overall character of the district, creating a st a stronger sense of place and connection. Um just like you heard from um the Mong organizers and the events, uh people were very excited to be able to host a large-scale event in downtown. And even with that, I know that it was there was a lot of people here and so we want to make sure that we're creating that space. I appreciate the thoughtful approach that's been taken with this ordinance and I also want to express my support for extending the timeline um to ex um the timeline to allow staff and stakeholders additional time to continue shaping it in a way that both addresses operational concerns and preserves opportunities for activations and community connection in downtown Merrced, not just for the Merrced of today, but for the Merrced of the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Gloria. A little applause. Thank you. You had your spot twice today. So, thank you for that. For the for the third time. Thank you.

Um, this is actually my first time ever at a meeting, so this is pretty neat. I appreciate you guys having me. It is uh nerve-wracking and exciting at the same time. Um, yeah, I just wanted to uh I I agree that more time definitely on this would be uh a good idea. It seems like there's a lot to kind of manage. Uh I feel like I uh my event which some of you may know is a supermarket. Uh I'm uniquely spaced in a very specific style of event. Uh I've been doing this, we're doing an event uh May 31st at the mall using a parking lot structure uh privately owned but still parking lot and it still gets the people working moving. Um I do think it's our 5year anniversary. So we first started doing the back parking lot of 16th Street 5 years ago which is crazy. We're still going. Uh, parking lots have been a pretty key piece of uh, what we do and uh, I think it was touched on, you're right, maybe the fee for parking lot uh, structures maybe were low. Uh, I didn't set them. I'd be more than willing to pony up for more if that's ever needed. I do think raising prices on things like that to accommodate, like you said, uh, the elevators and things like that, that's a great idea. Um, I also think if that structure just becomes an issue, I think I'm one of the unique vendors who maybe has only used that outside of uh movies in the park, I believe, occasionally. So, frequently that was used just by me, uh, which we were able to make a beautiful event there. Um, but there's other uh, spaces in town and I think farmers market continues to do a great job of utilizing the space just next to Bob Hart Square. Um, which I think I mean utilizing both together going forward would be a beautiful thing to see. Uh, I do understand the concern with parking and I've definitely dealt with that concern a lot over the years we've built with our events. Um, but I do see that there's a lot of potential in finding ways to successfully utilize parking lot structures. Other towns do it frequently, other uh, spaces. I mean, we've seen other cities do full carnivals in parking lots and for some reason they able to continue their week

without any issues at all. Um, sometimes Modesto Mall brings in a giant jump house parking lot that takes over, I don't know, a whole section. People are running and jumping around. So, parking lots I think are utilized in other towns very well to host certain styles of event. Again, mine is very unique in that way. Uh, throughout the 5 years, I think we haven't done any street closures on Main Street ever. Um, yet I've had very well success. Uh, every single shopper has been able to find a parking space. Um, we're we don't have a lot of parking downtown, but we also have a lot of parking downtown. Uh it's unique. Uh the fact that we've been able to host these events in Applegate Park is the perfect example of that. Uh Applegate Park has probably the most small amount of parking out of any event space we've ever done. Yet people are willing to park up to a mile away to go and attend this awesome space at the park, which again I'm super excited about revitalizing and just continuing to punch that. Um but yeah, I I think more time is needed. I just hope uh during that time it's considered to look at alternative options of not necessarily just saying no to parking lots but seeing how we can do that properly in your guys' opinion. Uh thanks.

All right. Thank you. Thank you for your input and your perspective. Anyone else? That's all we have. Mayor

close the public hearing. Bring back to council first for additional questions. Uh council member Dupont. Thank you mayor. Um, I don't know if we're agendaized tonight to provide input on the proposed new order ordinance concepts. I think we're agendaized tonight to approve um or not approve the urgency ordinance. So, I want to be mindful and careful of how we have agendaized ourselves for the discussion. Um, but I am in support of moving forward with the urgency ordinance. I think the urgency ordinance in place currently, we've seen what it has done as a positive impact for the city. Uh last week we had backto backto back events, Bob Hart Square and Canal. Um we're starting to build um really recognition throughout the central valley of our downtown and the events we hold. So I think it's important to continue with the the urgency ordinance. member prompt.

I guess I first want to ask are we able to provide the input on the new ordinance or not? Mayor and Council, we have a uh we have a motion in the in the uh agenda directing staff to continue to study this issue and return with proposed amendments to the municipal code to establish a comprehensive framework governing street closures focusing on the nature of the special event, including distinctions between parades, community events, and other uses of of the public right away. So any any um discussions revolving that um revolving that motion? I think um the public is on notice of so we can

so we can talk. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Um what if we Oh, go ahead. What if we we'll make it 27. We could vote on the uh extending the adopting the urgency or extending the urgency ordinance and then everybody kind of just give their input on on the next thing. And we're not going to take we're not going to give formal direction but I think I think what Rhonda was requesting is just for us to give our input. So without necessarily without giving formal direction or anything you can give at least we Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Sorry. Sorry.

Thank you for the clarification. Um, yeah, I'm fine with extending it. I think this will allow staff to go through this more thoroughly and um have continued conversations um in regards to that in regards to uh stop all of the city-owned parking structures to house events. I would like more research into this. If it only costs $35 to reserve a parking lot or parking structure, I think it needs to be looked into because not every parking lot is built the same in the city of Merced either. Um Eli, I know that you've had the Super Flee um in the parking lot next to N Street once when In Street was closed down. I went to it. It was a nighttime one. It was a great event. Um and I think you've utilized parking lots in a way that no one thought to utilize. So, I would say um I think it's fair for staff though to look into saying or seeing what should the cost be for ongoing maintenance. Um this is something I've brought up in other discussions, not just parking lots, but our parks. Like we bring new things, but what does that long-term maintenance look like to make sure that, you know, next year we're not having to spend $800,000 on a new elevator. So, um I think it's worth having the conversation to see what could work. And maybe there's only certain parking lots that would be approved for these type of things. But, um you um Eli, you brought up actually a good qu uh point is our our farmers market utilizes a parking lot for their farmers market every Saturday. So, they would be exempt from using the parking lot, which they've used for how many years now. So, I think it's worth our staff having a conversation to see what that looks like in regards to the parking structures.

All right, Counc. Well, now that we can discuss it, might as well discuss it. Um, hold on, Council Member, if I can make a point to Council Member Bole talking about the farmers market. I think it's important to point out that the farmers market is under a conditional use permit. It was conditioned to use that. uh so it can only operate between certain times where it doesn't impact uh parking. So I just want to make sure that there is a clarification on that one. Okay. Thank you. Thank Thank you, Counc.

Thank you. Um I think some of the points that have been made for the new ordinance are appropriate. I think working with um businesses that may be affected and having at least a discussion on hey do you want to participate in this um this event that we are having uh again allows them to participate if they want to but also allows that business to to come forward um and be out on either a street closure or on canal or wherever it may be. So they are partaking in really the benefit of uh the event as well. I will say I we have made huge huge investments in our spaces Bobart Square, Applegate Park, the moat um and we continue to make huge investments in these areas. I was sitting at Lao New Year um talking to people that were in attendance and I could see the farmers market over there. You know, those are those are parking spaces that could be utilized for events that are happening downtown. I think actually the farmers market would benefit going into Bob Hart Square or being in the center of really where Main Street is. Um, it's kind of hidden in a corner right now where not a lot of people see it, not a lot of people may know it's there. The the the key thing about Bob Hart Square when you're using it, utilizing it, is when there's big events like La New Year or the other events that have been happening in downtown and Main Street is still open. You have people that are driving on Main Street, when they see an event that's going on both on Canal and Bobart

Square, they actually slow down. They're looking like what what's going on? What event is going on? So, I think really farmers market could benefit from that um going into Bob Hart Square and you could we could utilize those parking spaces. I think the $35 fee is way too low. uh we should be looking if if we want to use parking spaces we need to look at um what would be allowable. I mean some of the issues that I also think is um we are providing a space for $35 and we have vendors that are charging uh to either pay for items, food, clothing, um what whatever they may be selling. um and may not also be reporting that sales tax to the city. Um so we we have some loopholes that are not closed uh that are also issues that we should not or individuals should not be benefiting off of the city by making money off of the city. So um I think it's we we also need to be very careful in providing spaces uh for individuals that want to make a profit. Um, not saying that all events want to make a profit, just saying we just need to be careful cuz not everyone is afforded that benefit. So, uh, one-stop shopping, um, Rhonda's term, um, I think it's a a perfect spot. Parks and community services know what's going on, uh, know how we can utilize, uh, spaces, um, and even provide better spaces based on your events, right? So, I think going to different departments can be a headache. Uh, so having a one-stop shop is um is beneficial and I'll I'll keep my comments at that tonight.

You want to put the one-stop shop in the city attorney's office? Imagine imagine that world. All right, Council Jean, your thoughts, sir.

So, first off, I definitely agree with the extension of the temporary moratorum. Um, I think that's definitely needed as we work through this with regards to the new ordinance. So, okay, first off, thinking about bike month, right? I'm not a fan of our parking lots in general. Um, I think we need to move away from car centric uh development. And that being said, I think the fact that we utilize parking lots for community space is amazing, right? I think it's important that or that should be a sign for us to see that hey we need more community spaces. We need more unique spaces and I think it will be a real shame for us to discontinue that. Um so as of right now I I don't agree with not allowing parking structures, parking spaces to be utilized for community events. I think that's all I have for now.

Okay. Thanks sir. Council member Ta any thoughts here? No thoughts or comment, but um I do agree that uh we should allow staff to u uh time to go study and bring it back and make decision on it. So,

okay. Uh I'm in agreement with uh the majority of the comments from uh from my colleagues. I I agree certainly with extending the emergency ordinance. Applaud staff for bringing that forward. I mean, imagine just the last few weeks in Merrced if we couldn't have hosted all the events we had downtown. their downtown's uh amazing right now. Our community is on fire with hosting all these events and it's you know it's it's about you see the way city the city as an organization and community can work together in a really positive way where the city does what the city is supposed to do you know provides the the kind of the the framework provides the canvas and then the community uh goes out and and shines like they have. I think this is an extremely important issue. Um you know I think our our discussion here is is very warranted. um a thoughtful analysis from staff, all the input they're getting from uh all the community members is vital as well too. Um this is important when it comes to building community. This is important when it comes to making our downtown a special place. It's also an economic development piece as well. I can't tell you how many folks I spoke with this weekend um during the the La celebration who were here from out of town uh coming to our city, staying in hotels um and doing all that as well. So important economic development piece. Having a beautiful downtown is is a massively important economic development piece. Um I think we're on the right track with respect to fees. I think normalizing the fees, making the fees uh rationalizing them is really important. They don't make a ton of sense right now just because they're all kind of implemented at different times, different years, different different millenniums to be honest. Um and they're all kind of all over the place. But those need to be rationalized. I think the parking lots uh I wouldn't necessarily support an outright ban in uh using the parking lots. Um but good time place manner restrictions I think are important. You you have certain parking lots which are heavily used very close to businesses uh that are important that the businesses depend on in a big way. Um there's also other

parking lots which you especially after certain hours might not get much use might be kind of empty. Um, and so I think there's there's a lot of nuance there that I think needs to be recognized because you can have successful events and you know, for example, the the West America parking lot after five, there ain't nobody at the top of that parking lot. So, but you know, behind Bob Hart Square or on the sides of Bob Hart Square after 5 on a Friday night, those parking lots are vital and essential um to those downtown businesses. So, just I think a kind of a nuanced time, place, manner analysis will be really important. Um, and that's about it too. I would share in uh Council Member Dupont's idea too that the farmers market would uh would be I think it'd be a better place or they'd be a better place for him in Bart Square. I think that'd be really cool if they could do that. U but again, these events are important too. And then as everybody stated as well, balancing the needs of our businesses and then balancing the needs of these events in a way that that adds to both as opposed to the events taking away from businesses or vice versa. They need to complement each other because, you know, it's it's a it's a relationship where both have to thrive. The events have to complement the businesses because if the businesses suffer, then downtown's going to suffer. Downtown suffers, then the events are going to suffer, too. So, we all need to take care of each other. Council member Brett or not council member Brett, you've been you've been demoted to council members. City manager Mcret.

I got upgraded tonight. No, you just took a pay cut, sir.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. Um, lot lot of really good feedback tonight. I appreciate the dialogue. Um, I I think earlier tonight in the presentation, we acknowledged that the current admin policy definitely needs to be repealed. I just wanted to maybe get one level deeper into this and and just maybe let let's just park it there for for the evening. Um, the policy actually sets the fee. It's $35 and it doesn't discriminate which parking lot if it's a parking structure versus a parking lot. That's what sets the fees now. And the policy actually is very clear which is it's intended for nonprofits only and the proceeds go for charitable contributions. None of the events been going on for the last five or six years meet those criteria. So we're not following that policy at all and that's why we really need to get away from it. So, we need to set an event policy that makes sense for all the events we're talking about here tonight, regardless of where we're going to host them, and need to get the fees in line with what's appropriate for how we need to staff them from a safety from a community standpoint. And so, that's that's the reason why the corpse, as we call it, the city on real property policy just does not make sense. That's that that's 825. So, we didn't talk about it a lot, but I want to make sure you guys got that out and just heard a little bit more about it. So, the other thing I heard too was talking about um um farmers market. Look, we're happy to have a conversation with them and see if they would like to move. The one thing that we do know often is that the uh the trucks like to be right next to where they set up and you really have a hard time often getting them into the Bob Hart Square setup. I don't even know that we want trucks in there because they cause damage. And so, uh they may be a limiting factor about that, but we could talk about whether or not they'd be interested in that. if they are, we can go through the process, amend the the CU. So, um I'll leave it at that and uh we'll take your direction and uh we'll go from there.

Okay. Just one point too on you said I think um you this to being sensitive to to the distinction between uh kind of for-profit enterprises and and nonprofit fundraiser events too. I think it's important. I don't applaud anybody who's out there trying to hustle and make money. I think we shouldn't fault anybody for exercising initiative and and trying to do something. But at the same time too, you know, being sensitive to that distinction is important. Council member,

I just want to uplift the comment made last council meeting by um Gloria. Um as we're talking about events here, I think it's important to note that some places have better amenities and we need to uplift the need for public restrooms, especially as we talk about community spaces um where we're having major events. And so that's I know it's not part of this discussion in terms of the new ordinance, but that's something we need to keep in mind um especially as we're talking about events.

Anybody else? A lot of attention in the city of Seattle to some recent stuff they did on that issue. Um okay. Uh is there a motion with respect to adopting ordinance 2592? Motion. Second.

Okay. Okay. I have a motion by Mayor Pro Tim Bole and a second by council member Deont. The motion will include the adoption of ordinance 2592, an urgency ordinance of the city council of the city of Merced, California extending for a period of 10 months and 15 days pursuant to California government code 65858, a temporary moratorum on street closures. Merit and council, please cast your votes. Okay. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you, John. Okay. Agenda item Sam Chrisort.

Agenda item L, reports L1, direction on the process for remote participation to be in compliance with Senate Bill SB77. Okay. Good evening, council and uh staff. I'm Jennifer Parsley, the assistant city clerk in the clerk's office. Uh, tonight staff is looking for council direction on cuto off times to accept e- comment and telephonic registration. Uh, the clerk's office and the IT department have been working with our vendor to prepare for the changes that'll be coming up for the Brown Act. Um, more specifically in regards to e comments and telephonic um, participation. Uh staff wants to ensure meetings are conducted efficiently, consistently, and equitably for all participants. Um staff is requesting council direction on the following operation procedures, which you can see here. Probably a little bit larger. Um, when it comes to the e comments, um, the e-comments feature um, allows members of the public to submit written com comments on agenda items electronically, like directly onto the the agenda item itself. Um, that way it can be publicly viewed online, right? As soon as they hit submit, anyone that's looking this up can see the public comments. Um, I think the idea is to kind of maybe go away from the email comments and just focus more so on the e- comments, which is a little bit easier and more direct. That way, everyone, even council would be able to see all the comments that are coming through. Um, and then with the telephonic um two-way telephonic comment or participation, individuals wishing to participate telephonically, they must register for the agenda item. So they

can register for any agenda item no matter how many agenda items there are that they want to register to speak on. And then once registration is closed additional public comment requests would no longer be accepted on that item or meeting. Um and then to also ensure equitable treatment to all participants. The same registration cuto off procedures would happen for in person as well as people participating remotely as well. That way there it's it's equal for everybody. So, if someone if we're on an agenda item, but it's already been closed out, someone that's in the room either should have already registered or turned in a green slip. Um, but once that registration is closed for people participating remotely, it needs to be closed off for people in person as well. So, if we can kind of look back on the options that our vendor um has available for us when it comes to the e comments, there's a few different options that we have. You can always leave it on um until the meeting ends. Accept comments during the meeting um five minutes before, 15 minutes before, 30 minutes before, or an hour before. Currently with the emails, we accept emails by the 1pm deadline on the day of the meeting. So that we do have a deadline for those. Um this kind of goes in line with that. Um unfortunately, we can't do the 1pm deadline similar to the emails. The system doesn't allow us to do that. But these options here will give us some sort of option for a cut off time just for e- comments. And then for um for the telephonic participation or remote participation, there's two options that they have um at the beginning of each agenda item. So an agenda item will be called. Um, the way our system works, I'll click a certain button and then the registration will close for those that want to participate remotely or we can set a specific time prior to the meeting. So, I'll just leave any questions or comments that you may have.

Okay. So, the two decision points for us tonight. Yes. Questions. Mayor Pro. Mayor Portim Boy, can you explain exactly what the e comment is and how it's different from like when we get the emails? Yes. So, it'll be not the same process in which you receive the emails. Um Jeff might be able to explain a little bit more with the more tech advance that he has, but um they can go on to this portal where they can click on that certain agenda item and leave a comment for that particular agenda item. And so everyone once they hit submit everyone will be able to see as well as you guys. I don't know if I your question. Well, do you have any more you want to say? I'll allow you to.

Yeah. So I I think she kind of hit the nail on the head. So it's going to be a web platform where all the agenda items will be listed and a citizen can go I want to speak on item K2, I3, M4 and as soon as they click submit that becomes into the record and all citizens can see it in real time. So, as people are submitting, you'll build a collection of comments and anybody can review at any time instead of waiting for the email items to be posted and then you could see it after the items are posted from the email comments. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. I probably have another question, but let me get my thought process behind it. Counselor Dupont,

thank you. Is there a filtering of those comments or is it just you hit enter and it automatically will pop up no matter what you say? So there is a filtering ability. We do not have it on. We allow just full transparency. Whatever is put there is put there. We could certainly work with the attorney's office on filtering and what that would mean legally. I I kind of defer the city attorney on that one. That might be a good discussion. So it it would sort of you know back when we were on Facebook it'd almost take the essentially the same form as a Facebook live discussion or a Facebook comment discussion.

So it'd be directly tied to the agenda item. They'd have to select the agenda item that they wish to provide comment on. So they're specifically saying I want to comment on item K2 that's talking about you know procurement of item ABC. They can put a comment directly tied to that agenda item. So it has to be tied to a specific agenda item and then that comment will show up on our screen, right? You'll be able to see those comments in real time. Yes. And so the difference between Facebook is we don't watch Facebook live over here and see the comments until after the meeting's done.

Right. So I think what Jen Jennifer is asking for is what period do we want that cuto off period to be for public comment? So do you want it to run the entire length? Because if you're allowing it through the entire length of meeting, you might want to actually see what's happening in real time or do you want a cut off window ahead of time so you have time to research and think about what those comments are before you go in front in the meeting? Does this comment format does it tend to favor, you know, like the emails we get now are typically they're longer. They're, you know, they're they're like little letters, right? They're they're thought out. Often times they're multiple pages. Is this gonna be is this going to encourage that format or is it more almost like an online comment format?

It's more of an online comment format. We can restrict the length of the comment if that's something that council desires. So we could restrict it to say 500 words or words or characters which would equal approximately 3 minutes in time but we'd need to get direction from you if you wanted to limit the amount of comment. Okay. Personally, I mean, it's nice right now to get with the emails because if people want to submit comments that are lengthy or that have documentation backing them up, it's a just it's a much more efficient way to to do so. But, Council Dupont, and then we're we we would need to store these comments, correct? So, we're going to there's a portal in which to store the comments. Yeah, we would maintain the record of those comments.

Okay. Thank you. What if somebody, for example, they they want to speak on K2, they say this has to do with K2 and then it has nothing has nothing to do with K2. It's got to do with something else. Or they want they say something for public comment and it's got to, you know, it's got to it actually pertains to an agenda item. How are we going to Yeah, I would have to defer to clerk for that. I mean, that's kind of sometimes with those emails that we get as well. They'll say, "I want to talk on K2." And they start talking a little bit about K2 and then they jump into maybe two or three other items as well. I mean I mean it's kind of same with people in person as well. They'll talk about one item and kind of veer off to another item as well. So it's just hard to kind of sure

block that I guess. Yeah. Coun. Yeah. I was just I was just trying to picture because you know I use Zoom. Is it like zoom where or is it um when uh we're talking about an item and you know people live wants to come and comment on it. Do they comment there? We can we can see once we move to a different item the comment will still be there or just like Zoom will just keep popping out all those comments.

This is going to be very much like your agenda packet that you see on the city website. So it's going to have all your agenda items and then there'll be a comment section and you'll see the public comment from each citizen. Mary Sue said, "I'm in support of this. I think we should buy more. Tom Smith says, I don't like this idea. I think we should do XYZ. So, it's going to fall in line for each agenda item and it's going to look like your agenda packet. And then as we move that from item down, will we still see those comment? So, the comments will be available to everybody in the city that you can see that

you can scroll up and look at all the comments. Yeah, you can look at you can go through each agenda item and say okay I want to see the comments from you know A1 to Z1 right you can look through each one that you want to see yeah I was trying to picture see how the setup is like compared to other uh virtual uh sites so right so this is going to be more of like your agenda packet of what it's going to look like

Tim Bole okay so say I'm submitting an e comment at 1 p.m. on Monday and I put on there on K1, but say you see it early and it's you're like, "This is not about K1. This is for K2." Would you guys have the ability to move it to the other item? Yeah. Yeah, I believe so. That we would be able to move it to a different item if we catch it in time soon. Yeah, in time. Thank you,

Council Member Jean. Sorry, I don't know if I agree with that. Um, but with regards to emails, um, have we ever included emails as part of the record for our minutes after the 1 p.m. mark? So, if they email us with regards to something on council after the 1 p.m., I I thought I' seen it in our minutes before. Do we do that? We maintain the record in the minutes. We don't note that we had any late submissions. We just note what we got during the meeting or during that time frame. Okay?

Because those are typically read when I read them out loud under written comm written petitions and communications. I announce who left a an email and for what agenda item. So that's what goes into the record into the minutes. Okay. And we're as of right now we're thinking of replacing emails with the e comments. We cannot maintain the two. We can. We were just if you wanted to get rid of emails, we had this other option as well for people to leave comments electronically. Okay. All right. But it's at the direction of council if you want to keep emails or if you want to just solely use e- comments. Okay.

Council Jup. So, by that statement, is there an option to not do the e comments and just do the emails? I think we can. Yeah, we can turn the e-comments off.

I think at that point, and there's a lot of value in the emails we get. And then the value too is getting them in advance of the council meeting, especially when they're kind of longer. I mean, if we're going to get them just before the council meeting and all of us have to look at them right before you know, when we all have our our day jobs one and two, it's uh it just gets to be a little chaotic and I think it'd be difficult for us to give them their due weight. But when they're um when they're provided like they are, you usually they're emailed to us shortly after 1 p.m. Jennifer does a great job of sending them all to us. We have the chance over the course of a couple hours to consider them. Um and then also they'll be printed for us here. I think that gives us a chance certainly to consider them. um if we had e- comments kind of flying all over the place right now during a meeting um you know and half of them half of them on point and preient other ones kind of you know all over the place I think it'd be it' probably detract from the council meetings to be honest I mean it could be pretty distracting um you could get a lot of people kind of consumed with what's going on um you know with that so I think it it'd make it more difficult to focus on what's going on here um especially if there's live comment I know there's value kind of in, you know, the old Facebook live round. There's value for people watching to to kind of spar with each other online, but it just certainly I don't think that adds a lot you might add entertainment value to some people online, but it doesn't add a lot of it's it make us more difficult, I think, for us to make it more difficult for us to conduct our meetings. Customer, is that a new one or is that older? Why not?

Yeah. Um, so I definitely support keeping e comments. Um, I think it's important to have the community be engaged. Um, I think as Jeffy mentioned, just putting a limit on the number of characters um would definitely help with um long comments. Um, I think I think it would help us hear more from folks. And I'm thinking in terms of the ones that don't want to speak up, right, that are more comfortable typing up a message. um hearing their voices and not everybody to be frank like our emails that we get for our city council meetings are very few and far in between right that there's very few of them um there's some meetings where we have a lot of emails but most of the time we don't get that many uh so I don't necessarily see the amount of comments going off the board here um so I I support it I think it's important to hear from community and uh we don't have to actively read as we're up here. Um, we could still continue business as usual, but I think it's good to uh have that option.

No, no one's there. Jennifer's not there. We'll get there. Uh, any questions or any public comment? We'll take Mayor Pro Boil out a question and then after that we can take any public input. So your suggestion until one hour before the meeting starts, is that six o'clock or 5:'? Because we could hear sometimes before as close session at five. So would that then mean four? Um, we could probably set it to four if we have and it's hard because we don't always have close session. I would say 90% of the time we do,

right? Um, I'm just thinking if that's if one I think it would be beneficial if people are submitting e comments and in the event that they do submit it for the wrong item, at least you gives you guys enough time to possibly reorganize them. Um, and then my other question is, you know, say we get them ahead of time, are we able to read them ahead of time? because we do get our emails with the email comment or we get the emailed comments which I appreciate that we do have 4ish hours to read or go through them and see what they are talking about. Um, so that's just my concern that we can be getting a lot of comments but they might not even be read. I don't want that to be a negative comment, but just when we arrive here at 5:00, go into close session. Sometimes our close session is the entire hour we get here at 6:00 and then we're trying to go through this go through an agenda item. When are we going to actually read these comments?

Just for a little clarification. So the at the time the agenda is published, that is when the comments will be open and will be inputed real time through time. So you'll be able to see, let's say the agenda is published on Thursday at 5:00 pm, a citizen can start making comments right then and you could see those comments right then. So as the time goes on from this the date the agenda is published until let's say you choose 1 p.m. before the start of the meeting, that's the time that it stops and no new additions can be had. But you could review the comments between any of that time. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. Any uh public speaker shift?

We do have one from Ashley Marie Suarez. Ashley Marie.

Hello. Good evening, council. My name is Ashley Marie Suarez. Um and I'm speaking out of personal capacity as a resident from district 5. I'd like to get some clarification and share a concern about this item. So, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it kind of sounds like um the cut off period for public comment on agenda items are either right before the item starts or sometime before the meeting starts and that that would apply to both online and in person. Um, however, if that is correct, I'd like to raise a concern that these options would significantly limit the public comment and civic engagement for those that might come into the meeting either in the middle of the the discussion, whether online or in person or um, you know, such as what I did right now, which was submit a green card request to speak during the presentation because I felt inspired to make a comment to uplift my concerns. And so I think that the city would be be doing itself a disservice by placing a cut off or um registration cut off time any time before the item is over or the public comment period of that item is over. And I also think that emails should be kept and that e- comments submission should be accepted on a continuous basis just to promote the spirit of SB77 which is to promote um public input and participation throughout these items. Um, so yeah, definitely think that that should be considered while making the final decision in motion before this item is voted on. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. All right, Jennifer, anyone else? That's all we had, Mayor. All right, that's it for public input. We'll take it back to council. I guess two two decision points as is outlined uh clearly by staff here. First with respect to ecom comments. Second with respect to the cut off time for public comment with the essentially all of our discussion so far is centered around the cut off for e- comments. Um I guess Jennifer and Jeff how would you like us to proceed? Just separate decisions on both.

Yeah, I mean we don't need a formal vote. We just need direction from um council. I mean Jeff and I have been working with our vendor. We're actually have a meeting with them tomorrow so we can kind of get all of these settings in place. that way we're ready for to meet compliance in July 1st. Okay. And we will be um conducting some trial runs just to make sure we get all of any you know bumps and bruises out of the way before we actually go live with this July 6th.

Okay. just so I get a better sense that the e- comments they're going to be so the agenda opens when you Wednesday Thursday whenever the and then citizens at that point can comment electronically and then how is that going to get routed to us that's just attached to the agenda. So we go into Granicus and we look in there and how are we going to see it? We obviously need some pictures to show you. Uh it's a separate web portal that you'll go to. You'll go to a website and it'll have the agenda. It'll look very much like your legisar website, but it's a different website. It's going to have all the public comments. Okay?

And then we can you say if we prepare uh the agenda Thursday, then you come back and later on you can check to see if it's updated for public comment, right? You can see in real time whenever somebody submits, you can go back anytime you want and look and see all the public comments as they come in. Do we get notifications or anything like that as more public comments? No. No, there's no notification currently. And then during the meeting itself, say hypothetically we were to allow comments, e- comments through the meeting, what would that look like for us sitting up here during the meeting?

You' if you if that's the option that you'd want to choose, we'd have a web web page on there and you could look at them in real time. I could see how that could be distracting, but that's a choice you guys could make. Okay. All right. And then then the related issue of how to handle the emails as well, whether or not to continue the practice of receiving the emails or include it with this. Okay. All right. Mayor Pro Bole,

I had a question about something you just said, but now I can't remember what it was. Um, I'm going to talk about the second part about establishing the registration cuto off time. So, if someone is wanting to call in and leave a comment, I'm trying to think how I want to appro uh say this question. Um it's going to would it be more challenging for you guys by we can't leave that open at any time like right now we have individuals that'll just come up you know maybe through the presentation and give the green card that just can't be feasible with this new system. No, I mean these two options are really the only two options that we have through this system. Whether we want to do the cuto off, you know, if I'm reading the title of the agenda item, there's things that we do on our end in order for these things to kind of set off. So it' be essentially checking off that item that that item is now active and then it closes out that registration so no one can then try to sign in to comment on that particular item that we're on. And so if we cut off the registration for those that want to call in for an item, say we say at six o'clock, no more registrations for the items. Does that apply for everyone in here as well?

Correct. Yeah, we want to make it equal for Okay. those that are inhouse or participating remotely. Okay. Does it have to be that way? Yes. Okay. because it's you're giving people who are um participating remotely at a disadvantage that they have a certain cut off time but everybody else in the room doesn't. So we want to make it equal for all. Okay. So would it be possible for those that are coming in public to register prior days ahead? Yes, they can. They can register as in person. We'll also have a kiosk in the back where they can come in and and register online as well. Okay.

All right. So I think I mean Ashley makes a very important point in that certain times certain things come up during public comment that inspire somebody else to say something. You know some person says something that's maybe they have information on personally or somebody says something uh you know they don't agree with or want to support. So it just but at the same time I maybe it's a way an unintended consequence of this of this new law which you know in a sense in a way it it's designed to encourage public comment but in that regard at least can you know can actually hurt public comment in the council chief

right and so just to give a little context so we'll have a screen on our end and we're going to have I'll have Kristen kind of monitoring who's coming online so I'll and I'll have a monitor as well so we'll know how many speakers we have remotely and then people that register in person will also have that popup so we can manage it that way so we can see first come first serve and kind of manage it in in that sense. Okay. So there'll be a lot going on over here. Yeah, you guys are super busy. It's do you and would it be we we're taking electronic comment first then public comment or how do you

I think that's at your at the council's discretion on how you want to do that but I say whatever you guys decide whatever that is moving forward that's how we'll run those meetings instead of one meeting we'll do e- comments or whatever telephonic comments first and then people in person and switch it next time. I think we just need to make it more consistent on on the structure of that. Yeah. So whatever council decides is what we'll do moving forward. Okay. You think one then the other or is it okay to I I would say it's at your discretion, but I would also maybe recommend doing all of one first and then all of the other next because it would be too hard. Yeah. Going back and forth.

Yeah. Just important for us to to know logistically what you guys have to you know run the meeting over there and so just logistically to know what you're seeing. We'll be monitoring our monitors here. We will have um a kiosk in the back for people to also register online. We'll still have some green requests be forms if we can slowly kind of move out of those, but we will still have that. So, we'll be monitoring that, monitoring back here to make sure we're getting everybody a chance to speak.

Okay. Council Dupont. Thank you, Mayor. Um, as for the emails, when we post the agenda, um, can a member of the public email into city clerk's office and it be included in the 1pm deadline emails that is sent to city council? So, if a a member of the public sends an email before the 1pm and the agenda's already been published. Yeah. So for example, it's agenda has been published on Thursday. You get an email on Thursday night night or Friday morning. Is are those emails included in the emails that we get correct after the 1 p.m. deadline?

Yeah. Any emails that we receive once the agenda is published is all collected and then you guys get it by the 1 p.m. deadline. Is there currently a limit of words or however long or however short of an email that you need to send? Uh there used to be um around CO era I think we did 300 words or less um was very rarely met. It was usually more than 300 words. Um but we kind of just moved away from that limit and it's because it never was met. So that's a no. Okay. Um

the other comment I have is um I don't think emails are few and far between. I feel like we get at least one email each council meeting after the 1 PM deadline. Um I think the e- comments I there was there would be no support for me of any e comments during a meeting. I think that's chaotic. Uh does not provide an opportunity to uh efficiently or effectively look at the comments. Um, so if there's any discussion, it has to be before the meeting and it has to be at a time that gives you um an ability to at least filter some of the comments. Um, I'm worried we're going to get comments that are not to the spirit of the intent of what we're trying to do. Um, which is another unintended consequence the state legislature and this infinite wisdom provided for us. Um the other thing is um I think currently there's an avenue in which people can e comment and emails. I think the emails I actually look at all the emails that are provided to us after the 1pm deadline. Um I do I do have the the concern that if we provide comments during the meeting um it can turn into more of an argument of the comments versus what the intent of um what we are there to do as business. So right now I'm I'm not leaning towards providing any e-comments because there's an avenue in which to provide e comments already. Um and my other question was to the city attorney which staff has said there is no formal motion that needs to be taken. Do we need to take a a formal motion on

deciding these policy questions or are we just having a discussion right now? Um, thank you, Councilman. Right now, it is agenda for discussion um and direction. I would recommend giving a variety of comments. We may want to actually have a vote on the item. I don't that may not fit um that's fine you know discussions with um the software um officials but I it's going to be hard to give directions if if it's um you pref you prefer a vote

you may want to have a vote and and then the direction is clear to staff how to proceed.

Thank you. Another quick point too about the e-comments is that if they're especially if they're um accepted close to the time the meeting starts or during the meeting, all council members are going to get different information because right now I think it gives us sufficient time at 1:00 p.m. everybody has a chance to to see. If you don't read those emails beforehand, it's your fault. Um and you get a copy of it. They're it's very clear. But if it's 1 hour before the meeting starts when we all have, you know, potentially busy afternoons with other meetings, jobs, then I mean, you could have very, very likely situation where council members are all getting different information. Some people have it, some people don't, some people have read it, some people haven't. Um, you know, I know just me personally, for example, I I'm often in my day job busy until 400 p.m. and then I have to be in transit between 4 and 5. So just makes it personally very challenging to to do. So um all right council member Jean.

Um so just for the registration cut off time u it mentions one of the option as at the beginning of each agenda item. Could you walk us through how that works? How does how do you close it off at the start of the agenda? Sure. So on mine I'll have a screen I'll read off the agenda item. There's two buttons that I press. One is to activate that item and then the next one is to shut the um registration down or I think it does it at the same time. Is that correct? Yeah, we have two options. So, could we end it at the end of the agenda item just simply by pressing the button? I think once you activate the item, it automatically shuts the registration off.

Can you So, you have the option. There just has to be a clearly delineated mark of when we choose to shut it off. So if you determine a clearly delineated mark, we can ex we could do that. The clerk would have to have to know then do it the same consistent mechanism and they'd click the button and it would end registration. So that's the mechanism that we need. What is the delineation between closing of registration? So it could be, you know, right at the start of the agenda item or what is the mechanism the clerk is going to know to end the registration, right? So that could be at the end of the agenda item. Sure.

Yeah. Okay. Just making sure that's an option as well. Um because I definitely support it at the end of the agenda item rather than at the beginning or prior to the meeting. Um, I think as was mentioned before, I think it's important where community members might not be uh anticipating speaking and then as the meeting goes on um they might be compelled to speak up. And so I think it's important to give them that opportunity to speak um as the agenda item is still active.

All right, Mayor Perent Bole, piggybacking off what council member Jang just said. So, if we were to allow the registration open till the end of the agenda item, would that allow for more people to call in for telephonic? But how would you be able to manage that if we open it up with telephonic then had in person and then more people are calling? Now we're going back and forth. Okay. Um Oh my gosh, I had another question. Now it's like you this is a really good discussion. So, I'm like going um if it comes back, I'll I'll put another request to speak.

Could we have a not saying this is a good idea, but could we have a you know, for example, we open public comment and we have a in person. And then after that, we have our electronic. And then as soon as that's done, we cut that off. And then in person. Again, I'm just talking out loud after that. Jennifer's face says once you cut off the registration for remote participation, it should be the same for in person.

So, if we go because I mean I see the again I see the value in leaving it open through the comment period just because a lot of times things come up and but at the same time mayor proton boil's point where it will Okay. I mean, the level of chaos that will ensue, especially for you guys, having to manage 100 different things over there between the request to speak forms and the comments coming in. You got to monitor this and you got to keep accurate notes of what's going on in the ME. It's that's a lot. And you know,

and Rhonda just reminded me that we have to cut off remote and in person at the same time per SB77. You have to allow that same amount of time. Yeah, it's a dumb Well, never mind. Speak my mind. Say that on record. That's on record. It's just It's a No, it's a bad consequence of It's a law that intends one thing, but then sets rules that.

Yeah, keep going, please. Oh, go ahead. No, it's just a you know, it's a again, it's unintended consequences. Sometimes laws are poorly thought out and and I think we all see the we see the need public comment is very important. It's important to be engaged but and it and but at the same time, you know, real hand information from people who participate in these local meetings realizes that that often times things come up in the middle of the comment and we get a good feedback motivated by folks who hear one thing and oh shoot that reminds me of this. I know this information that somebody might not have. So

um I just I want to be very clear um the way uh the government code was amended in this area complements of SB77 whatever opportunity is afforded the in-person public so we're talking about public comment at the meeting um has to be afforded to the remote participants at the meeting and it has to be equally applied. So at this point all we have is the black letter language. We don't have any notes of decision. We don't have any case law. We simply have what they passed in the statute. and and it's very clear that whatever you decide has to be with respect to the duration of the public comment opportunity and time has to be equally applied between those in person and those participating via the two-way telephonic. I don't know if that helps or confuses, but I just wanted to clarify that.

Okay. All right. Who's got a new one? Customer. So, correct me if I'm mistaken. During our last two council meetings with regards to SB77, there was discussion with regards to at council's discretion, we could limit the duration of public comment. Either that be by time, so for example, if we do 30 minutes public comment on an agenda item, it could be split 15 minutes a piece for online, telephonic, or in person. or if we limit the number of people, it would need to be the same with regards to online or in person. Is that correct?

Yes, Council Member Jean, that's that's correct.

Okay. So then with regards to I guess the priority for when folks come on board, I'm trying to get to what Matt was saying earlier about could we jump back and forth or how do we actually have the process of going from in person to online to in person. Um, I I if you I'm thinking out loud here, spitballing a little bit. If you go from in person to online to back to in person, to Mayor Proim Bole's point, you then have to go back to online because it has to be equal opportunity. If you go maybe reverse that order and you went online and you just allowed everybody online, right? What whatever that universe consisted of for that specific agenda item, close the registration at that point. we could look at the amount of time it was and then have that same amount of time in person. That again is a clunky, unintended impractical consequence. But the law demands equity in terms of the opportunity for participation whether you are in person or remotely. Period. And and that's all the language we have to go on right now.

Yeah, I understand. Um, it's just again simply because I support have as we do things now where we allow folks to submit a a green card at any point in which the agenda item is still active. And so I think that is important that we continue that practice. Um, I mean we might need to put some pen to paper and figure out how to make that work, but I think it's important to still have that opportunity for both the online folks and in person. It could it be does it have to be at the beginning of each this was asked earlier but could it be at the conclusion of the public comment period that could be an option too but that's just that's challenging

right we'd have to define what the conclusion is if we don't know if there's more registrance coming in yes so we need some clear articulable delineation point when the public comment period closes yeah if we if you if you're going to as the as the chair okay we're going to close the public comment period if we're going to say that for every agenda item that there's going to be comments, then we could use that as the delineation point. Okay. When the chair closes the public comment period. All right. Who's next? May heard Tim Bole.

So, I think that we're this is obviously new for us and a lot of other jurisdictions. I want it to be as easy for you guys as we work this thing out because the last thing I want is chaos. Um, and I think that if we start something now, maybe in 6 months, one year, two years later, we have figured out our flow and we say, "Hey, I think we can now start doing this because we figured it out." So, I don't want to put all of this all these different things onto you guys and we can't succeed in that portion. So, I'm fine at having either a specific specific time prior to the meeting or at the beginning of each agenda item. I'm leaning more towards at the beginning of each agenda item because I know that there's individuals that won't be able to show up to city hall until 6:00 or whenever it is before the meeting, whether they have work or whatever. Um, I know there are people that will watch our meetings from home and when the items coming up closer, they will arrive. So I think that's the appropriate um could be at the appropriate time at the beginning of each agenda item as a registration cuto off time. I think switching or not just switching but adding the e comments I think starting at the 1 p.m. as we work things out and figure out how it looks because I think for us as council members I think it's important that we do read those before we step foot into c uh council chambers. Like I mentioned, we have close session 90% of the time at five o'clock. Um, some of us do have to drive a while to get here and um, it leaves us limited time to read everything. So, I think starting off if we can do a 1 p.m. deadline for the e-comments and the emails. Okay. What are you going to say now?

So, for clarification, the currently the technology for e- comment does not allow for that 1 p.m. deadline. That they only an hour before the meeting is what the technology allows for. Wow. Okay, then I'll do one hour. But did we define if it's a 5:00 PM? So the clerk can define stuff. I think yes, that would be important for us. Council

Thank you, mayor. Um I would join in coun and mayor prom boils at the beginning of each agenda item. I I just want us to also think about this is uh these are new systems as well. Um, and if this system crashes, guess what? Guess what we're doing? Going into an hour of recess. So, the more chaotic I think we create the system to be, uh, and I'm not an IT whiz, so I'm just shooting at the hip here, but the more likelihood we could have crashes to the system. So uh that is going to be um a huge concern for me as well. So, I think defining it at the beginning of each agenda item item not only relieves a stress on on staff but also reduces the risk that we may have to crashes to the system um to continue doing the business of the city. Um and not not trying to figure out, okay, well, now we took a public com a physical inperson comment. Now, we got to at least ask um the online platform and then continue to go back and forth until the may the mayor says that this is the end of the the public comment. So, I think it's the best to go with at the beginning of each agenda item. Um, as to the e- comments, um I I think you can have an e comment currently with emails. Um I don't think there is not an avenue currently that you can't already comment on an agenda item. So, as of right now, I would not be in support of uh any e- comments as there's already a platform in which to provide an e- comment to a specific item or a general public item already from the time in which the

agenda is posted up until the 1pm deadline, which allows, at least I read them, uh allows myself to read the uh emails that have been submitted. Okay. Um, yeah, my thoughts. I think the e comments don't add much. I think they kind of actually detract to an extent. Um, the it'd be nice if we could have the cut off time at the con when the public comment period closes. Um, but at the same time, you know, sensitive to the demands of this new system. Um, I'm fine with at the beginning of each agenda item. I think that's going to create some unintended consequences. Um, a specified time prior to the meeting is I don't I don't like just because, you know, you say you have a you're on your your item is agenda item M7, then you got to get here at at 6 p.m. to register for that and, you know, sit around for hours and wait. I think that's uh, you know, that's unfair to to folks, too, who, you know, forcing them to to get here earlier, wait, you know, for hours and hours. Um, so big I'm fine with the beginning of each agenda agenda item. Um, I think it'd be nice if we could do it the conclusion, but I think at the same time just given the maybe wait and see how it goes. Um, and it's going to be that's hard that's very hard on you guys. Very difficult because you got to keep track of that, keep track of public comment, keep track of everything that's going on here. That's a lot. Um, so sensitive to that. Um, that's my thought. I think the comments I mean the emails are easy. I think the amount of time we spend I spend reading responding to emails is is significant and um emails give the opportunity uh for people to uh provide uh detailed comment prior to the meeting

and they uh do a good job.

Okay. Um any additional council member TA any additional thoughts or what do you think sir? Yeah. Um I think uh this is a new system that we're we're trying on and it it it you know I agree with council member uh Dubon. It could be chaotic, you know. Uh and we don't want to put ourselves in that situation or our staff in that situation. So for me uh I do I mean as much as I want everybody audience or to comment on it, this could be very challenging for us. So uh you know I don't see that you know as we try on this new system. I think I'm in favor of leaving the e-commerce out first and you know that could be chaotic a lot of a lot of a lot of us council and then uh staff too. So um at the beginning of each item you know I'm in favor of that too. So u uh you know this this is a very confusing uh law. So uh but yeah.

Okay. All right. Fu and Sarah are these new ones or are these older ones? new council.

Yeah. Um I support e comments for until the end of the meeting. Um again, as I mentioned before, I think it's important to have engagement um and have it be on the record. Um in terms of the registration cut off time, I think it should be at the end of the agenda item. Um again, giving folks the opportunity to speak um throughout if something comes up during the agenda item. Um, I I believe Jeff and Jennifer will be more than competent in making sure that it works. Um, and I don't think the load on this system is going to cause it to crash. There's there's just no way. Uh, but that being said, I those are my thoughts. I again agree with e-commerce till the end of the meeting and then registration till the end of the agenda item.

All right. Mayor Pro, I think I misunderstood you. So, e- comments are not required. No.

Oh, okay. Then disregard what I said earlier. I'm fine with emails until 1 p.m. Like I said, having something come to us during the meeting or an hour before the meeting. I like to read through what we receive and have thorough time to go through everything, but I still and stand um with the registration cut off time at the beginning of each agenda item. Okay. Or additional discussion, questions, thoughts, comments, or a motion. Did you want you want us to vote on that?

We'd have to bring it back. Okay. So, direction or how how do you want to I have a question. You said that you have a call tomorrow with the vendors. Yes. Given our discussion today, would you be take our thoughts and talk to them about it? And then when would be the next time that we come back to council to discuss and vote? We could come bring back the next meeting. Yeah, we can bring it back June 1st. Okay. Did you hear that, Matt? No, I did not. Another good example.

We'll we'll bring this item back June 1st um for a proper vote. Okay, that's a I thought Craig said he wanted us to vote and then but he said he wanted us to bring it back for a vote. Okay. So I hearing direction roughly for uh no e comments and then at the beginning of each agenda item for the registration cutoff. It's hearing kind of what I'm hearing the the consensus around at this point but we'll see how it goes on June 1st. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Agenda item L2 potential city of Merced energy efficiency upgrade projects. Mayor Council, we're going to cue this up real quick and we've got some uh distinguished guests here tonight. They're going to help me out on this item. Um there we go. So, we've got a presentation tonight from Energy Systems Group and uh some of these folks might look familiar to you. We got a few in the front row. At least one row might look very familiar. Uh coming over to the left side, uh Ashu Jane has been a familiar face for many of you. He's been a longtime partner. uh with the um League of California Cities. He's worked for different companies in the past. Uh just to kind of bring you up to speed, uh he's been a longtime advocate working with the city of Merced to see if there is efficiencies of operations we could look for to save money on our uh energy. And so we said, look, let's work with our team, see if there might be some things that are out there. Uh he's taken this work on at no cost to to the rateayers, no cost to the city. and they got some things they want to report on tonight and get your feedback and direction to see if we want to pursue any of these. So, uh, I'm going to turn over to them. I know he's brought he's brought some esteemed group of members with him, some technical people with him who we've had conversations with in the past and and we'll let them do their thing.

Thank you, Mr. McBride. Uh, good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council and staff. My name is Ashu Jane. I'm with Energy Systems Group. Um before I proceed, I'd like to introduce the rest of the team. On my left is Jake Jacob Goring. He's our uh uh development manager. Um we have Jim Brown, um former retired county administrative officer who's our adviser and consultant. Uh Amelia Kotrell, she works very closely with me in business development. and um Ko Lim uh he's our senior developer. Um um so as Mr. McBride said, we've been working for the past five or six months with your staff uh to put a proposal together that um actually not um replaces your old infrastructure and does it in a way that does not impact your general fund or even your enterprise funds. it actually gets funded out of savings and not only does it get funded out of savings, it actually saves you money over the life of the project. Um, so to tell you more about um and so this is just a feasibility study that we conducted and I'll tell you more about the process uh but uh I'll have uh Jacob come and uh talk to you about the scope that we developed along with your staff first. Thank you, Ashu. Uh, good evening everybody. Make sure I can There we go. Perfect. Uh, agenda. So, um yeah, as Ashu mentioned, we working with the city staff for the past few months. Um really diving um into the various facilities that the city has. Um looking at, you know, energy expenditures um annually and then looking um on site doing walks and trying to, you know, come up with a project that not only uh you know, saves energy um you know, uh improves deferred maintenance projects, but you know, hopefully will help uh city staff

achieve some of the the feedback and goals that they shared with our team as we did um this work. Uh and yeah, this table kind of shows a general summary of of everything we looked at. So there's a lot of uh various uh conservation measure scope items across um you know a lot of the different city facilities that I'll I'll run through. Um so interior lighting, this is uh looking at replacing old uh inefficient uh lighting uh systems across you know these uh cities or facilities that you see um on the slide. Um so this uh saves a lot of energy um can save uh maintenance uh you know cost and time for your city uh staff as well. We have interior and we have exterior lighting. Exterior lighting mainly focused at um the public works yard in the Magnamara Park. Uh HVAC replacements is a big part of the project. So this is looking at um this this uh specific slide is looking at replacing packaged uh units across uh these nine or so facilities. I think there's roughly 40 units that we're looking at replacing. All these units again would be kind of at, you know, near past their their useful life. So would be, you know, in line for replacement. Along with the unit replacements, we're also looking at doing um controls upgrades across the the facilities. This would include not only the units that we're replacing, but all the um uh city units that are not currently on any centralized control system. Uh so this would be replacing thermostats um to to provide you know better operation uh for the units and then also kind ease of uh maintenance and usability for the staff as well. Uh we're also looking at replacing some larger cooling uh equipment, one here at the civic center and then one at the police HQ. So these are um existing aircooled chillers uh that we're looking to replace um with you know similar type units um but more efficient um and again these are similarly at their kind of end of useful life as well. Uh at the police HQ, we're also looking at um upgrading the existing air

handling units uh to make them operate, you know, more efficiently um and prevent some um uh just, you know, operational uh issues that can come up with the kind of current systems that are currently there. We're also looking at doing um uh an EV charging uh expansion at the DPWR. We're really installing new EV chargers. Um I think you know, we spent time there. It looks like the city um you know fleet is looking to expand into EV and uh so we're looking to um install kind of a more robust at least starting point um to to be able to charge these vehicles. This would include about 10 chargers and then a new um you know utility service from either Pion or MID. Uh we're also looking at doing um transformer replacements. These are um you know kind of critical electrical infrastructure components at all these various facilities that typically are um you know not usually looked at for replacement unless they they fail. Um so these come with you know really good energy savings and payback as well as you know just upgrading some of the critical infrastructure for these uh buildings. Sorry we have a lot um battery storage. This is at two sites um two pump stations. is one at the UC Merrced pump station. Then well 8. Um again these battery storage systems will be used really for um utility savings. So either doing um demand uh peak shaving or kind of arbitrageing on uh time of use rates from the utility. Uh this this battery storage system is also eligible for IRA um tax credits. Um so again it kind of helps improve uh the payback of this item. last few here at the wastewater treatment plant. We're looking at doing um a it's they're called linear generators. So, we're looking at installing a 230 kilowatt uh linear gener generator made by Mainspring. Uh the kind of the unique um piece about these units is that they run on bio gas. So, currently the the wastewater treatment plant produces bio gas and the

digesttors that the city's currently not using. So, this would be um a way that we can uh basically tap into that gas supply the uh city has and generate on-site electricity to save um power, electricity cost. Kind of in tandem with that generator, we're also looking at installing a one roughly one megawatt uh solar system at the plant to also uh uh reduce electricity cost there as well. And I think that's all the scope slides. Yeah.

Anything I missed? Well, just that uh you know the bio gas it's being flared right now. So that's a free commodity that we're going to use and uh install a piece of equip equipment that will produce electricity out of that. So right now it's just uh being flared. Um uh so um any questions in the scope and again this is a feasibility level study. If the council gives us direction today to move forward, then we will get more into the details of all of these scope items and come back to the council uh if staff uh approves us to come back to the council at that point. Um and then uh you know there'll be an action item. So today we're just looking for direction. Uh and again um we develop these we are very unique in our industry that we develop these completely at our risk. So from this point on every company that I know would ask to sign an agreement with you to do the engineering to come back with final guaranteed price guaranteed savings. We don't ask for that. We develop these projects. will if you say today that you're generally in favor of this, we'll come back to the council in 3 to 4 months um after running through staff and we'll do all the engineering, come back with guaranteed maximum price, guaranteed savings. We guarantee savings over 20 years and uh that's when we'll ask for an action item um to move forward. Right now uh all we are looking for is direction and it's at completely at our risk and the council is not at uh the city is not at risk on any of these projects for now. So uh any questions of the scope or I'll run through the financing a little bit.

Any questions at this time? I don't see any issues so proceed.

Sure. Um so the way this project is funded you know um it's roughly our estimate right now is 14 million and there's a few bucket of savings if you can see on the left side. So the sources of fund will be solar savings which come to around 11 million battery storage savings are 2 million. The main spring for the um uh using the digesttor gas to energy that's 8 million. uh energy efficiency that's the transformers the uh the air conditioning uh some lighting that's 5 million uh there's O andM savings which are basically because we are replacing equipment that's at the end of its life you don't need to spend money repairing it so there is a way to calculate those savings based on guidance from California energy commission so that's 3.9 million um you should be getting 2.2 2 million in grants from um um actually 2.1 million comes from um the inflation reduction act and I think there's a small grant state grant for the EV chargers. So the mo most of the grant comes from the inflation reduction act. Let me tell you a little bit about that because this uh the solar project has a grant amount of uh 1 million. Um that grant expires at the end of 2027. So to to get that grant, we would have to complete the project by end of 2027. the battery storage even though it's funded by inflation reduction act the main spring linear generator even that is inflation reduction act those go on until 2033 so it's only the solar project grant which is 1 million that h the solar project has to be completed by

uh December 2027 uh for us to get that grant for the city which we think if um you know if we come back to the council um by towards the fall uh of this year, we should be able to complete the project by end of 2027. Um so, uh the lease payments work out to around 14 million and then there's operational maintenance cost for the linear generator, for battery storage, for solar. So, which is so the total savings are 33 million. The total cost is 25. So, you're saving roughly $7.5 million through this project after paying for all costs. Um, let me just go to the next slide. Um, okay. Sorry. Now that I touched it. Um, so I want to summarize some of the benefits here. You're using project savings to um, you know, fund this project free of general fund dollars. You're saving 7 7.4 million after paying for all costs. the you know uh electricity costs are rising fast even though maybe Merced irrigation district has been pretty good about that uh but PG&E and you do pay some PG&E uh costs um so the more you generate on your own the less dependent you are on the utilities so and I've talked about I think everything else one of the biggest benefit is that you know we are doing this project we are bundling all these projects together. It would take your staff an inordinate amount of time to do these individually. Um, we use a legislation called government code section 4217 to implement these projects. Otherwise, the city would have to hire an engineer

first do a bid for an engineer, then design, you know, come up with uh plans and specs to do all this. You know, for a $14 million project, roughly 10%, I mean, you'll have to spend $1.4 4 million to just do the design to bid this project out. And so that's why in our industry, in our trade, it's very common to do these design build kind of projects. That's the norm. Um um so we just um uh completed uh we just uh we're in the middle of construction of a project. It's in the one of the later slides with city of Lamore, which is not too far from here in Kings County. Um uh and there we are doing a $24 million project which includes uh pretty much everything we talked about here including upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant and um you know solar and EV chargers and HVAC and uh other things. So let me just um so here's a tenative road map. Um if your council decides to move forward with this, it'll take us roughly till end of August to um um finalize everything and then you know we'll work with staff and uh hopefully come back to the council in September uh for approval and if your uh council approves it then um you know we'll it'll take us uh around two years to complete the project but the solar project will be done by December 2027. So, uh, be happy to take any questions at this time.

All right. Any questions at this time? Jennifer, do we have anything from the public? We don't have anything, mayor. All right. Coun. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Ashu, for the presentation. Um, I I'll kind of just start out with some comments is um I'd like to know where city and city staff sit on some of these projects. But one of my questions to you as you is, you know, there's

about 15 projects that are kind of the scope of work on on this. Um, if you would to pair down the projects into what you think is the most important or priority versus which ones you could wait, what are some of the projects that you think are priority projects over some of the others?

Yeah. So you know what we'd like to do in these projects and you know um is come up with a package that can be that has positive energy savings that's a positive net savings. So the priority projects for the city would be replacing the air conditioning units. Um you know maybe um using the digtor gas that's being flared. um the um the EV chargers the um you know so those are things that are um critical I think that you're doing but to do those to make those projects pencil in a package we you know we're looking at doing solar at the wastewater treatment plant we're looking at um you lighting which is you know you can still function without having LED lighting but it's better quality lighting and it saves money so it's so what we are trying to do always is come up with a package that we can come up with positive savings at the end of the so it's it's use how do we come up with a package that we can fund your critical needs so that's what we are doing here um and again you know end of the day if If your council or staff decides that they don't want to do everything, we recommend we are fine with that. You might say, you know, in the next stage, next phase that you know you want to do twothirds of this and that's okay. So, uh that's the time I would say that you should make some critical decisions on you know um do we do the entire package or do we do less? But the critical items always are the ones that are out of their uh useful

life right now, which is basically the HVAC system, the transformers.

Um the other question I have is, you know, you say we won't have to to use any general fund uh dollars for the project. Um explain and I I see your sources of funds. there more savings, but you have to have the project in place to realize those savings. Um, so what are the upfront costs? Are you carrying those upfront costs yourself and expecting the savings on the back end or are you looking for this project to potentially be paid out of you know wastewater management fund or or what is the the financing source from the city?

So generally uh when we presented this to the city we actually broke it down by each enterprise fund. So we have a general fund cash flow. We have a water fund cash flow, a sewer fund cash flow. Um so um the general fund really breaks even. Uh so there's you know because this is u um more of a sewer fund project because most of the work is it. So the sewer fund is definitely positive um and um there is a the water fund is just the battery storage. So it's marginally positive too. Um so the way these projects typically work is you know if you have any cash for the project we don't finance projects but we arrange the financing for you. Um and we don't make any money by doing that. So um I'll just give you an instance. Uh city of Lamore was $24 million project. They decided to borrow 15 million from Bank of America. We arranged it. Um and then the rest they had money uh in their uh they had some money in the general fund that they put in. They said some money in the uh uh water fund and some money in the sewer fund. So that so it was partly funded by um finance uh by a lease and partly by uh cash from different funds. So, you know, so Bank of America, if if you or the finance company usually deposits the funds in an escrow account when you approve the project, uh, and you approve the financing contract. So, let's say this is a $14 million project and you borrow 14 million, the finance company will deposit $14 million in an escrow account which will be controlled by staff, by the city. And then as we do a do the project it'll be like any

construction project with you know mobilization payments and um you know uh ongoing uh monthly progress payments. Um so as we are building the project we get paid. Um so when we complete the project the escrow account gets depleted. We are paid in full and then you start making lease payments uh to the to the finance company. But at that point you should be seeing savings. So what we are saying is the savings should be there to make the lease payments. Essentially you're taking dollars that you're spending on operational expense and making lease payments out of those uh by saving those operational expense. You're making lease payments through that. So it's not coming out of straight out of your funds.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so there's some form of debt service that is um in this in this type of project. Yeah. Um, as for the incentives, the the tax credits, the grants,

do you uh partner with the city to apply for those grants, provide support and trying to obtain those grants? We know that grants aren't 100% guaranteed. So, is there support in that aspect as well? Definitely, we're legally not allowed to file the grant on your behalf. You have to have a you have to be a tax attorney to file the uh inflation reduction act. Uh but we've done it several times and we'll we provide all the information to your uh tax attorney. Uh and it's a 1090t form. It's it's not that difficult and and they they file it. But we provide we the answer is yes. be support fully uh with all the cost breakdowns and all the forms that they that they need.

That's all that questions I have currently. Mayor MR. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Um actually, it's good timing that we we have this on the agenda tonight right before we do a budget presentation. Uh I think the council member Deon's point um you know we did talk about enterprise funds earlier this year and looked at some of the rate studies and some of the balances that we have and we know that we have some reserves for capital and so uh I think to directly answer your question you know we should be looking at trying to save some rateayer money where we can especially in in water and wastewater and so if we've got projects where we can do things more efficiently through through these energy projects I think that's a good place to start. If we can do things that make sense and we have the ability to use some uh rate, you know, some savings there, uh it may make sense. We we really wanted to bring this forward just to kind of uh spark some creativity. We're not trying to stifle anything with our with within the city. So, we thought this was time to bring this partner forward, show you what we've been working on. Uh, bring the whole universe forward. See if there's things here that make sense to you that you want to, you know, have us continue to work on. If you're like, "No, this is not the time. Please don't waste your time on this." Fine. We pack it up. We don't work on it. You think there's something here we should work on, we're happy to take it forward. Um, but I think for us as a shoe mentioned that, you know, enterprise funds I think make sense because you've got funding there all ready to go and plus you can add things into the rates potentially later on if you need to and in some cases you've got um in life areas where we don't have to make investments. Uh those areas unfortunately like government buildings however they're often uh general fund and so they are very tight for funding. So they're they're difficult to manage for debt service. But I think I think enterprise frontrest is definitely an area we should look into.

Customer dup remember the question I had um these projects um at the the price that it's at. We have a project labor agreement that's um within the city of Merced. Do these projects fall under the project labor agreement um as presented currently? And if you don't know, that could be the answer as well.

These are budget pricing. So, we definitely have worked with project labor agreements before and we just uh we will go through your PLA and see what it entails. And uh we have no issues working with the PLA and we have in the past. So we just need to see you know uh what kind of uh uh if there is an impact on price but this is a budget price right now it's I would say plus - 15%. All right. Additional questions, comments. Okay, hear none. Uh, this is on for one to accept the report and two provide comments and suggestions to staff on potential next steps. Um, I think we I think certainly if you could tell me we could save $7 million and have cleaner energy, I think that's a win-win for everybody for sure. But again, um, devil is in the details. I think staff needs to take a hard look at it. Um, see, you know, where the financing is going to come from, where the potential savings can come from. Um, so I think certainly, uh, at least from my perspective, uh, makes sense to continue working on. I think that's kind of the impression I get uh from the city manager as well, but and you know, if there's a project to be had there that that benefits the city, we do it. If not, then then we won't. But any additional comments? Scott, anything else you want to add on your work?

That's right. Or additional questions, comments, coun, is that a new one or is that

Yeah, that's a new just a finding conclusion uh comment is um I join with you, mayor, in that sentiment. I think staff uh needs to take a a hard look at this if we are going to take on you know debt service then city council needs to have eyes wide open going into the project. So um would I I do think we may have enterprise funds to work on some of these projects that um have been depreciated and have been not looked at in in the past. So, um, definitely open to continuing the conversation and getting staff's input on what could work currently and if we want to do all the projects. Does that include debt service? What does that debt service look like? What is the the interest to that debt? Um, we may realize some savings, but with interest is not always provide savings on the back end given the interest right now, interest rates right now. So, um, definitely look forward to what could come about of this because a lot of these updated projects could could be beneficial in in the long run for the city.

Yeah, for sure. Council, similarly, I'm I'm in favor of having better efficiency here. Um I think don't know where my mind went. Um yeah, it's getting close to it's after 9:00.

Um yeah, I think it's important that that we do look to save the city money. Um I think there needs to be more details. Uh we need to be able to pick and choose kind of what we're able to um actually implement. Um, so I think that it's important to continue to continue the work um in detailing this thing out and then uh bring back to council to really decide what is feasible for us uh what the city needs and um yeah let us see what it is and choose from there.

That's what the intention is here and uh the interest is included sir in this um and the lease payment uh the the savings um yeah okay at 4.25% 25% over 20 years, which is the current interest rates approximately. Is this a solar project that we lease from you or is solar that we own? You'll own it. We own. Yeah. Got it. Okay. We'll maintain it and guaranteed for 20 years, but you'll own it. Yeah. Additional questions, comments? We have Pro Boy, Council thoughts that keep working on it if the project makes sense, makes

Yeah. Uh I'm in favor of moving this project forward. Keep working on it and then bring back more detail so we can review to and make decision on it. Okay. All right. You have your direction, sir. Okay. Thank you, Mr. J. We appreciate Thank you so much. Thank you for the All right, quick break. Um 9:22 right now. We'll come back at 9:30.

Let's recent You're gonna fall asleep. All right, Venus. Here we go. 37 slides. No city manager introductory budget message.

Agenda item L3, review and discussion regarding the city of Merced fiscal year 2627 budget. Thanks. May

Mayor, if I could um first of all, I wanted to thank uh the council for your time and consideration for uh introduction of the budget this year. Also wanted to thank Venus and her team along with all the departments that worked on this. I know that we had uh changed the budget process quite a bit this year. We came back to you, I think it was in January. Uh we provided you the uh uh department um level um my my brain just shut off but uh I want to say goals and priorities but I know they were they were different. They were the uh MGOS's management goals and objectives for the departments. We provided you guys also a copy of some capital projects. So you thought you saw those very early. You gave us some feedback. Uh we really do work on the budget pretty much from about November October November all the way through now. And uh it's a challenge. It's it's a lot of work. And so uh I want to thank everyone that's involved in it. And now the process kind of shifts from internal to external as we start talking about tonight. Uh this is the first of three meetings where we where we discuss budget. Uh also want to thank the public. Um the town halls the strategic goals meeting that we had those all factor into this. Um uh there there's just one word that comes up over and over as we work through the budget. It's its constraints. Uh the city face faces huge constraints. Uh there are challenges that we've got every year. We try to put put together our budget. It is put together by how do we manage um our resources to make sure we provide a good quality level of services for for our citizens and our businesses and and it is extremely difficult and it's gotten more and more challenging each year as I've been your city manager. And so, uh, I think this year we you've got some unique decisions to make and I think we we provided, um, some good choices for you to to consider and, uh, we're going to present those tonight and I'll turn it over to Venus.

Good evening, mayor, members of the council. Um, tonight we will be presenting the city of Mrs. budget, the city manager recommended budget for 2026 27. So there's a lot of information in this um presentation but I know that it is late and I will try to be as efficient as possible. So we are going to talk a little bit uh just city budget overview. Uh we'll talk a little bit this year about internal services and how those work um within the city. uh we'll focus a little bit on the general fund, measure C, measure Y, discuss a little bit about other departments and then um leave you with options and some so you can discuss among yourself. So just as an overview in creating the budget for next year, uh there are currently uh labor negotiated um in place which would increase salaries by 4%. So that is included in this budget. uh maintenance, supplies, and services. We were able to maintain either reducing them down to less than they had le last year or at least maintaining up to a 2% increase. Um we did have a methodology change this year for the budget. Uh new grants and opioid carryover we removed from next year's budget and we're going to be so the budget resolution allows us to do um grants as carryovers. any new grants will come to you um to approve and appropriate um when they're given to us. They're not really part of um the operating budget. And so by changing this methodology, what it's doing is that it's um not factoring in uh your general fund reserve requirement. So these are really considered not operating costs but one time type of things. So, by moving them out of the budget and kind of doing them separately, we're eliminating the increase um that's not really needed for the reserve requirement. Parks and community services, we did balance the budget, but again, they could um have future challenges uh

because of the way that we balance them with um potentially one type of funding or agreements that are being put in place. Uh PCM fleet replacement, it's not included in the general fund. hasn't been for years since the downturn. Um, but we do include it in enterprise funds and other special revenue funds if the funding is available. And this year we have not uh allocated any funding towards community funding. It's not to say that the council cannot do that. We just have didn't do it in this initial uh uh version of the budget. If the council decides to do that, it does not impact uh your budget shortfall and it does not um uh it's not factored into the reserve either because it's considered onetime funding. So, some of the challenges last year, this year, and probably we will continue to have is um you know the fire support on federal grant. So currently we have 24 firefighters that are funded by our federal grant. So we're going to be losing several millions of dollars. Um that grant ends next fiscal year. Uh we will get funding through March of 2027. So in this budget there is one quarter of 24 positions that are not funded by the grant. So they are funded within the general fund. Um but th those positions are at risk. uh park safety and homelessness, they are a community priority, yet ongoing funding could be at risk um if we're not able to figure out some uh additional revenue sources. And then streets, of course, we we never have enough money to continue the street um maintenance. You know, there continue to be deferred maintenance on them and they continue to deteriorate. So in saying all of that, uh we did put together a budget and uh for next year's

budget, the recommended budget is 40461.2 million. Of that, the general fund is 69.1 million. Your enterprise funds, which is the bulk of the pie, is uh 210.6. So this is where your water, sewer, refu um and airport funds are located. Internal service funds are 59.3 million. Your measure uh measure funds are 21 million. Probably made that color a little too dark. Um but that's where your measure C, measure Y, measure E funds are. And then all other operating funds are 101.1 million. So this slide doesn't tend to change very much from year to year. These tend to be the citywide largest cost drivers every year and coincidentally these are intern most of these are internal service funds. So your general liability your workers comp um vehicle on and m health insurance we saw that increase last year for uh for to this year by 15%. And of course there's a Kalpers which is our pension cost. There's also a new legislation coming through AB uh 1383 which could um continue to make pension increase this uh change for public safety uh pension in which um they they rolled out Cal um um sorry PEPA several years ago to help uh cities with pension costs and now this is somewhat rolling that back and so this that would uh continue to increase our unfunded acred liability significantly. It's hard to say what that dollar amount would be as of right now, but if that is does go into effect, it goes into effect January 1st of 2027. And so we will start to hear a lot more about that as um the months go on here this year.

Some of the recommended staffing uh for for next year. So we currently have 562 full-time positions approved. Um, this would change in the city manage office. We're eliminating two. In the fire division, we're adding two but eliminating two. In human resources, we're adding one. Information technology, adding one. Public works fleet, we're adding one. And so, I subtotal it here because these positions are what would impact the general fund. And then below that is enterprise fund. So, uh, public works streets is one, public works water, um, adding one but deleting one. and then the refuge division we're adding two. So that is a net of four positions um to be added for next year. So throughout the past year, there's been a lot of discussions about our internal service allocations um and how those um impact departments because so internal service costs are basically a a fund that we we we have separately and then the way that that gets funded to pay out is that we charge the departments for that and they're charged in different ways depending on the type of service that's being provided. So, we have a liability insurance, right? This is where we pay all of our insuranceances for um property uh employees um uh vehicle insurance and so based on number of positions or number of vehicles or square footage of the property that the department has um experience of claims and losses and that gets allocated in a very specific way. Um you can see that 6.3 million was allocated to departments. Of that uh 36.5% was general fund and then other departments made up the rest of that 63.5% um was charged out to other departments. So we have several of these types of funds within the city and workers comp.

Employee benefits is where healthc care um is u monitored and tracked. We have fleet management, which is if your department has a vehicle or several vehicles, you are charged vehicle on&m fees. So, we have a a fleet division that employs mechanics and um you know, they do they uh purchase gas and so you're gassing up on the vehicles. So, all of that is monitored on by vehicle and then that is distributed um by public works as a charge to the department. So, we have several of these and I don't want to go into too much detail about all of them, but this is kind of this tells us how they're allocated and what the allocation was for this budget in the in next year. A couple of other areas for admin is support services. This is where we employ uh personnel and risk uh management employees and then information technology employees that they provide a service to other departments within the ser within the um city and so that's why they're an internal service uh fund. Uh direct service charges is when we know um an employee works very specifically does some work for another department and so they they charge based on an hourly rate and number of hours and it's a very specific calculation that's done. Um so we charge within the city we charge each other $6.2 million of that the general fund only pays about 1% but the general fund benefits by receiving $2.4 $4 million in revenue from other departments by direct um service charging out to other departments. And then we have what we call administration um within the general fund. So there are several uh departments, city council, city manager, city clerk, attorney, finance and purchasing where we do a lot of service for other departments and so and and then within departments in the general

fund. So I just wanted to show you kind of the allocation that we do. It's based on a weighted average and it's based on number of employees on budget amounts and then a level of effort of of how much time and and effort we spend on these departments. So all of these departments make up an operating cost of $10 million within the general fund. And so the way that there that's funded is 1.3 million is direct service charges to other departments. Um we have a little over 300,000 that is miscellaneous revenues that come in and 6.2 2 million of that are the admin charges and then 2.2 million is absorbed within the general fund. Uh it's considered working for departments within the general fund. So here is the general fund budget uh recommended for next year. We start the year with 11.8 million. We have budgeted revenue of 67.2 2 million operating expenses and transfers totaling 68.5 million. So that does leave us with a shortfall of almost 1.3 million. Uh we have some below the line non-operating costs of 400,000 some future planning costs of 2 million 20 uh two 2 million25,000. So this is your uh set aside funding and we'll go over some of these details in a future slide. And then we have some prior year projects that are carrying over um to for completion of 200,000 leaves your balance at 7 almost 7.9 million. 3.4 of that we need to um keep within the general fund to meet the general fund reserve requirement. So it's 5% of your operating expenses and that leaves uh funds available of $4.4 million. This is the slide that shows uh what where revenue expense has been over

several years. Um it kind of it starts back in 1213 where we started to um we were in the downturn and so it kind of shows us coming out of that. So you see a lot of blue over orange because a lot of our expenses were um over revenue and then they we start to come out of that around 1920 2021 you see really good revenues over expenses. We start to get pretty equal in 22 and 23. And then in uh and in 24 you still see some um good revenue but then we get to 25 actuals and you're seeing expense over revenue. And then our budget for the last two years has been expense over revenue. And then 2526 um last year um we did make that balance. So where you're seeing the big um expense over revenue is because of a one-time fundings. So just to break down what our revenues are for next year. So we're estimating to get 67.1 million. um of that sales tax is uh the biggest 26% that it's a little over 17 million. Property tax and vehicle and L is both 16%. So between these three revenues it makes up um 58% of your general fund revenues. Um RDA residuals 3% you have other taxes at 12% um admin at 11% direct service charges at 4% and then some other fees and charges of 12%. So it does reflect down. So taxes in general actually increased 4%. The reason that it um shows a downward is because of the change in methodology for one and then we're seeing um the reduction in the safer grant. Uh we're seeing some reduction in franchise fees um and a couple other areas smaller areas um make that look like it's going down.

On the expense side, uh we're estimating 71.1 million in expenses. Personnel of course making up um the biggest chunk of this pie of 72%. You have maintenance, supplies and services at 20%. You have transfers at 3.2% and then your future planning at 2.8, but every every other expense um category is less than a 1% less than a.5% really. Um so I show operating up 1.35 but there are a couple factors there. So uh personnel actually increases 4% and then transfers increase another 3% but the drop is the debt. So the DOF settlement has been paid off. So that debt falls off and then again because of the methodology change in the grants and the opioid carryover um it offsets the expense to show like it's going down. This slide is the historical transfers that the general fund has supplemented other funds. So historically they supplemented uh parks and recreation which you can see um has received an allocation um for several years. It did get smaller in the downturn but then has um slowly increased and we're up to um a little over 1.7 million. uh development services has historically gotten an a transfer, but when they're doing very well with building activity, they don't need that supplement. So, you can see that they had fall they've fallen off after 1617 and not needed a supplement. Um and then airport had come off for a few years because of the um the car's act grant and now it's needing the supplement again. So, we did have it come back last year and we have uh some for next year. It's less than last year, but there is still a supplement there. And then what we've added now um for last year and this I'm this year and

next year really is um the housing housing admin. We're now seeing um deficits in housing and so the general fund is helping to supplement that. We did come at midyear and ask for that for this year which is where you see that blue little bar at the top for 2526 and then we continue to add it for next year. So, these are the details on the uh non-operating costs within the general fund. So, we are setting aside um $60,000 and I'd say it's for enterprise resource planning, but it's not for the system. It's for um it's for temporary help to help us with implementation. So, we are continuing to implement the ERP and we're hoping that that will be done um through August, September, and then um we will have the utility billing implemented. Um we have $80,000 for the election costs coming up in November. We have 150,000 allocated towards a compensation study um to prepare for the next round of labor negotiations since next year will be the last year on um all those. the arts projects. So, this is carryover funding. It's not new funding. Uh council had allocated uh quite a bit of money in the last few years and so they've not used it all. So, this is this will carry into next year for use. There's 20,000 allocated towards Bob Hart Fountain Repairs and then park maintenance um is uh recommended to purchase a 3/4 ton truck uh for their division. The set aside funding um is economic development opportunity fund 405,000. We have affordable housing fund at 67,000 and a little over a million for the trust 115. And as you can see, there's zero um identified for the general fund reserve 25% set aside because based on

this operating budget in the general fund that's proposed um you will actually see that the general fund reserve is overfunded and so we do not need to set aside additional funding. So this is to show you what those balances will be once we allocate that additional funding. So in the general fund um it our fund balance would be at $7 million. 3.4 again has to remain um for contingency purposes based on the reserve requirement. So leaves us at four 4.4 million available in the general fund reserve. We're at 17.8 million. Again no identified set aside for next year but we are overfunded by 740,000 there. and trust 115. If once we add the million, we're at 11.3 million. Uh econom economic development opportunity fund adding the 400,000, we're at 1.45 million. And affordable housing after we add the 600,000 will be at 1.1 million. So we're moving on to measure C. Uh measure C again h we have that separated into three funds. we have the old the funding that's left from the old measure C. Um and then it got superseded by the new measure that passed and so the new measure required 95% of of the funding to go to public safety and then 5% to go to roads. So we start um the year at 6.4 million for all three of those. We're estimating 9.3 million in sales tax for measure C, a little bit of other revenue and then a total of 9 almost 9.5 million. Um we do have transfers factored in uh the 145,000 is to meet a maintenance of effort for SB1

and then operating expenses are 10.4 million. We have some acquisitions of 530,000. Some carryover capital projects of 1.6 million. So it leaves our balance at 3.1 million for all three funds. This does meet GFOA recommended minimum um by a little over $800,000. So when measure C passed um there was a requirement uh that we could not reduce costs uh for police and fire in the general fund and a few of these other funds. And so we make sure that we do this calculation every year to make sure that we are meeting that requirement. Um so based on that um we have uh 52.7 million um accounted for in these areas for public safety. So that is exceeding the dollar amount by 15.8 million and it's exceeding it by 3%. So in measure Y, we are um continuing to see some reductions in measure measure Y. They're not a lot, but they are still um continuing to decline. And so we are not sure when that's going to kind of bottom out so we can get a consistent amount. But so this year we're estimating um the revenue to come in at about 1.6. Next year it'll be we're estimating about the same. So, um it's about an $80,000 reduction from what we thought would um come in this year. So, although that's not a lot of money, when you break it down to each of the allocations, it can be impactful. So, measure Y again is required to be 20% set aside for police, 20% for fire, 20% for park parks and recreation, and then we have 40% discretionary, but can only be used in those three

categories. Um so for measure Y these each column is a fund where we track and monitor and make sure that these are spent for those um specific areas. So our beginning balance is 700,000. We're estimating again the 1.6 million from measure Y. Uh we have a little bit of other revenue which is interest. Uh we have some transfer in. So the 348,000 um reduction in discretionary but then positive in the 20% allocation, it's for the park maintenance portion of it. And then we have transfers out that are actually transferring out of measure Y and um transferring into the parks and community service operating fund. So that's a total of 643,000. Um we have other expenditures within the funds of 1.3 million. And so it leaves our fund balances at $47,000. So parks and community services. So we talked about measure Y. Um the council has um basic they give a 100% of the 20% portion to uh parks and community services operating fund. So we transfer that out and then they have um designated 50% of the 40% discretionary portion towards that those programs too. So that's another 321590. Um in addition we increased the general fund supplement by 4%. So that's 1.7 million that will be transferring from the general fund. Um, we did have some fund balance within measure Y that we were able to fund some equipment for field prep and uh in in anticipation of CP42 opening and then to also help with other field preps to rent

them out for use for um for sports events. So that's the mule gator 20,000 tractor 30,000. You have a lawn mower 16 foot wide lawn mower 20,000. uh turf tank lease for 15,000 and then storage container and trailer 5,000 and 2500. So the way that we were able to make the fund balance is um really uh the department um kind of knowing seeing the writing on the wall right they knew that if they were not they were not able to supplement their revenue then they would probably need to cut their budget. So, I know that uh Director Jensen went out and he has very good relationships with um and with partners within the city and so he was able to um to secure some additional revenues. So, in addition to him increasing rates, which was improved in approved in December, and those rates were included those increases were included in the budget. Um that also includes some potential rental uh fees from CP42 of $60,000. Um he had also received a three-year donation for a zookeeper. And so we're in year two of that donation. So that would be 7 the cost of the zookeep keeper 76,200. But he also secured an agreement with Merced school districts in which they are going to contribute um per particip 500 up to 500 school participants in youth sports between um football, basketball, and uh baseball. And so some of that money is coming in for this year, but the bulk of it, the 196850 is estimated to come in from that contract

for next year. So that really helped to um supplement their budget. Um they also are receiving a grant um for an outdoor recreation program of 124725 and then they all they continue to get CFD special tax. This is not new. Um but it is a large piece of the revenue that they get. So the special uh CFD special tax assessments um they did increase a little bit this year. So and so we're leveling a little over 6,400 parcels which will give them uh $240,000 in revenue. So just breaking down uh parks and community services, their total expense budget is $3.6 million. Of that 2.2 two is personnel. Uh 640,000 in maintenance, supplies, and services, 488,000 in internal service charges, um 219 in admin costs, uh 13,000 in direct service charges, and then 17,000 in transfers. On the revenue side, you can see 50% of their revenue is the supplement they receive from the general fund of 1.8 million. And then they have the measure Y um from the 20% allocation and the 40% allocation. Uh the CFD of 241,000, the C CVF grant, the Merced contribution, um the zookeeper, and then program fees make up 500 a little over $500,000 of their revenue budget. Okay, so moving into police. So police department they currently have 143 positions 98 of them are sworn and this is um these positions are located within the general fund measure C and the CFD. Um some of the highlights in the budget are you know based on the council

priority of code enforcement. They are including uh nine part-time CSOs to to help uh in that effort uh of code enforcement and some are in measure C and some are in measure Y. Uh in measure C they are um going to be replacing duty weapons uh for 105,000. And then last year we moved uh quite a bit of operating cost in order to help the general fund balance. And so they are continuing to leave those operating costs within the measure C and then they've actually increased a bit too. So they've increased by 18%. In the fire department there are 93 positions. 88 of them are sworn officers. 24 of those are the safer grant um uh firefighters um between so again that's between general fund measure C and CFD um also in the general fund they are proposing to delete two battalion chiefs and add two division chiefs so this um would increase the salaries a bit but where they're able to make up those savings are reductions in overtime uh battalion chiefs are able to make overtime as division chiefs um would not uh we're uh also included in the budget is a fire chief equity salary adjustment of 9%. So currently the fire chief makes a dollar an hour more than the deputy chief. And so in order to somewhat line him back up, um we proposed a equity adjustment of 9% um for that position. Uh and measure Y, they're proposing to purchase two cardiac monitors. Um again, with the priority of code enforcement, they're allocating $80,000 towards weed

abayment. and then they're purchasing 11 thou uh $11,000 narcotic safe um for their AL ALS program. So in in administration, so the city council currently the um stipen setting commission met and are recommending um an increase to the council stipend. So, currently it's 500 for council members per month and um 600 for the mayor. They're recommending it to increase to $1,000 a month for uh council members and 1250 for the mayor. Um that would be effective January 1st. Uh I believe that's coming to you June 1st for approval. And if that is approved, um that um additional funding for uh January through June is not incorporated in the budget. So, we would add $23,575 uh dollars to the shortfall. Um, also in the city manager uh department, we are adding two part-time interns. Uh, we deleted the two peer support specialists. That Calg Cal VIP grant expired in December. Um, and then adding the compensation uh study of 150,000. In the city clerk's division, we are adding a part-time position, the deputy city clerk part-time position. This is to help with um implementing uh SB77 and to help with public records requests. In the human resources uh department, we're adding an HR director. Um because this is an internal service fund, I wanted to show you the breakdown of what the general fund cost is compared to other fund or and then what the other funds cost is. So an HR director is

217,000. The general fund uh allocation of that is 95,000. All other funds uh make up the other 122,000. In information technology uh it's recommended to add a cyber security specialist um for 154,000. I guess again that breakdown is in the general fund uh 69,000. Other funds are 85,000. They're also including end of life server replacements and wireless access point replacement. Again, because we don't have the replacement program in place for all funds, typically um you would want to set aside a little bit of funding every year and then when these come up for replacement, you would do that. But because we've not been able to incorporate that, they don't have capacity. They're having to do these one big purchases at one time. And then again, I just wanted to show that we are not setting set setting aside funding for the ERP allocation system. Um, we have set aside millions of dollars over the last six to seven years and so we finally feel like that is completely funded and we should be able to get through implementation without another allocation. Um some other items are last year I added in um about a million dollars of RDA residual to our revenues and this year um we're increasing that to $2 million um in RDA residual. Uh now that the doof settlement is paid um we can use that for operating costs within the general fund. Uh again, we're carrying over arts fund, excuse me, arts funding of 70,500 and um there's no allocation for community funding at this time. So, in development services, there uh the there were fee increases that were

approved um in April by the council and um once those were approved, we did incorporate into the budget. Originally they were not balancing. Um they had pretty much eaten up all the reserves in the first uh the first uh department uh budget, but once we put these um fees in place, they actually do balance now. Um so they're not um eating into their reserves at this point. Uh that new fee study also incorporated a new fee called the general plan update fee. So, we created a new fund in which 5% of certain building permit types will be put into this new fund and it's um to hold there until we're ready for to do um future general plan updates, housing elements and zoning codes uh in the housing division. So, as I mentioned earlier, the housing um administration department because of the way we've had to change um how we receive money through the grants and the project activity costs um we are now um not able to get enough to fund the administration of housing. And so, uh there is a deficit of 159,000. And based on you know them doing work towards affordable housing we are allocating 127,000 of the deficit which is 80% um to come from affordable housing and then the uh 20% to come from the general fund. So it's about 32,000. So in downtown we had um implemented the property base improvement district. Uh the board has requested that we increase that by 2%. Uh the formation allowed up to 5% but they're only requesting a 2% increase. For the tour tourism based improvement district we're increasing

that 3% and that is based on toot toot were increasing at 3%. Uh the sale of the ballast station we had hoped that that would be completed in this fiscal year. So we did not put a budget in it for next year. Um we now know that that is likely going to carry into July or August of next year. So when we come back with Arata, you're going to see some items on there for a budget for the bow station. Uh in the airport, um they do have a deficit, but they did increase their revenue. So it so the amount of general fund transfer is less than last year um because of the new carrier coming on board, uh the completion of the new terminal, the new TSA agreement. Um they are trying to do some advertising. And so they were able to increase some revenue there. Um they are increasing their revenue, but it's still just not enough to um to balance their budget. So in public works divisions, uh their staffing, we're adding three maintenance workers. One is in streets and two in refues. Um we're deleting a water distribution quality assurance tech and adding a water distribution operator three. Uh we're also adding a storekeeper for fleet maintenance. The cost of that is 94,000. Again, this is an internal service fund. So the general fund allocation is 17,000 of that cost. All other funds pay 77,000. So looking at the three enterprise funds, um the the operating system funds, uh we always like to make sure that they're um they're fiscally sound. And so uh operating expense over revenue, you can see in the wastewater and refues, they actually have more

revenue than operating expense. And the water division is a little bit the other way. um they have 16.9 million in operating expense and only 16 in revenue. Uh but they the reserves are pretty high in all three of them. So the orange bar is the reserve. The blue is the reserve goal. So in water and waste water, we like it to be six months of operating cost plus 5year average of capital costs. Um and in the refues, it's only two months of operating costs. So you can see that their reserve is quite a bit more than the goal. So they um and then rate studies are in progress for all utilities and that would likely go into next year. So, some of the projects that were included for public works were a skater room roof receal, a service center partitions. For fleet, it's oil containment tanks of 30,000, and a highway 59 shop carport of 50,000. For the civic center, it's um the third floor fire alarm, and then replacing restroom partitions for the first and second floor. In measure C for roads, uh they're proposing to purchase a 3/4tonon truck for 80,000, a 10- wheelel dump truck for 250,000, and a shared boom truck. So the cost of the boom truck is about 800,000. They'll share it with three other divisions. So the the streets uh portion of that is 200,000. And then a couple projects within enterprise funds are the uh wastewater programmable logic controllers for 3.4 million. And then um they're wanting to do some asphalt repairs out at the corpyard and water and refues will share that cost for $350,000.

Okay. Measure Y for parks. So this is the 40% discretionary. So half of it goes to programming for parks and recreation and the other half stays for um parks. So bike p bike path maintenance will continue. They'll continue to allocate funding towards tree trimming of 100,000. They said they set aside funding for ongoing park maintenance as it's needed. 75,000 um allocating 35,000 for each of the fences at McNamera pool and Ada Gins's pool. Um, also there were two uh playgrounds that burnt down. And so we are um appropriating the deductibles of 25,000 for each of those. And then once the insurance um is approved and um the claim goes through, we will bring that back to council for the additional appropriation to be uh reimbursed by insurance. Um what's also included is the $30,000 onetime investment towards Rahili Park um from the cellular tower agreement. So in the next slide I'll show you all of the street funding that we've not put towards projects but um we did include a little bit of new funding towards projects. Uh so we 300,000 is towards the Belleview Road bike path. This is a new project and in coordination with the UC Merrced um we added $100,000 to the APS Polar push buttons at schools project. So this is project has gone on for a few years and they add a little bit of funding every year to continue that. Um the same with the next one, the downtown concrete light pool. Um it's not new. It's adding an additional 40,000. Uh Craig Drive rehab is new and they're allocating 200,000 just to start that work. And this slide just shows you all of the

roads projects available funding between all the funding sources. So most of the funding we put into projects to be determined until council either directs a project or um we come up with a project that is ready to move forward and then we would allocate it funding. Um so in total there's about 11.3 million in projects to be determined between all these funding sources. Uh there's a little over $580,000 unappropriated in measure C for roads. So there's about 11.9 million total. Last year uh at the at budget presentation, I uh provided a slide for fiscal stability and what we would look to do for revenues because we were having some challenges last year. we knew that would continue into this year and to help that. And so on the left is what we proposed and the right is um the progress that we've made. So adopting a new uh rate for the CFD for services. So we have worked on that rate, we have a rate, we came to council at a study session and presented that. And so the next um step is to wait for a project to form that district officially. And so that is pending um waiting for for a project to form it. Adopting new development services fees. So that was a completed it. Those rates go into effect July 1st and they are included in the budget estimate. The business license audit that got approved by council in January. Uh we have an agreement with HDL and that is in progress that actually went live today and so they they're starting that work um effective today. It took a little time to get that up and running. Um and then identify other potential cost recovery areas. So as we talked about parks and community services did

um increase fees and got that improved in December. airport is continuing to look at um some of their fees to see where they can increase um increase that and of course we're still continuing to look for others as we can. So last slide. Uh so the shortfall as I mentioned before is about 1.3 million in the general fund. So these are some of the options um that are being provided. So the first one is to leave it as as it is. You can leave it 1.3 million out of balance. Um we do estimate a fund balance that could absorb that if you wanted to do it. Uh that is maybe a one a one year maybe a two-year fix depending on where the fund balances end up. Um the uh this could affect a credit credit rating if we wanted to move forward with that or ever wanted to get into some kind of a debt agreement. um it could impact our credit rating and potential interest rates. Um so that is uh the negative of that. Uh if you wanted to clear the shortfall, um a recommendation by staff is to transfer the $740,000 from the reserve that it's overfunded. Um we we could transfer some of the operating costs from PD to the CFD of 150,000. we can transfer some PD and fire um operating costs to measure C of 250,000 and then the balance we can transfer from the trust 115 from pension of 153,000. Um this would be a one-year fix. And then this um second um way that you could clear the the shortfall is again transferring the overfunded from the

reserve if you wanted us or if you wanted to identify other expense reductions and then anything left again would would come from the trust 115. So again this is another one-year fix. Um none of these options are sustainable in the long term, but these are options that um could help for this year. So that was my 37 slides. So if you have any questions, I will do my best to answer. All right. Any questions for our finance officer? Jennifer, anything from the public? I do have two request to speak forms.

Call speakers, please. Uh, can I get Ashley Marie Suarez and Andrea Urebe?

All right, Ashley and Andrea, thank you for waiting around. Good evening. As you may have read in the comment letter that I submitted Friday, May 15th, community members we work alongside would like to see the city invest its discretionary dollars into stronger tenant protections and resources. While it seems that the affordable housing fund may get 607,000 from the general fund this upcoming fiscal year, the housing department requires a budget transfer to balance that anticipated deficit. and it appears that the remaining uh 480,000 or so um dollars would be insufficient to meet community demands for stronger tenant protections and housing resources. In consideration of this, um the community would like to see more general fund dollars transferred into affordable housing fund on an annual basis in the future to ensure the funding of housing resources and programs. Um I'd like to thank the council and staff for working on the repeat housing code violator ordinance as this is definitely a step in the right direction. And while we wait for the city to determine if retaliation protections can be expanded from 6 months to 12 months through the anti-slam ordinance, we urge the council to consider the following. After the um establishing of that program goes into effect, code enforcement might respond to some calls to determine uh whether units may be considered too unfit to live, resulting in order to vacate notices. And while tenants do have state protections that require owners to pay for relocation assistance, there's a possibility that owners might not be able to afford that or simply don't want to pay. And to address this likely scenario, we're asking the city to allocate 250,000 of its general fund dollars in combination with the revenue generated from housing code violation penalties collected by code enforcement to advance benefits to displaced tenants in the event that their unit has an order to vacate and the owner of that unit does not pay. This program would decrease the risk of households experiencing homelessness and might be able to reduce further costs in addressing those programs that address homelessness in the long run. Similarly,

many tenants are facing retaliation as a result of reporting uninhabitable conditions to property owners now before the policy has even passed. And so some of the those retali retaliatory actions include but are not limited to increasing rent after repairs have been made, harassment, and threats of eviction often resulting in notices to terminate the teny. But because many of these actions are illegal and considered retaliation, tenants um would like to see a broader right to council program. However, we know that's not possible under this deficit. Um, and so in light of the trends of terminations of tenency that result in evictions, we're strongly recommending council allocate somehow $1 million of its discretionary funds and grant funds to establish an eviction protection program that will at least serve tenants um that are facing evictions regardless of immigration status and low-income households um to be able to fight against these illegal terminations of tenencies and evictions. Um, and so if there's any additional questions or concerns about some of the community identified programs that were highlighted in the comment letter, we definitely would be happy to arrange a meeting between council members, city staff, and residents. Thank you.

Thank you, Ash.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Sandra and I'm a land use and transportation policy advocate for leadership council. Through our work, we meet with community residents from South Merrced and engage with city staff and council members. Today, my comments will build upon the comment letter submitted by my colleague Ashley Marie regarding the budget for this upcoming fiscal year. The two asks we outlined regarding land use and transportation are funds for a South Merrced community specific plan and funds for local streets improvements in South Merrced. South Mercedes SB535 disadvantaged community under Kalen viral screen 4.0 and is also considered recap recap area within the housing element. This translates to environmental injustices within the community and a plethora of infrastructural needs including road improvements, the need for a grocery store, more green spaces, and access to resources. These are all large undertakings that require community engagement, actionable items, equitable investments, and support from the city. Um, a South Mered specific community plan will help create a guidebook to address the many needs within the community. Consequently, we are asking for $350,000 for the development of the South Merrced community specific plan. As mentioned, South Merrced experiences poor transportation infrastructure due to long deferred maintenance, heavy traffic, and years of disinvestments. Residents have advocated for improvements and investments for transportation within the community for years through public comments, letters, attending workshops, and collaborating on evening walking tours. some one which was referenced earlier today and it was the most recent one we held in February and we were able to have council members Tao and Shong attend. Thank you so much for attending. Um during this review of the presentation uh that was posted online, I saw within the capital projects a project on canal and child which would require an additional $200,000 for sidewalk improvements. I will note that I did not see that one in the slides and I hope that does not mean that this project has been re received. Um this project on Canal and Childs falls um for and supports the goals established within the housing element

which says says it will allocate 20% of the capital improvement project budget for projects in recap areas including district 2 and south Merced. Additionally within the city safe routes to school in Merced improving access and connectivity work and the application for the active transportation project I noticed item D a project on child's avenue and end street. We view these projects as a sign of the efforts of residents being acknowledged and listened to by city council members and city staff and that y'all are listening and paying attention to what residents are asking for. We appreciate this and we hope to see these commitments from this council to see this project secured within this budget and go to the improvements of the community of South Merrced. Beyond these two projects, we hope to continue seeing um commitments that will promote active transportation projects and road improvements within South Merrced through funds from this year's fiscal budget through the general fund measure V grants such as CDBG and ATP. We ask for 5 million in funds to be brought to South Merrced for local streets improvements. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Rub. Miss Sandal.

Hi. Um, you know, one of the things that I that I didn't hear from the budget uh was actually about measure V. So, I don't know. I mean, I I read that article on those palos. So, I kind of, you know, put my my antenna up on that and just wondered, you know, if it was within there or if it's separate or, you know, whatever. But I also support more tenant protections and that you actually, you know, do fund some of these uh recommendations that um the staffers from uh leadership council have offered to you and I look forward to the the ordinance that's still being worked on. Thank you.

Thank you, Cler. All right, Jennifer. Anybody else?

That's all we have, Mayor. Okay. All right. We'll bring it back to council. And again, this is the first of our three budget hearings. We have our budget uh report traditionally second meeting in May and then two budget public hearings uh our first one which will be June 1st and then our uh next one the final budget meeting June 15th as well. All right. So, back to council. additional uh questions for staff um andor additional direction. And again, we have uh uh next budget public hearing and then our final budget on June 15th as well. All right. Anyone members of council have any comments they'd like to make right now? Council

Venus, first off, um, do you mind going to slide 34? I just want to confirm, uh, because I guess I must have missed it. Okay. Um, yeah. So, there is that change there with Craig Drive rehab relative to the original agenda item in the presentation. Can you explain why that is?

Yes. So, when I first um did the presentation, I added in the agenda. Um it it was brought to my attention that the new money was not put towards Child and Canal, that it was put towards Craig Craig Drive rehab. So, we had to make that change. Um Child and Canal is still a project. It's still going to carry over. There's still some funding there. Um but the new money was to allocate to this new this new project. Mr. Mr. McBride,

um we we are awaiting um just some information on Child of Canal. We we know that it's received a congressional award and so we're working with our uh congressman's office on more details. So um I mean we've got every uh we're very confident we're going to be able to bring that project forward now with the additional funding. And I'm looking at Jennifer, I don't remember what the dollar amount was, but it was $815,000 is the number.

850. So, uh, there's funding for that. And there's more funding that's being lined up for other activities that will benefit South Merrced that we're right now can't speak of because we are sworn to secrecy, but we hope to be able to talk about that very soon.

Okay. Thank you. Um, okay. So, I guess my my questions and comments um are kind of like in order. So, if we could go back to the top um look at slide four, can you Yes. Um could you just walk me through what because I'm reading bullet point number three. the park safety and homelessness or community party yet ongoing funding could be at risk. Um, could you explain a bit more what that means? Like what kind of funding we're putting there already and what kind of risk we're talking about here?

I think I think I can help on that. So, I mean, it's pretty straightforward. We we've got a a safer grant that's $3.5 million and uh that grant's going to expire uh at least, you know, one fiscal quarter in 2027, right? So it's not fully impacted, right? But if we look the year farther out and you don't have that $ three and a half million dollars, that's that's really the bigger issue, right? So um you know, for your 2728 fiscal year when you look at that budget, trying to balance that's going to be the real challenge. And so it's not rocket science. It's just very straightforward. What are your areas that are general funded? And so you you just saw the presentation, their parks, community services, their police, and their fire. And so all we're pointing out here is that, you know, parks, community services, those are areas where you're going to have a hard time balancing it. And so we know this is a community priority, uh, park safety. And so we we just want to tie it back and and make that point that, uh, we know this is going to be a risk in the future. Okay. I mean, the the implication here is simply that without the safer grant, we're going to be cutting funding from parks. Um, and I don't know if that that's the case here, right? It might not be. Um, but that's what I'm kind of reading here. And if we refer with regards to the deferred street maintenance, um, do we have and I know we have the slide down below as well, but do we have that list of prioritized street repairs and detailing what streets have been deferred in terms of maintenance?

Yeah, I think that's something engineering has, but I don't have that with me now. So, in your goals and priorities, you had a two-year uh it was a two-year priority, and that was to develop an updated PCI. So, we're year one of the two-year priorities. So, we're working with the county to develop that. So, we're not ready for that yet.

Okay. Um, and then for slide, let's go down to we could go all the way down to essentially 22. So, I think this is a really good breakdown of expenses and revenue uh specifically for parks and community service. Uh but it's odd that this line isn't mimic for police and fire. If we go down two slides or just

and then down the other one, we don't have a breakdown of either of their departments um in terms of total revenue, total expenses. Um I think I've said this before in the past, we tend to always look at how to cut parks and community services. Um, and so I think if we could include this particular slide template, uh, slide 22 for police and fire, I think it will get give us a good image of how we're funding um, departments across the board in the city. Um, and I will defer for now. Thank you, sir. Okay. Additional comments from the council. be it. Um, with respect to the community funding, I think we've, you know, traditionally we do something in the neighborhood of 30 to 50,000. I I think, uh, you know, I think there's a lot of value there. If it's, if we get the right requests from the public and if we make good decisions, I think it's a really good way to leverage funding, we get a ton of value there. We saw it, you know, in particular this past year, um, through the SBCA grant. We saw a report on that. Um, tons of other examples too of good, uh, you know, good investments there if we're smart about it. So, just throwing that out there as well. Um, you I think it makes sense. And I think, um, when it comes to, uh, making up the a potential 1.3 million budget shortfall, uh, you probably the staff recommendations. following the staff recommendation I would think is the best bet and then you know hopefully um you some salary savings uh and then potentially increase revenue as well uh fingers crossed for that as well too and that could you know help ease the the budget as well. Usually our budget usually our revenue projections are you know are pretty

they're pretty conservative um you know so hoping for increased revenue from increased sales tax in particular which would help you know hopefully ease that gap and you look at all the different it kind of changes over the years I don't know how many shoot over you we used to be um you know this we had all these kind of funds and then now all the kind of the reserve funds but you know we're getting close to I think it was roughly uh between all of them the trust 115 economic IC development reserve close to 40 million uh all so that I think that's over the years you know a good sign we've gradually uh you know built up our reserve built up trust 115 which allows us to defay pension costs as well so yeah kudos to you and all that too just you know gradually uh building up those set aides um that's it for me um anybody else Jean

u for the $70,000 for arts Um I guess what what's the timeline that we are looking at in terms of spending that money putting it out for bid for more art? I think uh I'm I'm trying to see if Jennifer is going to look at me so she can if you can wake Jennifer.

Council member Jang was asking what the time frame is to spend the 70,500 for arts. So we have projects um that are going to go out for RFP and RFQ and so it will be probably in the next physical year. They take time depends on the process of selecting and so but we plan on spending it over the or allocating over the next fiscal year.

Okay. Uh, that's good. I I want us to spend that money. Um, and I agree with Matt in terms of making sure we have allocation for community funding. Um, Venus, do you mind going to slide 28 or actually it's actually Yeah, 28. Yeah. Um, do we know what that cost is in terms of the PBID 2% increase to the city? Um, so I the cost to the city. Yes. So, my understanding is that there's city-owned property here. Yeah. Yeah. We pay a fee for the properties we own. It was I forget the number. Was it 60 or so?

So, the total cost for next year for uh city u property is 32,586.

Awesome. Thank you. Additional comments. Customer Dupont. Thank you, Mayor. Um, I'll leave the bulk of my comments for uh next hearing uh going through the budget. Um, I will say the budget options. Um, I think number two is what I'm leaning on, but it's going to be a mix of two. Um, I think trust 115 is heavily underutilized. um looking at previous year's budget to what the inbalance is or what the estimated inbalance was in the 2526 budget to what the beginning fund balance of 2627. Uh that fund balance without any expenses or additional revenue increased almost a million dollars. Um, so if we put another million into trust 115, we're looking at $2 million that we basically have put into um on an interest bearing account from fiscal year 2526 to fiscal year 2627. So, um, heavily underutilized and I think there's other items that I'm wanting to have the full council here to discuss, um, on other expense reductions that we can make and also I think other revenue that we're not either accounting for or discussing or loss in translation. Um, and I think it should be flipped. we should be using trust 115 before we go to the reserve for onetime emergency

funding. So, I'll leave my comments at that and uh save my further comments for the for the next budget hearing. Okay. Thank you, sir. All right. Anyone else? Yes. I got two more shots at it. June 1st, June 15th. Cas,

I would like to express my support for u putting money towards a relocation program. Um what that dollar amount looks like. I think that's could be debatable. I know speakers mentioned 250,000. Um but I think that's definitely a program that we should look at especially since that money is recoverable. Um, so according to how it works that the city could recover that money from landlords. Um, so I think it's a good way to put our community or tenants first and be able to ensure that they are housed um, if they have to relocate. So I definitely support it. All right. Additional comments. Okay. All right. Seeing none, uh that's budget report. Venus, thank you as always. Uh exceptional amount of work and and you guys um do an incredible job. Make it look easy.

Okay. Agenda item M. Business M1. Mayor Pro Tim Boil's request to discuss America's 250th birthday in California's 150th birthday. Is everyone still awake? I think most of we all got a little nap at some point. Oh my gosh. Kind of re-energizes. Okay, so I think it's California 175.

It is 175. Um I did mention that to Scott on Friday when I met him. Um, so no formal no formal presentation, just some of the things that I've thought of um for California's 175th birthday. Possibly doing a mural if we have funds available. I'm not sure what has been um thought of so far. Originally, I thought of California poppies. I think our poppies are just one, it's our state flower, but they're just a very vibrant orange, you know, beautiful coloring. Um, and then over the weekend, I started thinking, you know, what makes us special is I mean, our slogan is gateway to use. So if there was some kind of mural to reflect, you know, our gateway to Euseimity slogan and possibly showcasing some of the famous monuments in Euseimity like Half-D just really showcasing what um California is to us as Merrs, obviously open to suggestions, but I think this would be appropriate to celebrate California's 175th birthday. Um, in regards to America's 250th birthday, um, I have been asked by community members what the city of Merced is going to be doing. Given the presentation we just had, I am very mindful of, uh, of cost and also staff time and want to be mindful of that. Some of the things that I thought of were um similar to what we do during Christmas when we display the Christmas wreath around downtown, somehow find some kind of American flag wreath or red, white, and blue type ribbon. I don't know. Um there has to be some company that creates these type of things um where we can display these. But I look at this as possibly a new tradition that we do in every July, not necessarily just for the 250th because

if we are paying for something, I would think of it more as a tradition and start something new in Merrced, not just a one-time cost. So it doesn't necessarily have to have 250th on displayed somewhere. Um because then I look at that as a onetime cost. If it has the date or the year, um once it's done, it's done. Um some other things. Um we have our lights on our um on the civic center on the second floor where maybe we can do them red, white and blue. Um as I know Atwater is famous for their Fourth of July parade. I'm not trying to take anything away from them uh for the Fourth of July and it being the second meeting in May. I am mindful of timing. Not necessarily that we have to do everything in July for the 250th as I'm assuming we can celebrate this all year long. But these were just some of my initial thoughts. I know we have two council members absent tonight as well. open to suggestions, but I think um doing something for California's 175th birthday and doing something for America's 250th birthday um in years to come, people can look back at it and still celebrate it and then well, we won't be here in 100 years, but maybe then that council at that time can do something for America's 350th birthday and California's 275th birthday. So just trying to think of some different kind of traditions and um and open to suggestions as all as well.

Anything from the public? We don't have anything. Mayor, any thoughts from council?

I can jump. I think the idea of a mural is pretty cool. I think that'd be uh something we could certainly figure out. Um terms of big events, right? Atwater was always kind of the focus on Fourth of July. So, you know, I think and a big part of Merced goes to Atwater. So, I think supporting them is probably the best way to do it, not taking from what they do. Um, bolstering up other events as well, some of the fireworks shows around. I think Mariposa is having a big deal up there, too. So, um, terms of events, I think you're right, probably just best support other terms of flags, um, had some some conversations with, um, uh, local boy scout cub scout troop. They're and they're going to work hopefully with a Sunrise Rotary who does the Field of Honor about getting flags out. So, that's a good way potentially 2,000 plus flags at the last Field of Honor. So, maybe something like that where I don't know if it's potentially even putting the Field of Honor back up temporarily or else um or else just finding a way to display flags across town. So, but I think there's good in terms of them. There's really good both groups are really good and willing community partners in terms of getting flags out all over town. So, I think a mural if if we can swing it and then flags up those are that's a good start. Customer Dupont.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I agree. Uh even if we do a combination mural as well, um California and kind of also to celebrate um United States 250 um would be an option as well. Um, but I think the mural idea is is good just to bring more awareness to Mercer, but also to to California. Uh, I like the decoration ideas. I wouldn't want to take away from what Atwater does. Um, but I I do think if we could, you know, decorate downtown and provide a little bit more um of a vibe, I will say. Uh, then that would also be something that we can do. Something simple, but giving reverence to the 250th. Yeah, it'd be nice to have flags up all over downtown for, you know, a couple weeks before leading up to the 4th of July.

Yeah. Something I even thought of is um Shar, did you see this? What was that? Um because I know that we have during Christmas time. I don't know how long we even have the Christmas Reese up in downtown. I mean, I know it's kind of leading up to the Christmas parade and goes into December and I'm assuming they're taken down in January. I'm so I was pointed Frank's in charge of all the Christmas decorations starts using Christmas ties in in March.

So I mean it could be something that leads into July into August. Um I mean we've invested a lot of money into downtown and I think doing something for that summer. Um I don't know. I think it's just it kind of gives Marcet another something exciting to I mean they're if they're Reese I don't know if that's really exciting but I guess it builds that character. Jennifer's looking like she wants to say something.

So if we want a mural we'll need to hold a special meeting and put out a RFP or an RFQ. So we'll need to put that out pretty quickly. Did you want the mural? We need to decide if we want the mural done by the birthday or so takes a while. I don't know if it necess necessarily needs to be done by the birthday. I think it's just in honor of the birthday. Um because I'm also, like I said, I'm trying to be mindful of staff time and yes, and I know it is a process. So, um,

well, if it's if it's a California mural, too, the I just looked it up a second ago, but the California is, uh, September 1850. So, this being the date, if you're focusing more of a California mural, the the date's not as, you know, it's not July 4th. Yeah. You know, 1776. So, California said that they're going to celebrate California's birthday throughout the summer. Yeah. So, we'll get it done. Yeah. September 9th is 1850 is the that's the day. Yeah. Yeah. Um and then if we were to incorporate America's Birthday 250 in that um Yeah. We were just discussing budget

CH. So I do support a mural um in this case. Um, I mean, I love the idea of the Poppy or Yuseimite. I think those are great options. Um, I think utilizing this week, right, with um I said Artfest, uh, connecting with artists and giving this as an opportunity, I think would be great. So, I I'm in support of a mural. Council Chap.

So, Mayor Protein, I thought you talk about celebration, you were going to throw a big event with vendors and parties and firework, but um but I I'm in support of your idea and I and I think it's important for us to celebrate uh such a you know, great uh time of the year to celebrate, you know, 250th. And what about Merced, right? We should include Merced besides California, you know? So I think it's great to celebrate bring everybody together for Dupont. She can still throw a party.

I mean we have all year to celebrate I guess I guess I mean what will be the next steps that we need to take?

Mr. City Manager next steps from a staff perspective. What would you like to see? Well, it sounds like we're coalesing or the council's coalesing around a mural. So, um I think your staff has heard that, but we obviously need to work with the procurement process so we can start to begin that. Um I would encourage you to look at the document that we just shared. Um there are some interesting things in there. This is provided by the state by the way. This is something they had on their website. Um there are a lot of uh communities that are doing reciting of Declaration of Independence on the date that it was signed, which I believe is July 8th. That's a really lowcost um easy thing to organize that we could do at Bobart Square. Um there's a few more ideas in there they might want to think about that could be done. So, um, you know, if a mural is what you're looking to do, we can get started on that. But I would suggest that maybe look and see if there's some other ideas as well and, uh, we could just, you know, bring it back. Another thing you guys can do, too, is, um, we're getting, uh, back to kind of the time we're going to have some subcommittee work again. Maybe we can think about having, uh, work done through that to bring up some some other ideas.

Sounds good to me. All right. I think yeah, M Street uh over Bear Creek's always been a good spot for, you know, some with all the flags there for some, you know, sort of you either veteran or or America focused mural. Um I don't know where the the bridge part, the concrete. Yeah. In between the So there's the the little Yeah. Put a big It'd be tough. You can't do a big Wii. It's got to be It's broken up. We had we had talked a while back about doing something like that. Uh Monica Modell, who started was talking about doing a some sort of tile mural honoring veterans on there. That was that was a while back. Never happened.

Um that's one idea. Um all I can we can get in touch with uh uh the Boy Scout troops and the Sunrise. They're all ready to go on flag so we can figure that out. Yeah. Um, and what they're wanting to do is it they're going to be giving out flags for anyone to have to put in their front yard or what's the concept? Not not it's not defined yet, but could be a variety of things, but it's just a question of what, you know, what work. So, but they'll definitely want to do something.

Okay. Mayor, I uh I just received a phone call from the Boy Scouts today, as a matter of fact, and they are going to be distributing out many of the flags starting on Friday through Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. So, we should start seeing a lot of those flags going out throughout the community. Just FYI. Yeah, even better. Yeah. Thanks. All right. Anybody else? Cap. Uh Council Jean, is that new or is it okay? All right. Mayor Pro, is that in sufficient or anything else?

I think that's sufficient. And then with uh city manager McBride mentioning we have our committees that are going to be starting up. If there's more discussions, I think that's appropriate time to discuss anything else. Obviously open to suggestions, but I think doing a mural really um I think it sets the stage for us. Yeah. And I'm glad that we are very supportive of these type of projects at Bur said. So yeah, for sure. All right. Jennifer, agenda item M2, request item to future agenda. Counc anything for future agenda? No. Jean?

Nothing. Counc Dupont. Nothing tonight. Mayor Proa? No. Nothing. Nothing for me. Okay. Agenda item M3, city council comments. Oh, I left. Council member T. No comments. Council, nothing. Council,

I have one thing. Um, I want to say a huge thanks to uh Director Jensen uh the last couple weeks of downtown Bob Hart Square uh events um has really highlighted the importance of events downtown Bob Hart Square. It has created a lot of buzz throughout the central valley of what Merrced is providing as as uh a downtown. Um and it's not just, you know, setting up the events, it's also going out there and ensuring that those that are going to have events in Bobard Square, Chris is out there uh with hoses and with everything that you may think of to ensure that the event goes smoothly. So, um, all the the buzz and the importance of downtown would not be possible without, um, a good director like Director Jensen. So, thank you.

Pro Tim Bole. Nothing this evening. We're lucky Chris is so humble because with all the praise he gets from up here, he

um, that's it. Uh special shout out to I went to the among other things went to the rescue mission uh annual fundraiser dinner of in our last point time count of the 403 sheltered homeless in the county the rescue mission and their programs they shelter 281 of those 43 so approximately 70% are in rescue mission programs. Um, and then if anybody's able to, uh, Saturday we're going to have a group that's going to do a barbecue at the Sunnyside Apartments on D Street from 1 to 3. So, everybody's welcome. We're going to, um, go out barbecue and then, um, do some giveaways, too, which which with items we had donated. So, show the residents of the Sunnyside apartment some love on on Saturday.

Cool. Item in adjournment. Is there a motion to adjurnn? Motion. Is there a second? Shall I'll second it. We're never going to adjourn. Okay. I have a motion by council member Dupont and a second by Mayor Sorado. Mayor and council, please cast your votes. I'm the last second of a motion. Need another vote. Council and the motion passes unanimously. Can't go home.