City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to the April 7th closed session of the city council of the city of Moreno Valley. The city council receives a separate stipen from the community services district if any CSD business is conducted during this meeting. I now call the meeting to order on April 7th at 4:01 p.m. Madame Clerk, roll call, please. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard here, Council Member DGado here, ma'am. Council member Bak Santa Cruz here. Mayor PM Gonzalez here. And Mayor Cabera here. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is public comments. Madam Clerk, do we have any requests to speak?

We do not, mayor. Thank you. With that, we'll go ahead and move to our next item, and I will turn it over to our city attorney. Mr. City attorney, what matters will the council be discussing in closed session today?

Mr. Mayor, we have um actually five items, but they're listed as three items here. Um item D1, it's going to be conference with legal counsel regarding potential initiation of litigation. That's pursuant to government code section 54956.9D4. involves two potential cases. D2 is conference with legal counsel regarding significant exposure to litigation. That's pursuant to government code section 54956.9D2 that involves two potential cases. The Brown Act requires that for significant exposure to litigation that we announce why there is significant exposure. In this particular case, the two issues involve the general plan update. As you know, we've received several threats of litigation over the general plan update. Um the other item is um um the pertains to oh the annexation issue Rancho Balago estates in that particular instance we have received threats of litigation over that issue and there's um potential litigation associated with the issue with RCA and the donation of um habitat land. So, we'll be discussing that. The last issue um is a settlement of a case and we don't want to disclose the name of that case since it may jeopardize existing settlement negotiations, but at this point, I think we can disclose it involves the Palm the Box Springs Mutual Water Company. So, we're going to talk about that in close session.

Thank you very much, Mr. City Attorney. So, with that, we will go ahead and recess into closed session.

Good afternoon and welcome back to our closed session here in the city of Moreno Valley. At this time, I will turn it back over to our city attorney. Mr. City attorney, was there any reportable action taken in closed session today?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, there was actually closed session. There's a close session announcement in regards to item number D3, conference with legal council regarding ex existing litigation. And this pertains to the lawsuit that was filed against the city by Bomb Box Springs Mutual Water Company. And so the city council voted 50 to approve the following settlement terms that um the Buck Springs Mutual Water Company will continue to collect the utility tax from its users and remit the tax collected to the city which they were not doing. So, we got them. They're going to agree to do that. And we are um going to wave all penalties and interest for the delinquent taxes that they did not remit to the city. And the reason for that was there's concern that the um the water company would simply pass on that cost to the customers. So, the council does not want that to happen. Um the the settlement also provides that the city will assist with the forms that are that um families of low income family with low incomes can submit to be exempt from paying the tax. So, the city manager will have his staff work on those forms and we will rely on some of the determinations, lowinccome determinations that are made by other agencies uh with respect to um determining whether or not somebody is qualified and that includes like the forms that are filled out for medical, Medicaid or the CalFresh and SNAP programs. So, that concludes the close session announcement.

Thank you very much, Mr. City Attorney. So, with that, we will officially conclude our close session at 5:32 p.m. and we'll be back in just a moment to begin our special presentations. Thank you.

presentations. That was a test. I failed acting in high school. So, there you go. Well, good evening and welcome to tonight's special presentations. And I've said this before, so you guys are probably tired of hearing it, but if anybody has any doubt that this is the safest place in Marino Valley, just look in the back of the room, you guys are covered. Our our first special presentation tonight recognizes two members of our public safety team who have distinguished themselves through hard work and commitment. Before we begin, I'd like to invite Chief Sarah Mack to the podium to join us as we recognize two members of her team. Ma'am. She told me to call her ma'am. Tonight we are proud to recognize Deputy Tomas Avery, deputy of the first quarter and community service officer or CSO Jessica Naranho, classified employee of the first quarter. I invite both of them to the front. Please join me in giving them a big round of applause. Congratulations. Congratulations.

All right. Now that the stage has been set, we'll begin with community service officer Jessica Nadanho. Community Service Officer or CSO Jessica Naranho is a valued member of the Special Enforcement Team, also known as the SET team. Known for her professionalism, reliability, and technical expertise, CSO Nanho plays a key role in prisoner transport, asset management, and daily operations. She also responds to calls for service and handles investigations involving nonviolent crimes. Her work is consistently recognizing recognized during multi- agency operations for her reliability and effectiveness. While managing her workload, she continues to pursue her pursue her degree in business management, reflecting her commitment to growth and excellence. Please join me in congratulating CSO Jessica Nurano, classified employee of the first quarter of the Marino Valley Sheriff's Station. Deputy Tomas Avery is also part of the special enforcement team, serving in a different role and bringing strong performance, initiative, and leadership to his work. Deputy Avery is one of the team's go-to deputies on cases involving gang activity. Work that takes experience, precision, and deep understanding of how to build strong cases. Just a few months ago, during a homicide investigation involving a juvenile victim, Deputy Avery played a key role in identifying suspects and had the case moved forward. Deputy Avery currently works on complex investigations, including robberies, assaults, shootings, and fraud cases. As a lead case agent, he executes search warrants, conducts surveillance, and tracks down suspects. His work has helped his team lead in firearm seizures, removing illegal weapons from our streets. Deputy Avery is decisive, reliable, and ready to step in when it matters most. Please join me in

congratulating Deputy Tomas Avery for deputy of the first quarter at the Marino Valley Sheriff Station.

Deputy Avery and CSO Nadano, thank you both for your service. On behalf of the mayor and city council, is my pleasure to pres present you with these certificates of recognition that your captain has now. And I'd like to ask the captain when she's done handing them their certificates and handcuffs if she'd like to say a few words about her staff members.

Thank you. I just want to say that uh it is absolutely my pleasure to stand up here in front of the city of Marino Valley, the council, and of course your you guys' beautiful families and present you with these welldeserved recognitions. You guys both every single day just continue to do an amazing job and it's just no surprise to see you both standing up here to represent the city of Marino Valley and Riverside County Sheriff's Office. I thank you very much for all your hard work. I know you guys will continue to do an amazing job and welld deserved. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chief Mack. And I'm going to start with Jessica. Would you like to say a few words, please?

I just want to first start off by thanking um the station administration and the city council for taking the time to recognize myself and my partner up here. Um to my team back there, all the hard work that you guys put in every day, this is because of that. Uh most importantly to my family, my friends, my boyfriend. Um thank you for your guys' support and love. Without without that, I wouldn't be able to continue in doing this. Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica. Welld deserved. Now, Thomas, first off, thank you to the uh station admin as well as the city council members as well for putting this on for us. Uh big thank you to my family. Uh they're a great support system. Uh, I also want to thank uh my team. Like Jess said, we we all work hard together on these cases. Uh, I've been fortunate to work for uh great supervisors at the station that, you know, allow me to do my thing and uh, you know, work gang cases. Uh, thank you all for your help and your support. All right, we're going to take a group picture with the city council and mayor and u your chief and then we'll or your captain Big smile. One, two, three.

Hold on. Is anybody Thank you both and everybody in uniform for your service. Uh you may now return to your seats. Oh, you did that. I'd like to invite Council Member Bernard for our next special presentation. Thank you.

Okay. Um, so for our next uh presentation is a proclamation for child abuse uh prevention month. We recognize that this is a difficult topic but also an important one. April is a time to raise awareness, strength, support, and reaffirm our commitment to the safety, well-being, and healthy development of all children. Protecting children from abuse and neglect is a shared responsibility. Helping to highlight this important month is Jill Eaton, founder, foundation director for Riverside University Health System, Crystal Sheffer, Shekeleford. They went over this with me, so if I have butchered these two last names, I I apologize. and uh Shaina Fijimoto. I think I got them all right, but I had it right in my head if it was wrong. So, please join me in welcoming them up here with us today. No. Okay. So, no. Come on.

Yeah, come on over. Um so, thank you for joining us tonight. This evening, we highlight the work of RUHS um which supports prevention through health care, education, family programs, and community awareness efforts such as pin wheels for prevention. In recognition of this month, the city of Marino Valley is lighting the M mountain blue tonight, symbolizing hope, awareness, and our commitment to supporting children and families. So, Jill, we invite you to share a few words about RUHS um supporting children and families in the community.

Thank you. So, I'm Jill Eaton, the foundation director at Riverside University Health Systems Foundation, and we are so grateful to be here this evening. Uh we are thank you council members and mayor for having us this evening, and thank you for sponsoring our prevention for pinw wheels campaign uh through RUHS. this evening. Before I go ahead and get started, I'd also like to introduce uh Crystal Shackleford, who oversees ARCAT, which is the Riverside County Child Assessment Team, and then also Shauna Fujimoto, who is our chief executive director overseeing pediatrics at Riverside University Health Systems. But before we get started, we have a pin wheel that we would like to present to you this evening and all of the council. So, we're hoping to get a picture as well, but um I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Crystal who can go ahead and share a few words with regards to what we do and the good work.

Thank you. In um we're located out at the RUHS medical center and we serve the whole county, but we're so grateful for the support of this city and last year we served over 1500 children coming in for evaluation of child abuse and neglect. And while that is um you know after an allegation has already been made stopping that cycle from moving forward is very important and it's very important that as a community when we see something we say something so that we can help stop that cycle of abuse as well and protect all the children. So thank you so much for your support. We appreciate

I know it's already been said but I'd like to say it again. Thank you again. um city council, mayor, and everyone else here in attendance. Um thank you for this proclamation and making u bringing this to awareness. We are very grateful and honored to do this work. Thank you. So the pi so I don't know if everybody here knows but the pin wheel is a symbolic symbol of child abuse and so that's why many of you are wearing the lapel pin and also we have the copper pin wheel that we wanted to present to you and the city council members this evening. Thank you. Thank you.

So on behalf of the city council and the mayor, it is my pleasure to present this proclamation. this all recognizing April uh 2026 as child prevent child abuse prevention month. And I would now like to invite my colleagues up here to take a few photos. Thank you. Sorry. Jiggle it. Hold on. Couple more. We'll fix it.

One more. I'll just vote for you. Can you take a photo with her photo?

Thank you.

He's getting ready to fix it for you. That's fine. Okay, perfect. Okay, so thank you. And now we will move um to onto our next special presentation recognizing California League of Cities Week presented by Mayor Cabrera.

Thank you, Council Member. this evening for our third presentation. As the council member mentioned, we are recognizing April 7th, excuse me, here in the month of April, recognizing California League of Cities Week. Th this special presentation recognizes the California League of Cities Week across the state of California, affirming the vital role that cities play in delivering services and the public servants who carry that work forward every single day, many of whom you see in this very room this evening. The League of California Cities, for those who may not be familiar, is a statewide organization that supports cities through advocacy, education, and resources that strengthen local government. This week also recognizes the public servants whose daily work keeps our communities safe, strong, and moving forward. right here in Marino Valley. That work is carried out every single day by dedicated employees and public servants who serve our residents and support the city's continued growth as you seen just last week or over the weekend with the fires that happened. Uh the amazing work. Can we give it up to all of our first responders, our firefighters, our law enforcement who were out there keeping the city safe, did an amazing amazing job. uh I'll say just a model for the rest of the state to follow on how to respond to incidents like this and so many others from all of our city staff from our city manager's office, city attorney, city clerk, everyone that works and and leads the various departments that are out there. Uh whether it's boots on the ground, uh filling potholes, cleaning up the graffiti, you name it. It takes a team. And that is exactly what we have here. And that's why we're recognizing this week. And here to receive the proclamation on behalf of this recognition, I would like to at this time invite Jesse Ramirez, who is the regional public affairs manager for the

Riverside County Division of the League of California's California Cities to join me here at the front. If you could give him a big Marina Valley welcome. Okay. Thank you. Mayor, do do you mind if I say a few words? I I want to Okay. You don't know what this mic?

Yeah. This is for you. And um um let me just uh before I pass the microphone over to you also uh want to say that the League of California Cities has represented cities across the state for over a century bringing local governments together to share knowledge, strengthen leadership and advocate for the needs of our communities. And uh you may mention this, but just almost two months ago now with your assistance and everybody else at the league, uh the city of Marina Valley was able to um for a few more years at at least make sure that we keep $15 million in tax revenue here in our city budget and we could not have done that without you. And in just a couple weeks, we'll be up in Sacramento for the uh legislative day of action at the swing space meeting with legislators and making sure that we get these bills passed that deliver for our community. So without further ado, at this time, Jesse, I'll turn it over to you.

Absolutely. Thank you everybody. Uh I wrote down a couple notes um and I kind of want to just explain some of the work that happens at Kel Cities. Um, California Cities Week is an opportunity to collectively recognize and celebrate the vital role cities play in improving lives statewide and the public servants who make that work possible. The work that you do uh you law enforcement folks, your staff members and council members uh impacts all of us uh on a daily basis here statewide. Um, in particularly, I want to emphasize uh and thank you for the work you do outside of city hall uh in policy committees, uh in conferences, at workshops. Um folks, uh we just had policy committee hearings and uh I'm going to go through the list here and I'll start with the mayor. Uh they say that you lead by example and leadership starts at the top and uh thank you for your work as chair of the Latino caucus and also as a board member. Um council member Delgado for your work uh at on public safety committee. uh, city manager Brian Mohan for his participation in policy committees, city managers departments, and now the president of the Riverside County City Managers Area Group, Sean, Lana, Angel, John, thank you guys for all of your work on the policy committees. Uh folks, just so you know, they sit in a room for almost eight hours a day and review hundreds of bills that are introduced through the Senate and Assembly and they make decisions on whether or not our organization as a whole should support those bills uh or oppose those bills. Um Kel Cities, I often say, is a platform. People say, "Well, what does Kel Cities do?" We're a platform for you guys to utilize. Uh you've learned to utilize it well. Uh and like the mayor mentioned uh we they we overcame a big hurdle uh for our region and so I want to thank you for the work that you do and again outside of city hall that's this is their extracurricular work so uh thank you for all you do very much appreciate it.

Thank you. Absolutely. Give it up for Jesse once again to get a couple photos. Yeah. So at this time uh we actually have this proclamation that we would like to present to you on behalf of the city of Marino Valley. uh if you'd like to go ahead and join me on this side and if my colleagues could go ahead and join us as well. On behalf of the city, our 215,000 residents and all of our staff here at city hall, we present this proclamation uh to you, Jesse Ramirez, uh in recognition of uh League of Cities week in the state of California. Thank you so much. Much appreciate it.

Thank you. Right back here. One more. Oh, no. That's for you. You get to take that. Oh, yeah. That's all for you. I know Caroline might get a little jealous, but it's okay. I'm sure she has plenty of those. Well, thank you once again, Jesse. And for our fourth and final presentation this afternoon, I would like to go ahead and introduce Mayor Prom Gonzalez who will be presenting the one legacy donate life blue and green day. Mayor Prom.

Thank you, Mayor. The This will be the last presentation uh for this evening. It recognizes Donate Life Blue and Green Day, raising awareness of the life-saving impact of organ, eye, and tissue donation. Each donor represents a powerful act of generosity, giving hope, and a second chance to others. Today, more than 100,000 people across the country are waiting for a life-saving transplant. At this time, I'd like to invite Christy Bethl and Justin Watton, public education and community development specialist with One Legacy to join me at the front. Please join me in welcoming them. One Legacy is the nation's largest organ, eye, and tissue recovery organization working with hospitals and donor families to save and heal lives. Their work helps turn loss into hope and gives others the chance to live. On behalf of the mayor, city council, it is my pleasure to present this proclamation in recognation in recognition of donate life blue and green day. And there they'll have a few remarks. Uh Christy and Joshua. Good evening, mayor, council members, and community members. I have the distinct honor of sharing Cat Manson's story and representing one legacy, our local organ procurement organization proudly serving Riverside County. On behalf of our entire community, I want to sincerely thank City of Marino Valley for your continued support of organ, eye, and tissue donation and for recognizing this important cause through your pro proclamation again this year. Your leadership helps raise awareness, encourages meaningful conversations, and ultimately saves lives. There are currently over 107,000 people waiting for a life-saving organ.

20% of them live right here in California. For her, this mission is deeply personal. Her 11-year-old son, Christopher, became an organ donor. In the midst of unimaginable loss, her family made the decision to say yes to donation. And because of that decision, lives were not only saved, but families were given hope in moments when there was once none. She had she has had the incredible honor of meeting all three of his organ recipients, the individuals who received his kidneys, pancreas, and liver. She got to stand in front of them to see their smiles, to meet their families, and to witness the lives they are now able to live. It is something she will carry with her forever. In those moments, you realize that donation doesn't just save lives, it connects them. Her son's legacy is still living through each of them. And every milestone they reach, every memory they continue to make. This is the true power of organ, eye, and tissue donation. Because of communities like Marino Valley, more people are learning about the importance of registering as donors and having those important conversations with loved ones. Thank you again for your continued partnership, your compassion, and for helping families like hers turn a loss into life and legacy. Thank you. And please let me introduce Christie as well.

Good evening everyone. Thank you again um for the opportunity to allow One Legacy here to celebrate National Donate Life Month. We are honored to be here today. You guys are the first city in Marino in Riverside County. You know the M that we've talked about that's going to be lit up. This is the first city that is celebrating the third annual lighting to celebrate National Donate Life Month. So while you pass tomorrow or I'm sorry on Friday, April 10th, that is National Blue and Green Day. So do us a favor, call to action, right? Check your license. Make sure you're a registered organ eye and tissue donor. Share your decision with your family. Look at wear blue and green on Friday. Tell all your friends and family that you're a registered organ eye and tissue donor. And let's help save lives together. If you guys are really ambitious and you want to come hang out with us in Isuza. We're doing our 25th annual 1K or 5K. You can walk, you can run, you can take breaks, too. And so that is um going to be uh April 25th at Isuza Pacific. There's some postcards in the back and we'd love to have you guys. Um, typically RUHS has a hospital team. Um, so if you go online, you can scan the QR code, you can join um the hospital team or there is also another team that you guys may want to consider uh joining. Um, team Oh, where did he go? Marlin, is it

Brando? Team Brando um is also a a local recipient who received um an organ and so you could join his team as well. So, thank you guys um for the proclamation. Have a good evening. I

want to invite my colleagues for a photo op. two more. Thank you. Thank you uh everyone that was here for special presentations and we will reconvene at 6 p.m. So almost Thank you.

Good evening and welcome to the joint meeting of the city council of the city of Mareno Valley. The city council receives a separate stipen from the community services district if any CSD business is conducted at this meeting. I now call the meeting to order on April 7th at 6:06 p.m. would any of my colleagues like to lead us in the pledge of allegiance this evening.

Mayor Pro Tim Gonzalez will lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Please remain standing after the pledge for the invocation given today, actually in English and Spanish by pastors Andrew Bogenright and Isaac Martinez from Sandals Church, Marino Valley. Good evening, pastors. Welcome. Would you guys uh join us in a word of prayer? Um God, thank you so much for this great city. Uh thank you for protecting it from further damage um from the fires this past week. uh for those that did incur damage, would you be with them and their families? Uh would you give the politicians and business leaders and nonprofit leaders wisdom as they make decisions and impact the people in this community? Uh would you make the city a place where everyone can prosper? Would you bring peace and unity? And uh thank you for the opportunity to gather publicly and freely uh to debate and share ideas and uh make this place better. uh would you honor this time and use it for the good of the city and for your glory in Jesus name. Amen.

Jesus. Amen. Amen. Thank you very much once again, Pastors Bogen Wright and Martinez from Sandals Church, Mareno Valley. And that brings us to items item D, the land acknowledgement. And at this time we wish to acknowledge that we are on the unseated lands of the Kawia and the Pyokawichum or Luiseno who as original inhabitants and now as sovereign tribal nations have continued to live and thrive upon these lands since time immemorial. Item E is roll call. Madam clerk, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard here. Council member Delgado here. Council member Bakas Santa Cruz here. Mayor Prom Gonzalez here. And Mayor Cabrera here. Thank you. Thank you. Item F, motions to excuse. We are all present. So item G, staff introductions, please. Patty Rodriguez, city clerk. Sonia Gomez, senior deputy city clerk. Even Kintine, city attorney. Brian Mohan, city manager. Lana Himenez, assistant city manager, administration. Natalia Medina, financial resources division manager. Sean Keller, assistant city manager development. Angelica Filipo, community development director. Kyle Winski, economic development director. Melissa Walker, director of public works.

Jeremy Bubnik, director of parks and community services. Robert Cardinas, human resources director.

Jesse Park, fire chief. Thank you very much team. It's always a pleasure to be here in the chamber to conduct the people's business. And moving into item H, approval of order of the agenda. I would like to read something into the record before we take a vote on this item. I have been informed that the staff report for item J8, the rotational toe service award should have included exhibit C at the time of publication. Exhibit C is now available to the public and has been placed on the deis for review by all elected officials. At this time, I'll look to my colleagues to see if there are any requests for the approval of the order of the agenda. So moved.

I'll second that. There's a motion and a second to approve the order of the agenda. Madame clerk, please call for the vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard, yes. Council member Delgado, yes. Council member Baka Santa Cruz. Yes. Mayor Persam Gonzalez. Yes. And Mayor Cabrera, yes. Thank you.

Thank you. That motion passes. Next is item I, public comments on matters that are not on the agenda. The city now offers language translation services through a free app called Wordly. The app automatically translates a variety of languages into English and vice versa. To use this service, please scan the QR code at the speaker signup table. For the visually impaired, please use your earphones or earbuds to listen to the verbal translation. If you do not have any such listening devices, please let the city clerk know and we will gladly let you borrow some for this meeting. Before we move on to the public comments, I would like to remind everyone to direct their comments to the city council. For comments on items on tonight's agenda, each speaker will have a total of three minutes to comment. Madame clerk, are there any requests to comment on any items not on the agenda?

There are, mayor. The first three speakers are Goodrude Springer, followed by Fred Bono, followed by JD.

Yes. Gertude Springer. Good evening.

Good evening, everybody. I'm here on behalf of those that are afraid, those that too afraid to uh call 911. Um I would like to address the uh music ordinate. Over the last past six months, I have called the police 12 times and every time they come out, they only give out warnings. At some point, they should be given a fine. What's the purpose of calling the police if they don't uphold the law? We have had enough. Me and my family have had enough. I'm a homeowner. I've been here almost 30 years in Marino Valley. I've never seen it like this before. Um, I've gone to city hall and I've talked to someone who referred me to the mayor. The not the mayor but the chief of police. I talked to Bryant Clark, bash number 2747, about mediation. I don't know if the city supply mediation for uh these type of complaints, but you should. Uh it's been it's been over two weeks and I haven't heard anything from him. If the police don't have the proper training or the supplies, the city should assist them in those areas because I don't think they have the supplies that they need. I don't even think they have the training because when they come out, they just giving warnings. I don't even think they

have the proper supplies to even give out a fine. If you park your car on the streets, you're going to get a ticket. If the police pull you over, you're going to get a ticket. Why not have tickets for ordinate? I shouldn't have to sell my house because the city is not enforcing the law. Neither should I have to get an attorney or a restraining order. This doesn't make sense. I was told that if the music is coming into my home, I got the right to a citizen arrest. I might be wrong, but this is what I was told. Um, the police, no, I don't want this to escalate because me and my family were fed up and I want you guys to know it. Uh, I don't want anybody going to jail. This is something that has been occurring every freaking

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Bringer. Yeah, we um our standard is we don't respond during public comments, but what we will do is member of our staff will come right now and connect with you so that we can follow up on your concerns. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. Thank you.

The next three speakers are Fred Bono, followed by JD, followed by Citizen Hello everyone. Um, my wife took our granddaughter to the Sunshine Adaptive Sensory Friendly Extravaganza. Uh, she wanted me to let you guys know that it was very well organized, very well set up. She appreciated the sensory room and quiet room. Uh, the activity area outside was a great uh was great, although they didn't get to participate. Uh, the egg hunt went smoothly and uh, the employees were amazing. Uh although however although this was inclusive for the kids with autism and special needs, my wife didn't see any other kids with autism. It's supposed to be a quiet space for the uh minority artistic kids. It seemed like it was a normal neurotypical majority event. And we have one of those events called the Springtastic Festival uh for those group of kids. Um, you know, I just want to make sure that I'm advocating for autistic kids. Um, I hope that you can vet the kids in the future. Um, they need a quiet, safe space. And maybe you can be more descriptive in the the details to let people know that it's not your regular uh egg hunt. This is specifically for the kids that need a quiet, safe space. Uh, the next thing I'd like to talk about is the fire. Um, boy, uh, we learned some stuff, my wife and I. We did pretty good on our evacuation, but I need real time info. I need info from reliable source. It was a major incident. And uh although I got some uh information from my cousin uh Linda

Castiano, she pointed me to an app that gives me information on the evacuations. Um I'm a big social media person. We need a social media page for our fire department. We need to know what we do before it happens. This was a major incident that a lot of people were scared. Uh sheriff's department did really well. They came into my area, my neighborhood, came on with the loudspeakers, told us to get out, and we need to get out when they tell us to get out. Uh, I just feel that it would have been a lot better if we would have had some information prior to let us know what's important, what to take out, how to get out of the area, because when they tell you to get out, you need to get out. Um, and everybody did a great job. It was uh we stayed at Lel Sports Park and getting updates and then we finally went home. But u I want to see social media for our fire department. Thank you. The next three speakers are JD followed by Citizen followed by Ismael Gonzalez. Good evening everyone. Today uh we honored a few police officers for the uh their accomplishments. Uh that was a good thing. But right now I think it's time to slap a couple of officers on the wrist for how they've been functioning. One of those would be Miss Sarah Mack, the captain of the Marino Valley Police Department. Here's what Sarah Mack has. Uh here's how she keeps her her department sanitized. I've been having problems with the police, so I didn't want to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding things. So, I made contact with someone and received their

uh department standards manual. It's about this thick, like a old yellow, bigger than a yellow uh yellow telephone book. I bypassed the part about overtime and etc., went straight to the part that had to do with investigations and the part that has to do with searches and seizures. I found out that the police department are practicing a corrupt they're pra it's just not isolated in incidents. They're actually corrupt. So I filed multiple complaints. Here's the patter pattern that Miss Sarah Mack over here uh does. She says, "The Riverside County Sheriff's Office has concluded the inquiry into your complaint of misconduct by the department members. You reported to the Marino Valley Sheriff's Station on the date that I did it." The inquiry into your complaint revealed the alleged conduct did not constitute violations of the department standard of department's policy and is unfounded. Here's how she has how has manipulated the paperwork to sanitize her department. On this complaint, there is no sequence of numbers. Other complaints that I have filed have a a sequence of both letters and numbers, a dash 1, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, about 12 characters. Miss Mack has sent me three complaints that have been unfounded with no complaint numbers. So when they're filed, we don't know who we're we're talking about. I filed the complaint against multiple people, so I don't know which one she's referring to. And it seems like someone needs to step in and do something about that. Because if she's sweeping their bad deeds under the rug, then it's not going to be well in the future when someone lifts up the rug and see all the dirt that's there. this young lady, Miss um I forgot her name that was up here calling 911 and

not getting good service. I can somewhat sympathize with that because over this past year, I have developed an unwanted relationship with the Riverside County Sheriff Department and as a result of that, I have learned a bunch of things that I would rather not know. You know, they some there's a saying that the more you know, the more you know the problems you have with that and I see that. I'm so sad to be up here today to point the finger at this young lady over here who is uh actively doing things to make her stats look good. I don't think that that's fair to the public or to the department. Why not just address the person that the complaint is on and get them right instead of sweeping it under the rug and sending letters like this that mean nothing. I literally have a letter in my hand signed from her that if we wanted to go find out who this was about, you wouldn't have a chance to. I could leave copies to all of you in here and none of you would know what this is about. You know why? Cuz she failed to mark the identifi.

Thank you. Thank you. The next three speakers are Ismael Gonzalez, followed by Ronda Banks, followed by Christopher Baka. Just one second to make sure before we start the clock. Um, there was someone named Citizen. Is this Okay. Okay. Go right ahead. I'm here to raise a Just one second if you'd like to go ahead and speak into the mic and then we'll start the time. Okay. I'm here to raise an urgent

Can you just One second. I'm sorry. We want to make sure we get this right. Just waiting for staff to give me the thumbs up here. Okay, go right ahead. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, in the beginning of all of this, you all stated that this is the safest place. You guys had all the officers in the back. Um, I'm sorry, but I disagree. Uh, since I've been here, this is not the safest place. This has caused me nothing but trauma and agony. Um, Captain Mack, sorry. This is for you. Uh, the mayor, I am going to need you to address some things after we're done. Um, this is a urgent public safety concern. This is a this is about police cooperative misconduct. I have repeatedly reported gang activity, not just with your fellow officers, but with uh members of Marino Valley, some of which have active warrants that I spoke with you in the past. You said if they have some, you will address that. I hope you will keep your promise with that. Uh if you would like to get with me after this, I have their names and information for you. Um, this is an ongoing lack of enforcement and failure to follow up reflects a serious breakdown in duty of accountability. Captain Mack, I am asking you directly. Why have these reports not been addressed? And what immediate steps do you have that you would take? Um, I know you're not going to answer any questions now, but, uh, I do plan on following up with you after this. And, mayor, uh, I am requesting your oversight to investigate this matter. I will be following up with you if I have to get with, uh, Mr. Mohan um, to investigate this matter because it is ongoing. It has not stopped. This is serious. This is life and death. Our lives have been in danger. I have a hit on my head right now from these gang members. Um, I need I need somebody to take

accountability for this. My family's lives are in danger and I I don't know when this is going to stop. So, either you want to help lives that that are alive or you want to be picking up dead bodies. I'm not sure what you would like. So, please I need somebody to reach out to me. That'll be all. Thank you. I'll make sure to follow up with you directly. Thank you. Thank you. The next three speakers are Ismael Gonzalez, followed by Ronda Banks, followed by Christopher Baka.

Hello and good evening. My name is Gonzalez. I'm a member of the Sierra Club Box Springs Group here uh locally. And uh I just want to begin by uh acknowledging and uh sharing respect to fire chief uh Park for your services uh this week um and all your colleagues that helped uh save um you know Miranda Valley essentially 4,000 acres uh over 4,000 acres were burned. Um I'm here uh to speak on uh sending back your general plan to the planning commission. Uh there's been some updates on it and I know that it's going to be addressed later this month. I'll be here uh hoping to hear some updates on that. You passed up the moratorum for warehouses because of this. And um I went back to look at the published uh uh version from 2021, the general plan. In that plan, you guys list that area that was burned as open space park. Um, also acknowledging the fire hazard. It's a very high fire hazard uh category uh over there. And uh you know, reality proved that to be true. 4,000 acres is nothing or like it's not nothing. It's incredibly large. Um and there's been some updates. You guys have been in negotiations with the attorney general. Because of those updates, it needs to be reconsidered. It needs to go back to the planning commission. It needs to be heard again. Um, and let's see. Um, I want to acknowledge some kudos to you. Uh, you've acknowledged the AB98 SP 415 with truck routes. You guys are at the forefront in in the entire IE doing that. That's part of the general plan. That's part of the CAP, but it needs to be reconsidered, you know, completely. Um, so send it back to the planning

commission if you can, please. Um, the Gilman Spring area, 4,000 acres, which sits right next to the Santa Wildlife, 300 threatened and endangered animals and birds live there. It is one of the uh most biologically diverse places in Southern California. People come all over just to uh spend a day out there. And look at what happened. You guys want to add more warehouses? Look at what happened today in Ontario. a million square foot warehouse just burnt down that was full of paper and it produced nothing but environmental catastrophe for the entire IE um you want to put 40 more over there right next to that very high fire hazard area you guys want to add 3,000 uh uh new homes under the Rancho Bellagio annexation project that is a fault line the most active in California you're going to put families children. I saw a school. I saw a golf course listed in that project right there. That's insane. Uh the next three speakers are Ronda Banks, followed by Christopher Baka, followed by Steven Castro.

Good evening. Uh my name is Ronda Banks. I have lived in Reno Valley my whole life. I went to Sugar Hill Elementary School, Palm Middle School, Valley View, um even Marino Valley College. I'm now an MSW student at USC. Um and the topic that I want to discuss, although it's not on the agenda, it's about our youth and our safety in uh Marino Valley. As our mayor sits on this um council, he is the youngest mayor in Marino Valley. He was elected in 2017 at 22 years old, my current age. And we know that in Reno Valley, we have a large youth population. um one of four residents um are um under the age of 18 and as we have seen there has been a lot of criminal activity involving our juvenile um youth and it has been ongoing concern with our people. I know Riverside County is pretty big but we're I really want to talk about Marino Valley today. I think that there should be more community in um centers. There should be more activities. And when I talk about the youth I'm not talking about our elementary. I'm talking about our middle school and high school students because they're more at risk to um gang violence, um negative influences, and our youth have the power to change environments. They set the trends and if we pay more attention to them, I can see a positive change in Reno Valley. Um, I could see children wanting to be a part of our community, wanting to influence people, not to join gangs, not to join um, not rob and steal, not be in neighborhoods, bumping music late at night. We want to make Muno Valley a role model. And I think that our council can do a good job at investing that and we can put more money into our youth, especially our middle school and high school students, because they're at the critical age that they have more independence but less supervision. Thank you.

The next three speakers are Christopher Baka, followed by Steven Castro, followed by Morgan Bay.

Good afternoon, council. um your police um department and your detectives are trained to firstly acknowledge the most obvious. And with that, I wanted to go to something I spoke about maybe a year, year and a half ago when I mentioned uh Ben Benzi and the debacle that they did up in um Vasilia with the healthc care where they embezzled money and they were uh convicted of that. Um they also uh firebombed a political opponent. That's Benzi, Ido Benzi's brother. They literally firebombed a political opponent's home. These people are embezzers. These people are dirty. And these people are here not as Americans but as thugs from other countries looking to pillage the taxpayer. And you people need to wake up and understand what's going on in our communities. Okay. So with that, I want to point out that the most obvious, who would benefit from a fire started on the corner of Gilman and Aleandro? Who would benefit from those homes that are there at the foothills to be burnt down so they can be bought and incorporated to this bogus uh agreement that our corrupt Mohan city manager has made? Wake up, Delgato. You think he is supporting you? He's supporting his interest. At the same time he's paying your political campaign. He's helping Corey Jackson. Shelinda, the same thing. You think he's

not going to support your opponent? You're living in La La Land. You're living in La La Land, lady. And Delgado, you need to wake up. This is Anything to do with the Benzvi is straight out corruption. So with that, I ask that you people really consider what's going on with our city, with our corrupt staff, and be honest with yourself, with your with their the decisions you make. How ironic that this stuff comes up during an election season. That's how he slips all this nonsense into the into into his being. How does he profit off of this? He profits by the millions, by the hundreds of millions when he gives out and buys political uh people their votes by giving into nonprofits. He probably gives into the RSA. He gives into the fire uh uh nonprofits. He gives into all kinds of nonprofits in order to buy your votes. So, please wake up. The next three speakers are Steven Castro, followed by Morgan Bay, followed by Jill S. Hello, good evening. Um, I'm here to talk about a partnership uh or my name is Stephen Castro. Um, I'm a student at Cal State San Bernardino in the social work program. Myself and my classmate Kimberly are here to speak on an event that we're having in partnership with Inland Compassion for the homeless. Um, we're going to do a toy drive. Um if individuals have um underwear and socks for adults, for men, um they can drop them off as well on the day of hygiene items and feminine products. Um it's going to be April 26th at Paris Park or I'm sorry, Paris Boulevard at Sunnyme Park where we'll be having the event in the community. We'll have food um there

available for people that are hungry and um and we just want to let council know that this is what we're doing. And um time. Oh, time. Okay. What time? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm a little riled up from the last speaker. Um U one between 1 and 3 PM. I'm sorry. And uh and yeah, we we plan on having a lot of people out there show support from from our community here in Marino Valley as well. And people actually some of us are coming from like Redlands, Sanino, the surrounding areas uh areas to be a part of it too. So, we just want to inform the community that that's what we're doing. Thank you. Thank you.

The next three speakers are Morgan Vaya, followed by Jill S, followed by Veronica Sanders.

Hello. I am here to once again talk about bike lanes. Uh, for the last month, Marino Valley has unknowingly been participating in a March Madness bracket. This was put on by an organization called Bikelane Uprising, which started when the founder was almost killed after she had to exit a bike lane around parked cars. She started a database where cyclists can upload photos and locations to document where obstructions are happening. Uh it generates this very lovely heat map so you can see exactly where the problems in the city are. Uh it also color coordinates the dots so you can see if these are private vehicles, uh construction, whatever they might be. Uh this is all available online. Uh, we bested San Diego, Chicago, and Boston to be the champions of the worst bike lanes in the country. So, that's not a great thing. Uh, we documented over the last month over a thousand instances of cars parking in bike lanes. So, this is a complicated issue. I know we're working towards protected bike lanes. We're waiting for CALR to release guidance. I know we're waiting on a lot of those things, but for us to have this many obstructions happening every single day, we also need to be looking at how to improve enforcement. Uh whether that's automated enforcement, um parking enforcement officers who are going out. I know our police department has been doing not a tough crowd for this, but our police department has been doing a really great job and our crime statistics are down throughout the city. We don't really want to pull them to be doing parking enforcement. So having a dedicated parking enforcement team that is available whenever to go out and be patrolling so we don't have to call it in would be very helpful. Uh just this morning we had another child on a bike that was hit by a car on their way to school and this is going to continue happening as long as we don't have safe bike lanes in town. Um I would really like to see our map not look like this next year and I would

really like to not win next year when they do their March Madness bracket again. So, I'm I'm hoping in the next year we'll see a lot more progress towards protected bike lanes, um better enforcement, uh and hopefully it gets to the point where people just will not be parking in bike lanes. Um but thank you to the city staff. I've spoken to I think like everybody at this point and everyone has been really fantastic, has provided a lot of really great information. I've spoken to most of you at this point as well and I think we're on the right track. We just need to make sure that we're following through, getting those funding opportunities, and making that progress um where we can. Um, one minor thing, the police department put out a really fantastic video about ebikes. Uh, there was one small issue. They specifically mentioned Siron ebikes. Those are not ebikes, those are offhighway vehicles. And he mentioned that they can be registered to be on the road. That is not true anymore in California. Suron bikes cannot be made road legal. So, anyone who has a son, it is strictly an offhighway vehicle. It cannot be made legal to ride on streets. Thank you.

The next three speakers are Morgan Bay, followed by Jills, followed by Veronica Sanders. I'll go again. Next is Jill S.

Hi there. My name is Jill. I am your friendly class 3 ebike rider. Um, I was here a few weeks ago. Um I did take play part of the um bike lane uprising and um I rode several hundred miles in the last six weeks around town. I rode in the morning. I rode in the afternoon. I also rode in the late afternoon evening hours. There was not a single time and a single place in this town where there were not cars parked in the bike lane. Again, I don't want to ride out into the 50 mph traffic on Nason, on Iris, on Paris Boulevard. There's no bike lanes on Paris, but I end up there frequently. I don't know why. Um, we have this issue happening now. Twice in the last month, I have had a driver tell me that a dead cyclist is the best cyclist. Um, I had to call the police because someone told me that the next time they saw me, they were going to run me over. This is not the community I want to be a part of. The hostility is coming largely in part from the fact that the cyclists have to call to say, "Hey, there's people parked in the bike lanes. Can you come out and enforce the law?" So now the car people have decided that the cyclists are the problems. They don't get in trouble unless they see a cyclist because the police follow us. Um, this hostility has got to stop. We really do need some sort of parking enforcement. I am of the and my kids will all tell you I don't believe in having laws that we're not going to enforce. So my brain keeps going if they're not going to enforce the parking and the bike lanes just get rid of the stupid bike lanes and I'll ride in traffic. And that's not where we want to be. We want protected bike lanes around schools so kids don't get hurt. Um around the parks, we all know that Morrison is an issue. Um, but definitely we need to figure a way out that it's not on the cyclist's responsibility to call the police to have them come clear those bike lanes. We should be able to

go, "Oh, there's a bike lane. That's a street with a bike lane. If I need to get to across town, I'm going to go down that road because it's the safest alternative." And then it's not. So, um, as Morgan was saying, we don't want to win this contest again next year. Um, so if we could really like figure a way to focus on that, that would be awesome. The next three speakers are Veronica Sanders, followed by Julie Pedroza, followed by Lindsay Robinson.

Hi, I'm Veronica. I'm a volunteer with Building Up Lives and I'm going to defer my time to Julie. Good day, Julianne with Building Up Lives Foundation. My story is a positive one just to lighten the load here. Um, it is a little bit personal and emotional, I got to tell you. So, forgive me if I tear up a little bit. Um, Building Up Lives Foundation received some money last year and we opened up Shop for a cause store. This store helps those with autism and special needs to be able to develop social skills and experience out into the community. And we actually bring children as young as 12 years of age in. So, that's a rarity. You do don't see that happen. That is their story. My testimony story is a lot of people don't know but my daughter is autistic. She also has seizures which caused a lot of learning disabilities. She at during COVID she was in our store and I realized she didn't know how to count. She's in ninth grade ones, fives or tens. She couldn't count. She couldn't count. So that was when she was 14, 15 years of age. She's 19 years old. She runs that store. She managed that store. So anybody that has autism and that children, and this is this is the thing that parents, us mamas, we worry because when we're gone from this world, where's our kids going? We want a better world for our kids. So that's a huge thing. Um, and I want to inspire those that do have children and adults with autism or special needs that there is hope out there. I was told by her first employer that um, she'll never get a job. I was told this by a businessman in the city. She'll never get a job. She'll

never be able to do a job. She's not happy golucky. She's very shy. That's what her autism resembles to people is that she's shy. But let me tell you, she's nailing it. She's nailing it so much that she tells me, "You need to leave the store and let me just run it." I would have never in my life wouldn't be able to tell you that this little girl who couldn't count, she could not count in ninth grade and now at age 19 is running this store. So, that's something I hope that the public can embrace and bring bring your kids. Bring the kids to learn. Don't ever let anyone tell you that this child cannot do. I'm sorry. A mom pushes. We're going to push. It doesn't matter if the doctor tells us. No. Everybody tells us. We're still going to push. And let me tell you the results. There it is.

Did you want to speak? I'm going to defer the rest of the time to Julie. Go ahead. Oh gosh, I didn't know I was going to get all this time. So, building up lives. Also, it's it's technically just three minutes per person. Um, if you like, we can give you three minutes, but yeah, we can't double up. Um, starting this Sunday, we are going to pair up or uh join with um the VFW on Alessandro and we will be giving out food every Sunday from 1:30 to 3:30 to feed our um community. Right. So, what else should I say? Time 1:30 to 3:30. Um,

bring bring bags and um ID and a smile and a smile. Thank you for your time. Thank you. You did great. Thank you. The next three speakers are Lindsay Robinson Followed by Nikita Wilson, followed by Mr. Seth Cox.

Good evening, council, staff, residents. Um, it's been a while since I've been here. I'm sure you're happy about that. Um, I recently submitted a public request for the fiscal impact analysis for the annexation of Gilman Springs. I did not receive an analysis, but did receive documents I already had. Does this mean that you did not do a fiscal impact analysis? Because it's going to be very costly for us. Um, that doesn't make good business sense and does not show good stewardship of our taxpayers money. The city of Hemet had one done. Why didn't Mareno Valley signing anou without public input also doesn't smell right? General plan updates are required to have public meetings and participation yet we were denied that re right. We kept being told by the city that they were not updating the general plan update yet suddenly the staff announced that they did an extensive general plan update. How could they do that? Sounds very dishonest and unethical. Also, the final product has many errors that should have been caught and fixed before uploading and printing. General plan updates require the protection of community character. I recently found out that the PACO in our municipal code that defines the Northeast character was maliciously gutted during the COVID lockdown and demonstrates the city's intent to deny and destroy and destroy the community character of our northeast neighborhood. I formally request that you reinstate the original PACO to our municipal code and remove the R10 commercial zoning being forced upon us in the dishonest and unethical G general plan update. I hope you also are all questioning why the planning commission was forced to vote on the severely flawed EIR and general update when they did not have all the information and also question why only one commissioner voted and to

wait until they had all the info yet the commissioners were forced by staff to vote. There's a problem when planning commissioners are forced to approve a project without all the info. And on a positive note, the Riverside Concert Band is celebrating their 150th anniversary with the fall festival at Fairmont Park on April 25th. Your very own Mareno Valley Wind Symphony will be the first band performing at approximately 11:00 a.m. and the event is free and there will be vendors and food and shade and everything. Thank you. The next three speakers are Nikita Wilson, followed by Mr. Seth Cox followed by Bob Palomares.

Good evening, mayor, city council, city staff, and community. My name is Nikita Wilson, and tonight my comments are of my own. I would like to address institutional patience versus institutional permission. A pattern worth examining. Let's talk about Marino Valley Mall, Highland Fairview, city developers, and now the museum. We've seen violations be identified. The question is what happens next? This is not about one case. This is about a system. Timelines are extended without escalation. Projects remain incomplete for extended periods. obligations are delayed without consequences. Institutional patience was designed into the agreement with Highland Fairview. Realw world impact doesn't wait for triggers. My question is when does institutional patience become institutional permission? The next three speakers are Seth Cox, followed by Bob Palomares, followed by Dr. O'Neal. Seth Seth Cox, Marino Valley resident, District 3. Um, I guess I should have

went first because now all the thunder's gone, but that's okay. Thank you, fire department. Great job. We sat out there on the east end. We didn't get evacuated, but we watched it. My house guest, it affected her for PTSD for the fires we had to watch. So, thank you. Thank you. Um, what I really want to talk about, I came up here a couple of meetings ago during the mall issues, um, and reported some spend numbers. Uh, back then we were sitting at 12.369 million spent on the mall since the immersion contract was executed. Since then, in January and February, that number has gone up to 13.9 million. It appears that we're on about a $650,000 spend on the mall. I'm going to count it as an investment because I want to be positive, but when will we see some of the return on that investment? That's my question. So, I will cut it short. Don't have anything else. Thanks.

The next three speakers are Bob Palomares, followed by Dr. O'Neal, followed by Luis Palamarz. Good evening, council. Uh, as always, our two chiefs, great job, both departments. I've been hearing from a lot of people say, "Man, Marino Valley, they really took care of it, huh?" I say, "Yeah, that's that's our safety people, you know, our first responders. Those are my heroes." And uh but what I wanted to speak a little bit about was that you know during Memorial Day, Veterans Day and you know we celebrate the veterans and we have a lot of committees and boards you know cuz I go to the Riverside National Cemetery maybe once a month. I got a brother, my grandson, and uh there's a lot of veterans that are buried there that are they're all to me that's sacred land. They're notable because but nobody knows their stories. But I wish we would have I know uh Donovan Sadik is trying to get something going and I really don't know much about it. But if we could get a committee to take flowers to some of the veterans that never receive flowers there. But uh because me, you know, sometimes when I go over there, I'll find like I found this gentleman. He was from the Kinta. He was buried in 2003 named Mitchell Page. He died in well just it at in 2003 November 15th but he in 1942 he was on water canal

with 200 Marines and there was 2,000 Japanese and he fought and if you look it up that's his name Mitchell Page because I just kind of remember a little of what went on But he was using three machine guns because all of the machine gunners were gone. He was jumping from one to another. He had to because of the barrels heating up. So he was doing it. Finally, seven guys that came that are the cooks that were way in the back, they came to help him. And the Japanese couldn't understand, you know, they couldn't understand that one guy was doing that. So when it finally came to the end, you know, he told him, "We're going to take the fight to them." And if you look up his story, look up his story, you'll be amazed of what he did. I mean, it and like I said, that National Cemetery is sacred ground and we need to because we always talk about everything here in Moreno Valley, but they're part of Moreno Valley, too. So let's give them a little bit more than just on those holidays. Thank you.

The next two speakers are Dr. Anne Sha followed by Luis Palomares.

Good evening. My name is Dr. Anil Sha. I'm a cardiologist and I have invested into real estate in Marino Valley 30 years ago and uh it's off Paris Boulevard and we lease the building and very often after 3 4 years the lease is broken and then the entire building is trashed and crime comes in tremendously and this has happened over five times in a cycle. I finally decided after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to really rebuild the whole structure. I finally decided to do this myself to create a banquet hall of my own. Uh we trusted somebody. He went into the wrong direction. But since last October to November, I have taken this on my own and I'm finding so difficult to meet anybody to get the right direction. I just can't believe it. It is just outrageous that if I write letters to them, if I ask for a meeting, there is complete silence. And I'm asking for a direction so that we can start a business, you can get taxes paid. The previous person did not pay, you know, taxes to you. It was a cannabis kind of an outfit. They didn't pay taxes to you and is bankrupt. And and I'm trying to make sure that there is no crime. So, I'm trying to do it myself, but I don't get any answers. Can you please help me?

As I mentioned at the beginning, we our standard practice is not to engage during public comment, but what we will do is I think maybe Sean or or uh community development will as soon as you're done speaking, we'll connect with you to make sure we follow up, schedule those meetings, and make sure we get your answers your questions answered. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming out. The next speaker is Louise Palomares.

Wow. Luis Palar's community activist. Nothing surprises me with this council and this staff anymore. Where's the money? Senator Cops came and talked about all this money. 13 million plus on this mall. It's a money pit. I mean, I was here to say open the mall. Get it going. We need it, you know, because of a lot of jobs. But how long are we going to do this? What's really going on over there with those owners? Get them to pay their taxes and pay their own damn bills. How long are we going to bail them out? You know, we need it there because of the jobs and the revenue it brings to the city and the tax dollar. But come on, how long are we going to be in Egypt? How long are we going to be in the desert? 40 more years. Give me a break. Let us go. Riverside, get your dirty selves out of our our city. Everything we have tried to get here. Riverside comes and, you know, throws a monkey wrench in it. And you know, we know our mayor right here that has us on the Titanic SL2 million dollar man here. He's all in cahoots with the Riverside crowd over there. I mean, are you the mayor of this city, Marino Valley, or the mayor over there? What's really going on here? You're always lobbying for everything at every other community, but what our community $2 million you cost us on the lawsuit plus. And you know, you did a big infomercial when the when the um donkeys, you know, there was a meeting a couple of weeks ago at Sandals Church. I believe Ed was there. Some of the community members were there. But you, the mayor that did a big infomercial when they were talking about the the Boros, that's what you like to call them in the in the Oh, golly, my mind goes blank here sometimes. In the I'm I'm tired. And your pal here, he didn't go to that meeting when they're talking about what they're doing to our donkeys, killing them and all that. Where were you? Where were you? Why weren't you at that meeting? Either one of you, the buros, you're always

pushing for the buros, the mascot, the this. But you don't you weren't there. You know what? You're too busy panhandling out there. Come on, pay to play. Come and give me some money. Come and lobby and I'll give you some money to do what you need to do. That's who you are, mayor. That's what you do for our city. You have us on the Titanic. This city has gone downhill since you've been here. $60 million with Hillwood. The staff knocked themselves out trying to get that going. But you send it away. You and some of these other council members, you know, it went away. We could have had a lot of money. A lady came and talked about things for the youth there. We could had a youth center. We could had uh soccer fields. We could had etc etc. We could have built a brand new uh police station out there in the east end, a fire station. This is what you send because you're here, the political prostitute mayor that you are, loving everybody else for whatever you need for your personal agenda and your next campaign run. And forget us, the people. You're here just to what? Climb the political ladder. What about us, the people?

Are we gonna get a break, Cabrera? The next speaker is Roy Blacker. Lot of wisdom right there from Hurricane Louise. You know why? We got the problem just from the tradition of snidly whiplash that started this illegal city and the crap of our meetings. We have a mayor right here. Prove me wrong, bud. cost us $2 million on a political retaliation. Cost us taxpayers. Sat there at the deis and rejected. Rejected. Shake your head. No, you ain't got guts enough. You do not have guts enough to stand beside me like you promised and we'll debate it. We'll take the evidence. Put yourself under oath and swear it on a sworn affidavit under penalty or perjury. Just like the illegal crap you pulled trying to get Leadonna with the October surprise. Prove me wrong, bud. Show some show some guts and leadership that you don't have. Let's get into a little history. Measure you. It is a general freaking tax. It is whatever three or four votes possibly on that council decides. Quit ris misrepresenting this. We sat here. my dearly departed dad back in the utility tax would have supported if it was a special tax for public safety. Just like I said with measure U and it would have passed. Now we're got another thing and we'll deal with that later. We spent 1990 at Aleandro and Nason any burger but knee burger talked us into a contract that we got screwed over for building city hall. That's how we wound up with this moon rock of a building here. Just like everything else you wanted you, this is no different. You learned this from the crime syndicate could go

over the 60 acres on Marino Beach and tell us where the fifth high school is that we told them. Elena, tell them what person told them and give them facts and figures that that wasn't going to work and they went ahead and did it anyway. When do we get our freaking act together around here? When do we stop repeating the mistakes of the past? Citizens of Marino Valley, when do we keep electing people that keep screwing us over? And again, I give every one of you the opportunity and any one of you and will sit beside me and we'll broadcast it to the world and we'll let them decide if you're right. Show show some convictions of what you talk about and be strong enough to stand up there and defend your actions. I will I'll fight for this city just like my family has and everybody else that built this community that you're crapping on. Mayor, that concludes all the public comments on items not on tonight's agenda.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk, and thank you to all of our public speakers as well. With that, we will go ahead and move into item J, which is the joint consent calendars. And before I open the consent calendar for public comment, I will look to my fellow council members to see if there are any items that they wish to remove from the consent calendar for separate action. Uh, Council Member Delgado, I don't want to remove it for separate action, but I do have questions on it on one of them. J8. Item J8 for questions. Okay. I want a staff report and separate action for J7 and J14.

J7 and J14 for separate action. Okay. Are there any further requests? Yeah, I was going to pull J7 and 14 as well. So, we'll go ahead and uh go to J8 first for for questions of staff.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. U this is for uh city manager Mohan regarding uh predatory touring towing. So, do we have control over private properties? If we give a contract to a tow company um and we are called and said that they are conducting predatory towing towing, do we have control over them or is it between the private say an apartment complex and the tow company? Do we have any control over that or do we have any say in uh monitoring that or even uh enforcing that or so? Let me answer that in in two parts. one, the rotational tow program uh is a program uh that in conjunction with uh law enforcement, we call out um tow companies that are part of the rotational tow when vehicles are in the right of way. Um now if there are vehicles that are in private property um and uh the private property owner calls uh a tow company or has a contract for to tow companies to enforce their CCNRs or their their regulations. Um then that is not part of our tow rotational toe program. Um and um a lot if not all of the uh tow companies do have contracts with private properties mainly uh multif family residential.

So their contracts are different than our rotational tow contract with that same company though. Uh potentially yes. If uh we have a rotational tow company, uh they could have private um uh contracts with private property owners and um those would not go through the rotational tow program. Um and law enforcement would not be called. Uh it would uh be literally through the property owner and the tow company and the tow company individually. Okay. Thank you, sir. One question. Um when you say it's not the same contract, you mean the same rates, right? So there we can't set their rates for on private property toes, right?

Uh correct. Correct. Not the same contract and not the same rate structure. We can't um limit like I've received complaints about towing in apartment complexes where the residents live there and forgot to put up a pass or something. Those rates are not what's on this rate schedule that we're approving. We don't set those rates. No, we do not. Do we have any um limit? like is there anything that we could do like if they're low income like the lowinccome housing that we have affordable housing projects where you know they're deciding between rent and getting their car out of the toe. Um is there any way that we can set rates citywide?

Uh there is not. Um because that is a private transaction. Um, I mean, the only thing that we could do is for those toe companies that are part of our rotational toe, we could uh convey that, hey, there's a sentiment here that um, you know, we we don't want predatory uh, towing and we would like the um, CCNRs to be enacted and forced, but um, you know, if there is leeway leeway uh, to be um, maintained, you know, if somebody parked in a um a red fire. I know uh Council Member Delgado and I had this conversation. If somebody wanted to just drop something off and they parked into a fire lane, technically that is uh against a CCNR, but um if a uh tow company was driving by um and or the um property manager saw that, again, that's a private um transaction, but we can definitely convey uh for those particular uh tow companies or tow purveyors that are part of our rotational toe company. And actually, do we know if maybe their rates are lower? Are we charging more than standard rates or less than standard rates?

It would be less than standard. This is less than what um they're charging. Yeah. In fact, these rates uh over five years only go up $39. I mean, that's that's significantly red $39 a year or $39. $39 total for the five years. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you for that, Mr. Muham. And just just to reiterate what council member Baka Santa Cruz said regarding um the financial burden that and I get it, follow the rules and you'll never have to worry about it, right? But sometimes when you're unloading groceries or you're you got a a car seat and you want to just get the baby in or something like that, well that's where you're going to unload. And these these apartment complex are very string I mean very I would say the word stingy but very um strict on their parking, right? So there's very few. Everybody's, you know, jocking for that one spot or whatever. So you're going to unload and then when you're coming back out and your car's attached to a tow truck that and then they're they're got they have to decide, you know, I I got to pay this and it's it's it's it's becoming burdensome. So, I I just wanted to see if we as the city had anything to do with that or if we're u if we have any influence on that, but apparently it's a private matter and just but like

and we can influence them to say just use common sense, I guess. So, we do have a multitude of meetings uh throughout the year with our tow rotational toe companies. Um so, I'll make sure that I I personally attend and uh convey uh your sentiments as a body. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you. Thank you. And I have a couple of questions as well to follow up on that in regards to uh I had received questions inquiring about the criteria for companies that wanted to submit applications for this. Uh we in the staff report, if you take a look at it, there were three applicants. Two of them were successful and are being recommended. Uh one is Valley White Towing, the other is Pepe Towing. Not sure what the third one is. It's not listed here and um uh we don't need to go into that, but just curious about the criteria because that's something that that had been brought up before uh that it might be time for the city to explore uh changing and updating our criteria to be somewhat equivalent to surrounding jurisdictions that you know uh for example if if a particular tow company maybe doesn't have a physical toward in the city of Reno Valley but they have one um adjacent to the city boundaries in a in a neighboring city or a certain distance from our city boundaries, they might still qualify. So, what what would that process look like if you know the council wanted to take a look at the criteria?

Uh, current currently the municipal code um for a rotational tow program requires the tow company or tow purveyor to have a yard, a tow yard within city limits. Um, so, uh, the you're right, the staff report says that we received three bids, two qualifying. Um, the one that did not qualify, um, has a towyard in Paris. Um, and, uh, unfortunately, because our municipal code is, uh, stated the way it is, uh, we weren't, um, able to, uh, bring them through as qualifying. Um, moving forward, if that was something that this body would like to change, um, what it would require would be obviously um, uh, an ordinance uh, revision, uh, first read, second read, um, and then whatever that motion is. Um, I will state that, um, tow companies are are very territorial and they're, um, they're extremely, uh, quick to litigate. And so if that was something that um council wanted to do um and allow additional people in, you know, there's there are certain tow companies that potentially have uh towy yards within, you know, surrounding jurisdictions that didn't even apply for the RFP knowing that they weren't going to qualify. So you have that issue and then you also have the issue of the two qualifying ones that are now stating we're potentially changing the rules midstream. So, um we would want to definitely uh seek uh legal counsel to ensure that um possibly the RFP is descertified. Um then the ordinance is revised and then another RFP go out with the new revised ordinance. But um uh the uh our our city attorney is very aware of uh how um efficient and

effective these particular tow companies are and are very successful in litigation. Thank you. Um yeah, keeping all of that in mind, those concerns and questions that would need to be clarified or, you know, relying on legal advice, I guess that's something that the council can take up at some point in the future. Okay. because this this particular award is for five years. It's a fiveyear contract which is a pretty long time. Uh I have one more question but uh we'll go to Mayor Proton and and Brian is are other do other jurisdictions have uh structures where there's where they you utilize tow companies that are outside their their boundaries. It it's a it's a common practice amongst jurisdictions.

It's all up to each jurisdiction. I mean there are certain jur jurisdictions that allow towy yards to be in uh other jurisdictions. There's certain um jurisdictions that are like us that uh the to uh yard has to be within our jurisdiction. Um you know there is benefits there's pros and cons um you know when your car is being towed um and you're without a car and you don't want to have to go to you know four jurisdictions over to get a car. Um and so um you know those are things that would have to uh be discussed as policy. Um but yeah, currently uh for a a long time now uh the Munich uh code has required the towyard to be in our jurisdiction. Thank you.

Yeah, I have I have one question.

So I know that we did award a contract to Pepes. Um but as many people here uh probably remember, Pepes is something that is a towing company that continually comes up. um with complaints and improper toes. And so um like so that's a that's that's honestly one concern that I do have because it's not just like once or twice. It is a consistent thing where um residents have consistently said they're having issues with Pepes improperly towing and and just overall just not um not a a good tow company to deal with. Um and and while I do and I I hear what the other council members are saying also about um neighboring neighboring count neighboring cities. Um I do agree though with city manager to be without a car and have to figure out how to get to a neighboring city and get your car and come back. Um so that I so I understand like having the towyard here ah it's Pepes is just one of the ones where you know I'm still waiting to find someone to say something good about them. And and I think the incident that you're you're the incident that you're mentioning is not the uh the rotational toe but in the private property.

Correct. Yeah. Ye. Yes. It's not part of the rotation. It is the private property but you know I I'm kind of in the the y of like if if they're willing to do it at the private property even with the rotational toe like you know but it's it's kind of like um bad customer service is bad customer service whether it's private or public, right? if if it's if it's consistently bad, it really doesn't matter where it's happening. They're just bad, right? Um so that's that's my concern with them getting it. Although I do understand they're the biders and stuff. I just want to point that out.

Yeah. And I I I hear kind of some uh support or agreement with, you know, some of those concerns because, uh it is something that has been in the in the papers, etc. in regards to some of these tow companies that we see on the staff report. Um, so if you'd like to do the research, feel free to go ahead and look that up online. But, um, to follow up on that as well, um, outside of this, you know, assuming this gets approved and we award the contract to these five to these two, uh, companies, is there any authority outside of that at the staff level, uh, maybe city manager or any other staff? Do you have the authority to, if necessary, uh, bring in another company or or more? No, I do not. Um um outside of an RFP. No. Um you know, in a quick conversation with the city attorney, I mean, we kind of alluded to it um you know, descertifying the the bids. I mean, we could reject as a body, if you so choose, reject um all bids and um then move to modify uh the ordinance um to potentially bring in more tow companies um and then um you know, we can go out and rebid. That's that's completely within your purview. Um staff is uh only bringing this as a recommendation based on our current structure. Um but you are right. I mean typically what we what we do is five-year uh programs. So if this is something that is not sitting well with you at this particular point in time, this might be the opportune time. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that because I I think, you know, I I I want to be cognizant of, you know, any potential legal risk, but at the same time, I don't think that's something that should keep us from doing what's best for our constituents. You know, the threat of litigation potentially or the possibility of litigation is I just I

don't think that's good business. You know, if a private entity wanted to hold that over our heads um to secure a contract, but uh I guess my ultimate the reason why I ask these questions is not because of the maybe the monopolization. I'm not an economist, so I don't want to really speak on that. Even though two companies for 5 years for a city as large as us, I'm not in law enforcement. That's not my industry. But that seems like very few for a city as large as us. And my ultimate concern um would be just anecdotally when I drive around the city here and there, you see a car that might be stopped on Paris Boulevard or Alessandro, there's no shoulder. the safety risk of a if a tow company cannot get out there quickly enough, the the the risk that that poses to public safety and making sure that law enforcement has uh enough tow companies in the rotation to be able to call. If the first two are not unable to respond, then they have a third or fourth that they can call out as well. Uh it's the public safety component that is my biggest concern. Want to make sure that we alleviate that. So, I mean, I I would be open to exploring changing the criteria, but I if that's okay with staff, if we're able to do that and if there's support for that, I would be open to exploring that.

Well, I think from a staff perspective, it's not um a monopolization of of increased costs because the rate structure is set. Um but I do believe that um uh staff does and law enforcement does share concerns when we only have two as opposed to the five that we had when we started uh what was it almost 5 years ago. Um we had I believe five in the in the rotational toe. Um yeah, so it it does become down to um response times and so um having two is probably not the optimal um and therefore um it it sounds like it might be time to restructure. Yeah, I think there's consensus for that. Council member Delgado

structure. Yeah. So I would motion that on J8 that and and city attorney correct me if I'm wrong. We're going to either table this or uh continue it and uh bring it back with kind of different language. And

since these um businesses submitted their proposals based on our current policies, my recommendation is to reject all these bids. We come back with a modified program that will have to be presented in the context of an ordinance. You approve those and we go out and rebid it. In the meantime, we'll keep all of our tow companies who are currently who currently have contracts. We'll just keep them on a month-to-month basis. That sounds good. How do we want to approach J8 on the consent calendar though?

I would suggest you take a separate vote on it. And the vote should be uh based on a motion to reject all the bids, direct staff to come back with revisions to the program um and then rebid it and then switch all of our current tow operators to a month-to-month basis. Thank you for that clarification and and I I there's a motion coming, but I also just want to make sure we respect the process, not to belabor the conversation, but since we technically are taking separate action on it, should we allow for public comment as well? Oh, yes. Okay. Just want to make sure we're respecting the process. Uh so, uh we'll get to the motion after public comment.

And mayor, real quick, just uh some additional information. Uh when um city attorney was speaking monthtomonth, uh the contracts due June 30th, 2026. So, monthtomonth would actually occur in a few months. Thank you, madam clerk. Do we have any request to speak on J8?

We do. Mayor Bob Palomarz when I heard the name Pepees tolling that red flags came up and you know uh it might have been a year or two years ago that they were being sued for illegally towing 700 vehicles. I think I don't know if Moreno Valley was part of the law lawsuit. I know Riverside was involved and I've never heard any what the results were of that, but when you have an agency or a business that maybe is found guilty of that, I don't even think we should do business with them. I know in the city of Fontana you don't see Pepes toast trucks and that's where their original headquarters is out of. So uh yeah, as Bernard says, I haven't heard one good thing about Pepe Sewing and it ain't me. I ain't going to say nothing cuz uh they've had a bad reputation for a very long time. And when I heard that they're here or if they got a contract, either somebody's rubbing elbows or didn't do no research on their background. But I'd like to know what happened with that lawsuit, you know, whether they settled, made a deal, or and then they're back here when I heard their name. That's no good, you know. I mean, like somebody getting parrolled and he's a child molester and you know, nobody knows where he's at, but he's back in the city. It's no good. You know, it's not that severe, but to me, anytime, you know, we're always fighting crime.

So, one less is better. Thank you.

The next two speakers for J8 mayor are Roy Blackard, followed by Christopher Baka. I'm sure Mr. Ed pulled this so he could come so I could come up here and speak again. So th this whole thing really underscores a lot of what's wrong with Marino Valley. See, we don't have enough tow yards. We don't have the ability to do it in our city. And then it constricts our ability to get towe yards or tow companies in Marino Valley to do the job where we could keep an eye on them and provide. You know what the problem is is from the most cases everywhere I look here you do not see people who have participated had to deal with the free market economy. The more you have the more competition the better the service. if you want to roll with that, the lower the price of what we all do. So you can see public policy is what's driving 98.7% of what you see happening here. If we had a city that had a proper plan in place and we weren't fighting amongst ourselves all the time, we would have the facilities in here to do this and this. We would have 27 bids coming in here and you would have options on the council. The staff could present you with options to fix or mitigate these concerns that come up,

but we have reaped what we've seown and we're seeing the results of it. So, I hope this is another example where we take that 36 pound sledgehammer and try to knock some sense into you guys because this is a consistent as it's proven problem that's come up all across the board. Everything practically 98.7% of what you hear are things like this and related and we don't fix them. We don't come up with the proposals to fix these. And that's what's the problem. You wouldn't have these sort of problems. You would be up here. You should have the ability and the people that want to come into this city. and you have 87 gazillion choices instead of two. Do we have the will, the vision, the guts to actually do that or are we just going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and hope for a different result? The next three speakers are Christopher Baka, followed by Joan Stefon, followed by Riley Peak. So this is solely on the tow service. Um, I just wanted to uh remind you a couple years ago that I came and spoke about my car being towed away at apartment complex and there was an investigation. And not to criticize our wonderful police department and our wonderful don't want to do anything negative for our wonderful Chief Mack,

but your uh police uh report sucked and it was misleading and it was false. And uh uh what happened is my car was towed and uh I had uh at the time I was suffering from my cramping from the COVID and I had a temporary red uh thing and it had it expired at midnight and they told my car at 2:00 in the morning and I had to get to the to the DM I had the uh uh what do you call it? The the the doctor's um uh thing and I had to get I couldn't get to those days. I couldn't get to the DMV. Okay. So the police department said it was a legal toll and it wasn't because there's a procedure and that's what I don't understand why the police department knows that there are procedures to have a car towed from pro uh public um and this was uh of course u beep towing and the procedure is that the management needs to call the toll company. the manager has to be there with the tow company to sign it off and they need to call the police department to have the car towed. None of that happened with the what the management was doing was being lazy and gave uh Beis tow the cart blanch to go in there and patrol and tow any car they felt like away and that there was no procedure there and there was no accountability as far as a police department giving them allowing them to do such a thing. So, as far as Pepis toes is concerned, they're so corrupt. It's beyond it's, you know, and I just don't understand how after we went through that and went through that, I've given up on so many things with the city because of these this kind of nonsense that keeps going on and on and on and on. So, I don't understand why even it's

being considered to have PEPA's toll here in our city after so many things that go on, you know, and that's just the tip of the iceberg with so many things that go on in our city. It it's sad, you know, now we have the mob here. We have uh special interest here to intimidate political uh campaigns. So, those are the rest and the RSA. The next two speakers are Joanne Stefan, followed by Riley Peak.

I'm here speaking as a private citizen of 40 years and not as a planning commissioner. And um I was also uh like our council woman said, kind of turned back when I heard Bez. It kind of really uh sent chills up my spine and you should have heard the people in the back. So everybody knows who he is. He is a predator. Um, my granddaughter when she first moved into the incomesensitive apartments got towed and I had to go out there and I had to go to Bez. I told him why was she towed? She had a sticker on her car, but it was a little bit lower. And he said he couldn't see it. It was visible. Did we get Did we get any relief $450ome dollars later? No. And I said, "How are you going in there and towing people's cars when they're income sensitive?" And he said, "Oh, well, they're so nice. They didn't even look like they were income sensitive." And I said, "Do did they call you?" Said, "Nope. Just like Chris said, they go in there periodically. They go around looking and they'll tow people." And it's just a shame. And then she got towed again. No, she didn't get towed. She got towed. uh her friend got told because they parked the car, they went in to get something that she was going to give him a letter or something. When they she came out, the car was gone. They're that quick. They're real quick. And this guy, I mean, I really can't see two tow companies in a city of 220,000 people. That doesn't even sound right to me. Um I mean, come on. It's really crazy that uh Pepis is even being considered. And you should put something in there that when you get too many complaints, it gets rejected. Their contract is null and void just like

anything else. Because if you get too many complaints, there's an issue. There's a problem and it has to be addressed and quickly. And and you need to tell them that and and maybe you need to remind them and maybe you need to do a a a people in the city how many people have problems with Pepez and maybe you'll get your answer there because I just in this das like I said back there you should have heard the minute Pepe was named it was like you should have heard the gas. So that tells you something and Shelinda picked up on it right away because she's heard it quite a few times. So, for him to even be up there, I mean, come on. I don't even They didn't even mention the other guy. The poor other guy. Who's he?

The next speaker is Riley Peak.

Hello everyone. I just wanted to quickly say that we shouldn't be towing our residents cars outside of the city of Marino Valley. If someone is left without a car and we take them to Paris, Riverside, they have to take the bus and that's like a 2-hour ride just to pick up their car when if we did it in Marino Valley, it would take them 30 minutes. So, I'm sure there is more than two towing companies in the city of Marino Valley. And if there isn't, then we should be providing maybe even lowering the fees if we tow it outside of the city. Because while yes, our residents if they may park illegally, they should be punished maybe with like a ticket or something or towing them to somewhere in Marino Valley, but we shouldn't make them go through that long commute just to get their car back. A lot of our residents are commuters. They either commute to college, they either commute to their jobs. Half mo more than half of our residents don't they live here, but they don't work here. And without their job, they can't even a they can't afford anything. So, let's just keep the cars in Marino Valley at least. Thank you. The next two speakers are Tangela Ford and Luis Palomares. Hi, Tangela Ford. First district, first time here. Whoa. Thank you guys for being here. Um, on this item of J8, I also do agree with everyone that having the cars towed out of the jurisdiction is beyond inconvenient and just not financially appropriate for the citizens. However, when we start talking about changing the criteria, I I'm really skeptical about that of changing the criteria for the uh rotational toe contract in in form of ordinance. Um, have we considered maybe a city towing? Um, money will just get recycled back to the city if we do that instead of privately contracting or um just trying to throw some solutions out

there instead of just coming up here complaining to you guys. Thanks so much. Have a good one. The next speaker is Louise Palomares. Louise Palmer's community activist. Wow. Oh, golly. Here we go. Uh, I agree with the lady that said we have to do something here within the city so we can at least use that money here comes back into the the pot here. And as far as uh, you know, everybody makes a dollar here. The towing company, you know, the people that that that the the yard, everybody. Plus, even the city, the police, you got to spend how much to get uh a release there? What? $2 $300. Now, that's a lot of money. And then, especially in apartments. Come on. I mean, what does this guy parked there, wait for somebody to do, and then he's on it like white on rice. It's all wrong. You know, people are trying to make it make it. It's getting harder and harder and tougher and tougher. I mean, food, gas. Wow. Come on. And it's going to go up to $8, $10. What? Cuz we're in a war that we don't need to be in. Really? Really? Really? Come on. We got to We could send a man and a woman to the moon, but we can't fix things here in Marino Valley. And we got the dollars. The sad part is we got the money to do it. We got measure money, the taxes, the penny tax, $30 million a year of my money. Let's build a police station on the east end with that money. We don't have to refine finance anything. Let's do that. We don't got to wait for Eido. Eido's going to take care of us down the road, but right now, let's do this. You know, if it takes five years, 10 years, let's do what we got to do right now. So, that's what I'm going to say about that. And I want to send a shout out to our firemen and our police because they're our heroes out there. They were out there

with those fires. I have three people that live out there, a niece and a couple of kids, and they were on it. And Atheta was there, too, taking care of business. Thank you. he was on the job. So, thank you for uh taking care of us. The um that chief and um the police chief too also with her officers out there trying to keep everything with the traffic going right. I really thank you so much for keeping us safe. Mayor, that completes all of public comments for item J8.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Thank you to our public speakers. So, we'll go ahead and bring it back to the deis for any deliberation if desired. If not, I think there was a motion. I have a um before we get there, so I know that you said that if um we don't approve this tonight that we then can with the towy yards we currently have move to monthtomonth. Does that change the price scale if we move monthtomonth? Well, uh typically when you go uh from the end of one contract and you go monthtomonth, it's a negotiation. And so you would need to go back into negotiation for those rates. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. But the one thing is is that uh staff will um will try and uh quickly come back to council with revisions to the ordinance. Uh if if you are okay with uh out having that benign um two-step process, um we can come back with just revisions from what we heard today uh in consult with the city attorney um in um trying to change regulation based on everything that we heard. Bring the back back to council uh probably first meeting of May. And I believe because of the nature of this type of activity, we can probably introduce it and adopt it on the same night as an urgency ordinance. So we don't have to wait for second reading and 30-day referendum period.

And my hope would be that we can try and rectify the framework of the new ordinance, have that in place, be out for RFP before the end of a current contract. So that way we can show um good faith that um this is going to come quick. Um but before you make a motion, I have some clarification on some of the language if when you're ready.

Yeah. Uh Mayor Prom has a question and then we'll come to you, Mr. City Attorney. in in hearing the the concerns of some of the community members, can the RFP include but but again there's not many tow companies and make it restrictive uh complaints, customer service, stuff like that that make it a little bit more robust and we could see you know some of the um some of that being addressed in the RFP without saying exactly what those particular revisions may be. Um there are certain things that we can do that would bring in uh past practices the rating but without saying it um uh out loud yes we will take a look at um various things that would u be able to give you options as policy makers.

Thank you Mr. City Attorney. Yeah I was going to suggest that we bring back an ordinance that's kind of in a menu format so the council can select which provisions they want to include. So um the recommended motion should be reject all rotational toll service proposals, deny the approval of the recommended agreements, direct staff to present a recommended revisions to the rotational toll service program at a future council meeting as soon as possible, and prepare a new request for proposals based on the revised rotational toll service program as approved by the City Council.

So moved. Looking for a second. I'll second. Okay. There's a motion and a second. Madam clerk, please call for the vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard, yes. Council member Delgado, yes. Council member Baka Santa Cruz, yes. Mayor Prom Gonzalez, yes. And Mayor Cabera, yes. Thank you.

Thank you. That motion passes. And there were two other items that were pulled for separate action. So, we'll go ahead and go to the next item, which was J7. That is, let me make sure I get the title here. Approval of agreement with Robert Garcia Boxing Academy for Community Boxing Academy program fiscal years 2627 and 2728. And we'll get started with a staff report from our city manager. Are you passing the whole consent calendar? No, we'll we're going to get to that first. We're going on the items that were pulled for separate action. Thank you. Okay, Mr. City Manager, I'll turn it over to you.

Uh, thank you, uh, Mayor, Mayor Potam, council members. Uh, the item before you tonight is, um, a continuation of, uh, the, um, community boxing academy program that, uh, was implemented two years ago. Uh in a nutshell, the program is uh to provide um youth um between the hours of 3 to 6 um to promote healthy uh lifestyles, discipline, and leadership development through uh boxing. Uh it is a 2-year program, 24,000 per year, uh for a total of 48,000. Um and that particular contract runs out here in June 30th of 2026. And very similar to the contracts that uh we just brought forward with the um community outreach pilot programs um that uh those are two-year uh pilot programs that ran out. We just brought that back. So this is just bringing it back for you guys to have a conversation on whether or not to continue this particular program. With that, I'm available for any questions.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Uh so we'll bring it back to the deas for council questions of staff before we go to public comment on this item. And I do have to to start off the questions. Uh Mr. City Manager, is there any I know I think we received something this afternoon, but um is there anything you could share as far as data or statistics in regards to uh the number of youth that have been uh able to enter the program and train because of the funding and the partnership with the city and any other data or statistics that you may have? Yes, I just uh forwarded that to you um because we just received the update for um the um reporting through the end of March. Uh but there is over the last year um which is the second year of this particular program 1 2 3 4 5 11 12 13 14 uh there is over 20 uh individuals about 21 to 22 individuals that have come through this particular program in this last year uh that range from uh the age of 11 to um 18.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll look to my colleagues to see if there are any other questions. Okay. Seeing none, we can go ahead and move into public comment. Madam clerk, do we have any requests to speak on this item?

We do, mayor. The first three speakers are Susie, followed by Roy Blacker, followed by James Vega. Hello, I am Susie Zapardo and I haven't been here for a while, so see if I can do this right. Um, I have a dance studio here in town. I've uh been fortunate enough to have it for 47 years. and we've been able to serve our community by teaching dance and uh so much more than that including life skills. I um am not really prepared for this because I just found out about this meeting right now, but very excited to hear that the boxing organization has had success and I would just like to know where we need to go to find out about that because even though we've been in town for 47 years, we finally got our nonprofit a few years ago and we've been trying to find a program that we can serve our community even better. my staff is ready to go, but I'm hitting red tape and all this stuff. And I don't really know what to do and where to go. So, if we can get some direction, we would love that because we just would love to serve our community more. So, if someone could talk to me afterwards on how we can do that, um we're ready to go.

Yes, ma'am. Absolutely. We will make sure that someone connects with you right now as soon as uh your public comment is concluded and we'll make sure to uh get you all that information. Awesome. and thank you so much. I think that the boxing thing is awesome. That's great. And everything else that we're doing with our community, um I think there's some good stuff for the kids. So, that's very exciting. Thanks. Thank you. The next three speakers are Roy Blackard, followed by James Vega, followed by Bob Palamares.

This one caught my eye for a few various reasons. Not that it good program. we should encourage this. My first question is, were there RFPs put out? Did we go to other boxing clubs, martial arts, offer them, find out what was going on of that? Is there any metrics of the two years that we've had on the contract of students coming in or doing that or had all that in I didn't see that in the staff report or anything like that because my main concern of that is it appears that when you come up to this or that these boxing club has uh some sort of relationship ties to the mayor and the mall and they've been up here with that. We just want to make sure that everything is above board on that transparent that we are doing competitive bids or we're offering other agencies like that. Um, pains me to hear the first speaker, Miss Aparto, come up here and find out all the uh, roadblocks she seems to be suffering here when her and her family have been here for 87 million decades going back a long time. Why why are the residents that have been here a long time seem to have all these kinds of problems and roadblocks coming in? And again, not saying anything's up or down or sideways on this thing, but when we put these staff reports together and we put these discussions together and this should have again another issue that should not be on the consent calendar. It should have been on a regular agenda item and we should know these things before the council votes on them because I've said this 9,472 times. As long as you are making

judgments on complete and accurate information, you know, I can live with the decision even if I don't agree with it. But it always seems to be that there's some sort of problem, some sort of question. We're not being disclosed this. And that's why we have the angst of things that are coming in here time after time, item after item, day after day, year after year, decade after decade in 40 plus years of history of the city of Marina Valley. When do we stop? When do we do proper procedures of that? when you know you guys use that transparency word and I mean it's absolutely amazing how we're everything but transparent transparent would be to do this now maybe these are the only guys that could do it whatever then explain that to us then you may have some justification for it but again it's Marina Valley it's a big question The next three speakers are James Vega, followed by Bab Bob Pales, followed by Esme Gonzalez.

You want me to say something to somebody just really quick? Susie, it will as soon as you start talking, it'll start your time. Just

I I actually dance with you and my son. So, thank you so much for everything you've done in the city. You're fantastic. You really are. You're an inspiration obviously because now I have a youth foundation. So I'll talk to you afterwards. Sorry about that guys. So guys, thank you so much for putting this on the agenda. Um I brought a couple guys with me uh that are an example of what can happen within our city. They're undefeated fighters. These two kids are from here. One of them um Albert Gonzalez is uh signed to top rank and uh he's 17-0 currently. And Louis on the other side on the east end in Ranchalago uh undefeated as well. That's the kind of stuff that comes from RGBA. Uh we appreciate like I said, Robert um actually we had a discussion and we did come to the city to give us some assistance of course and uh obviously you guys have treated us with open arms. It wasn't one of those things where we're trying to beg for assistance, but it's for the kids. You guys know that we've been to some troubles with uh with the mall. We are expanding our current gym to 20,000 square feet. And uh more than anything, any assistance that you guys could give is for the children. We want to double up the size of uh the amount of kids that are coming in. And we are going to change things in May. We move into this new location uh to start working on it. Within 90 days, we are going to open it up to the public. So, we are not charging anybody. It's going to be open to all the kids. So, based on capacity and what we can take in, but we should be able to fill a good amount of kids. So, Robert is doing that. Robert good up uh grew up um in a bad area. He knows that help is needed. He wants to give back to the community. So, it's not a matter of asking for for funding. I know that's what I'm here for, but I kind of switched it up and now we're going to open the doors to as many kids as we can. So, that's our goal. That's what we want to do. We want

to make champions like these kids behind me. We're not only going to teach uh boxing, but we're also uh teaching financial literacy. That's what these kids need. So, um we appreciate the support. We appreciate uh you guys putting us on the uh on the calendar here to give us some assistance. Of course, um Robert just wants to make it known that he's covering the cost all the way through. So, anything that the community could do to help these kids with equipment or whatever it is, we are going to open it up in a few months, invite everybody out to come look at it. It is one of the largest boxing facilities in the sport of boxing that's coming. So, I'm going to put it together again, guys, and I'll invite you back out. I know we had 5,000 ft, so we're quadrupling the size of it. Um, there is footage that I've provided over so you guys can see uh how packed our gym is right now. And uh I know I'm running out of time, but uh just uh want to thank you, like I said once again, and we are doing some positives. Um uh I don't I don't see that there should be any any backlash on this. Uh we need to keep doing things for our kids and keep uh supporting uh Robert Garcia. If you can, we appreciate you. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Bob Palomares, followed by Ismael Gonzalez, followed by Luis Palomares. You know, sports are great for the kids. When you get kids in sports and you start them young, it really benefits them when they get into, you know, teenagers and adults because they ain't walking the streets. So, that's great. And my hats off to this program and the dancing one. But I got to say that it seems to me like there wasn't any outreach because the last time we were giving money to this boxing gym, there was a gentleman that has a boxing gym up on Canyon Springs Plaza that came down here. And he said, "What about me?" You know, I help out disadvantaged kids and all that. And that was it, you know. So, I don't know. Are we playing favoritism here or I mean I understand it's a great program and that's great but let's not forget the other guy that came here and also asked you know let's give him the opportunity because he's doing the same thing. So, you know, just don't look one way, look the other way too. Thank you. The next three speakers are Ismael Gonzalez, followed by Nathan Ureina, followed by Luis Palomares. Ismael Gonzalez here. Uh, Mr. Vega has left the building. I wanted to ask him to clarify what he just said. Does he not need the 48,000? Because he's going to open regardless, right? And he's going to supply free memberships to any kids that come. So why are we even having this discussion for this particular gym? You have someone who has

a dance uh nonprofit who's been here for 30 or I'm not sure how long but decades. And why is this particular company, this one gym the only one to come to uh the agenda? I've never seen a business kind of have an item like this. And just out of morality sake, I I love MMA. I love uh boxing, but those people are all adults. Uh uh you know, they're willing to get hurt because it's a payday for them, right? Why subject kids to the same kind of level of risk? Take a look, Google it yourself. Football players and and fighters uh who repeatedly get head trauma are able to get CTE. Are we are we going to finance kids getting CTE uh in their earliest development stages of life? Uh that's ridiculous. Um I think it's pretty clear uh especially after what happened with the Marina Valley Mall and the concern that you guys gave to that mall in this gym that there is some kind of level of favoritism here. Um Mr. Mayor, you're looking down. I'm not sure if you want to address this, but is there some kind of connection between you and the ownership there? No, he says no, but uh everybody else says yes here in the audience. Um I'm wondering who to believe, you know? Uh I want some information because why are we financing kids to get injured to injure themselves at their like the most uh important developmental stage of their life? I'm a I suffered head trauma as a kid from a car accident. It's it's nothing to laugh about. It's nothing to smirk about. Okay. Thankfully, it didn't have any sort of long-term uh issues with me.

But to purposely put kids in a gym and fight each other, I mean, you guys have laws for animals fighting each other, right? Why are we considering this? Why am I paying 48,000 to to finance this? Thank you so much.

The next two speakers are Nathan Urina, followed by Luis Palomares. Good evening, uh, Mr. Mayor, honorable council, uh, members of the community. I stand in strong support of the Robert Garcia Boston Academy and all the transformative ways that they have helped our children in our community from young boys and young girls going into that gym in the mall and transforming themselves not only physically but mentally. The sport of boxing is a sport of grit, sport of determination. very few sports except for others like MMA where you're actually one-on-one with your opponent. Baseball, football, you're with your team. They're all supporting you. But in boxing, you're in the ring. You're finding yourself. You're digging yourself up and you're trying to find the very best in you. This program transformed a lot of kids in Marina Valley because I've seen it firsthand. You could see kids who are happy there. They're no longer on their iPad just sitting at at home just wandering around. They're no longer just roaming the streets. They're no longer just bored finding something to do. They actually found a home. They found a community in that gym. And to see the two boxers that just came, one from district uh three, the other from district 4, now champions, undefeated, who knows? They'll probably be the next WBC champion. We'll be probably painting uh murals of them just how they did in Tulair for Richard Torres when he won his silver medal. Just think of the transformative ways you could impact the community's lives. There are other opportunities, other community groups just need to come

forward just like RGBA has done. It's not about favoritism. It's not about excluding. It's just about bringing the community forward. And Mr. Mayor, honorable counsel, you have the facts in front of you. You know exactly what's happening. I ask that you look at the facts and not just some random baseless claim of favoritism or personal gain. That's that's not what we're here for. We're here for the community. We're here for the children. That's what's at stake at the end of the day. And with that, I just want to say again, I'm in strong support of this and I hope you make the right decision. Thank you. The next speaker is Louise Palomares.

Wow, what a lie. Action-packed. Yes, it is about favoritism. Yes, it is. Cuz it's another gym. They don't get they need I mean, they didn't give him the time of day. It's up there on on I think they can't where the green onion is, you know. They turned a blind eye to them. They didn't help him as a black gentleman when he has people in there that are young boys that are at risk and they want help. But we didn't even give them the a time of day, right Cabar? Cuz it's your lobbyist and the people that donate to your campaign and the people that come and support you. And just like this young man right now gave you glory, you know, wow, what a great guy you are. Don't nod your head at me. Come on. You know, it's all true. You know, if people would turn on their TVs and look at what goes on in this council every time there's a meeting and the planning commission and all of that, they see the whole truth. You know, we've been in this, you know, for the longest time. You know, they come and lobby you. You know, I'm not against the gym. Hey, I came and supported it. When the mall was closed down, I said, "Hey, open it up. We need those stores open. We need all these uh things going on in in our community for our kids." Right? But it seems like you're giving it to the same people every time. That's wrong. Look at the studio right here that that the woman came and talked about her her dance studio. Give her some money. But you don't even say enough about it out there to let the people know. I didn't know. I didn't have a clue. You know, I talked to different. We don't know they're doing that. We don't have a clue. You know, send out send out something to the community. Just like when you want to t raise our taxes. Our mailbox are full of all the propaganda. how you're going to save and what you're going to do for the city and how great it's going to be. Do that for all of these nonprofits that want something that want to bring something to our city. Martial arts, you know, dance, music, all of the above and other boxing, not just this one. Hey, I I know they do excellent work there. They're, you know, top-notch people. I'm not

knocking that. I'm just knocking about the money. You know, the money. Don't worry. Come and lobby me. I'll take care of you. Work on my campaign. I'll take care of you. Hey, I got this. That's who you are. You know, you just prostitute our tax dollars away, Mr. Mayor. That's the truth. I've been coming here for what, over 20some years. Come on. You've been here what, seven years? Too long, and we've been on the Titanic with you. You have took our city backwards. Look, look at what it looks like. And you sell the Hillwood away. That project, $60 million. WE COULD HAVE HAD a lot of things for the youth here. We could have had a lot of stuff. Team post, uh, soccer fields, baseball diamonds, yada yada, etc., etc. A state-of-the-art library, not a Mickey Mouse little libraries all over in every in every uh, you know, storefront and paying for staff money. A lot of money to keep those libraries going. That's your idea. So, you could put something on your propaganda when you're running again. I hope the people don't I hope they vote you out this time cuz man, we're we're bad off with you. Thank you.

The next speaker is Albert Gonzalez.

Hello everybody. I wasn't ready to speak on any of this. I didn't come prepared, but um I just got the encouragement from the people that were just speaking about Robert Garcia Boxing Academy. And like uh James said, forget who I am. Forget Albert Gonzalez, a professional boxer. I'm here to speak about me being a Moreno Valley citizen that's lived here all my life. I was born here. I was born on Cactus. I've lived here all my life. And um life was never easy for me, you know, growing up in hard places. Um Hemlock, Edgemont, you know, Pepper Court is it was never easy. But one thing that I could tell you guys is that boxing saved my life for the better. At the age of 18, my brother was killed to gang violence. Uh unfortunately, when you when you grow up in in harsh environments, you're forced to fight. you're forced to to grow up tough because if not you get bullied, you you know, you get picked on. It's not something that's delightful. That's something that I would wish on anybody. And at the end of the day, Moreno Valley is a tough city where you have to learn how to defend yourself. I love the fact and I'm here speaking on the on that reason that for what Robert Garcia is doing for this for this city. Not only a lot of times when you grow up in these kinds of things, in these kinds of uh environments, you have nothing else to look forward to. You have you go to school and it's a lot of kids who are the cool kids, the kids that are in gangs, the kids that are, you know, doing the bad things, the the the ones that are not going to school. They're the ones that everybody looks up to. And I believe what Robert Garcia is doing to this city is giving hope for the better. It's giving a a reason for you to do good and be able to make good money. the right way instead of like I said I'm I'm from this city. I grew up in this city. I went to Sorrano. I went to Palm. I went to Badgers. I went to Moreno Valley High School. I went to March March High School because I wasn't a good kid. But at the end of the day when I give when I started going to training things like that, it gave me

a reason to look forward into not doing bad things. But when as long as we didn't have Robert Garcia Boxing Academy, there's no reason to look forward to. There's no reason to do the the right things, the good things. Why? because it's like you feel like it's it's not beneficial. But at Robert Garcia's gym, you got a world class trainer that's been trainer of the year two times in in the sport of boxing. And now you know that he's training kids here in this city. It gives hope to kids. It gives hope to people like myself that come from nothing. Not come from nothing. Thank God I have my parents, but come from harsh times, but it gives you hope to know that there's um there's a there's a light at the end of the tunnel. The gym is a very expensive gym. Uh, not very expensive, but $200 a month, it's it's tough to come up with those funds. Now, what James Vega and Robert Garcia are doing to get funds for kids and not have to pay that. It's a blessing. And I just came here to let you guys know that as a as a as a person that came from Reno Valley that lived here, was born here. I thank God for Robert Garcia and what they're doing because not only has it inspired me, but I know it could inspire a lot of other kids that are up and coming.

Thank you. The last and final speaker is Joanne Stefan. Again, I'm speaking as a 44 year resident. Uh my comments are my own. I should have stayed on the couch is where I should have stayed. Um, the Robert Garcia gym that is at the mall, I personally, no matter how they got here, I really don't care. I'm kind of glad they are here. I really am because when it comes to the fact of having somebody like that in our city, I mean, I think it's it's a plus. And, uh, as far as an economic boost for our city, it's there. Taxes, revenue. I mean, we got kids like Albert Gonzalez who was born and raised here. That is going to put probably the city already on the map because when you Google, he's there. I mean, and city of Marino Valley. So, basically, to me, it doesn't matter how they got here, they're here, and we want to keep them. As far as I'm concerned, I don't I, you know, and if we give them the money, we give them the money because they're going to be doing good things for the kids. And like he said, he's going to try to open it up to other avenues and and actually he's going to get more space in that mall because let's face it, you go to the mall, I don't want to, you know, downplay anything, but let's face it, it it really isn't a mall. So, if we really get establishments like this in there and they're going to bring revenue, I mean, let's face it, West Minister, they're leveling it as we speak. Yeah, no more Westminster Mall. That that's just done. They're doing condos, whatever. And a lot of the malls, that's

what's happening. Especially if they're not bringing in the dollars and bringing in the tennis. I mean, they just got through saying how much money we've already put into that mall. I mean, I if I have a bad tenant, I know I get them out because it's, you know, it's just not feasible financially. But in our case, it's a different scenario because you've got all the people working there. You've got a lot of people that depend on their jobs there. So, it's a different kind of thing. So, you know, you got to throw them a lifeline and hope for the best. But this is one establishment that basically needs to stay there. And and like everybody said, it's not the fact that they're getting this money. is the fact that other establishments like this that are nonprofits like the ladies dance the studio just give us money to other ones and let you know send out letters to the nonprofits and say you know what we may be able to help you don't even have to say a dollar amount just throw them a lifeline because it doesn't look good that's what's happening here it doesn't look good just to one

mayor that concludes all public comments for item J7.

Thank you very much madam clerk and thank you to our public speakers as well. So with that we will bring it back to the deas for uh questions and deliberation and I I just because my name has been brought up so much I do want to just respond to some of those comments uh because I I think it's just really unfortunate and unfair that um you know people are making things up about how did they get here and all that kind of stuff. If if you really realize the caliber of boxers that were just here, these are not just any boxers. These are world champions. They are on the Mount Rushmore, the Robert Garcia himself and his brother Mikey Garcia that they decided they made the decision to move from Riverside to come to Mareno Valley. And I just completely disagree with any of those arguments that say that that basically are trying to throw them under the bus or taint their name. That is disrespectful. And I'm going to call that out because a lot of work went into getting them into this city. And we can have our disagreements. But um I I want to before I continue also uh I want to commend Susie Zapardo. You know, we've talked a few times over the past couple years. I commend you for the work that you're doing. Love I've been to the studio before. I need to go back. But u do want to say that um definitely support funding uh your program as well as others and there are different funds right this this particular uh uh funding is is for RGBA or for boxing in this case but for example we also have uh public art initiatives there's significant funding there as well art dancing is a form of art and there is funding a lot of funding available the applications are available would I'd love to get you that information so that you can submit an application and get funding for youth studio and then take it a step further. Share that with other organizations, other businesses that are also offering similar type of services,

whether it's dance or any other type of art. There is a lot of funding there and we are desperately trying to get that money out. We need your help. All of you folks that came up here and talked about why don't we spread the word, help us. Don't just come and complain. Help us to spread the word. You care so much. Excuse me, Polymer. you had your your time. Please be respectful. Share that. Take the initiative to let folks know that this funding is available. It's it's your duty. It's our duty to do that together. Don't just come up here and complain. Take action. So, Miss Aardo, I invite you. I will personally send you that information and commit to supporting funding for your organization. And um I have more comments, but I I want to hear from my colleagues. I want to give them an opportunity to say something as well. Uh so I I'll hit the pause button and I'll look to my colleagues. Council member Delgado.

So I want to first start by apologizing to Susie because uh it's we didn't know that you were uh interested or I mean obviously anybody with with a nonprofit would be interested but we didn't know so or I didn't know but um you're here tonight and you're on the right track. Uh, as far as the other uh, boxing establishment in Marino Valley, I I just haven't I haven't heard him come here, but maybe he's in the same boat as you. So, we'll get the word out. Um, as far as the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy, I have zero ties. Zero. Maybe here's the line for zero, maybe below that ties with Robert Garcia Boxing Academy. What I do know is I grew up in Fontana and they had the Fontana Boxing Club and I know kids that were in the Fontana Boxing Club that stayed out of trouble because they were boxing. I see what they're doing here and I am thoroughly impressed. I've been to their box. I just sat I got a chair and I sat and watched the the goings on there and it I was extremely impressed on the the discipline and the mannerisms and the the uh the whole arena the whole everybody was extremely professional the kids from I they were little guys all the way up to that age group um extremely professional and and uh I've been to uh Miss Suz's dance studio for the last 75 years um and then revisit it now with my granddaughter. So um I understand that this program is a what 3M to 6 3 to 6

uh we the program is to try and effectively uh cover 3 to six because of children that are out of school and parents that are still working. Uh but this particular program um they uh are doing it four to five.

Th those times are crucial. We talked about that with the library down in uh district 2 about the kids coming out of school and and not having a lot to do. So this program is um giving uh kids something to do. And not only are they they're they're it's mandated you you're a professional. It's mandated you're respectful. So uh I I support them and I I support what they're doing. And I also support other businesses and nonprofits that um come to us for uh I wouldn't even say assistance, but partnerships. So, um looking forward to that, Miss Susie. And um the other boxing academy in Marino Valley that's been here quite a while. Have them come up. We're That's That's an art. Boxing is an art. So, u maybe we can take a look at them as well. So, um thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we'll go to Council Member Bernard. Yes. Um so, um I'm I'm going to go a little differently than what I'm hearing up here and it's just because um there were a number of things that were said. Um I do think because this is becoming um this is now becoming the norm that we are we are doing this. I do think personally that we should transfer to a system of a of a request for funding um a request for funding proposals, not just here, but in other situations that we're in because then you don't have what we're having here today, which is everybody went in, everybody had a fair shot, and this is what the this is what we came out to. So, that's that's one thing also. So, we were talking about metrics just like when we're doing um uh our program with the um with with the nonprofits that we were giving funds to. There's a metric system that was in the original contract that was executed and there's one that should be in this contract that's going to if if it were to go through tonight that would be executed. They're supposed to deliver quarterly reports and I'm not seeing a quarterly report. The email that I did get um when we were sitting up was just like a list of names, which by the way was that that's a whole I'm someone that believes in in PII. And so I was like, yeah. So now I have a list of names, ages, and the parents that signed them up. So that's another thing. Um so I don't have the metrics of how how many kids were actually signed up, when they were signed up, how long they were there. I'm looking for the metrics telling me. Um I know it wasn't until the last gentleman spoke where he was like, "Oh, it's $200 a month." I had no idea how much it was going to cost. Then um Mr. Vega says um like we we're okay with this funding. Thank you for the funding, but um Robert Garcia is going to cover everything except for the equipment. So now I'm like, well, how much is the equipment? So there's a there's just there's just little things that are like peing me that one, even based on the first um contract, they didn't provide the metrics that were required quarterly because it's not in the report anywhere. And I'm wondering if it was only provided with the names today because I'm like, well, how long

were these kids there? How do you select the children? What is the criteria to determine which one of these um which one of these children is able to participate? Like these are questions that um just in general is someone that deals with um grants and things like that. Every grant that I do, I have to have metrics to show that I'm meeting and matching the marks. Or for instance, if we're not meeting the marks, we're unable to deliver on those deliverables. We got to start sending money back. So, I've got to make sure by like a certain day, like a okay, I submitted my report for this. I had the report for this. Here's my calendar to show what we've done here and there. So, those are the things that um while I'm fine with everything that Robert Garcia Boxing is doing. I'm sure they're doing wonderful things, that gym is always crowded, it's always busy, those are just the simple questions that I think we should be delving into a little bit more. Um because based on that, even if I say the contract was executed 2024 to 2026 quarterly reports, I should have at least six six metrics that told me like here we were. So the first month we only had two students, but the second month we went out and requested and we got this many like but that's none of that is here. And to some people they're like well it's just only $48,000. Yeah, that's still a lot of money. Especially when I can think of like for instance at a dance studio where she'd be like you know what there was a parent that came in because that's the other question I have. Is it someone whose child can't can't afford it right? Like is it someone whose child or the parents like I really want them to do this but you know what we are low income and this is how much it is so we're using this money to subsidize. Those are things just like when we have um hole in the wall and inland compassion and and all those groups and power speaks louder and all of them come in and they're reading off a list. we've served this many people, we've done this, we've done that, we've done this, and like the three minutes that we give them. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing that here. And so, um, while I'm okay with the original agreement, I now want to know how we're going to make sure that these that these deliverables are there for the next

agreement and then if we need I really do think we need to look at how this money is is given out and if it should be the same people every single year. And it's not just here. It's other things that I've been pushing like, "Hey, you guys, we should really do a request and have everybody come in because then you don't have people like that boxing gym on the over there on the other side of the 60 saying, "Well, we've been here for 30 plus years and no one's cared." Um, but all of a sudden you guys care about this one. And I understand they're at the mall and they're investing in the mall and and they're elite athletes, but that's not to say that there's not elite athletes or elite people at other places either just because they're not with this gym in particular that came from Riverside to here. Also, it's always this silent competition between us and Riverside that I got to keep ping-pinging with and I'm I'm over that part. Just let me know like how they met their metrics and where are their metrics. And I probably would be like, "Okay, fine. They met the metrics." And that's that's the thing that I'm like looking at now that I'm like, "Nobody's questioning how they met the metrics because it's not in the report." And it literally says it in the contract. And especially when I have a council that likes to get really particular about contract details and today we're not getting we're not getting into contract details.

Any other council member Baka Santa Cruz?

Pretty much at the same place as council member Bernard. I asked for the metrics yesterday. That's why we got the list today. Those are not metrics. That is not what the report said we would be having. They're not quarterly. They can't backdate them and say, "Oh, we meant to give you these in January and these in April." They didn't fulfill the contract for the two years that they had the contract. Why would we re renew and let them do that again? We're charging our little leagues, you know, Canyon Springs Little League, Mina Valley Pony League, our soccer clubs. We're all charging them for lighting. Well, we would affect more students and athletes if we were subsidizing the lighting with this, you know, with the money. this bro if we were subsidizing that this year or if we were looking and reaching out to the dance studios to our um taekwond do to those who wanted to play volleyball at the rec center you know to expand the money but we've already invested half you know $50,000 or $48,000 over the last two years with Robert Garcia I think they're off the ground they're doing great they're expanding they just said they were willing to pay for everything why would we go and give them more money. It just doesn't make sense. And when I spoke to them at their recent event and they asked me to transfer some of our foundation money to their foundation, I told the city manager that sounded ridiculous. If they're doing well enough where they're building a foundation now, they have all this money. Well, they're off on their own. That's great. Let's invest in another um part another business that will keep our children um in the hours of 3 to six. you know, it's a one hour uh a day at this Robert Garcia and we're paying $200 a month for them. And is it the same? You know, we got one list for two years, 20 student, 21 students. Have they been in there since the beginning? Is there a savings? Do did they finish the first 48,000? if they're charging $200 for a month and

they're going one hour a day. Um, you know, but not to say that what they're doing isn't good. You know, we've been down there. It's great and they're off the ground. They're doing great now. So, I think it's time for us to move and in a different direction and start uh a bid just like, you know, we have rules about, you know, bid limits. Not to say that we're over the bid limit, but the spirit of that is that you don't spend all your money in one place. You you give some all around. We don't keep using the same caterer. We don't use the same um vendors and anything. We spread it out because we're a public agency. These are taxes. It should go to all of the businesses, not just to one. So with that, um, I feed you back.

Mayor Pro Gonzalez, I

I just want to make a few comments regarding, um, I I think we should, you know, RGBA is a is a world-class uh, organization. They they they're turning out, you know, world class fighters as we've seen, youth. Uh, they're becoming disciplined. Uh, their their gym is world class. uh the expansion they're doing into the mall. Not too many businesses in the mall are expanding in in that fashion. So I I think that we should put everything in a in in a balanced way. Yes, there there should be definitely metrics for for for different for different uh uh nonprofits like we do with everyone else, but I think at the same time, you know, I I think the city does do their their due diligence and spread the word to for these nonprofits to apply to apply for funding. If if we all need to do better and and make sure that different organizations tap into our our city resources, then that that's that's something we need to do. Um, all boxing organizations, you know, h deserve a a a balanced um uh resource here in the city, but RGBA, they're they they did come from Riverside. They're here homegrown in Marina Valley. They support local Marina Valley fighters, and that's something commendable, and we we shouldn't uh we we we got to make sure that that doesn't taint um the RGBA and what they're doing in the city. So, if we can support them in any way we can, we should, but at the same time, making sure that they're um they're they're they're meeting all their their their contracts and whatnot. So, um I I think RGBA is doing a great job and they'll continue to do a great job here in the city of Rena Valley, and we we cannot forget that.

Council member Delgado, I just have one follow-up question, Brian. How um if if this passes tonight and they get u the $48,000, how can we um is it up to us as a body to make sure that those those PIIs are met and reported like the other nonprofits come into the county or the uh the meetings and and report that out? Um or is that literally are we relying on them to do it and if they don't they we don't renew their how does that work?

Well, it's funny how you brought up the nonprofits. So, the community outreach pilot program was literally uh brought forward to council and and supported by council for those nonprofits that couldn't qualify for HUD uh funding, which is very restrictive. Um we don't do an RFP for those particular three entities that were part of the original 2-year. We added one uh agency uh recently and didn't even spread the uh original 210,000 amount. We went up to 280. So, there was no RFP. we just added a new uh nonprofit. Um the metrics in in the form in the contract is basically the same in which uh those nonprofits are coming in and doing the quarterly. Um this particular um contract um yeah they're they're they're not submitting on a quarterly basis. They're sub submitting on an annual basis. But again, these were to be very least restrictive. There were really no tangible aspects with these particular contracts originally with the community outreach pilot program because they couldn't qualify for the HUD funding. So, we were trying to provide funding to have those uh nonprofits do better in our city. Um, and that's what this particular program was uh designed off of. So, um if if approved tonight and what I'm hearing from council is, um they truly want metrics going forward, we will provide metrics. Um but for for the nonprofits, that's how it was designed. It was designed for funding so that they can continue for the betterment of the city, but knowing that they do not have the backbone for HUD funding.

Okay. No, here's the thing. then don't put it in the contract to provide metrics. So this is kind of the wi this is the issue. While I understand that for HUD funding they weren't able to make it. If you put in a contract a legally binding contract you are to provide A C and D then I expect you to provide AB C and D and do not waiver. So the fact that it was even an option oh like oh if it's an annual negative contract says quarterly. If it's annual, then say annual. But if you tell me quarterly, I'm expecting to hit that quarterly. When I have a contract or anything like that with the state or any of my community groups that I'm doing research with, these are like, yeah, here's my deliverables. So then why why am I having them sign a contract that says quarterly and then they're under the impression like, well, we can do it annually. And even if that's the case, they didn't submit annually either because I don't have any annual reports either. So, the contract, if it states explicitly quarterly, I expect quarterly. I'm I'm not playing like we're not we're not like batting this back and forth with them. It says quarterly, show up quarterly and deliver what needs to be delivered. If it's annual, then show up annually and tell me what needs to be delivered. But if it's in the contract, you and I both know this because we deal in contracts. Well, yes, but my comment was we didn't provide you the metrics for the two years related to uh the nonprofits when we brought that back recently and you guys approved for the four nonprofits.

Not talking about the nonprofits particular thing. None of the metrics were provided at that time. That's why this wasn't provided as part of this particular package. This is the same thing you brought up when I asked you about this yesterday. Oh, well, we didn't do it for them. It doesn't matter. We're asking about this particular project. But that is why it is not in the con. That's why it's not in the staff report itself. And I provided you guys an email today for the past year.

Yeah. I just uh would like to also say that, you know, that that agreement, that partnership was approved by the five of us, right? So that's something that we all agreed to and uh of course sounds like there's, you know, at least a couple of things that definitely need to be tidied up moving forward. Um that doesn't, you know, dispel or, you know, completely negate all of the good that the partnership has done. The original intent of the partnership and the reason why the five of us up here voted to approve it and enter and into that agreement and fund the program was to help at risk youth that could not afford um uh to pay for the full membership at the boxing academy and to help those uh within that window after school where they're most at risk. And Robert Garcia was willing to help pay some of that. the city came in and essentially uh subsidized part of those memberships, right? Um so I think, you know, I also just want to make sure that um I hear some comments from my colleagues that I somewhat agree with, not completely. Um because if I hear, you know, comments about what about all the other boxing gyms after Romel, the owner of uh United Boxing Academy over in District 2, I think, uh when he came for that last meeting, uh when this was previously approved, I reached out to him. I don't know if any of my colleagues reached out to him. I reached out to him and I spoke to him and explained to him, you know, like we want to work with you. And I've not spoken to him since. He has not reached out since. So, we need to revisit that conversation. And my point is that that's just one other boxing gym in the city. There are many other taekwond do, karate, jiu-jitsu. So, if we're going to open up that Pandora's box, there's only limited funding. We're going to have to say no to a lot of

people. And if we dilute it so much, how many people are we actually helping? like are we helping the best that we can in you know the name of trying to fund as many organizations as we possibly can. So, you know, I I definitely support continuing the funding uh to, you know, help these youth that are at risk um to to get their, you know, skills not only in boxing but in life as well. uh with a partner that you know would we be asking probably similar questions uh but um you know if we had a Kawhi Leonard in here who we've partnered with many times without going through RFPs or anything like that even the previous mayor uh was was a big supporter of that members of this council as well uh that were there taking pictures you know very proud of the work that Kawhi Leonard NBA champion from Mareno Valley uh has been able to partner with the city uh or even other you know Super Bowl champions that we have here in the city. When they see this kind of stuff, I think they think twice about wanting to do business with the city because of how controversial uh it's becoming when it shouldn't be. We're talking about at risk youth. I grew up in Compton. I didn't have access to a lot of these uh services either. But in my case, my parents worked hard to put me into Catholic school and that somewhat shielded me from a lot of what C Compton had to offer. I could have easily gone into gangs or drugs and other things, but I didn't because I had those pathways, those opportunities to keep me out of harm and to keep me away from bad people in bad places at the wrong time. This is us trying to expand the offering of those pathways with a premier boxing gym that decided to come to Marino Valley. And we cannot let them leave the city. we can't risk them leaving the city of Marino Valley. Um, so,

so I'm going to take issue with I'm going to take issue with that because I understand and I hear what you're saying. No one's arguing whether or not they're actually helping atrisisk youth. That's not the argument. The argument is the metrics. The argument is the documentation and the paperwork to say this is what we're doing A, B, C, and D. That is the only argument that we're having up here. So, to then conflate the issue and say, "Oh, no, you guys are going back and forth about a premier boxing." That's not what this is about. This is about Listen, had they had the deliverables in here and the metrics I'd have been like, "Cool, we're good. Sounds sounds like a plan." Because when I said like, "Hey, we have some other groups, they're not delivering, and once we started asking them that, they would show up in here and they would say, all I'm saying is give me some information as to what happened." And so I can let this go through for the next one, but I'm telling you right now, if it looks like this again where they're unable to deliver metrics, now we have now I have a problem again because that's all I'm asking you to do. It's a very simple like they do their accounting every month. I know cuz they're paying their bills. So they're doing their accounting every month. And when you're getting even if you're getting money from us to say like, "Hey, this is to help atrisisk youth." How else do you judge the system if it's working if you don't have the information to prove that it's working? Because someone told me it was because they wanted me to believe it. H for all I know, half of these kids could have enrolled three months ago. That's all we're asking. And if that's too much, as someone who's a taxpayer here, not just an elected, but an actual taxpayer, if that's too much to ask of them, will God forgive me for for asking them to be responsible with taxpayer dollars and explain to me what they're doing with the money?

No one said it's too much. We all agree. You just did when you sat up here and you started conflating and you started talking about aging. You do this all the time and I've talked to you about this. You do this all the time. No, no, no. Because you've had the hardest life of everybody. I think it would be better if we did something like a voucher system where a student would come bring maybe their report card, their parents' income, and they would choose if they want to go dance with Susie or if they want to go fight with Robert or if they want to play little league for the year. But we would support their individual, lowincome, individualized students that we could directly impact instead of giving money to the guy who put the mayor's name on a star in his business.

So, let me let me Ryan, let me go back to my original question before all this started. Let's let's get some order. Just one second, council member. People are really emotions are running high right now and um we just want to make sure that we bring back some decorum. Some council members are walking off today unfortunately, but uh council member Dogado the So Brian going back to my original question, can we if if this gets approved, can we they always work out move forward and require them to present metrics and require it?

Yes. If that's what I'm hearing from this particular body, we will ensure that. And then is it it up is it up to us to ensure that those reports are No, it wouldn't be up to you. It would be up to me. No, but I mean us as a city as the the granter, we we would ensure that uh they would um meet the metrics if that's what this body wants. We definitely should make sure that that happens.

I wholeheartedly agree and and council member Bernard and council member Baka, Senator Cruz had excellent points um as far as making sure I I you know making sure that they report just like everybody else should and and the voucher program is a good idea, but I think that's not what is in here now. And if this if this passes tonight, I think we we need to put it in a contract that they report and if I mean it's in there, right? But we need to hold them to the fire and make sure that it gets done because I don't think anybody is arguing that program. Yeah, I think we all agree on that. Absolutely. Just saying a different way.

Yeah. So, um yeah, apologies that the deliberation is getting uh you know, a little out of uh normal, you know, standards. But I I agree, you know, I support that. Uh we need to make sure that those reports are done. And um I I really don't think we should belabor this, you know, deliberation anymore. I think we've gone far enough with this. So, I would make a motion that we uh approve. I I'd wait till the the full council gets here. Just to be fair, do we know how long? I I see I hear council member Baka Santa Cruz in the back here. Can we take a break?

Based on uh in talking with the city attorney, technically a break hasn't been called. So, if there is a motion and a vote, uh those two are just away at this particular point in time. We It's not standard protocol for council members to just walk off the deis. Can we tell them, hey, we're going to we're going to vote. Can you come back? And if they don't come back, then that's we give them an opportunity to come back and we go. Is staff able to see if they can find the council members? If not, we need to continue with business. It's already 8:30 and we have a lot more items on our agenda. We We can't We can't do business this way.

Okay. So, the council members are back in the council chamber. Um, at this time, I would make a motion that we approve staff's recommendations and specify that moving forward for the term the two-year term of the uh agreement that we uh ensure and require that those quarterly reports are uh uh conducted and reported back to the city. I'm seeking a second on that. I'll second that. We will go ahead and call for the vote. Madam clerk, thank you, mayor. Council member Bernard, yes. Council member Delgado, yes.

Council member Vakasana Cruz, no. C Mayor Prom Gonzalez, yes. And Mayor Cabera, yes. Thank you. Thank you. That passes with four yeses. Council member Baka Santa Cruz is the no vote. So, we will go. Actually, at this time, it's probably a good time to call for a break. We'll take a fivem minute recess. We'll be right back.

Good evening and welcome back to our regular council meeting. We will go ahead and pick up where we left off. We had just concluded item J7 which was pulled for separate action. And there was a second item that was pulled for separate action. That was J14 that pertains to the uh proposed contract for the public safety campus. And so let me go ahead and get to that item here. Just one second. So J14, we will first uh start with a staff report and then we'll go into public comment.

Thank you, Mayor, Mayor Botam, council members. Um the item before you tonight is for um architectural and engineering design uh services uh related to a public safety campus on the east side of the city. Um this was a continued item from our last meeting. Um do want to note that um verbiage uh on page three under the uh title heading public safety uh property covenant. Uh so page three, page four, page five and a portion of page six is new uh narrative uh verbiage related to um the um covenant. And uh in working with the city attorney, uh he went ahead and go uh put uh this particular language in here. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn do turn it over to uh the city attorney to discuss um prevailing wage and to discuss the uh covenant itself and the binding effect of the covenant.

And this is although this background information is related to um basically the timing as to why this has been placed on the city council's agenda tonight. So, the former city manager negotiated um an arrangement with Highland Fair View. Pardon? Oh, I thought somebody asked me a question. Okay. Sorry. so negotiated an agreement um well an arrangement with Highland Fairview and um when he when I went over the terms with him I realized that well we need to memorialize this agreement and this agreement needs to been memorialized in a manner that makes it binding not only on Highland Fairview but any of their subsidiaries so they can't just change their their corporate um organization and get out from under this obligation. But let's let's just start with the basics. So a property covenant is a basically it's an agreement. It's an legal obligation that applies to the property. So we select the property and we record this agreement with the county recorder's office and anyone who owns that property is subject to those provisions. What's also unique about this covenant is that we not only bind the property and whoever owns that property at the time, but we also bind Highland Fairview and all of its subsidiaries because currently there's one of the Highland subsidiaries owns this property. So, this covenant is actually Highland Fairview and Merwin Properties and any other Highland Fairview subsidiaries. So we have a binding agreement here that's recorded. So what's this um agreement pro um involve? Well, it requires that and I'm going to use Highland Fairview just in general, but again it applies to the property owner Merwin and applies to all the

subsidiaries. So and and and it's important to note too that there's no out-of- pocket cost here for Highland Fairview. They're not doing anything that's going to cost them outofpocket costs because all this is going to be paid for by the development impact fees that they are required by law to pay to the city, the public safety um development impact fees that they have to pay for residential units. So, here's the deal. So they are required to set aside um 10 buildable acres of land. In this case it's almost 15 acres of we call it gross acreage but they can only build only 10 10 acres are buildable based on setbacks and things like that. So they have to set aside that land for the construction of a public safety campus. And they are also required to construct a turnkey public safety campus and eventually deed the land and the public safety campus and all the improvements over to the city. And we'll talk about the timing there um later. But they also in addition to um deeding land and they're not giving it to us. They're not donating it to us. Um and in addition to constructing the public safety campus and again it's no out-of- pocket cost for them because it's going to be paid for with these development impact fees that they're required to pay. They're going to provide a fire ladder truck, fire engine, and a paramedic and fire squad. Again, no out-of- pocket cost for them. It's all going to be covered by development impact fees. So when does this have to happen? Well, it's structured so that um at the time so as you know they have 15,000 homes that

have been approved over Aquabella and um there's I gather there's some other residential units that they're planning on building in the future which they have to come back and get entitlements for. So at the time they build they finish construction of the 7,000th residential unit within the city within any of their projects in the city. They have to set aside this land and start construction of the public safety campus and they have to finish construction within three years after that 7,000 permit and that inspection is actually approved. When I talk about inspections, final inspection, that means that it's done. They can sell it. They can rent it. So, they have three years to do that. Well, at the time that this propert that that the time that this agreement was negotiated with Highland Fairview, there was a a private developer could provide a park, build a park, and deed it to us later. Well, what sort of advantage does that bring to the city? Well, they did not have to pay prevailing wages at that time. if they built it and they gave us the land. Well, if we're using development impact fees to pay for that, which we're doing here, those are that's money that we can, you know, we're going to do it through this this program of, you know, issuing a bond. That's money we can use for something else that has to do with public safety. So, it actually reduces the cost. it would reduce the cost of this project. Since that time, the state

department of industrial relations has changed their opinion about whether or not a project like this can be built by a private entity and given to the city without having to pay prevailing wages. So under the current regulatory scheme regarding prevailing wages, if Highland Fairview built this, they have to pay prevailing wages. So what's that impact on us? Well, that means that that's our development impact fees that we're committing to that. So again, Highland Fair's no out-of- pocket cost for them. They have to pay these fees. Anyways, what we vent what we essentially did was earmark all these development impact fee revenues we're collecting from Highland Fairview to build this project. So that's what this covenant is all about. And so once that you know so it's my understanding that the reason for the recommendation to move forward with the city actually putting up the money up front and having it designed and constructed is that we're going to have to pay prevailing wages anyways and instead of having to wait for the 7,000 home to be built which we have no idea when that can happen or Highland Fairview can choose that choose to not build 7,000 homes and stop at 6,999 homes and then they don't have an obligation to build it, then we don't have the land and we don't have that commitment which is not going to give us any benefit now because there's prevailing wages involved. So this by moving this, you know, by um using bond proceeds from measure M to pay for it, it basically gets rid of that risk that it's never going to be built and or it won't be built for a long time. So we're kind of fast

forwarding everything and moving it up front and we're going to pay for it. Then all those development impact fees that um Highland February has to pay, we can use it to, you know, contribute toward the construction costs or we can use it for other public safety facilities and services. So it's basically money that the city's going to have to cover in any event for the land and for the construction. We're not getting it for free. We're paying for it. Now, whether we're using Measure M or we're going to use the development impact fees, that's up to the council to decide. So, that was the initial intent was to have the developer develop it, which developers were doing in other jurisdictions. you build it. You don't have to pay for veiling wages, but you give us that that public approvement, that park or that um recreation center or whatever aquatic center and we don't have to pay prevailing wages, but we'll use a development impact fees to cover the costs. So by funding it using bond proceeds that are secured by measure N revenue moves it up and by going out and getting a bid to enter into a contract for somebody designs it just moves everything up and it creates certainty with respect to actually building this public safety campus

measure you

or measure you I'm sorry it's measure U proceeds. So that's what this covenant is all about and that's my understanding as to why it's being staff is suggesting that the city just move forward and hired the architect to design it. Um Highland Fairview won't be doing that if you guys choose to go down this path. But I just think it's important to you know to clarify that you're not getting this land for free. You're not getting this public safety campus for free. You're going to pay for it. You're going to pay for it either through bond proceeds that are secured by measure U or you're going to use the development impact fees that they pay eventually. They're not going to pay it all up front, but those are your two options there. Or you can use, you know, whatever other funds you can legally use to build this project. So that's the background information because and I I was hoping that by addressing these issues in the context of staff report it addresses a lot of the questions that were raised at the last meeting.

So I'm available for questions.

Thank you very much Mr. City Manager and Mr. City attorney. Appreciate that. We'll go ahead and bring it back up to the deis for council questions of staff. Council member Delgado. So Steve, thank you very much for that augmented and that that broken down explanation of of this process because that really makes a lot of sense. We are going to pay for it eventually. Um it's coming out of diff whether we whatever we do with diff in the long run in the 699,000 up 7,000th uh home. Uh we we that's when it starts anyways. So, my understanding of what you just explained is we're we literally are just expediting a public safety center for our residents on the east end because we are only growing. We're not getting any smaller. We're growing uh especially on that side in Council Member Gonzalez's uh district. Um so, this is basically expediting the in this inevitable public safety building.

Yes. and and that that my pea brain that's what I I want to understand is that basically what we're doing. So now we're not waiting years and years and years. We're we're going to push this up to the front and provide a a blanket of security to the folks on the east end and not just the folks on the east end but I mean they can respond over here with the ladder truck too. So is is that my understanding? Yeah. I mean am I okay? Thank you. Me pro Tim Gonzalez does does diff right now ha the police and fire safety diff does they have monies right now from highland fair view from any of their developments?

Uh you they have to defer to finance on that. they have to pay public safety development impact fees for a variety types of developments like for industrial development, for residential development. Um, so no matter what they build, they have to pay that public safety development impact fee. This is all tied to the residential diff.

But but true, but specifically, is there money in that in that line item currently? Yeah, I I would assume there is without knowing uh actually how much or the actual detail. Um I know that um we've gone through all of the recent um uh documents, settlement agreements, specific plans, and identified all of the various metrics and so forth and various payments that they've made um to meet uh certain metrics. uh the certificate of occupancy on building 6A for WLC is getting ready to be issued uh which kicks off uh a whole new round of uh funding that would need to be submitted to the city. So, um I will say that from um a a dollar amount uh perspective, uh police uh diff right now is currently in a negative state and has a loan uh to the general fund um because of the current um debt service that they're paying on the current public safety building on the west side and they don't have enough diff uh to pay for the debt service right now. and fire uh has no um uh dollar amounts uh or surplus amounts that would be able to uh build this particular um facility at this particular point in time.

And and a followup question, do if can those diffs, the industrial diffs be used for the public safety campus or no or just the residential ones? any public safety development impact fees regardless of what sort of projects tied to it can be used for this purpose. Okay. Thank you. I should mention too that if the city builds it, we don't have to get permits. We don't have to go to planning commission and have it processed. If Highland Fairville build it built it, they have to go through the planning commission process and city council process. We have to comply with SQA though.

Thank you. And a quick follow-up question there just um before that answer or those two answers uh Mr. City Attorney you mentioned that everything that you said was specific to to the residential. It had nothing to do with WLC. WLC is completely is technically a separate project. Technically has nothing to do with this. No residential. Um so when it comes to Aquabella which is the project this applies to has Highland Fairview contributed anything in terms of diff when it comes to Aqua they haven't broken ground so there's nothing

so far um and then the world logistics center came up it was mentioned it's another project that they fairview is building do we by chance know how much they've contributed to date uh and how much at full buildout if they build out the full world logistic center how much they would be contributing in development impact fees.

Um we'd have to provide you the uh exact number u via email tomorrow morning but um the full bailed out of WLC will be um over hund00 million worth of diff uh that would be paid to the city uh amongst all the different diff um categories. Got it. I have a few more, but I think council member Baka Santa Cruz has a question. What about the land that it's on the proposed site? Who owns that? Um, Merwin Properties Highland Fair.

Yes. And that's I'm glad you bring that up because that's one of the issues we would have to go back and negotiate in the covenant because they are not obligated to give us that land to deed that land over until 3 years after the 7,000 um residents residential unit is let's say just approved final inspection. And then they were supposed to build that data. They were supposed to build the whole public safety campus turnkey. Correct.

That was because they were going to pay u not pay prevailing wage. They were going to get it built at a way lower cost than we would now that that loophole has closed and they are required to pay prevailing wage. Are they still required to provide us a turnkey public safety campus no matter what the cost has gone up? Yes. But remember, if it exceeds the cost of the development impact fees that they're obligated to pay, we have to give them credit for future development impact fees. But they said they would give us a turnkey station. So, how could it go over the the product is the turnkey station. How could it possibly go over? That's what we we agreed to

because I think at the time at the time it was negotiated they probably crunched the numbers and realized oh construction cost was you going to have to pay prevailing wages is this much. Absolutely. But they agreed to make the turnkey station. They agreed to build it and give it to us. Correct. Because it's costing more. The agreement is no good. Oh no. They're they're not I don't think they've commented on this. Yeah. I But why would they comment? Don't they still have to fulfill the agreement? still build. Yes, they still have to do it at whatever cost it costs. Yes. But again, it's a cost the city's paying. You're going to be paying it in the form of development impact fee credits. So, if it exceeds their

whatever cost it is, they're going to be made whole. Fair. They'll be made whole. What do you mean? So, it means that um they're not going to have incur any out-of- pocket costs. It's supposed to be all out of pocket.

No. So basically what will happen is they would at the 7,000th uh permit they would then have three years to build the uh campus they would build it and then the diff fees that they would have that they had paid would end up being credited back to them after the campus was built real quick. So look, this this idea of a bond to expedite the building is just on us. That's what we want, right? That's that that's what we want. That's what this is. That's why we're here. Pretend this never occurred. Pretend that never pretend. Realize this never occurred. This is just being kicked down the road. This is going to happen. It's just going to happen years down the road. And all we're trying to do is expedite it. In a perfect world, I would have had a property uh not related to a developer and we would have just brought this forward as part of the adopted budget process which you guys approved in May of last year and the CIP approved in June and we would be I I would assume rocking and rolling on a on a property on a public safety campus that was already city-owned, not tied to a developer. And this was predicated off of how council this body wanted to spend measure U funds for the first year.

So since we're building it early, it means that we'll have he'll have cost savings, right? Because it won't cost as much as it would have been if he builds it in the future. So perhaps you can go back and negotiate with him because we're going to build it now at a savings to you. You could go ahead and deed us the property, but it makes no sense for us to build on his land. Well, as the city attorney alluded to, um there would have to be an amendment to the covenant so that uh we take um site control of the property now.

Yeah. Because that covenant is recorded against that particular parcel. And so in any motion, and I'm I'm going to Mayor Prom Gonzalez next uh for a question, but in in any motion that we make today, we can direct staff to go speak to Helen Fairview and attempt to renegotiate the terms of that agreement, the covenant, the deeds on the property since we on our side in good faith to protect our residents and provide more public safety services are expediting it, moving it up. It's it's it's a no-brainer. They should ideally be willing to do the same, but we have to ask and agree to new terms. Correct. Correct. An amendment to the covenant. Mayor President,

we move up the timing to get the land. This is more a finance question. If those will will those credits be structured and will they be proportional to what they contribute? Yes. To equivalent to the cost of

and that's how it's structured in the Okay. And I think another thing to consider here is that diff the the fee schedule gets locked in at certain points in the development process. So you know as again just to kind of support the argument of the costs um as time goes on with inflation etc. also you know diff the amount of diff that gets contributed um toward paying for these facilities that's locked in in basically today's dollars right it or is that is it possible that the amount of diff they contribute goes up in the future? Uh no, not on this one because uh they elected uh there is a state statute 330 uh that requires when an application is submitted and uh their request of uh that particular um statute that all fees are locked in at that particular point in time.

What's the fee the total cost on the public safety campus that they're paying? What did we assign that cost at? We we didn't uh ever sign it in the covenant. So So again, in the covenant, if they were to build it, they build it. If they had to pay prevailing wages, is they have to pay prevailing wages, they have to pay prevailing wages, but they're going to get reimbursed for those additional costs through credits for future development impact fees that they owe to the city. But that's not what we were told. We were told we would approve the aquabella and we would get a turnkey public safety campus.

Yeah, that's why I thought important to outline all these provisions of the covenant. I have a question. So, does anything in this covenant u prohibit highland Fairview from assisting in the design or the construction of the plug safety campus? like outright like just contributing without can they do it voluntarily? Oh yeah, they can always do it voluntarily. If if we award this four to5 million contract for design and architecture, etc. Is there anything prohibiting Highland Fairview from voluntarily being in good faith coming to the city and saying, "Hey, I'm going to put 5% or 10% or some other number that they're willing."

There's nothing stopping them from making a payment to the city. Right. Right. Okay. Are there any other questions from the council? We're we're that's coming next, but we're still on questions of staff. So again, just in summary, if they build it, we stick to the covenant and let's say that they do decide to build all those homes, you're still paying for it one way or the other. It's either going to come out of measure you or it's going to come out of your development impact fee revenue.

We shouldn't know how much it costs because their agreement was that they would build the whole thing no matter what it costs whether it's done today or in 10 years or you know whenever they build it. So you would think that they'd want us to build it now and they would go ahead and pay for it now.

So if they're not going to do that, why are we moving forward with that? Why are we saving them money by building it now in today's dollars? I don't think the goal is to to our our goal isn't to build it now to save them money. I think our goal is there to provide a public safety building on the east side of this big city. So I I think we we really get and it's like I said last time, we are so wrapped up in not being favorable to a developer that we're forgetting what this really brings to this city and that's public safety. There's just and I get it. I get the business part of it. I truly truly and Shaylinda is or council member Bernard is way smarter in business than I am and she understands that that portion of it a lot better than me but the bottom line is it's going to get done anyways and and we are just trying to expedite it and if we don't if this body says no then guess what we're not going to get it and we'll get it down the road if the 7,000th building gets created

when as part of the adopted budget um the measure plan that was adopted was uh 18 deputies, um sixto um four medic squad patrols with 24 firefighter paramedics and other things. And one of the last bulleted items was um uh building the East End public safety campus because right now for the public safety um building that we have here, the current uh police station, we can't absorb any additional uh staff and um we would have a very difficult um ability to bring in 24 new firefighters as well. So um that is why we were staff was bringing this forward to ensure that we were just trying to meet the measure U plan that was approved by this body in uh the adopted budget. to just to follow up two two questions on that that with measure U just to clarify again um because I think there's some misunderstanding or or maybe skewing of of terms and definitions here measure U that was approved by the voters of Marino Valley was that a special tax or a general tax? That was a general tax um that only had to be approved by 50 plus one. Um typically if you're doing a special tax, they have to uh be approved by twothirds vote. Um but the reason why we're keying and this body keyed on public safety during the budget was due to the fact that the ballot language itself stated that based on uh surveys of residents public safety was the number one concern. Then you had open space um

parks. Uh then you had uh various um uh addressing the homelessness uh in town and quality of life initiatives as well. Yeah, thank you. I just want to make sure that we we're clear that measure U is a general tax and can be used for basically anything that the city council decides to you know allocate funding toward. It is not restricted solely to public safety. Now, with that being said, the survey results and all of that, obviously, the top priority was public safety. So, just just wanted to make sure we clarify that. And then my last question, um, we keep going back to these metrics and triggers. Uh, in this case with the covenants and the 7,000th CUP, the issuance of a 7,000th CUP,

final inspection, it's like a certificate of occupancy. There you go. Thank you. So, we already talked about, you know, what hypotheticals of what if Highland Fairview never builds it? They never get to that, you know, that number. We've already talked about that, but now I'm wondering what if Highland Fairview uh decides to submit for different entitlements. What if they 10 years, 15 years from now, they Aquabella is no longer economically feasible. Doesn't make sense for them anymore. They want to come back and resubmit for some completely different project. Maybe it's still residential, but significantly less units. What happens then with the triggers and the deeds in the covenant?

They won't have to build. That's That's concerning. That's concerning. So, we're still on questions. So, staff, but you said it will be built. Well, no. Okay, that's that's here nor there, right? But will this city have had a public safety center or public safety building campus on that side of the regardless of what he does? I mean, right? Regardless if we choose to

if we choose if if we vote on if we move forward on this regardless of what he does and again that money is coming out of diff anyways. We're paying for it anyways. We're just doing it from a diff fee. And I don't think I I don't want to speak for the rest of the council, but I definitely I'm not I'm not saying like this needs to get built with the fires and all that. We just saw clearly that this needs to get built, right? Nobody's arguing against that. I think the crux of the issue here, the concern that keeps coming up is is the possibility, the high pro probability possibility that the developer in this case happens to be high in Fairview can circumvent their obligations. like that's the issue because we that doesn't really happen on other projects and that that's the crux of the the concern here. Um and that's what we're trying to figure out.

Does this this um consultant let me see this architecture and engineering design would this be specific to the location where it is now? So if we chose to build it on our own property or buy some property nearby on that end, would this architecture and engineering design be like no good anymore because it would be specific to this place?

We are designing it specific to the uh roughly 15 acres of gross acres and 10 buildable. um with the fact that there would be a street to the west and a street to the south. Um we're we're trying to design it for this particular location, but um we could potentially if we had a like uh site somewhere else, we would be able to uh very much be able to move that to the other site. The only problem is we don't have site control of other properties, other parcels. Um, and we would have to purchase property. Well, I just feel a lot more comfortable if we own that property or if you spoke to the developer so that we could get into control of this property before we start investing on something that, you know, if he decides he's not going to build Aquabella and he's just not going to do it because he doesn't want to do the public campus and he doesn't want to give us that land because he doesn't have to until he builds his 7,000th home that our design and architecture engineering design is no good. Yeah. So, as part of this approval tonight, uh the city attorney and I then would be uh reaching out to um HF or Highland Fairview and their legal team uh to start the amendment of this particular covenant to get site control uh immediately so that we can go ahead and uh be able to design for this particular site.

That's great. I'd like to see this come back after you do that. I I I just I I would feel more comfortable and I think our residents would as well if we had those commitments, if we were able to take, let's say, I don't know if between now and our next council meeting is enough time. If maybe we need two council meetings, you let us know. But if we had those new terms, assuming Highland Fairview is willing to renegotiate and come to new terms, I think that's that's our due diligence. We're doing our due diligence and making sure that we have those terms and and rules set in place before we award this $4.5 million contract

and and options that you know, let's say they say no, we're not going to renegotiate, right? So So what alternatives do we have? You know, okay, we're stuck with the covenant. The covenant, we just have to rely on that. Okay. So, we we are uh still on questions of uh staff. Um want to make sure we get to public comment as well. Are there any more questions from the council? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and move into public comment. Madame clerk, please go ahead and call up the first three speakers.

Thank you, Mayor. The first three speakers are Jose Santos, followed by Christopher Baka, followed by Roy Blackard. Good evening, mayor and members of the council. My name is Jose Santos. I'm the president of the Riverside Sheriff's Association. I'm here tonight regarding item J14 uh and the previous uh decision to block a donated fire station police substation district 3. Again, words may be a little different than what uh the attorney stated earlier today, but I wanted to be very clear. This is a public safety issue. I will use something that has been told to me, if you're on time, you're late. If you're early, you're on time. Public safety when it comes down to Moreno Valley, we're lacking that right now. Specifically with the residents out on the east, east side. Okay. We just had a fire. Thank you to the uh the district chief along with uh Captain Mack for their response and the response from our our staff. But if we would have had services there already in place, we could have been a little bit quicker. Maybe a 100 acres could have been saved, maybe more. We don't know because we don't have that yet. Um and again the we urge you guys to support this um not necessarily just on the law enforcement side but also on the fire side. Okay. Um and I hope that uh with the rest of the residents also talking and speaking that you guys make the right decision. Thank you. The next three speakers are Christopher Baka, followed by Roy Blackard, followed by Ismael Gonzalez.

Again, nobody is in opposing the building of this campus at all. The point again is the Highland Fairview connection and that's a shame. I like to ask the RSA how much money that they receive from uh Benzi. They got one of their monions uh Mary Resa there. the political uh uh genius that loses all the all campaigns except Delgado's. But um my point is um again what some people brought up it's not against this. It's because of Highland Fairview and does this give him the right uh the opportunity to not build anything because he's going to use that as leverage that he's building something? That's exactly what happened with Aquabella one. He donated the land for the cut through and the city built that and he ended up using that as leverage for never building anything. He's a con artist, Mr. Delgado. Please, I feel like, don't you get it? Don't you understand? He's a con artist, sir. Please. The city is being robbed. Please. Jesus Christ. Don't you see it? You know, Mr. uh Mohan here. Jesus Christ. That's straight out corruption. My god. You know, come on. Again, give up the land free. And he cannot use it as leverage as he's building this. He's going to use that till the day he dies. And hopefully that's soon that he is building on Aquabella. That's what he's going to use it for. This is what this is about. You could if if the city's going to pay for everything, just go down the street and buy a couple acres there. They're up for sale. It's

not going to make no difference. It's all about corruption. Please. Please, Mr. Delgado. Please. My god, I cannot believe RSA is here. You got all the rest is here. Don't capitulate to them. Don't capitulate to them. You either. They're here for political purposes trying to intimidate you in order to get Benzei his way. Disgusting. The next three speakers are Roy Blackard, followed by Ismael Gonzalez, followed by David Zites.

Perfect example. Remember the fire station we built on somebody else's property and we ate that? You cannot build something on someone else's property. You have no dirt. You can make all the promises and everything in financing and everything until you have title to the land you cannot legally build on it. What in the hell is going on here? You are I'm gonna say this. You have flat lied to the people. measure you public safety, RSA, the cops, the firefighters, and everything else. And you know what? You caused this. And you I want to see I want to see you put the everyone under oath. Who tried to get us who tried to get this measure you off because we knew this was going to happen and you tried to get us and and violate our first amendment rights. It's a good thing we had the city clerk we got now that allowed us to put those names on there. And we are going to be proven right. You guys are are incompetent. 1,111%. Prove me wrong anytime. This is why we're in the situation we are. Why don't you listen? We could have this measure you $30 million. This is 15,000 square feet. At the most expensive, it costs 15 million to do this. Measure you could pay for this in six months. If you brought a proposal here, you should bring a proposal. We got the architect. We got the money. We're putting this in. In a year and a half, you're going to

have a police station and a fire station. And you're not telling the people that and that's what you promised them with measure you with the stuff you put out in the city and the rhetoric and the blocking and all the BS. Explain to this the citizens of Marino Valley how you build something on somebody else's property you have no title to. Why do you even bring a project forward? Why do you again? But we want to play blame it on the boogeyman and make all this stuff up. There is no possible way in any sane world that any of this would make any onetenth of 1% of logical sense. Quit deceiving the people. quit screwing us over for all of your agendas, no matter what the hell it is.

The next three speakers are Ismael Gonzalez, followed by David Zites, followed by Nathan Urina.

Hello again. Uh 4 and a half million dollars is is a lot. It's it's u considerable amount of money, right? Um, I think a a point that keeps being reiterated is that the city is growing that uh and I just want to say that I'm a proponent for public safety, right? But why we've I think environmentalists have been telling the people at this uh deis for years, for decades, why build east? That's the problem. uh you want to put a firehouse and and uh public safety campus over to the east. Um it's because you keep proposing to build out there, right? And even at the earlier uh city council meetings, maybe even from last month, you guys kept iterating u when the moratorium for warehouses was brought up were built out. So I mean east was the only way to build out for you guys. But even to your own staff, uh to the general plan from a couple years ago, uh even to uh the fire department, that area is a fire hazard, a very high fire hazard, and uh it's on a fault line. So, uh why put um a safety campus out there? I understand the need for it if you're going to put houses, right? which is the uh Rancho Bellazo annexation project also owned by Ido, right? Doesn't it make sense that he is probably having us pay for his infrastructure, for his warehouses, for his uh land um and and having us pay for it, you know, like you guys are not seeing it. But Mr. Baka was correct. He's robbing us. He should be held accountable for the land that he owns. And like Mr. Uh, Beckart said, "Why are you going to build on land that isn't yours? You should be able to obtain the

land first." Um, according to Google Maps, there is um Fire Station 58 already on the east. Uh, you could have had an opportunity to put the safety campus right there by Kaiser. Instead, we're going to have a a gas station basin right next to it. That doesn't make sense. and that gas station that you know with the big uh sign over there uh it's right there next to the proposed site uh on Cactus. So you your guys' priorities are are are skewed. You said yes to a gas station when it could have just been a a complete public safety campus with with Kaiser there and that would have satisfied the entire east side of of Morirana Valley for public safety. But now you're putting things in a very high-risk fire area. We just lost 4,000 acres. Like, does not does that not concern you? You could put a lonely uh public safety campus out there. But again, the houses haven't been built yet. The warehouses, the 40 million square warehouses that he could protecting. The next two speakers are David Zites followed by Nathan Ureina.

Evening council staff. Uh David Zites. These are my comments on my own. We do need the public safety. No doubt. I've lived in the east end of the city. Response times for fire is pretty good considering we live way out there. police. Also, my only concern, we're paying for this either way, which Ed, everybody knows. Everybody thought we were going to get a free one, but as typical things have been worked out, but it's going to cost us. My concern is, can we build this on this piece of property that somebody else owns that won't be deed to us for years? So, do we need to pick another spot to put it? Do we hold Ben ZBI to a build lease, say a dollar a year for a hundred years? That way he can't back out of this and in a hundred years that station's going to be outdated and will be need to rebuilt anyway. My biggest concern is let's nail the person down so this property cannot be used leverage against the city. if we get a lease, a build lease like they do with the malls and all these other places and set it up, you know, a dollar a year because he's he's apparently negotiated it so-called in good faith that he will give us this property. So, make him give us a lease, whatever it is a year, 100 years, and then if the property does come available available to be deed to the city, then the lease can be broken. But this will hold him accountable and not use this property against us in the future, which he has done on other projects. So that's my only concern with this. We do need the public safety, but we also need to have a place to build this before we spend money on designing it.

The next speaker is Nathan Ureina. Honorable mayor, members of the city council, staff, and uh members of the gallery, the recurring theme I keep hearing is accountability. I agree with our councilman Delgado. I agree with uh Mr. Santos and the other speakers when they say public safety is imperative and it needs to be happening on the east end. There has to be a decrease in response times. There has to be an increase in patrols by RSO by our firefighters and quicker response for our EMS. I have multiple friends including family who live on the east end who are already getting up in age. Imagine the response time now without that public safety uh center. If somebody were to fall, break a hip, what's the response time then? Think of that. The issue on accountability is there has been a lack of trust within a certain developer in this city since I was barely able to walk. It's been that long. So, as uh David and so many others have said, work to hold this man accountable at all costs. You are the trustees and the stewards of this city. Previous councils have let this developer walk all over them. It's time to take a stand to hold these developers accountable to put the safety and the interests of this community ahead of someone's preconceived notion of how they're going to benefit off of this. Now, I implore this council to work with staff to draft up a covenant. If that does not work with the developers, I also implore council to look at other options, whether to move move this

public safety campus uh to another side in district three or look in district two on the east end. There are many opportunities to construct this, but there are also many opportunities to keep our community safe. That's the one thing that we cannot waste. 4,000 acres have just recently burned. What happens to the next fire? What happens to the next tragedy? Which happens to the next emergency when response times aren't quick enough? Let's ensure that Marina Valley is safe for the next 100 years. Thank you.

The next and possibly final speaker, Louise Palomares. Wow. a lot of confusion. Hey, I don't want to wait around for Ido. You know, we'll take care of Eido down the road. Whatever he's going to do, that's good. But right now, we got to do this. We got to get this project off the, you know, with our measure U money. With our measure U money, you know, they said it was for safety and, you know, for police and for fire and all that. So, let's put our money where our mouth is, right? Let's get this going. Let's find a piece of land out there and make it happen. And I don't think you have to pay, I think, $5 million for a plan. Let's, you know, send it out. Let's see who could come in and put it up without all that much money. We can use that towards a building or towards a piece of land instead of just a a a plan, a blueprint. And I remember the the good old our mayor here when he was defund defund our police. Remember this one? I can have this up here because when the the um whatever were here uh um golly anyway, when they were here, they had all their signs here. So I can have this up here. Well, defund the police. So no, let's fund the police. Well, and you said you supported them at the last meeting. Oh, I'm always for the I'm always yada yada. Really really? Well, this is to tell you that it it was it wasn't that way. So right now, you want to wait on I don't want to wait on. We got to get this stuff up and running as soon as possible. I agree with you, Ed. Let's let's get it working. Let's make it happen. I don't want to wait for you or maybe I misheard you, but let's uh use some measure you money. Measure you money and let's get it going. Let's let's fly the position. Let's make it happen because we need that. We need it on the east end. There was fires and everything. I mean, we need a police

station on the east end and another fire station. But, uh let's let's make this happen sooner than later. And uh that's all I got to say. Thank you so much. Mayor, that completes public comment on item J14.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, and thank you to our public speakers. Uh, Miss Palm Mars, thank you for bringing that picture. I'm very proud of that day uh when I stood for justice for George Floyd. And on that same day, I could excuse me, you had your three minutes. This is your first warning, Miss Paul. You had your time. That's your first warning. Please, let's keep it respectful. Let's keep it respectful. So, um, that day I will also say that Miss Polyares, please don't make me ask a baiff to remove you temporarily from the chamber. Let's keep it respectful. That same day, I was communicating with both our police chief and the leaders of Black Lives Matter. And what happened? We had a peaceful protest in the city of Marino Valley where no one was harmed, no property damage. We were marching for justice for George Floyd. And I know you wanted the same thing. So, I appreciate you bringing that picture and reminding me of why I do what I do and why I am here and why the voters continue to vote me into this seat. But that's beside the point. I I think that um we need to table this, continue this, figure out a more concrete plan to build this public safety campus that guarantees that a developer will contribute toward the design and or the construction of the project. We need to build it, but the way it's structured right now is is just it's not right. There's too many red flags, too many question marks, uh too much there's too much going on with this that that too many questions that need to be answered. And uh this is why I pulled it at the last council meeting. It was on consent calendar. I pulled it from the consent calendar to ask questions and that's why we're here. Had we not done that, it probably would have gotten approved and just gone under the radar at the last meeting. But we are here. Miss Palomar, if I have to ask you again, I'm going to ask the baiff to remove you from the chamber. Please, I've given you five

chances already. Let's keep it respectful. We're all adults. So, I I just I think we need to do uh take a closer look at this, do a better job, renegotiate with Highland Fairview, see if they will come to new terms on uh an agreement and uh ensure that we can build this uh public safety campus. Yeah. I have a question for Steve. So the general consensus up here are or a couple of them were are saying if we we need to hold him accountable to build this, right? I mean that isn't the covenant that we have now holding him accountable legally like he can't get out of this, right? Yeah. the the covenant or am I

again when we say hold them accountable Highland Fairview is only required to deed us the land and build a turnkey public safety campus if they build 7,000 residences. If they stop at 6,999 they don't have to deduce the land. They don't have to build a turnkey. And again, there's no out-of-pocket cost for them because we would be using the development impact fees collected from their projects from residential for residential units for that pay public safety development impact fees. We're going to be using that money, which is your money, the city's money to pay for it.

Thank you, Steve. So, that's what they're accountable for doing. But isn't each house get a specific development impact fee? Like there's a fee set for that. So, how could we have set what he's going to pay if the agreement is you build this and you give us a turnkey? We had no how could we set the price on that? We didn't know how much it would cost because if he builds 7,000 houses this year, it's going to be a lot less for him to build it than if he builds it in 10 years or in 20 years. So, how could we have set the develop the impact fees

and and that's why there's a provision in there that provides them with a credit for future development impact fees because if it ends up costing it doesn't matter what it costs. If it costs $20 million they're only going to be obligated to pay that well they're not paying for it. It's the development impact fees they're paying. We're using that money to pay the $20 million. If it ex if you know if it exceeds you know whatever it costs they're going to be made whole. They're not donating the land to you. They're not donating that project to you. They're just going to they were just going to build it.

Okay. So I understand that this is what we're sold. So okay um so there's a number of things. This was all negotiated by the previous city manager and the city the city attorney. Let's let's just let's just start there. So, um I Brian, I apologize, but you know, sometimes when you get into a job, you got to pick up just like we do as elected, you got to pick up where someone else left off, and you got to carry the water. It is what it is. Um I I think where I'm looking at this from is at the end of the day, one, this is what we told everyone that the measure U funds were going to be used for. We have all agreed that we needed a public safety campus. We come up here um and council member Delgado and I sit on the public safety committee and we hear time after time from residents. What are the few things we typically hear? We don't have enough officers. Well, guess what? We can't actually hire anymore because we have nowhere to put them. We can't even literally we can't hire anymore because we have to make sure that they have space for their locker and everything else. And we don't have space for that. The other thing that we hear um and I and I I appreciate everyone who's now recognizing because we had the fire that it's very important that we have something on that eastern end and everyone was very concerned after everything was happening with the fires in LA that what if that happened out here. Well, guess what? Something similar that did happen on Friday and I think about those residents on the east side. But whether or not we hit a point where we continue to develop on the east side um for more housing or not, at the end of the day, based on a city of our size, we still need a fire station and other equipment. Um I we we're having this back and forth about holding this developer accountable, and I get it. A lot of you have PTSD from dealing with the developer. Um I'm not someone that deals with developers, so I don't I don't have the same version of PTSD. I understand the ability of wanting to hold hold told hold told hold told hold told hold told hold told hold told hold told hold told hold told hold him accountable and all of that. Um but what I will say is this. The land has a covenant attached to it. I know some things about lands and

covenants because when I went to go buy my first house, I thought I could go to this house and get it and I was told by the real estate agent I could. And then the real estate agent was like, "Hey, by the way, after I had got went through all my financing, you actually can't have this house because the covenant on this house stipulates that you have to make below this amount, this many people, and it's on there for 99 years." Guess what that meant? I couldn't buy that house and I had to go somewhere else. I don't know. That could be good or bad because it put it moved me back from moving to Paris to the city of Reno Valley. So, I guess it depends on if you like me or not, but hey, at least you care. Um, so I look at it from an aspect of at the end of the day, regardless, it's still something that has to be done. It's something that we've made a promise to these residents about and it's something that I have a concern about um when something has to be called in for emergency purposes, as somebody um that has had to deal with that as a social worker and I've had to call in Calire when my client was having a stroke and and counting down how long it was taking them to get there as I'm visibly looking at her having a stroke. So, I can imagine that being as a family member um when we're talking about response times for different crimes because, you know, from from no noise ordinances to um violent crimes, how long it can take someone to go out there and right now we're using volunteers to conduct certain things. But at some point, I look at it like we've promised the residents that we want to increase public safety. We've told them that public safety is a priority for a number of for a number of reasons. And let me tell you, our public safety does really good. They do really good um in some aspects robbing Peter to pay Paul and shifting and and mixing and doing things. But I I think at some point we need to just do what we've told the residents we were going to do. We said we were looking at this safety campus. Nothing else can be built there. Nothing else based on the covenant. Nothing else can be built there. And that's how I think we should look at it. That nothing else can be built there. Do I think we

should probably see if they would renegotiate? Yes. But if they don't renegotiate and this is what we have and we're going to build it, just build it to keep like this is how like just build the public safety thing we have been telling everyone about. And that's how that's where I'm at um with this right now.

Okay. Is there any further deliberation from the council? Okay. I'm ready to make a motion unless there's deliberation here. So, I just I would make a motion that that we continue this item uh to allow staff some time uh whether it's the next council meeting or the following council meeting to between now and then renegotiate with Highland Fairview uh on the various terms that that we have mentioned up here uh in regards to you know the covenant the the deed uh the the the milestones the thresholds the triggers within the government the covenant and the deeds and um and and bring something back to us uh so that we can make a decision on that.

I'll make an alternate motion to accept the uh agreement as it is in the staff report. Um sorry, I'm you know I'm a stickler for rules. So technically he made a motion on the floor. You can't make the motion unless he agrees to the exception to the motion. So, we have to deal with the mayor's motion first cuz you cuz you Yeah. You called for the motion and you were looking for a second and then he Yeah. So, first I guess we should ask if there is a second for the original motion. Yes. Is there a second? For the original motion.

Yes. There's no second. Okay. So, the

I'll make a a motion. I mean a second to the motion to the original motion. Okay. To your motion to to my motion. Yeah, the original motion. Okay. So, there's a second to the original motion. So, now we move to the alternate motion, but I'll look to the city attorney just again to respect the process. There is an alternate motion on the floor as well. We have to take up the alternate motion or can we vote on the original motion? We should vote on your original motion. Vote on the original first. Okay. Okay. Madam clerk, go ahead and call for the vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard, no. Council member Delgado, no. Council member Pakistan Cruz, yes. Mayor Prom Gonzalez, yes. And Mayor Cabera,

yes. Thank you.

And that motion passes. Okay, so now we will go ahead and go back to the rest of the consent calendar. Yes, we are still on consent. It is 9:53. Again, I'll just put it out there. I'm not calling it now, but um I I did double check with our city attorney that at some point if this meeting for whatever reason goes on too late and we want to continue the meeting to another day, we do have that authority. It would just require a vote of the council. So, just wanted to mention it, but um you know, for now, we can we can continue. Um so, please let me know let me know if um if anyone wants to go ahead and uh call for a vote to continue the meeting. But, um barring that, let's go ahead and continue. So now we're moving to the rest of the consent calendar, the remaining items. Uh first we will go to public comment. Madam clerk, are there any requests to speak on the remaining consent items?

Yes, mayor. The first two speakers are Roy Blackard followed by Christopher Bach.

Wow. J6 the attendance report on the subcommittee meetings commissions your liaison Mr. read pretty good. Wina pretty good. The rest of you not so good. Absences all over the place. Why I do this is cuz we get our knuckles wrapped because we're not at every meeting. But why don't you schedule two at the same time and all this other stuff that we have to you expect us to attend this whole charade that has went on and you have had a proposal for 9,5200 years 27 times on how to fix this more efficiently so we don't have to go through this clown show that we just went through. You will not fix it. You will not even fix the conflict of meeting so we can attend these so maybe we wouldn't find ourselves in this situation. But again, we get our knuckles wrapped for this kind of stuff. It's absolutely incredulous. You do not take into account the talent level, the professionalism, and people in this community. You tell them to middle finger it. You ignore them time and time again. The proof is in the pudding today. Why don't you publicly release the emails I sent you yesterday and post them up on that board so people can see what's going on. So the cops can see what's going on. So the firefighters can see what's going on. See what deception you've been

backing and what we've been trying to tell you for years. If you were attending these public safety meetings and asking these questions, we wouldn't have went through this. Prove me wrong. We have to sit here and take these brick bats day after day and we have to hear about this. And why aren't you doing your job? We wouldn't have these problems if we would put the fundamental aspects and procedures in place that you have refused to do for years and time and again in memoriam and councils. You've upheld the tradition of 40 plus years. Turn around and look at that date. When do you fix it? When does everybody come together and fix?

The next speaker is Christopher Baka.

Good evening again. Um, my comment is about the road improvement and um, I've mentioned this before and I really would like for everybody to take a step back and really look at the condition of the roads that have been were improved not too long ago and they're already all screwed up again. uh all it takes is a couple of good rains and you know goes in the cracks and starts breaking them up again. And it was brought to your attention that maybe you could look into bringing that inhouse and having the city have a department that strictly is dedicated to repaving the streets. They can start on one end of the street and within five years they're all done and they start all over again. And the cost of that would probably be less than what you're pouring into this uh asphalt companies that do crappy job crappy jobs and most of them are just, you know, painted with a thin coat of uh tarp and it's a waste of money. It's uh a lack of um insight. I think um some of these departments are just doing what they do just to whatever the bare minimum that they need to do. Um, I think our our city manager needs to go. We need a new city manager that'll take control of this city. I don't appreciate some of these other people that are corrupt and in with these uh developers and they're screwing our city over. They don't live in our city. They work here and they get paid a lot of money to do nothing but screw our city over and the taxpayer whether I pay $10, $1,000 or $10,000 that people pay $100,000 on property taxes is going down the drain for special interest and the incompetent uh staff people here. Um, Mexico,

a third world country, has invested in these machines that repave the roads and make them look brand new. I mean, u construct them as they were brand new. These machines will scrape up the asphalt and re um to it and they're like brand new and they're they have a 10 to 15 year lifespan. You know, that's inuinity. You know, they're thinking this is Mexico, our third world neighbor. Moreno Valley can't do anything like that. They keep pouring money into nonsense, stupidity. It's absolute moronic what the city does with the roads. They what is it? $20 million every couple of years for nothing. This is ridiculous. Uh you know, staff, people, your elected officials, you really need to look into more than just coming here and rubber stamping this nonsense. It's really gotten out of hand. And it's a shame. It's a really, really big shame. The next speaker is Isabelle Gonzalez.

Hello. And uh I just wanted to come up here and reiterate a lot of what uh Christopher Baka just said. Uh right here J9 says that you want to approve a measure for local streets for a five cap five-year capital improvement plan. Right. I completely agree with uh Mr. Baka. This should be done in-house. This is a great opportunity to provide uh city jobs to people who can go out there fix the roads ourselves and not hire outside contractors that will um probably negotiate higher for what they're for the services that they provide. Just like Mr. Baga said, uh our streets right now, there's a lot of potholes and they're just patched up uh very um not well. No way no other way to describe it. It's just patching up the the pothole. I'd rather see uh the street be repaved completely because uh when you just um fill in a pothole, it's not the same as a nicely paved road. It's again maybe not a pothole but now a bump you know and how many bumps are there on the road because of this Pat's work services. Um it's really ridiculous and uh I hope that you could you know keep the money that you're thinking about approving here for 5 years in the city. Pay pay the citizens for jobs. If if there's an issue with the job market, this is a great way to provide jobs. uh have people go out there uh repave the roads ourselves and not have other people do it for us. Um and then just one more layer to consider, I hope you guys can think about this, but with the approved World Logistics Center, if Edo gets 40 uh 1 million square foot warehouses, can you imagine how many

trucks will come? We estimate about 16,000 more heavy duty trucks on these roads uh breaking down our streets. So, uh you're already giving him a lot of power by giving him the development deals, right? Even considering Rancho Palaso annexation, but imagine all 7,000 residents, 7,000 new homes, however much, all those people are going to have probably single cars and trucks. Like it's ridiculous. And on Gilman Springs Road, a two-way highway. I know it's planned to uh get bigger, but still you you still have to worry about this. Uh don't pay outsiders for uh cheap labor. Thank you.

The next speaker is Luis Palamares. Yes or no? Sorry, mayor. That concludes our public comments for this item. We're still on consent. We're still on consent. Okay. We're not in general business yet. Okay. Seeing as there is no further public comment on the remaining consent calendar items. We'll bring it back to the deis for any deliberation if desired. If not, a motion and a second to approve the remaining consent calendar items. I motion to approve the remaining consent agenda items. I'm not even finished with my motion. Okay. I think there's five. Yes. Votes for that. Madam clerk, please call for the vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard, yes.

Council member Delgado, yes. Council member Baka Santa Cruz, yes. Mayor Prom Gonzalez, yes. And Mayor Cabrera, yes. Thank you. Thank you. So, that concludes the consent calendar. Uh, Adam K, we do not have any public hearings. Yeah, that does deserve a round of applause. Um yeah, maybe is is now a good time. It is 10:04. Maybe just to take another five minute break. Is that if that's okay with everybody? Yeah. Okay. Five minutes and we'll be right back.

Welcome back to our regularly scheduled council meeting. We will go ahead and pick right back up where we left off. That's L1, our general business items. The first one, L1, is background information regarding policy 1.10, 10 city council advisory boards and commissions. And we'll turn it over to our city manager for a staff report.

Uh thank you, um mayor, mayor prom, council members. Uh the item before you tonight is predicated off of a a prior motion um that um what the motion did was to have all planning commission appointments be conducted in open session in an interview process. Um and uh it's coming back tonight uh for conversation uh to see if council would like to proceed in that manner and or uh provide direction to staff as appropriate. Um with that that concludes my comments uh so that you can have dialogue related to the um original motion um that was motioned by uh district 4 and seconded by um mayor prom uh district 1 at that particular point in time as it occurred in October 7th of last year. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. City Manager. We'll bring it back to the deis for council questions of staff. If there are no questions, we can go ahead and move into public comment. Madam clerk, do we have any requests to speak? We do, mayor. The first speaker is Roy Blacker. This should be simple. Let's get to the planning commission interviews publicly like we talked about. You don't have to. All you have to do is do a little research. Get back about 10 12 years ago when we did this. Mayor Tom had it all. We laid it all. We had the public discussions and all that. We had the procedures laid out. All you got to do is copy and paste. Put it in there. We should have this should be in the this should actually be an action item. Why do why wasn't this discussed of all why do we have to drag this stuff out? We could have had this done that passes got our planning commission on track so we're not having all these discussions and all these procedures. It's really that simple. Why can't we do that? I'm talking slowly so everybody understands. Again, sometimes you have to be absurd to show the absurd.

Maybe we could use this the impetus of a start of a new dawning. Put the motion in directs. I'm giving you the instruction. Direct staff to go look up from 12 to 12 years ago. Copy and paste. Bring it back to the council and pass it. Copy and paste

and we're done. Well, then let's cheat. I'm all for it. There's a great saying in racing, Shay. There's cheaters and losers. That's And go look at it. Go ask anybody from AJ Foy to the lowest racer at Paris Auto Speedway and they'll tell you the same thing. You do what you have to do to get the freaking job done. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. And it's if if you want to call it cheating, then call it cheating. But that's the efficient way to get it done. We don't have to re we don't have to reinvent the wheel on this. We can use this as a start and then maybe we can start putting the processes in place like you've had 9,437 times. Straighten all or straighten out 98.7% of everything you're seeing. Maybe council will get on board. Maybe staff will get on board. Maybe we'll actually use the telephone and our technology to actually put this forward. We'll see.

The next speaker is Nathan Ureina.

Uh good evening, honorable mayor, uh members of the city council. Thank you for uh staying up this uh late with us. Uh the issue is not essentially reinventing the wheel. In Marina Valley, we like to say we're fair, equal, and impartial, right? We try to be, especially when governing. So, here's my suggestion to the council. You could take deal with it, whatever, however have you. Why not apply the interview process to all commissioners? Why just single out the planning commission? Better yet, if you want transparency in city government, put in term limits for commissioners. You have many commissioners who serve the city who served on commissions for over 10, 15 years and they've remained as commissioners. My honorable council, you have term limits yourself. Our mayor has term limits. Everyone says, "Oh, the commissioners, they have term limits because they are appointed at the pleasure of the mayor." The council, you seek your appointments, you send them to the mayor. You say, "That's a term limit." No. Previous city councils, they've always kept the same commissioners on as a favor or just cuz they like them or whatever, what have you. If you want true transparency, if you want fresh blood, as that saying has been thrown around these past years, if you want transitional change, if you want fresh ideas, if you want the whole way of governance to move forward, hold our commissions accountable, put in term limits, don't just single out the planning commission. If you want interview processes, it should apply to all commissioners. That's the way. That's the way you're going to have a fair, transparent government. You can't just hold it to the planning commission.

Thank you. The next speaker is Luis Palomares. Build the station. Anyway, Luis Palomar's community activist saying all that, uh, you know, the commissioners have a big job. They need a lot of experience. I know the mayor wanted to put two commissioners in there a while back. They weren't documented. They they weren't even as far as they weren't even had a um, what do you call it? Uh, register to vote. Come on, mayor. You know, they're all your picks. And we got good people in there right now. Not broke. Don't fix it. You want term limits? Okay. Well, it takes a whole concert to go there. So, bottom line is here, it's time. It's time that we get them here so they can be not your picks and nobody even at don't know who's that lady you're you're putting in the mix there. Uh, Cabrera, I don't know who she is. You know, let them come up here and be uh let the people hear what they got to say. let them uh sell their ideas and themselves and put their experience on the line like the young man said about as far get everybody all the boards and all the commissioners. Come on, you can't compare all the boards and all the commissioners to the planning commission and to the council for that matter. So that's a bunch of boo you know we'll be here forever doing all that. You'll never get to go home if you're going to do all the commissioners and all the boards. No, the planning commission is a big deal. They have to be experienced. They're the ones that send recommendations to the council to make things come and happen here. So, you know, do it right. And I hope that we're gonna, you know, open it up for interviews and people the people here are going to be able to see what the the people that want the commissioner seats are going to say in their behalf. So,

yeah, it can't just be all the Cabrera pick thing anymore. Thank you.

The next speaker is Christopher Baka. In my opinion, when it comes to the planning commission, I think you should just get rid of all of them and start new. Um, that's a problem with the special interest that's been infiltrated. Um, there's been certain people that just go along with the flow and, uh, there really needs to be some new blood. It's about time. You just get a whole bunch of new people. I think you should just all of you guys should just agree to get new people and each one of you gets one or two choices from your districts and just start a new. It's just nonsense. They don't do nothing. They're uh the meetings are cancelled. They got other uh duties to do and they don't do absolutely nothing except just wait for an agenda and rubber stamp it. That's not what a planning commission should be doing. They're a planning commission, not a rubber stamp um entity that is there for special interest. They're I guess they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing. You know, you're lucky to get one meeting every couple months and it's just a bunch of nonsense. Thank you,

Mayor. That concludes all the public testimony for this item. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And uh Miss Palomar is this is my final warning to you. I've already given you multiple chances. Uh you're heckling other members of the public as well. If I have to call you and single you out one more time, I'm going to have to ask the baiff to escort you out of the council chamber. Please, let's keep it respectful. Everyone, please let's keep it respectful. I've been more than generous. So, we'll go ahead and bring it back to the deis for any council deliberation. I motion to approve the authorized recommendation actions. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Do you have comments? Sorry.

I'm sorry, Shay. Okay.

Um I think um so I'm the maker of the motion and I think um I just want to give some background on it because some people are probably wondering why I made this motion. Um as many of you know uh that are here or have been here for a number of years. I'm looking at all of my friends in the back back there relaxing. Um, planning commission is often one of the most contentious appointments. So, while I hear the one constituent who is requesting do it for all commissions, planning commission is a little different than the other commissions. And because it's one of the most contentious and it's always um one of the ones where there's always an assumption being made about um and and this came from the idea that you know how are people um how are people being chosen whether or not people were were qualified to understand what needed to happen at planning commission and so in the interest of transparency I say interview everybody then so everybody can hear and see what everybody knows and does not know if they fool fully understand what it means to be on planning commission, which is if you were to ask me as somebody who sat on a commission prior to is very different than when I was sitting on the um arts commission, right? Or when even as an adviser to um the parks commission, planning commission operates a little differently. And so I think that in order for it to be as transparent as possible, and that's not to say we don't still get to bring um whatever picks either the mayor or the district representative has, but to have them all brought forward here is what it says and this is and and this is where we're at instead. Um and and this also came because what typically happens and I and I know because I've I've I've been an organizer um for many years um with my union and just in general. It's what I do. I teach organizing classes. I I get um showing up here. You're you're on I'm I'm coming up for planning commission. What I get is a list of people who show

up for whoever that person is to tell me how they are such a good person, a god-fearing person. And you know what I'm thinking to myself? I don't work. I don't I don't need to know that you're a god-fearing person for planning commission. I need you to know if you understand what a general plan update is. I need to know if you understand um what an R10 and an R2 is. Listen, there's lots of God-fearing people. I don't I honestly I don't care if you believe in God or not. You're an atheist, a Muslim. I really don't care. I need to know you understand the job that's being um put before you. And somehow, for some reason, it's just not what I'm getting. So, I was like, you know what? Maybe we need to have everybody interviewed in public so that we know that they are competent and understand what's being asked of them. And so, um that's where I came from when I made this motion. For anyone out there wondering, I have a lot of common sense, but I also realize a lot of sense ain't common for a lot of people. And so, I'm trying to get us to a point where we're making common sense understandings about like, yeah, you can be a god-fearing person, but do you know what an R10 is? Do you know what an R2 is? Do you know what a general plan update is? And do you know what it means when a conditional permit is issued? That's all I'm concerned about. So, that's where I'm coming from. And I will go ahead and defer over to you, Council Member Delgato. But I think the mayor is going to chime in.

No. Thank you. Yeah. Uh we're still on deliberation. Um if anybody else has any further comments. Yes. Mayor Proton,

I I I just want to make a comment. I I was part of that era where there was public interviews. Um and and it was another way of selecting uh planning commissioner. Uh, and I I'm just going to say this, the was there still, you know, the the dynamics of of certain council members, mayors picking their their certain individuals. There was I mean, because, yeah, they they heard everyone out. They they interviewed, but at the end of the day, there was still that push to get certain individuals on the planning commission. And then I also experienced the other way, right, where where you're nominated and you're and you're appointed. So, I I think if if we want to go back to that, uh I'm I'm I'm fully supportive of that. Um and and and we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens this round. We we'll try it again. And and those are my comments.

Thank you. And uh just wanted to add a little bit more context. So, the reason why this is on the agenda is because I inquired with staff uh about, you know, we've been getting a lot of inquiries from applicants, even a few at city council meetings during public comment asking um you know, I've submitted my application. I haven't heard anything back. What's going on? That's been a recurring thing as time has gone on. And I'm looking at the staff report under summary. The first sentence says on October 7, 2025, a motion was made and a seconded requesting discussion on the establishment of of an interview process. And today's date is April 7th, 2026. It's been several months. So glad that this finally has come back. Appreciate staff. I want to say thank you to our staff uh for um uh you know doing the research and bringing this forward once again uh so that we can increase transparency in this process and ensure that uh we have the most qualified people on these commissions and try to eliminate as much as possible you know personal political agendas etc and and biases for people's uh friends and preferences and things of that nature that have tainted the process in the past. Um, also want to say that I fully support and I would uh invite my colleagues to fully support establishing term limits as well. We have term limits as council members. We're limited to three terms. Uh, for city council members, it's four years a term. So technically, you could do 12 years straight. Um, as mayor, the mayor of Marino Valley is two-year terms. So that means six years straight before you have to take a break. Uh so uh I think it it makes total sense because that's one of the kind of points of contention that has come up in the various slates that all of us have seen is uh commissioners not to say that you know they've done a bad job or anything like that but at some point it's time for you know just like us at some point it's time for us to hand over the baton I think we should apply the same standard to our

commissioners. So, um I would actually uh ask uh or or if there is no other motion that's made uh I would include in any motion that we establish uh term limits for all commissioners to three terms. And with that, I will pause. Is there any further deliberation? Okay. Okay. If not, I'll make a motion that we approve staff's recommendations and include uh that we establish term limits for all commissions to three terms. I'm seeking a second. I second that motion. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Madam clerk, please call for the vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard, yes. Council member Delgado,

yes. Council member Baga Santa Cruz, Mayor Pro Mayor Proep Gonzalez, yes. And Mayor Cabera, yes.

Thank you. Thank you. That motion passes. Next is L2, sister city program survey results and committee relaunch update. And we will hand it over to our city manager for a staff report. Thank you, uh, mayor, mayor prom, council members. Uh, if you recall on, uh, November 4th, uh, last year, uh, we were before the body, um, and or before council talking about the sister city program. Um at that particular uh meeting it was uh discussed of uh potentially bringing back uh and and reestablishing the sister city. Uh we had discussed a survey and um potentially getting a city committee back together. Um we did perform um the survey during uh January and February. As a result of the um uh survey, 194 uh total respons uh responses of the uh respondents 88% of them um identified as residents of Marino Valley uh with additional participation from educators, students, business owners, uh civic and cultural organizations. Um 78% of the respondents uh supported reestablishing uh sister city program in Marino Valley. Um 74% uh supported reestablishing the relationship with San uh San Juan de Slagos. Um among respondents uh who did not support reestablishing the prior relationship, most expressed interest in still exploring um a sister city program with a new city or or country. Um and then 88% of the city uh should partner with community leaders and organizations in implementing the program. Um the most frequently identified partners included um Marino Valley College, uh Marino Valley Unified School District, uh and the county of Riverside. Um and the most supported program focuses around um uh focus areas were around cultural

exchanges and educational programs. Um so this survey compared to the one that was done in 2015 uh had 73 responses back then. So, um we more than doubled that and it is a fairly uh positive response in at least um continuing uh or reestablishing a sister city program. With that, I'm available for any questions. Thank you very much, Mr. City Manager. We'll bring it back up to the deis for any council questions of staff. Seeing none, we'll move into public comment. Madam clerk, do we have any request to speak?

We do, mayor. The first three speakers are Eliho Rangel followed by Nathan Urina followed by Elma Ree. Mr. Rangel, you are first up to speak. Welcome,

honorable mayor, council, and our our staff and community at large here. Um, you're doing great. Um I'm Elhio Ranel and I am here today to speak on re starting this uh sister city committee for our city. Um uh I just I want to recollect that um we used to have this program in our city and um it gave our city such an impactful cultural um learning they called the an educational experience for all of our citizens. Um, it it it brought it not to one group or two groups, it brought it to the entire city. And um I I need to say when I first moved here to Marino Valley about 31 years ago, I uh I w I I got to witness when they were doing that exchange and and I got to speak with uh Romelio Ree back then. Um anyway, what it what I witnessed personally was an emotional uplift that everybody involved, everybody in the city got to cherish here. And that program just fostered um I don't know how to I want to describe it as just um such it it it created a really great community to be in and you had to just

enjoy it and learn from people that were coming over here to visit us and they they were sending other people uh over to San Juan Ros Laos and everybody mentioned it was the same response. response and everybody was enjoying it. It was a great learning experience. Our students were involved in that and they they came back with um you know just an a great experience. Um I'm just going to put it this way. That program back then made that M up in our mountains shine brightly right over the entire community. It was really a positive great experience. Hence, I highly encourage our mayor, our entire city council, and our staff to um to relaunch the committee. And let's get back to our sister uh sister city program with San Juendel.

The next three speakers are Nathan Urina followed by Alma Ruiz followed by Ibe Ruiz. Honorable mayor, members of the city council, we're almost done. Uh I'm stand before you to speak in strong support of reigniting the sister city program while keeping our sister city of San Juan de Lagos. This program seeks to reignite the cultural, the industrial and the overall personal experience between our community and other foreign countries. Besides San Juan de los which is in Mexico, we have a growing population in Marino Valley of diverse ethnicities, some from West Africa, some from Southeast Asia, most notably our Filipino community, including the some veterans from World War II who remember their service there. We have community members throughout Europe. We have a good strong German-American community as well as an Italian-American community. I see there's there's no point in stopping in just one area of the globe. We should be able to reach out to other nations to find sister cities and to build up what we have here so special. As many of us know, there's this council is very big on entrepreneurship, industry, and bringing jobs to this community. What a better experience than to go reach out to our sister cities and bring corporations here to Marino Valley. What better way to go and partner with Marino Valley College, our MVUSD, and Valverde than create partnerships that will allow our students to diversify in knowledge and learn in different skills.

Let's improve future generations. Let's bring up our city. One of the lasting legacies of the partnership with San Juan de Roos is the pilgrimage at St. Christopher's Church. Now, imagine that with one partnership of one city, you bring a community together and celebrate culture. Now, think of that and you adding 12 other cities, implementing a culturalwide celebration, not just at our multicultural fest, but actually living it and celebrating and honoring the diversity. So, members of the city council, Mr. Mayor, I strongly urge you to reignite this program and relaunch it. Thank you.

The next two speakers are Elma Ruiz followed by Ebet Ruiz. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the Marino Valley City Council. My name is Alma Ruiz and I am a longtime resident of Marino Valley. I come before you today to express uh my strong support for the restoration of the sister city program with San Quander Lagos. In October of 2025, I had the privilege of helping St. Christopher Church helped organize the visit of the pilgrim image of Our Lady of San Juan Los to our community. During this time, I witnessed hundreds of residents from Marino Valley as well as visitors from surrounding areas come to pay come together to pay the respects. It was powerful. It was a powerful and moving experience that highlighted the deep cultural and spiritual connections that many in our community share with Suandelos Lagos. Equally impactful were the conversations I had with residents throughout the visit. Many expressed how meaningful this event was to them and how important it is for Marino Valley to honor and recognize these cultural ties. The presence of the pilgrim Image served not only as a religious moment but as a unifying experience that brought people together in a spirit of respect, tradition, and community pride. Restoring the sister city relationship with San Quend Lagos would be a meaningful step in acknowledging and celebrating the rich cultural heritage of many Marino Valley residents. It would foster cultural exchange, strengthen community bonds, and reflect the diversity that makes our city so vibrant. Thank you.

Our next speaker is I bet Reese. Good evening, mayor, council members, and the rest of community. I also want to reiterate what Mr. Raner said. You guys are doing amazing up there. Oh man, I don't know how you guys do it to be honest. But I am also here to uh talk about uh re reestablishing the sister city committee and uh continuing with the sister city program. Um, I am not officially speaking on behalf of the school district of MVUSD, but I am uh communicating with the with the school district and city officials in San Deos Lagos and they have recently started moving forward uh on visit talking about visits and uh the city officials have commented and would like uh city officials to also participate. And um during our break, I just wanted to mention that I was out there looking at some of the pictures that are part of the uh administrations of Marino Valley, previous administrations of Marino Valley, older ones of course, and a lot of them look so familiar because they were part of this uh program in the early 90s and then for many years after that. So I'm hoping that you guys can continue because this is part of Marino Valley history. So, if we could try to reignite that. Once again, like I mentioned, um there's already been talks. City officials are already welcoming and they are giving uh the city officials from Raino Valley a warm welcome as well. So, I'm hoping that we can continue with that. And um there uh like Mr. Ranel also mentioned there was so many positive relationships that were formed uh including all of these other cultural aspects and other aspects that would benefit uh if we did continue this and especially right now I don't have to mention all of these little details

about our country and uh a lot of the things that we're going through and um possibly some burning of bridges around um this this would be like a beacon of light for our city and for a lot of our people that I I think we desperately need and instead of burning bridges just really try to build bridges and I think this would be a positive um way to do that. So I appreciate your time and thank you so much. Our next speaker is Roy Blecker. Being a sixth grade edge ditch bank from Edgemont, my suggestion is why don't you take my native area, the city of Edgemont, and why don't we partner with them because those poor people down there could really use the help.

Mayor, that concludes all of public comment for this item. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. We will go ahead and bring it back up to the deis for any council deliberation if desired. Mayor President Thank you, Mayor. U I I just want to say a couple things regarding uh sister cities uh in general. I think sister cities uh are a great cultural, economic, educational exchange. uh especially now that we we we definitely need to uh see uh what what binds us as communities and and what better way than to foster these relationships with with other communities, especially established ones and and uh definitely uh reach out to other um other regions of the world, right, that that want to that we want to establish relationships with from whether it be um somewhere in in Africa, Asia, and Europe. So, um it's definitely a net positive for for our city and it it would be a a great uh opportunity to to um promote business to promote other aspects of MNA Valley and other uh joint uh efforts at uh cultural exchange, education, and and just assisting assisting other communities in because because we're all in the same boat, right? we're all on the same boat and and their different committees are dealing with the same issues that we're dealing with um just at a different scale. So, um and I I just want to make those comments regarding sister cities and uh hopefully look for support for for reestablishing and again getting the the recommendations here from the city that to to reestablish the committee with different different uh jurisdictions here within our city from the school districts, the council. Um I've I've had conversations with the city officials from San Juan Laos as well. So they're they're looking forward to um to reestablish formalizing it again even though we're we are sister

cities, right? But just taking that next step.

Yeah. And I uh agree with everything that has been said and I just want to thank everybody who originally uh established the sister city initiative with San Juan Los. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a sister city partnership with any other city, but uh a couple of months ago, I had established a relationship with the Japanese consulate out in Los Angeles. And um uh the general consulate out there and his team reached out to inquire about establishing a sister city partnership with the city of Marino Valley. Um but that was put on hold to allow for this to transpire. And um if this does get approved, then hopefully that that is one of the many other opportunities that we hopefully will be able to pursue. I know I'm going to look to my colleague from D1. Uh you know, if we could establish and and find a city somewhere in Japan that might be, you know, the hometown of one of the players for the Dodgers might be a huge thing for us, right? So u just want to throw that out there. that fully support this and I support uh staff's recommendations to um receive and file the survey and authorize city manager to restore the sister city program based on the criteria set forth in the established resolution.

I just have a question. It says there's no fiscal impact associated at all, but wasn't there plans of like doing some kind of activities or something that would have fiscal impact?

Yeah. So, uh the thought was um based on the prior motion was do the survey um then get the committee together um take a look at uh what we would want to do regionally. I already do I do know that um the um Marino Valley Unified School District uh through um Superintendent Ruvokaba uh they're continuing talks uh or or or starting uh talks with um their counterparts uh with this sister city. So what we would do is uh form a committee um get the committee back together, identify um what we would like to work on as a far as a plan and then we would come back uh to council with uh what that plan is. Um and then if there's any cost um how we would proceed uh moving forward with that. Um but we wanted to get the committee back together to determine what the totality of the um uh action plan would be for the next year.

You'd be bringing it back. Yes. With the fiscal impacts. with a fiscal impact and an action plan as to uh what the committee would like to do. Uh as far as potentially any uh um engagement um back and forth uh or any um pilgrimages or any um additional softwares uh hardwares uh any type of intellectual properties all of that stuff would be brought back in a plan. Isn't the pilgrimage like religious? Are we allowed to fund religion rel um you know things that are you know church and state separation?

Yeah, I would I would say that the pilgrimages would occur the way they have been occurring. Um the only thing that we do uh is ensure uh the public safety uh in the right of way as the pilgrim as the uh pilgrimage moves throughout the city but there is no actual funds that is uh supporting it. Thank you. Okay. If there is no further deliberation, I'll make a motion to approve staff's recommendations one and two. I second that motion. There's a second. Madam clerk, please call for the vote. Thank you, mayor. Council member Bernard, yes. Council member Delgado, yes. Council member Bakasana Cruz, yes. Mayor Prom Gonzalez, yes.

And Mayor Cabera, yes. Thank you. Thank you. That motion passes. Next is item L3, report an update regarding recent incidents involving involving wild bureaus. And we'll hand it back to our city manager for a staff report.

Thank you, Mayor Mayor Pro Tim, council members. Um, as we've tried to inform uh our residents, um there have been multitude of um incidents and injuries to uh over um more than 20 uh burrows uh or or donkeys um since 2025. Uh it's gotten uh to the point where uh there was even a recent uh town hall uh meeting that uh it was community meeting uh with county officials um and uh the Rivco County um animal services department. These particular burrows um or donkeys have um been injured in unincorporated areas of Riverside County and um various incidents uh with um arrow um being shot with an arrow uh being beheaded with what most likely is a machete um and a lot of uh different types of injuries. Uh even recently um there was um uh two dogs that were seen u mauling um donkeys and burrows um coming from behind and injuring them. So um based on um the um meeting that was held uh for community members um our um animal services manager uh Ashley Ren um produced information for council. We also did a press release based on uh that meeting that stated that the um Riverside County Animal Services Division is taking lead uh for uh the investigations into these particular incidents um because they are occurring in uh their unincorporated areas of Riverside County. Um, we also put out uh in that press release uh the various contact

information uh for um the uh Riverside County Animal Services um station and um just asked our residents to be vigilant and report anything that they are seeing. Um and uh that we will continue to um monitor the developments and work with uh the regional agencies to ensure that uh the donkey and burrow um population is safe. With that, um, I'm available for any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. We'll bring it back to the Dis for any council questions of staff. Seeing no questions. Madam Clerk, do we have any requests to speak?

We do, Mayor. The first three speakers are Isl Gonzalez, followed by Nathan Urina, followed by Luis Palomares. Uh good evening again. My name is Osman Gonzalez. Uh I want to first off uh say uh thank you to Erlin and uh Ed for showing up to that town hall over at uh in in Riverside. Um I was there and I appreciated to see you guys there. Um, Mayor Cabera, uh, you posted today a social media post, um, that, uh, referred to some federal law, right, from 1971. Uh, I just want to maybe put this out there. Uh, that law is in reference to public lands, B, BLM. Uh, the donkeys that are here in the Richie Canyon area, it's not public lands. So, I don't think that law necessarily equates to what our concern is here. Um, I went to the um environmental and historic preservation commission board this month. Uh um council member Alana Baka, you were there and I was the only person in attendance and I asked the commission board after reviewing their um flag proposal for the city, if you're going to have the donkey on it, why not have some sort of municipal level protections? They told me that was already discussed and uh nothing came about it because uh again there's this level of deflection which I mentioned at the town hall. It's I understand these donkeys are in a weird legal gray area right between two counties between multiple cities but at some point this concern about a serial killer uh whether it's killing animals I think you know we should look into I don't know if we can

RSO um is there any missing children around uh the fact that there's two dogs huge dogs a Kane Corso reportedly and a German shepherd running around just without Lisas in that canyon And what if there's a kid uh out there? You know, what happens when those two dogs come across a 5-year-old? You know, uh we need to be thinking about this as a killer on the loose and there's a $50,000 reward for it for that person or people, right? So, there's nothing funny about this. Um I hope that everybody's taking this really seriously. Last I heard from that town hall, there was DNA being tested at UC Davis. There's been no word from the police. whatsoever. What happened to that? Uh did was it conclusive that it came from a dog or or you know mountain line? You know, we're the public is left in the dark. And this is the problematic because people are starting to make rumors. There's false leads. There's nothing to go on for us to um try to, you know, uh help you guys, right, catch this killer. Um, I hope that there's the same level of effort and attention to this concern that the mall had. You guys had daily updates with the

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Nathan Urina, followed by Louise Palomares, followed by Christopher Baka. Honorable mayor, members of the city council, I stand before you and implore you to do anything and everything in your power to protect the wild burrow population throughout the city of Marina Valley. The majority of our wild burrow population in the city is concentrated in the nearly outskirts area, particularly in district 2, especially on the roads of Pigeon Pass Road and Quail Call Road. We have a significant amount of wild burrows in that area. I just went there yesterday and we have seen a lot of baby burrows just wandering around with their moms. The issue regarding uh the attacks on our burough population, whether it's in Marina Valley or you're going into unincorporated Riverside County throughout Rishi Canyon, is the notion that maybe these aren't attacks. Some I've heard in official settings that this is just a mating season type thing. Well, it's not a mating season at all. You have vicious dogs which have been alluded to by the city manager and members of the public. You've had burrows been beheaded and viciously attacked. This is an issue because whether whatever story you believe, whether the burrows came in the 1800s along the Butterfield Express or they were brought via the Death Valley in the 1950s by a poor uh minor who just ran out of his luck and he just brought some burrows and started populating. No matter which story is concrete on how the burrows got to this region, it is clear that the community views them as an essential part of their culture here in MNA Valley. Our own city social media refers to the burrows as our burrows. We

constantly go back make posts on wild burrows and the donkey population shadowing the fact that they are important to our community. So I say if the city is willing to put it out there on social media, make these announcements and say they are essential, they are important, the community values them, we should be doing everything in our power to protect them. And that's that's the basis that I see. That's the basis that many of my fellow commissioners see. That's the basis that so many in the public see. Some may just view them as just wild animals, a nuisance, or just something that's untasteful. Others view them as a beautiful creature. Those who just say that they're just u a s and they just cause ruckus. Others view them as the animal to which many Christians believe that our Lord into that carried him in to Bethlehem. Now the issue is what are we going to do moving forward? That lays at your feet. You've heard the community. You've heard the responses. So now it's up to you to decide what is going to move forward. Thank you.

The next two speakers are Luis Palomares followed by Christopher Baka.

Luis Palomares, community activist. Wow. It's a shock what's happening in our in our community in the canyon with the burrows. I mean, they've been here since before us and we're here to protect them. So, let's get to the bottom of this and put everything into it to make it happen that we see what it's going to I mean, what we're going to do next about it. I know the mayor is a big activist and an advocate for burrows because he talks about them a lot. So, let's put you in charge of that one, mayor. That'd be great. get to the bottom of it. If you went and gave it 120% like you do in your campaigns, I think we'll get some answers. Really? Really, that's true. I really believe that. Put uh the put the the your money where your mouth is or your mouth where your money is. Either way, whatever which way you want to do it. And I stand corrected, Gonzalez. I didn't know you were at that meeting. So, thank you for being there. I wish the mayor would have been there, though. That would have even been better. Thank you.

Oh, sorry. The next speaker is Christopher Baka.

It gets frustrating when you get up here to speak on issues and it goes in one ear and out the other and you're laughed out of here like you're some kind of nutcase. Um, I think maybe it was about a year, two years ago that I came up here to inform you that what we saw was outrageous and and you know, we were questioning it. And I also went to the county supervisor and asked him and they did the same and said that that wasn't happening. I can bring several people here to verify what happened. And what I'm talking about is for weeks every day there was trailer upon trailer from San Bernardino County bringing in at least 20 burrows per trailer daily. These were this is illegal. I mentioned it to Delgado went in one year and not the other. It didn't happen. I guess I'm crazy. I guess I'm hallucinating. And that's why we have these burrows. You know, we've had a lot of bureaus, but that's why we have this massive influx of these burrows here because they were illegally dumped here from San Bernardino and somebody got a somebody did something and they were taking up Crystal Hill where that illegal fence is up to Donkey Land. So, what deal they cut with who? You know, we're talking about hundreds of burrows that were brought here illegally and that's why we have this influx of burrows. I'm not saying I, you know, I those are beautiful animals, but they're an intrusive species that need to be partially eradicated. And the only thing that the city that the city should be doing at this point is funding spay and neuter pro um with the with the county spay and neuter for those donkeys. It's cruel to have them repopulate in the manner in which they're repopulating. There's just too many of them. You're talking about a herd that came here maybe a hundred

years ago and now you have thousands. How do you in a hundred years how many there's going to be nothing but burrows there? Absolutely ridiculous. So I would suggest if there's any funding, anything being put out by the city. It's strictly to spay and neuter those burrows. Thank you, mayor. That concludes all of public testimony for this item. Thank you very much, Madam Cler. We'll bring it back to the day for a council deliberation. I'll go after I

I'll start. Um looking for a picture of I had two burrows in my front yard the other day resting. I did not interrupt them. So this this is a very and as we all know about how complex this issue is. It's not a cut and dry um issue. It's not a a fingerpointing issue. It's very complex. Um, we went to that meeting and not a lot got done. And it wasn't because we didn't want to get something accomplished that night. It was just because it's so complex that there's so many different authorities uh involved. Uh, well, the Riverside County Animal Control or Animal Services has taken lead on this. Um, and as of yesterday, um, last night, I went up to Donkey Land and I facilitated a meeting. Um I didn't control the meeting and they were just asking me to facilitate it because I knew both entities. Uh Donkey Land wanted um to have a liaison uh to our sheriff's department. um obviously cleared it with um the the sheriff's department and uh they have assigned as of last night they have assigned a lieutenant to be all things donkey and she's still going to do her her regular duties but what that's she's going to provide is being a liaison to donkey land. So, this lieutenant will have a pocket full of numbers. Donkey Land's going to contact this lieutenant and uh be able to vet what the issue is. If it's an illegal action, uh she'll she'll vet it to the proper authority. If it's uh something that Riverside

animal control or animal services should take, she'll contact them. She'll also have Redlands, uh, Sanernardino County's numbers, and if she's contacted through whatever sources she's contacted through, she'll be able to be, uh, that liaison to those other entities and kind of steer the issue for a resolution in the right direction. Um, Chief Mack, is that is that about I mean, we're not deploying her to Donkey Land, but is that about the level of of commitment and just as a liaison kind of help guide and and and she's local, Amber's local, Amber calls her and says, "Hey, I need help with dot dot dot." Um, and then the lieutenant kind of vets it.

Correct. her primary responsibility as she said will be work as a liaison. she will have the resources available at hand to quickly direct people cuz what we found was one of the biggest issues outside of obviously the the issues with the donkeys but people had so much frustration because they weren't sure who to contact and I think that part of it is okay let's eliminate that let's put somebody in charge let's give her all the resources so she can easily contact the the right person like you said there's many jurisdictions involved and there's also some things that amount to what animal control should reasonably handle versus hey when is it time for us to step in and it's a law enforcement issue and she'll be able to do that. So, make those assessments and then direct people to the proper resources quickly.

I also, you know, I during the meeting, um, I I just wanted to make sure that the Donkey folks were well aware that we're not committing a deputy to them. That's not what this is about. It's just a liazison. Um, and I think that's a great start. I know uh council or mayor prom was at that meeting and it it I don't think a lot got got accomplished except a lot of uh their voices got

yeah we we we heard them and but we knew why they were there because it was an issue. So I think this is a great start. Um, and I thank to to the staff and u obviously RSO for um allowing this start to produce um maybe investigatory uh levels maybe not or just a communication. So I I think it's a great start and um they're they are over the moon. the the Donkey Land folks, Amber and Chad, are absolutely ecstatic about having one liaison to contact and being able to get answers rather quickly versus not knowing. Yes, go ahead, ma'am.

And if you don't mind, I just also wanted to add that we're also here to support whatever whoever is going to be taking the lead or whatever jurisdiction that this falls under. So in addition to us working as that liaison if it's something we will not be taking criminally we're here to support all of those other departments. Thank you.

I have a few comments and and kind of and and thank you council member for that for that update. I think that was one of the the frustrations I noticed. There was about what 200 people that attended. It was well attended. People are super passionate about the the wild girls the donkeys. And uh one of the frustrations I noticed because there was there was a panel and council member was one of them. There were so many jurisdictions and and you know at times they they they were asking who could we contact who could we contact but there's not really a point of contact uh but but now with with um having a a liaison I I think that at least from from the city of Mina Valley's perspective um they'll have that that one point of contact and kind of disseminate the information. I think that's what that's one of the things that we're looking for um to to keep updates on what's going going on with with Donkey Land, the donkeys and and the various reports of just the the brutality, right, they're they're doing with with the donkeys. And I I I just want to share a couple things that that were mentioned at at the meeting. You know, um u you know, people feel there it's it's a huge part of Ma Valley. Uh it's a local icon of of the community. um support Donkey Land. Um so everyone's passionate, everyone feels, wants, says that, you know, the the rural is an icon of the city. So I I think as a as a council, whatever we can do to to elevate, protect the donkey as a city and and reach out to our different partners, I I think I think that's what we should do, you know, as as best we can. And if here locally we can we can establish, you know, I know um I I know there's, you know, in in in our new hopefully flag, right, the the the bol donkeys there, too. So, anything we can do to to elevate that and and

make it a a a super u uh icon of the city, I think that's what we should do. But that's my comments for now.

Yeah. And I want to start by saying thank you to uh both of my colleagues here. uh Council Member uh Dogado and Mayor Prom Gonzalez and and to city staff, especially uh the director over at Animal Services for the city, Ashley, um for for her involvement and her team as well, uh working on this. I know they've been supporting uh as the county is the lead agency on this particular matter. Um you know, investigating and following up on these horrendous acts that have been happening there in the Rechie Canyon area. Um it's just terrible. It's terrible. And we share those concerns. And um you know some of the things that that I've been doing uh working on kind of behind the scenes um is communicating with our state partners, our state legislators. And there is uh work ongoing now for almost a week and a half of uh trying to figure out uh what options policy-wise there are both via legislation and administratively through various state departments like the state parks for example. Uh there are options out there and so there's work as we speak being done to figure out the language the specifics so that a formal proposal can come out in Sacramento. Uh so I am in direct communication with our state partners on those things and as soon as we have something confirmed uh I will make sure to report that back uh to to our residents. But uh the the overarching goal the mission of this state approach is to figure out how we add additional protections for the wild bureaus at the state level. And then um Ismael mentioned the federal legislation and in in my statement earlier today I mentioned that you know that has limitations and I think part of our motion hopefully will be to you know reach out to any and all partners from federal to state to county to see what um how we can collaborate with them

whether it's legislation or otherwise uh to further protect the bureaus um that do live in our city as well up on the north side. And so I just wanted to make sure to mention that and and provide that brief update. We'll come back with with some concrete uh language and and updates as soon as those are available. hopefully within the next week or so and uh we can move forward with those and and then you know just want to support and agree with what Mayor Prom Gonzalez said about you know we we the bureau is our unofficial mascot for the city and uh it's likely going to be on our flag that's going to be the official flag for the city that that's part of the design and so I think even symbolically we have a responsibility a duty to do what is within in our governing authority to put the wild bureaus, the donkeys, uh to give them their place, right? It doesn't mean that, you know, that's the only animal that we do this for. I mean, we have hawks and other animals, but if there is one animal that really stands out that kind of represents what Marino Valley has to offer, it's the wild burrows. They're beloved by our community. So, um we'll continue working on it and um I'll leave my comments at that. Is there any further deliberation? Would anyone like to make a motion?

Yeah. Is it a receive and file, Brian? Uh yeah. So, uh there's a recommendation number one, uh receive and file this report regarding recent incidents involving wild burrows, uh andor provide direction to staff as appropriate as option. Uh, recommendation number two. I I I I want to I want to make a motion in in relation to this. I I want to make a motion that we uh direct staff to make the the wild buro the living animal of the city valley. Um and u hopefully have support. Thank you. I'll second that motion. Madam clerk, please call for the vote.

Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard, can you repeat your motion one more time for me? Um, Mayor Proim living at Okay. Yeah. What? What did What is this as the mascot again? No. What is it that you're proposing? Yes, but not so much as a mascot. I more as the living animal because it's it's a living emblem of MNA Valley. It's it's a different way of saying it, but it's it's a mascot that we voted against, but it's it's a living animal. The emblem, the icon. We all love the buro. What would that mean? What would

we would pass a we would in my my understanding we would pass a resolution making him an animal of the city of Marino Valley, a living animal. So, it is back to the the city of Marino Valley having an animal Yes, that is everywhere. Yes. And and I guess I would look to staff. I mean other than obviously because of what is happening, right? It would obviously be a symbolic thing in nature. Um but would it go beyond that?

That would be a policy decision. um that if a motion of this nature um and we bring it back, conversation is to occur, resolution is to be made. It's a policy decision as to how this body as council wants to promote this emblem. Um potentially change the policy related to our seal and our current logo, which is the tree and the bird. Um, there would be a a slew of things that I think this the the staff would have questions on with policies and procedures and how we would potentially roll that out in a resolution, but um it would be up to this particular body as to how you would want to promote that.

Yeah, I don't know if it would go that far. I I don't think that was at least that's not what I heard. It would simply just be making the bur the wild burrow the official living animal of the city. It's already our unofficial mascot. We promote it at all of our city events. Kids, families love it. Um, so, you know, I support it.

Yeah. So, I think it just is one of these things where we're back to the conversation about having an official animal and I'm understanding um what's going on with the burdos. Like I I understand that um I see that we have the liaison. I see that we have everything. I I'm just looking like so for me aside from the um the concern of what's happening to them, we were back to the discussion that we had already had which was like yeah so we didn't want an a a city animal and that that's what it is. And so although I know um you both are saying like we we weren't expecting to go as far, it is actually something that could go that far because it's a policy conversation. What would that include? Do we now change this? like I know like it's yes it's on the on the flag that we're having for the city but that's a different conversation when we start making things official and we start having to um to to look at it because it it does become a policy and so um

I think I want to commend you guys or Mayor Propam for even thinking about the the donkey as as our I want to say mascot but our official living animal. I I don't even know what that term means, but I'll send it to you. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, it's not funny. I mean, it's serious. No. And I And I know you think it's Yeah. So I They are a part of our fabric, right? They are literally what we say and especially in my district because I I have to deal with them every day. But I'm not sure that I I think they're right as far as I think there's a lot of work to be done to kind of figure this out as far as where it would go.

We're on the we're on the right track with the liaison. I think that's um super important that and and again she's going to be able to uh or that lieutenant's going to be able to communicate those issues with staff. Is there is there a definition um that was given regarding what a living animal?

I think that came up when the discussion came up last time. There was some explanation from staff as to what what that is. I mean, I did I did a quick uh Google search and all of it is scientific in nature and designations of species designation. I want to make sure if there's a different one organisms. Um I would Do you Do you have it? No. Do you have it? If you have it, just read like Yeah. If you got it, read it.

Okay. Oh, I thought you had it. Yeah, I think we there's a motion and a second. Let's just go ahead and vote on it. Madam Clerk, please call for the vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard, no. Council member Delgado on this this

No. I I would like more information, but no. Council member Vaka Santa Cruz. No. Mayor Prom Gonzalez. Yes. And Mayor Cabrera. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So the next item is L4. That's explore adding mobile shower services to the permitted temporary uses table within the Marina Valley Municipal Code. And we'll turn it over to community development Angelica Director Angelica Fraso for a staff report.

Thank you honorable mayor, members of the city council. Angelica Fraalupo. The item before you request the city council to consider allowing mobile shower services as part of a homeless resources fair and outreach event through the city's established temporary use permit process section 9.02.150 of the Marino Valley Municipal Code. At least two Mino Valley or local nonprofit organizations have inquired about providing mobile shower services here in the city. A re recent request also included connecting the mobile shower unit to a city water source. The Marino Valley Municipal Code does not list this activity or service as a permissible use in the zoning and land use sections of our code. Staff recommends allowing the use only in connection with an approved and organized homeless resources fair and outreach event through the temporary use permit process on private property. The intent of the recommendation is to limit potential secondary effects associated with such a use and potential liability to the city. To reduce liability, staff recommends limiting the mobile shower units to private property and not allowing them in the public rideway. public facilities or city parks. Through the TUP process, staff could add conditions such as requiring liability insurance, and naming the city as additionally insured. We would require property owner authorization, potable water source verification, gray or wastewater disposal plan, emergency cleanup procedures should there be a wastewater spill, security measures, infection control. These are just a few of the items that we would consider as adding. Um because this is a legislative policy matter, staff is

requesting the city council to consider this item and um before we proceed with any sort of formal action through the our code. And this does conclude my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Madam Director. We'll bring it back to the day for any council questions. Seeing none, Madam Clerk, do we have any requests to speak? Yes, Mayor, the first two speakers are Veronica Sanders, followed by Julie Pedrosa.

Veronica went to bed, right? Do I wait for the clock to restart? Um, yeah, let's reset your time and let's go ahead and uh give you three minutes. There you go.

So, I'm Julianne with Building Up Lives and we do have a shower shuttle that we would love to see out here. Um, we have taken our shower shuttle to Riverside and um, close your eyes if you're gory or not into if you your stomach's a little squeezy. We saved about a million dollars in saving a man's arm. He's homeless. the homeless population get hit by cars a lot. And so this as we undressed him and helped him undress with his gauze, we noticed that he he's not feeling the pain. Let's put it that way. Um he needed further medical advice. This is what the shower does. The shower also points out things that need to be done and it could save the taxpayers money. He has not changed his gauze for a month. This is how bad that is. Um he received medical services. He also he was a young man. He also we were able to find his mother. So he got rehoused someplace else. Um the shuttle also does a couple other things too. I know at this point you're only considering it to be for homeless, but the shower shuttle here, we want it to be community use. So, not just that, but in our fires, our firemen can have access to it. Um, it can go to areas where law enforcement is being there 12 hours, 13 hours. They need to use a restroom. Guess what? This two toilets. So, um, again, building up lives. We are an all volunteer nonprofit. We have retired law enforcement. We have teachers, doctors, nurses, the in community that lives here participates and and makes building up lives and all multi-programs that we do run in this city. So, we'd love to be able to see that work

for the community. We actually have a dentist that's retired and would love to go in there. Now, all the bells and whistles behind all that stuff to um be permitted and all that, that's stuff that has to be on the calendar and figured out. Um, as far as our end, uh, we're in, it's already insured, bells and whistles. My husband is retired CHP, so it has to have all the bells and whistles before it goes anywhere. So, we do have that. Um, I also want to point out we have a building on Himmllock that we had for a long time. We call it the dig bin. The dig bin emergency and resource center. So that particular building we're trying to put a keypad lock on it. And um oddly that's a the hardest thing we're installing. But anyways, it's got bins of clothing. We want to build a partnership with the other nonprofits and those that help the community in need. And it has medical supplies. It has um non-p perishable food and clothing. and it would be open 24/7. So, there's answers and solutions in our city to help conquer many different things. Don't just think homeless.

Mayor, that concludes all the public comments for this item.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, and thank you, Julianne, for uh for that presentation. We'll bring it back to the deis for council deliberation. And u I just want to say that, you know, thank you. Thank you again. I know you've been uh Julian, you and your team have been working on this for I want to say years, for years trying to get this uh so glad that this is finally at this point. I appreciate staff for bringing this forward and um you know the original intent was to help the homeless community, but really like that idea of possibly branching out to help in you know emergency situations and some of our other partners. So the only thing I would say is like well I support it number one. Um, and then, uh, secondly, just things to keep in mind, safe storage, because the last time we had one of these mobile showers, it was stolen off of a church property of, uh, Iris and Indian. So, definitely want to make sure, yeah, it was literally the property was broken into and someone took the mobile shower. It was gone.

Um, so definitely want to make sure that does not happen. Uh, so ensure safe storage of the mobile shower. Uh, proper sanitation of course as well. And then coordination with our existing partners as well. So, uh, I'll leave it at that. Fully support it. Council member Delgado. Yeah, I I like it. I I was just wondering if if it's mobile, do all the uh rules still apply like that Angela and Angelica talked about the liability insurance property owner authorization. So, that's that thing's mobile. So, you have to ask permission to pull it on someone's private property. Is that it's all these rules apply?

That's correct. So through the temporary use process, we would require those as conditions. And so whatever we condition would be specific to the location that would have to uh also they'd obtain property owner authorization.

I like the fact that they would be at a at a uh an event and the truck would be there and whoever needed to take a shower, take a shower and go back to the event, right? I think that's what the Yeah. Okay. Thanks. It wouldn't be like on the various properties that they have like Monday through Friday just available to anybody. It would be more like at the events like they spoke about an event that's going to be happening at Sunnyme Park in those type of events.

So the recommendation is for um a temporary use permit is on private property. So for example, if um I let's let's say just for the sake of the conversation a shopping center then uh and there was an outdoor event that included other services, exhibitors that provided resources for the unhoused and they wanted to include bringing this mobile shower unit. then that that is how we are designing this um permit process through the temporary use permit. Um, and we would require again we would add conditions to ensure proper Yeah. And and on that note, I know there's only so far we could push that, but let's say as this evolves and the final language comes back to us for approval, um we made I think we should just keep the door open to like if we do entertain uh you know, emergency situations, for example, and being able to have this set up and staged at for those type of emergency events, potentially looking at waving fees in those type of situations, not across the report, right? Um because there has to be some kind staff time and everything goes into it. But I think we should look at that maybe exempting in certain situations if it's emergencies or something like that. Uh just just a thought.

I have a question because um one thing um it said that there was a recent request that includes connecting the mobile shower unit to a city water source. Um, so I, so one, I'm like, so that would mean that they would be requesting to tap into the city's water, right? Um, would we be charging for that if that was something we were allowed to happen? How much water would they take? Who would who would um do we need to have city staff there to tap them into the system? I I guess I'm just trying to figure out because that was part of one of the requests that was made. And um for those reasons, we have um we are proposing that through the temporary use permit process, it actually is only allowed on private property. So the event producers, the mobile shower um you know owner uh nonprofit group would be responsible for coordinating the water through that property owner. And because we're not recommending public facilities, public parks, public rightaway, that's not something that we would need to consider.

All right. Thank you. Okay. Is there any further deliberation? If not, we can go ahead and entertain a motion and a second. I make a motion to approve staff's recommendations. A second. There's a motion and a second. Madam clerk, please call for the vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Bernard, yes. Council member Delgado, yes. Council member Baka Santa Cruz, yes. Mayor Prom Gonzalez, yes. And Mayor Cabrera, yes. Thank you.

Thank you. That motion passes. Thanks again, Julian. Appreciate you and your team. Next up, we're almost there, folks. Almost there. Just hang in with us. Um, next is item L5, review and consider FIFA World Cup 2026 special events. We leave the most exciting ones to the end, huh? No, I'm just kidding. Uh, we'll turn it over to our economic development director, Kyle Warski, for a staff report.

Good evening, honorable mayor, city council. Kyle Warski, economic development director. As many of us know, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is quickly approaching. Tournaments co-hosted by United States, Mexico, and Canada. The closest venue to the city of Marina Valley is in Los Angeles to be held at Sofi Stadium. The entire tournament starts on Jul or June 11th of this year and concludes with the finale on Sunday, June 19th. While Marino Valley is not a host city, the event's global impact creates opportunities for non-host cities to engage residents, support local businesses, and participate in World Cup related activities through community oriented programming. In accordance with the goals and objectives of the 2024 economic development strategic plan, economic development staff has been exploring ways to leverage the World Cup being hosted in our country. Staff has been actively engaged with representatives from FIFA, US Soccer, and the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission to explore opportunities for community involvement, including watch parties. On March 2nd of this year, the economic development subcommittee received a presentation on potential city sponsored watch party options. The first topic, potential dates and times. So staff took a look at the entire World Cup schedule and identified two dates that really stood out that had no issues with uh existing special events or were not being held during the work week. A lot of the games are during the work week, during work hours, and so having a a watch party during those hours doesn't necessarily make sense. The first date that was identified was Saturday, July 11th, in which two quarterfinal matches will be played, one at 12 or 2:00 p.m. and the second at 6:00 p.m. at night. The second identified was the finale on Sunday, July 19th at

noon. During our review with Parks and Community Services Department, we learned that there's two churches with existing rental agreements on Sundays at the CRC facility, effectively eliminating the potential to host a watch party for the final on Sunday, July 19th. The second topic discussed at the subcommittee was venue options related to these special events and logistics. ED staff worked closely with parks and community services to provide two venue options for this event, including estimated cost. Those are summarized within the staff report. I will highlight a couple or highlight some of the the main points of those. The first option is to hold a large special event outdoors at the CRC amphitheater and lower parking lot similar to what we do for Fourth of July. This would accommodate approximately 3,000 people and include food, special vendors, and a beer garden. The estimated cost for that type of outdoor event would be $100,000. Second option would be to hold a smaller scale event in the CRC ballroom. This option would accommodate 400 people. Food and beer options would be provided in the courtyard, but no food or beverage would be allowed inside the building due to the seating configuration to maximize the occupancy. Estimated cost for the indoor venue would be $8,000. Regarding venue options, the outdoor venue can accommodate higher attendance, but the event would be subject to inclement weather during the time of the year where it could be very warm outside. There's also always the potential for an offshoot rain event uh in the month of July. The indoor venue would offset those concerns, albeit at the cost of lower maximum attendance. Regardless of the outcome of tonight's agenda item, ED staff has began working with our local restaurants, bars, and other public gathering businesses to encourage East to host their own FIFA

World Cup watch parties throughout the six-week tournament. Many have shared their excitement to us about the World Cup and their plans to hold various watch parties and special offers on food and beverages at their locations. In accordance with the strategic plan and decrease patronage to our local businesses, Economic Development will implement a marketing campaign for these business-led events, highlighting the dates and times of their viewing parties and specials that they plan to offer. Since parks and community services department would actually run this type of event if council chooses to provide that direction, uh ED and parks and community services presented to the parks and community services subcommittee on March 25th the same date and venue options I just detailed. The members recommended that the city council did do not move forward with either option as presented. That concludes my presentation. Uh myself and Jerry or Director Bubnik are available to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Director Warski. We'll bring it back to the deas for council questions of staff and council member Delgado. Surprise, right? Um, so Kyle or Jeremy, whoever wants to answer this, as far as the Fourth of July, um, extravaganza, the parade, the fireworks, and all that, and then we're going to have it here at the amphitheater, that's obviously July 4. This event would be the following week. So, how would that impact staffing?

Thank you, council member, for that question. I'm going to defer to Director Bubnick since this is an operational question. Uh thank you council member for the question. Um as you mentioned a fourth of July event is an all day event. It's our large largest event of the year and it's kind of a all hands on deck for our staff. So, um pulling off another large event, um one week later would be very difficult um with staff because again they're working long hours leading up to that event and then a lot of them um you know will take time that that next week. It doesn't it I'm not saying we couldn't do it but it would create a challenge for staffing.

Thank you.

Yeah. And a follow-up question there. Um or first I just want to touch real quick on the the dates. I think if if it you know you mentioned that the final and and others because of dates and other conflicts it just wasn't going to happen. I think if you know just looking at the price tags if it were say like the final or something I think I I would argue very strongly to do this but I I just I don't know if I can right. Uh, I don't know if it justifies the the dollar amount, the price tag justifies uh doing this. Um, and even if we went with the smaller one, option number two, the $8,000, it's so limited. Uh, the indoor space that would be like a disservice to our community, you know, uh, not allowing as many people as possible to partake. So, I I I I just wonder, you know, you're still, it sounds like you're still, regardless of what happens, moving forward with partnering with local businesses, uh, which I think is a great idea, uh, you know, local restaurants, bars, etc. Um, are we still going to explore, uh, sponsorships, you know, from local businesses that we have, whether it's like Fortune 500 companies or others? Is that something that is still on the table as well? Trying to bring in potentially sponsors um to to help, you know, augment that approach that we're taking with our local businesses

as as we do for other types of events. We can all uh honestly reach out to different various groups and and look at sponsorship, but I would need to know what what the sponsorship request would be for. Um, each of the private businesses has that we've been interacting with and receiving feedback from have not asked us to help financially support their watch events. uh they're being very grateful that we're willing to market for them, which we don't typically do, but for the World Cup being held in the United States again, um and maybe for the last time in in my lifetime, uh it's worth it to to our staff and and my department to be able to big dealize this event and promote it as much as these businesses want. Um but there's been no financial assistance requests coming from them. they they just would appreciate us to help market it to include uh or to really advertise and hopefully increase the patronage and maybe some of the customers that are going to go there have never been there before and so if they have a good experience and maybe they'll become a return customer to some of our local businesses.

Yeah, definitely. And uh one of the things because we talked about this at economic development sub mayor prom and I uh along with staff was um you know one of the things through FIFA that they offer is official merch official FIFA merchandise but I believe that comes with a price tag there. There's a cost associated with that. So that's maybe somewhere that, you know, if businesses are interested in entertaining that, it just adds it adds a different aspect, a different level to, you know, whatever we're going to be doing that maybe other cities uh can't offer, right? Uh for whatever reason. So that that would that's kind of why I ask about that. If if there's a price tag and we're able to come up on merch directly from FIFA, how are we going to pay for it? And ideally, we don't have to use our taxpayer dollars. we could find sponsors who are willing to put their name on it. Um, and then the last question and then I'll hand it over to Mayor Proto Gonzalez is about a national house or even if we can't get a national house. The reason why I say this is because I'm on SCAG. I'm on the board of directors for SCAG, uh, Southern California Association of Governments and we get updates on FIFA. Um, one of the things that came up was having national houses and cities hosting a national house. example uh you know New Zealand having the team of a particular sport hosting them in your city in a hotel etc. A lot of cities are doing that some of these bigger cities uh is that something at all that we're still exploring or even if we can't get a full national house uh is there a way to get maybe a branch of a national house or something you know to be the go-to for the IE for example? Good question and it is something that we have um researched for both FIFA 26 as well as the LA28 Olympics. Um our initial research has concluded that for for the Olympics uh most of the events if not all of the events are being held in in LA County and so most of the national houses are occurring out there. Uh that has not deterred us for the World Cup.

Although with the World Cup and if you look at the individual team schedules, they don't play at the same venue uh multiple times. Even the United States team, which already has a home base because we're we're the host country, plays at SoFi twice, but then they travel again. And so it maybe we can um entice them for preWorld Cup training so that they can potentially acclimate to uh Southern California. But that acclamation only goes so far as though if they're going to go play in um Mexico City, that's a completely different acclamation period because of their elevation. And so we we've been looking at those things and we'll continue to do the outreach with the the various FIFA delegations to see if we can um land them for training. Although we will have to coordinate closely with our our counterparts in parks and community services because we're going to have to have a venue for them to actually train at which then could potentially impact existing reservations for our um existing sports groups that use our facilities.

Yeah, thank you. And just I don't know I'm just thinking like you know what if we were able to bring just for example you look at the demographics of the city of Marino Valley we're over 60% uh Latino in Marino Valley. Uh about 87 88% of that 60% is Mexican origin. Uh just that's just one ethnic group here in in in Marino Valley. There are many others, but you know, if we're able to get, you know, me Mexican soccer merch, right, that I think people are more likely to gravitate toward that and uh ultimately, you know, bring in that foot traffic so we could be a regional destination. Uh because I doubt a lot of other cities are going to be doing this. We might be one of the only ones in the IE. How do we bring those folks to Marino Valley and give them the extra incentive have, you know, Mexican national team merch or Argentina or the Philippines, whatever country you want to talk about. So um that's enough questions for me. Mayor Pro Gonzalez.

Yeah, I I I just want to make uh some comments. I I want to thank the the economic development team for uh the various ED subcommittee meetings that we we were a part of and u all the the research that went along with the various options here. the kind of the origin was, you know, with the hype of the World Cup, it's it's, you know, it's the most beautiful sport, right, as they say. and um having something for our community, especially the soccer community here in town where they have the big screen and and they're having a good time, they're drinking and and having a, you know, the nice um big uh TV watching their favorite team play, whether it be Mexico, the US, or a very popular quarterfinal, right? Let's say England, France, right? Spain, Portugal, right? Or Brazil, Argentina, something like that that attracts a crowd. It attracts people. They they get out of their comfort zone from home, right? From their um air conditioned home, right? It's going to be in July, of course, summer. But it's exciting to be out there with your fellow fans and and celebrating, right? That's that was kind of the origin of this. But but as we can see, it's it's um it's right around the corner. It's there's a price tag and um I I you know I I think the the indoor event kind of what you said um is not as you know it's is it wouldn't be as well attended as as an outdoor event in my opinion. But um that that was kind of the the why why we're here. See if we can do something for the residents of MNA Valley. Okay. Uh, Madam Cler, do we have any public comment?

We do. Mayor Roy Blecker going to be Wednesday. I'd like to know how why frick and frack let this even out of the subcommittee meeting first place we should have an explanation why this would even cost a h 100red grand or 8k or that you know my world the world we all lived in you we had block if you want to put a block party in go to a bar if you want to see it on the big screen for crying out loud have a party at your home rent one do at but the absurdity and we should we should probably keep this meeting going another 36 hours just to prove that we can do stupid better than anyone else without a question without a doubt if this would have been done like I've tried to explain to you 9,437 times we wouldn't be here this shouldn't even got to an agenda item until it was ready to pass. Again, if you guys cannot figure it out, let's come up with a system where we can. Let's get the people in here or the talent level that can. You guys want to keep beating this drum, beating a dead horse, a dead donkey clear into the ground. And we do it every day again. Well, maybe we should extend it to 48 hours on this meeting just to make 1,111%

stupid or certain we are the stupidest city in the entire freaking planet. What day do we say no? We're not going to do stupid. We're going to have a subcommittee meeting on how to do that for crying out loud again. I'm gonna say this and I hope maybe it will sink in as my dearly departed father used to come up here and say valley and the bird of opportunity flying away. Why can't we stop that? He will never see it. Ever increasingly, you're making sure, guaranteeing I will never see it. And what's even sadder is future generations will never see it if we keep on the track we're on. Please put some sanity back in this. Mayor, that concludes all of public comments on this item.

Thank you very much, madam clerk. We'll bring it uh back to the deis for any deliberation if desired and just going to look at

do you mind? I I would just like I don't think that it was um because I want to explain the the den. I don't think it was a bad idea. It's not a bad idea. This is actually something I think um had been planned out for a lot earlier, much like how we're doing um there you go, the Olympics. Sorry y'all, it's getting late and I've been up since 5. Um, much like we're doing the Olympics, I think it's something that could have been included in the special events calendar and we could have planned for it. It is a quick and a tight turnaround, especially after the 4th of July. And this is coming from someone that although I know um you guys like to brag that, you know, you would love to see the Mexican merchandise down here. I'm more of an Espa girl. And so I would have loved to see Spain instead. Um, and I'm someone who was up watching games at 2, three o'clock in the morning and while they're on, while I'm at work, like I'm someone who enjoys um the World Cup. So, I don't think that it was a bad idea. I think it was just not enough time for us to um work through the details. And I'm hoping um like I explained to um like I explained to Kyle, I would love to, if we able to to um put it back into the economy with the small businesses, going there at a watch party with them. Um hopefully though, like how we've been researching and working through um the Olympics, I'm hoping we are able to do something for the Olympics instead because now we know, okay, this is what it looks like. This is how long we need to to plan for it and then we can add it into the calendar and then we can make sure staffing and everything is where it needs to be. So, it wasn't that I thought it was a bad idea. I just thought it was a quick turnaround. Um the the the sticker shock was a little sticker shock for me. Um, but other than that, I think that this is a good model to use for the Olympics. And then if we were to have something like this, if not FIFA, but you know, something else that would come here in the future, I think would be a good idea for us to know, at least now we know how all of the things we need to work through because there was a lot of things Kyle talked to us about that I didn't think about, which was like, hey, they're sponsored by Budweiser, so you you would have to make

sure like they we had Budweiser here and they'd have to have Budweiser cups or um what licensing was going to cost. So, there were things that I didn't know cuz I was kind of like, well, can we just call a movie theater and ask them to show it on the movie screen and then we just have everyone go in there because there's AC and then we can just pay for food or something. So, there were things like that that I didn't know that came up. So,

okay. Seeing no further deliberation, um I don't think there's support for the first or two. The first one, it's getting late. Number one or number two as far as recommendations. Uh, but I guess just to formalize it, should we make a motion to allow staff to continue working with our businesses and whatever it is that you're working on with our local businesses for the World Cup? Or are you fine with No, I don't think it's necessary, but if you want to, it won't hurt.

If you're already doing it, then we don't need to worry about it. So, um, do we need to vote this down or should we just move to the next item? Just go to the next item. Okay. All right. So, our last item, L6. Uh, thank you everyone uh for that last one. L6, review and consider public art commission approval to modify main library mural to remove Caesar Chavez and replace with Dolores Wuerta. We'll turn it over to Director Bubnik for a staff report.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. It's my honor to present the final agenda item of the night and uh put us all out out of our misery. Um the item before you tonight is a recommendation um by the art commission, public art commission to um remove director. I think there's consensus to just skip the staff report if that's okay with you. Sure. We'll save I'll do the motion. Um okay, madam clerk, any request to speak? Yes. The first two speakers are Fred Berno followed by Nathan Yurina. Sorry.

Hello everybody. I'm a no for this. Um I don't believe we need to remove Caesar Chavez and replace with an image of uh Dolores Horta. If you want to remove uh Caesar Chavez, just sand the blast the whole thing and take everything off. Good night.

The next speaker is Nathan Urenina even though I'm not close to it. I'm going to say good morning uh members of the city council. Uh so on this item I am in favor of option two on this item. Yes. Remove Caesar Chavez from the mural but do not replace him with Dolores Wortha. Dolores Wera herself stated she did not want herself to be replaced but with Caesar Chavez. She didn't want any street names to be renamed after her, any images or likeness to be put in her place. Um, so no on that one. Um, just go back to the artist and see what else we can improve on this mural, but just remove Caesar Chavez. Thank you.

The next two speakers are Roy Blackard, followed by Christopher Baka. We have facts and evidence. Yours truly came up to this very dis address this very council when these items came up and this one specifically. I told you do not do anything political. Once you did and I put a proposal where has it been profered that okay you're spending 250 grand or whatever you're doing on these political ones. Who else besides me should have 250 grand to run murals across this placing what I think should be on the political thing? No, this thing should be this thing should be gone. If we're going to we either leave it as you approved it or we sandlast it off just as Mr. Urethus said, we're going to be back on this thing forever. This was the problem. You should have never approved this in the first freaking place. You ignored several people that came up there and told you not to do this. And you continue to say and make up and do the wrong thing. And here we are again. Exactly what was predicted would happen is happening. And we are here until Wednesday to deal with it. what you guys did again. When do we stop doing stupid? We will again. You don't want to stay here till the next day. Then you know whatever we got to do. I We want to do something. Let's buy some

uh ear wax removal from the ears so you guys can listen. Can we get staff reports that say this? Look at way the staff reports were going. And I went, you said, "Oh, go to the the whatever arts commission thing." When I walked in, they shut the freaking meeting down. You know, whatever about the flower ones we couldn't, you knew Caesar Chavez looking from the roots of the grass could have predicted what was going to happen here. You know, it would be nice. Would you just up there apologize to us for putting us through this? So, either do You got two choices. Either leave it as it is or sand blast the darn thing off and pledge to us that you will reform and not put us through this again.

The next speaker is Christopher Baka. Good evening and again I'll date myself by stating I was at ground zero during this whole Caesar Chavez Dolores Werta stuff going on in East LA and it was well known that Caesar Chavez was not a good person. He was actually a heroin mule and uh the whole thing was a farce again skitso Chris it Caesar Chavez was not a good person. I recently I when I was involved in the Democratic party, Dolores Werta was there and she was a snake and it was created chaos. So sand blast it forget the whole thing. It was all nonsense.

Mayor, that concludes all of public comments for this item. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Any deliberation? I'll apologize to I I I want to apologize to you, Roy, for having you here past midnight. I want to apologize to you because you know you know so much. Um so I I just want to formally offer my apology on behalf of all of us up here tonight at 12:03 a.m. I motion to approve the public art commission's recommendations. Second. Council member Bernard. Yes. Council member Delgado. Yes. Council member Baka Santa Cruz. Yes. Mayor Prom Gonzalez. Yes. And Mayor Cabera. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. And I think if there's uh unanimous consent here, we could just table all the regional commission committee reports. Okay. Um anything you want to say? Item N O P. Nothing. Closing comments. No table. Okay. Item Q something to say. Yeah. Sorry, Jeremy. Yeah. You so rudely cut me off. I was waiting all night for that. That's my fault. You got to tell us about all the the events coming up, you know? We'll save that for the next one. Thank you, Jeremy.

Um, okay. So, item Q, future agenda items, just in consultation uh with the city attorney and uh his legal advice. I want to read into the record that I will allow public comment on this item until otherwise provided by the city attorney and city clerk after they consult with the district attorney's office on the issue. With that, Madam Clerk, do we have any public comment? We do. Mayor Roy Blacker. We'll make this short but sweet since we got donkeys and flags and everything. So, I'm proposing this. Let's put the donkey on the flag and the slogan should be Marino Valley, the city of ass.

Any other public comment? No, mayor. That concludes public comments. Uh, so we'll officially adjourn this meeting at 12:05 a.m. Thank you everyone.