City Council - Special Meeting

Thank you.

Oh, yeah, that's definitely on. All right. Okay, well, I don't have a gavel, so we'll just have to do a little bit of that. So on that note, we also don't have a flag, but we all know where it is. It's up in that building up there.

Councilmember Clear? Here. Councilmember Stackflap? Here. Councilmember Redmond? Here. Mayor Globman?

Here. All right. Moving on to item three, special presentations and announcements. Okay. Okay. Excellent.

In that case, we will then move on to item four, that is... Rosal McCoy, roughly, in Mount Shasta, California. The audio in here is so much better. I would say consider perhaps moving down here rather than being up there at the upper lodge. All right.

Thank you, Rosalind.

All right. You guys know me, Mal Shasta. Yeah, I just want to give a quick little update. We're having our 14-week business planning workshop series. We just, I think, number five. We just finished number five. So we have nine weeks left. We're moving through, like, from vision and missions and values. Next, we'll go more into marketing and messaging. And then a really important part is finances, making sure that everybody

Anyone else?

Hello, my name is Anastasia Sprout, Mount Shasta, technically Siskiyou County. And I wanted to... Just give an update on the press. I've started a community membership press called the Mount Shasta Observer. It is the next iteration of the Mount Shasta Bee. It's my intention to publish at least as many positive stories as challenging ones. I'm not after bad news. But ever since I started the Bee, I've been hearing a lot of things So I'm trying to find a way of moving that into information that's helpful for the community. So I had published a story about making lemonade out of lemons about the old Crystal Geyser plant. And that's a really exciting development of Glenn Kaufman and the team of Mount Shasta Organics. So I just want to invite people to check out that story if you haven't seen it. If you look up Mount Shasta Observer, you might first see Shasta Observer, which is a new AI countywide newspaper that sprung up, which is interesting. But that's not my small press. I've been trying to get support from local, well, Northern California Independent Press from Humboldt County and other areas just to figure out what I'm doing, because I don't really know. But I'm hoping to learn more. So, I am fielding a lot of inquiries that I just want to offer to you all to hopefully just address if you can or if not, but maybe debunk before something gets legs in the wrong way. So is it true that Jeffrey Collings has resigned from the board in protest of the city council's treatment of Todd Yuhas? That's one. And is it true that the landing development is at risk or canceled for the same reason? So just wondering if anyone can comment about that. Thank you. Not the planning of it, but the actual developer who invested all the already money. Thank you.

Anyone else for public comment? As Anastasia mentioned, we don't do a back and forth, so I'm happy to respond when it comes back for council and staff comments. That's not to say we're not, that's why I'm taking notes here. It's not that I'm not paying attention. I'm just writing stuff down. Okay. In that case, we will now bring it back for council and staff, the aforementioned council and staff comments. Anything over here? What's that?

I'm going to use the microphone. I was just seeing if you wanted to talk on it or if I would. Thank you, though, Rosalyn. There you go. So to the comment about the landing, the mayor and I had a team's call with the developers and just reassured. I think there was some ambiguity on their end as to where the city stood with our plans to continue on with the landing. And Casey and I had a really great conversation with them and just let them know that we are nothing has changed as far as our interest in them and our growth opportunity and they left very happy and excited to hear Kim is stepping up into acting city manager and yeah, excited to keep the momentum and they have our cell phone numbers so lines of communication are open and are moving forward.

And on that note, we do have the next town hall with respect to the landing on September 1st. So everyone, what's that? What time is that? 5.30? 5.30. Thank you, Rosalyn. The last one, for those that were able to attend or were not able to attend, rather, it was awesome. There was, I don't know, like 80 people there. Really good discussion. A ton of good ideas. The folks from GHD, the firm that we hired to do the master planning, They were actually really impressed by the community output and just the amount of people there, so they were really fired up on it as well. Very, very excited to see the next iteration of what they come with on the first, September 1st. And then I actually, that brings up, I did want to address, Jeffrey Collings did resign from his position on city council. He did not specify a reason why. I'll have to, I don't want to speak for him, but I would like to just thank him for his, a lot of years, his service to the community. He spent a lot of time on city council. He's been to a ton of meetings. I think everybody in this community owes him a great deal just in terms of the amount of work that he has put in over the past decade plus. On a personal note, when I first got onto council, Jeffrey was kind enough to have me, he invited me over and kind of, we had some sit down meetings at his house and did, you know, some info sessions about kind of processes and just sort of processes and procedures and how to get things done. And really appreciated him taking the time to do that. And so, Jeffrey, if you're watching out there, thanks again. And I'll talk to you soon, I'm sure. But just wanted to thank him for all of that. Anybody else would like to say anything? And on that same note, I don't ‑‑ I do have Wi‑Fi. There is ‑‑ because of now the ‑‑ now we are down to four people on council, there are two options when that happens. The first would be an election or an appointment by the city council. We would, of course, prefer to do an election, but because of the election coming up, the time frame because of that does not actually allow us to do another election. So instead of that, we will be opening applications for a temporary city council member to fill or... Yes, an appointed city council member. So if you are interested, we'll get the details out soon in a city newsletter, Rachel. Rachel, we'll get the details out soon. But so for the next two weeks or so we'll be accepting applications for folks that are interested in filling that seat for the remainder of the term. It's only through about the end of November. It's either the last meeting in November or the first meeting in December when we swear in the new people that are running on November 3rd. I realize this is confusing given the timing and that we have an election and that it's one of the seats that would have been open anyway. But if you would like to serve on city council for the next three months... Please inquire at City Hall, and you can put in your application. Do the chair. If you want to speak, please.

For those of you that are already signed up to run for city council in the upcoming election, I would strongly recommend doing this. It will give – you can do both. Yep. So it will give you a chance at kind of a dry run, and it will give the public an opportunity to see you before election time.

Yeah, sure. Why not? This is a weird thing. We'll take some questions. Let's do it.

Wouldn't that appear that the city council is recommending one of the candidates if you choose one of the... Yeah.

You know, I absolutely, I do, I completely understand where you're coming from with that. Frankly, this is not how I would have chosen to do it. It's just, we are bound by law to appoint somebody. There is a city nearby that's been running with four people for the past, like, two years or so, and it is not really, they've been gridlocked two to two on most decisions. Given the function of our council, I don't actually anticipate that being a huge issue. We are, while not in lockstep on everything, we're not ideologically divided two to two the way that we see some other places. So I think we probably could get by with just four until the election. To your exact point there, short of just appointing some random person who has no interest in city government, I don't see a great way around that. because like I said, we are bound by law to appoint someone. So it's a tricky situation, I agree. If they apply, they will certainly be considered. You listening, Jeff? Sorry, that was to Jeff Harkness, not Jeffrey. Oh, one other thing. For those of you watching at home, this is for those that don't regularly come to the meetings. Starting on, well, next Monday and then every Monday, we... I got a prop here. Hold on. The owner of Deadwood has been kind enough. He's going to live stream the council meetings, and there will be city council buzzword bingo going on. And then I will then show up, and anybody else that wants to, but I will come by after the council meeting to answer questions that you may have related to that evening's council meeting. So just an attempt to kind of get some more folks involved that don't necessarily pay as much attention. that don't want to or that would prefer to drink during a meeting. The prize is undetermined yet. I will figure it out by next Monday. Thank you. All right. That's all I got. Anybody? How about over here? No?

No? Over here?

All right. In that case, we will then move on to item six, committee updates. We've got the Downtown Enhancement Advisory Committee, the Library Tax Advisory Committee, the Beautification Committee, and the Active Transportation Committee.

There are no updates for today, but there will be an update at next Monday's meeting.

Awesome. I look forward to it. All right. Did you have a staff report or anything like that?

A staff report for?

Just during the council and staff comments portion. I may have jumped the gun. I thought you gave me the go ahead.

No, not under number five or six.

Okay. You're good. Thanks for checking. Um, cool. Well, before we move on, I do want to point out for anybody in attendance or watching at home, there is a one vacancy on the planning commission, two on the beautification committee and two on the downtown enhancement advisory committee. So if you are interested in serving on any of those committees, they would love to have you. Um, cool. All right. Did we somehow miss, was there supposed to be a consent agenda on here? No. Next Monday? Got it. Okay. We will then move on to item seven. The general fund adjustment for contract finance services. On July 23rd, 2026, the finance director took a leave of absence for a time period of up to 12 weeks. Kim?

Okay. Thank you. Mic check. Mic's good. Okay. So... There have been a lot of changes in city staff in the last month. It is one thing for me to be wearing the hat of acting city manager. It's another thing entirely for me to be wearing the hat of acting finance director. Finance is one of those things that is so integral to everything the city does. Nothing can happen without going through the finance department in some way, fashion, or form. And without our finance director in her seat right now and not knowing how long she's going to be out, the city has a responsibility to find someone who's capable and credentialed who can fill that spot for this temporary period of time. So in the last couple of weeks, what I've been doing is calling around for professional services, made a lot of phone calls, connected with a lot of really great individuals, actually. In summary, there is a firm recommended here tonight to play the role of on-call finance director. And it is through a firm that makes their living doing this. We are not the only city who is without a finance director. We are not the only city who needs one. We're not the only city that needs some sort of an oversight to make sure that decisions we make today and tomorrow are in the best interests of the city. So the firm that's being recommended tonight comes with decades of municipal finance experience, both on the public sector side and the private sector side. So these are consultants and individuals who do this for a living and their job is to help cities make things right. So the recommendation before you is for a $10,000 budget adjustment to reallocate budget that we have in our general fund to allocate to a consultant finance director. and that person will be in their seat functioning as the finance director until such time that our finance director can come back. One quick thing I wanted to mention is if we want to take a look at page three of our agenda item or our agenda, under number 11, future agenda items, item F is called funding of forensic analysis of finance department. To be clear, this individual or this firm coming in to play that temporary finance director role, that person will have the role of also auditing whatever's happening within our finance department today. So we're not losing any time fixing anything that needs to be fixed. So I'll stop here and pause for any questions. To the chair.

Please.

Two questions. One, is the firm familiar with Springbrook software?

The firm is not familiar with Springbrook per se. None of the firms that I met with had direct involvement in Springbrook per se. However, Springbrook is just one of many, many different finance software that's out there. And none of the consultants I spoke with had any hesitations in terms of getting up to speed and learning SpringBook because it's another version of QuickBooks. It's another version of financing tools.

And what does the $10,000 get us? Is it an allotment of hours? Is it based on timeframe, based on completion?

That's a very good question. The $10,000 is allocated so that someone can come in at the rate of $195 per hour to really get in and investigate where we're at right now and to provide the critical services that we need. We're going to have to reinvestigate whether or not $10,000 is going to be enough. And at such time that we decide, we're going to watch the budget and if $10,000 isn't enough, staff will come back before city council again to ask for additional allocation of dollars. But part of this is the subject matter expert is not in her seat and there's no one in the building who's qualified to even know what's happening. So part of this is having somebody come in to really get into it and then we'll reevaluate after a week and see where we're at.

Perfect. Second question is, With Melissa's leave, the type of leave that she's taking, are we saving any funding on paying her wage while she's out?

Not at this time because under protected leave, any employee who has protected leave and vacation bank, admin time bank, sick bank, those hours are being used. So it doesn't save the city any money right now.

So it's depleting her compensated absences? Yes. Okay.

Yeah.

So you're talking about coming back before us for more possible money? Is that basically $10,000 just covers the 12 weeks that Melissa has gone on leave?

Correct.

But if she goes farther than that, we might have to come up with another $10,000? Correct.

We may have to come up with some more because we don't know what we don't know right now.

And, um, so you, you talked about them coming in and taking a look at everything, but then, so in this discussion here, you list a lot of things that the finance director does. And I know Melissa does a lot as I'm sure all finance does a lot.

Yeah.

I'm sure all finance directors do.

Yeah.

Is this person going to cover all of her day to day stuff in addition to doing this sort of, uh, Forensic work as well?

The short answer is yes. There are more details involved, obviously. We still do have staff in the finance department who are here today conducting everyday business, day-to-day. You've seen correspondence. So it would be that person coming in to fill in the gaps, so to speak.

Cool. John? No? Okay. Questions? All right. Well, in that case, we will take it out for public comment.

Rosalind, so we have technically four people in the finance department. We have a administrative supervisor. So are they going to be able to cover the majority of the day-to-day and then this new firm coming in and doing the forensics? Or all these people are not really able to cover this day-to-day? I guess you can't answer me. Because I see that they all have the software. We're paying for this very expensive software to be in each one of these people's hands. And it just kind of seems questionable. So hopefully the forensics will kind of look at these questionable things.

Okay.

Anyone else? Yeah. Sure.

Okay. I move to approve a budget adjustment of $10,000 to onboard a temporary on-call finance consultant.

Second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed or abstained? Moving on to item eight, delinquent property tax resolution. This is on packet page 10. Each year, the city council approves a list of properties delinquent on property taxes for submission to the county auditor. Rachel? Rachel?

If this item looks familiar, it's because you approved it about one month ago, but we've gone to the county and they've asked for us to submit it in the format of a resolution. So we're back now at the resolution.

Okay.

So this is the same action you approved a month ago.

No questions. Public comment. Okay. We'll bring it back for discussion.

Rachel, what is the resolution number? All right. I move to approve that resolution, CCR-26-18, a resolution of the City of Mount Shasta adopting the practice of collecting past due accounts through the Siskiyou County Auditor's and Tax Collector's Office. Seconded.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed or abstain? Okay. Moving on then to item nine. This is on page 15 of your packet. ballot measure h argument authorization on june 8th the city council voted to place measure h on the ballot for the election to be held on november 3rd 2026 staff has prepared a resolution authorizing several members of the public to submit an argument in favor of measure h on behalf of the city

You may remember about a year ago a presentation from Bill Berry, the expert who is a consultant and comes into small towns like ours to help these types of measures get passed. And he performed a scientific study polling local residents about what they would want to see out of this type of ballot measure. And he's taken those responses and crafted them into a ballot measure argument that satisfies those requirements. So with that done, this resolution would authorize several members of the public to be the ones to submit that ballot measure argument. He says that that type of support tends to go a long way with these types of measures. So we worked together to identify some well-known members of the community, and they've been willing to sign on as supporters for this ballot measure, and this resolution would authorize them to submit that argument.

Makes sense to me. Let's see. Any questions? John? And for those wondering, the argument, the words of it are actually down on page 17 of the packet here as well, if you want to read through it. But while I stall for a second, we will now go out to public comment.

Rosalind, I did call in earlier. So if you read the Measure H, it says one cent transaction, meaning you have a transaction, you pay a penny. And at city council, when we had our presentation, he kept saying, it's only one cent. And we kept going, no, it's one per cent. So this wording is really bad. And so if you go technically, how this wording goes, every transaction, you're going to get one penny. This is bad. really badly written, and just on that, it should be voted down because this one cent per transaction is insane. I'm really sorry that you guys did it this way, but here we are.

Just a reminder that this agenda item is actually about putting the support on the ballot or not, not about the actual measure age itself, but that's still a reasonable thing to bring up. I don't have the ballot language in front of me or the measure in front of me, so I can't actually say it one way or another. Do you have it in front of you?

I hesitate wanting to get into it back and forth, but I do want to verify that I did make a phone call over to Laura Bynum's office this morning, and I did verify that the specific language that's going to be on the ballot actually says one percent instead of one cent. That said, I do recognize that there are several pieces of information flying around. and things get lost over time. And so there may be a reference on social media to a one cent or someone may have said something that said one cent and then somebody else copies and pastes it. So it's everywhere. But I did go back through and I made a phone call this morning to Laura and I did verify that what was actually submitted and what's actually going to be on the ballot is going to say 1%. So as long as she has that information, and we did ask about that this morning, I'm comfortable stating that we do have the right vernacular in place on the ballot.

Excellent. Well, thank you, Rosalind, for the opportunity to clarify that, because as you astutely mentioned, one cent per transaction would not do a lot to help with our budget, unless people are making a ton of small transactions. Any other public comment out there?

Hello, Araya, again. Oh, also, I forgot to mention earlier, welcome back. I know some of you had some travels. I hope you guys had some time to refresh, have time with family and whatnot. And now we are here, obviously, and we are Currently navigating some challenges here in our city. It's kind of all over the place I just want to say as always, you know often I we really appreciate you guys We know your job is really not easy and also it's an unpaid job So we do want to acknowledge that we know that it's not an easy thing to do and it requires a lot of sacrifice to come here and try to serve the community so We want to acknowledge that and also for us, you know, also community is hugely important. That's why we also make a lot of sacrifices of our time and energy and personal resources to try to bring people together and focus on solutions for our community as much as we can. Really doing our best. to contribute to helping people ignoring distractions and distortions, because we know there is a lot of that flying around also. And even, as Anastasia mentioned earlier, a lot of people come up and bring things to her because of her newspaper things. Us also, just because of our work in the city and going around and engaging with so many people, people talk a lot. So we are obviously not all privy to all the things that are going on behind the scenes because we're just not in there and we're not in the meetings that happen. And we do also understand that, you know, You are also being advised not to share all the details, and I'm sure there's valid reasons for a lot of that. But, you know, just a reminder, too, as we all know, the more that you guys are quiet about things, the more that other people are going to talk and fill in the gaps with whatever they're coming up with. Just want to remind that in a loving way that as much as we know sometimes you can't share everything and we get it but also the more that we don't share the more that everyone else is coming up with stories and people are talking quite a lot so not saying this happened at all but based on things I'm hearing. If at any point anyone made a hasty decision on something and maybe not even with full information.

Sorry, is this in relation to the ballot language of measure H?

It is connected. 30 seconds. OK, just saying people need transparency for trust and to move forward. And this does associate with the ballot measure, because if you're going to ask for a tax increase to be able to help people understand why we need to do that, they need to have confidence and trust. So just kind of bringing that as a reminder, we appreciate it. We know your job is hard and also it's a small town, so people like to chatter. So that's my input.

Thank you. Any other public comment? We'll bring it back for discussion.

I move to approve resolution CCR-266-19, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Mount Shasta authorizing ballot arguments and rebuttal arguments for Measure H, essential services and public safety protection measure.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Any opposed or abstain? Okay. Okay, moving on to item 10, council reports on attendance at appointed outside meetings. I had a meeting with the mayor of Banasque in the state of Zaragoza in Spain, and he expressed interest in becoming sister cities with Mount Shasta. And I would like, I guess I'm jumping again, but I think the next thing is future agenda items, so I'm gonna roll that into this one. And I would like to put that on there, because it's an awesome city that's very similar to Mount Shasta. It's like the same elevation, same population, based on skiing and mountains. They have the tallest mountain in the Pyrenees is right there, is like their mountain, just like we have Mount Shasta. It's like real similar. Yes, it's where he is from, and yeah, hung out with his nephew, it was cool.

PICS or it didn't happen.

Oh, I got them. Don't you worry. Any other outside meetings? No? All right. Well, then, future agenda items. We've got quite a few on there, but anything else? John? Okay.

Are we going to have the appointment for the next regularly scheduled?

I don't believe we will because the, so, so Rachel, if we could get that out in the newsletter and then posted kind of in the normal spots about that. So we'll need to take the applications for a couple of weeks and then, so it'll be, there we go, which is, I don't know the date. Yeah.

Yes Yeah, I would recommend having a special meeting probably so that they can sit in on the September meeting and do three full months Seems reasonable, I mean Yeah

Sounds good. Okay. So, yeah, just we'll do that, and then we'll go to the sister city on the future agenda, and then I'll help out with that one, and then we'll move on to item 12. All right. Well, thanks, everybody. Good stuff. And we'll see you all next Monday for our regularly scheduled council meeting. I don't know if it's going to be down here or up there. I'm not sure yet. Yes, that's true. That is true. So if you do want to hang out outside and then come back in for it, you're welcome to. Thank you.