City Council - Regular Meeting

Alright. I'd like to call the 04:00 regular meeting of the City Council to order. If everybody's seat backs and tray tables are in their upright position, I will attempt to fly this thing. So we're gonna call the 04:00 regular meeting of the city council to order. And, madam city clerk, may I have a roll call?

Thank you, mister mayor Pro Tem. Council member Warren? Here. Council member DeForest?

Here.

Council member Stone?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Holiday?

Here.

Mayor Lavelle? Let the record reflect all members are present with the exception of mayor Lavelle with an excused absence.

Thank you, madam city clerk. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance led by our deputy city manager Scott Agujenian and remain standing for the invocation led by Sal Rangel.

Let's pray. Dear heavenly father, as we gather together here to conduct the business of the of the city, lord, we we pray for that you give wisdom, lord, for the council members and that they're in an agreement with one with another, lord. Give them wisdom, guidance, lord, that, so that our city becomes, united itself. I ask you to bless the the time here and and, all the city representatives who are here to tonight. As I looked, there were, I think, 22 different items that that's to be either discussed or voted on today.

Lord, I also pray for the, not only our citizens in unity within the city, but, Lord, our city leadership. And, Lord, I ask that you bless and continue putting your hedge of protection around all of the cities and all first responders, for us. And we just thank you for this great nation that we can come together, Lord, and, have this meeting and that, you put a hedge of protection around of our military servicemen and women who are out in in harm's way. We ask these things in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. Alright. Our first order of business is a proclamation for fair housing month. Madam city clerk.

Thank you, mayor pro tem. I do have representatives. If I can call up Vic Carrillo. Hello, sir. If you can just go up to the podium there.

Welcome, Vic.

Sir.

Mister mayor, if you'd like to I will. My apologies.

I've got a proclamation. I didn't know if you were gonna say something beforehand. Alright. Let me read the proclamation. Southwest Riverside County Association of Realtors Fair Housing Month.

Whereas April 1968 marked the passage of the historic federal Fair Housing Act landmark commitment to eliminating discrimination in housing and advancing equal opportunity for all Americans, and whereas the city of Murrieta recognizes that homeownership is a cornerstone of the American dream and plays a critical role in fostering community stability, personal wealth, and long term prosperity, and whereas ensuring access to homeownership opportunities free from discrimination to strengthens Myriad's neighborhoods and supports a vibrant and thriving local economy, and whereas realtors play a vital role in upholding fair housing laws by adhering to a strict code of ethics, providing equal professional service, and helping individuals and families achieve the dream of homeownership. And whereas the Southwest Riverside County Association Of Realtors is committed to advancing fair housing through education, advocacy, and community outreach with a strong focus on providing access to housing and homeownership opportunities and whereas continued education, collaboration among housing providers, local government, and community organizations are essential to ensuring that all residents of Merida have access to housing and homeownership opportunities free from discrimination. Now, therefore, be it resolved, the city council of the city of Merida do hereby recognize April as fair housing month and encourage all residents, housing providers, and community stakeholders to uphold the principles of fair housing and to promote access to housing and home homeownership opportunities free from dis discrimination.

Dated this April 2026, signed by all five council members. Thank you. Don't don't leave yet. You're not what? You think you stand up there and look pretty? That's gonna be hard. Is there anyone from the city council that would like to make a comment or a remark? The floor is open. Will in a sec.

I want to thank SRCAR for the hard work they put in to making sure that everybody has an opportunity when available to purchase or to rent and to stand behind our citizens and our communities and get housing for them. It's it's not easy. There's lots of rules and regulations, and I know you jump through a lot of hoops. And I know that's difficult, but we wanna say thank you. We do appreciate all that you do in helping our citizens in this wonderful city that we call home. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you, council member Warren. Councilwoman.

I I just like to say thank you for being here, and thank you for everybody in the audience that's here in support of that as well. So thank you so much.

Councilwoman Stone.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Vic, listen. What's very, very important for our community is homeownership. And that comes with quality of life when you have owner homeownership. So we appreciate all the advocacy that SRCR does at the state level to promote homeownership and so thank so much for all of your hard work for everyone that's in the audience.

I know each and every one of you and I know how hard they work for homeownership. So thank you so much. And in addition lastly, I know times are very challenging for realtors with the ever changing laws. And it's not easy to be a realtor today in the current climate. So, you know, I feel for all of you as well. So, again, thank you for all of your hard work.

Thank you. Yes. And I I agree a 100% with my what my colleagues say. Has your real estate career time frame exceeded your time as a police officer now? It's getting there.

It's getting really close, isn't it? Alright. Let's come down. We'll take a picture. Alright.

Next is the approval of the agenda. Are there changes to the agenda? Seeing none, call for a motion. I have a motion from councilwoman Lisa Forrest and a second by councilwoman Cindy Warren. Please vote.

Motion passes four zero. And on to the city manager administrative update.

Thank you very much mayor pro tem and council. I've got a few items for you this afternoon. First I want to highlight an item that is actually on our consent agenda which is item number seven. This is a matter dealing with Western Municipal Water District who has graciously agreed to help support our library expansion with funding support for the Carole Carson Garden of Verses. And so I understand we have a member of the board of directors here, Brenda Denset from Division III. I'd like to invite her up if you would please, and say a couple of things about that generous contribution and support to our library.

Couldn't get a bigger

council, mayor pro tem, staff, and fellow residents. Yes, I am a Myriad resident. My name is Brenda Denstedt, and I'm here on behalf of Western Municipal Water District, which I serve on the board of directors and have now for twenty years. It is certainly a pleasure to be here, and I really wanna thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. This is always one of my favorite things to be able to do is whatever agency I go to visit, I like to bring a big check.

And you guys like to receive the big check. Right? So let's talk about what this big check is for. So first of all, Western really appreciates our partnership. We've done a number of projects with you folks over the years. I have been able to be a part of many of those projects and have certainly appreciated that over the years. You know, we did a wonderful butterfly garden outside of the Marietta Library, a couple years ago, and I was there. And it was just a wonderful turnout, and it has turned out to be a very beautiful place. And I hope it has met with your vision along the way. So it certainly has exceeded all of my expectations, and I hope that there is more to come, and I think there is.

This project that we're getting ready to launch with you guys is part of the replacement for nonfunctional turf with climate appropriate, water wise landscaping reducing water use while lowering your long term maintenance needs. With the state's restrictions on drinking water for nonfunctional turf, efforts like this are not just beneficial, they're necessary. This project helps position the city ahead of those requirements. So you are ahead of the curve, which is always a great thing to be. Through the turf transformation partnership program, Western Water makes these projects happen by providing funding, coordination, and support so they can move forward efficiently and successfully.

What makes this project especially valuable is its visibility. Spaces like this help our community see what water wise landscaping looks like in real everyday settings. You know, it's one of the biggest things that I always get. I wanna do the right thing. I wanna take my lawn out.

I wanna be more water efficient, but I don't know where to start, and I don't know what to do. So you guys will now have a place that you can direct all the residents to to go and take a look at. This project will remove over six five hundred square feet of turf and is expected to save more than a 102,000 gallons of water annually, proof that even these projects can deliver meaningful and lasting impacts. We appreciate our partnerships in advancing water efficiency in the region. And now just a little breakdown of what I'm getting ready to reveal to you guys.

Your agenda is incorrect, So I wanna make sure that we get the numbers correct. Western will be providing a check today for a $100,000. So $50,000 of that is coming directly from Western, and then we have partners, which is El Senor Valley Municipal Water District, which is contributing $525,000, and Rancho California Water District, which is also contributing $25,000 In addition, I am also very aware that our staff has readily assisted you guys in providing and applying for an additional rebate with Metropolitan Water District, which I also serve as a representative on on behalf of Western and one of the 26 member agencies of Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which could, in fact, reach you guys to the tune of up to 35,000 additional dollars. So this is big stuff, and I know we're pending the approvals. And as soon as I get the approval, we'll be back again to do another one because you'll take my additional 35,000 from me, right?

Yes, we will.

So I just wanna make sure that there is a correct motion that is made for item number seven to reflect an accurate amount of money that's getting brought in here today.

We will make that correction.

So with that, it is certainly my pleasure to present this check to you guys.

We're gonna come down there and do a picture. Mr. City Manager, is there more?

There is, in fact, more. So the next thing I would like to highlight is that this past Saturday, we helped support a rotary led community cleanup day, which was really successful. So a total of 28 volunteers participated in this effort, meeting first at Marietta Mesa High School and then dispersed to clean multiple corridors through the area, including Cal Oaks Road, Los Alamos Road, Monroe Avenue, Jefferson Avenue, Madison Avenue, and the nearby I-fifteen on and off ramps. So my understanding is approximately 30 large bags, so just about one per person were collected. Our municipal services department was helpful in driving through and collecting all those materials that were bagged up and now off of our roadways.

And so I just wanted to really extend a very heartfelt thank you to our friends at Rotary and for all of the volunteers that spent their Saturday making Murrieta a little more beautiful. Yeah. And then there is still yet more. So I see Garrett String, our capital projects manager, is already at the desk. And he's going to talk to counsel a little bit about the citywide sidewalk replacement program. After he's done, we're going to have Hilder Sam, our public information officer, come up and tell us about some of the exciting things happening in Murrieta.

Evening, Mayor Pro Tem and members of city council. So, my name is Garrett Strang. I'm the capital projects program manager here with the city, and it's my pleasure to give you a quick update on a, citywide sidewalk replacement program that we have coming up and some other municipal services updates. So the citywide sidewalk replacement program, it's a new project that we're introducing this year. The main point of this project is to accomplish tackling a whole bunch of ADA issues along Whitewood Road, from to Hot Springs Road all the way up to the northern city limits.

So this project is gonna cross three different city council boundaries, and it's gonna be split up into four different, bids. The base bid will be from Whitewood Road, on Whitewood Road from Hot Springs to Los Alamos, and then from, Los Alamos to Hunter, Hunter to the northern city limits, and then the third, added bid item will be, various citywide locations. So the overall goal of this project is to, remove and replace these, compromised sidewalk panels, do some ADA lip grinding of some of the raised concrete lips, and also fixing some asphalt patching where some of their tree roots have gone into the street and caused obstructions. So project by the numbers. So this project is going to remove and replace approximately 14,000 square feet of sidewalk, which equates to about 400 individual panels along that stretch.

In total, we'll be grinding about 90 different sidewalk panel lips, removing those ADA violations and hazards. We'll do about 6,000 square feet of asphalt repair, 300 linear feet of curb and gutter replacement. In total, this will be this will equate to about 330 ADA violations being corrected along the entire corridor. And finally, in order to fix these issues and not just to fix the root of the issue is we have to remove about a 110 trees along this entire corridor. So which brings me to we'll get to that.

So environmental considerations that have to do with that. So, obviously, if we're taking out a bunch of trees, we have to submit a sequel class two categorical exemption, which we will submit to the county. We also will be performing nesting bird survey to make sure we're in compliance with the migratory bird act. And finally, since this is along Whitewood Road, which is a MSHCP sensitive area, we'll be ensuring that we implement the appropriate BMPs

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the a 100 trees, but they will be replaced at a one to one ratio. Of So

any we're tree that we remove, we'll be replanting one at a nearby location, and we will be replanting trees that have less aggressive root systems that won't be won't become future hopefully won't become future hazards for us to have to deal with later. As you can see from these pictures that I've posted here, it's not enough for us to just remove the sidewalk panels and, cut the root systems that run underneath. If we were to just do that, then we're at that point compromising structural integrity of the tree, and, we pose a risk of it falling later on. So, you might ask yourself, why don't we just remove the sidewalk panels and replace it and move on? Well, we don't wanna create future, you know, we have to protect the interest of the city prevent future hazards as well.

So as you can see from this picture, this is just approximately three or four sidewalk panels that we removed. And you have all those, structurally binding, root systems going under the sidewalk. If we remove that, then you pose a risk of harming, of the tree falling. So so overall, our goal is to make Marietta safer by investing in every step and building a better path forward for our community. So this is just a collage of different pictures of, some repairs that we're going be doing around the along this corridor.

And finally, some other municipal services updates. So Fire Station one improvements is about 40% complete. We've got a lot of concrete going down. We're just about ready to do the official sewer turnover to where the station will officially be on the sewer system instead of septic. So that'll happen in about the next two weeks where we do that official turnover. The Los Alamos Hills turf replacement project was complete about a month ago, so that is open to the public and being utilized by the by the sports in the area. And finally, we have our Alderwood Pickleball Court ribbon cutting ceremony on April 30, So we hope to see you guys there. And if you have any other questions, I'm available to answer.

Are there any questions from council? Seeing none. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much.

City council members. So as always, we have a lot going on in Murrieta. This weekend, we had our long awaited firefighters barbecue, which went over great with the community. This family pictured up here in the top left corner, they told me they've lived here for twenty seven years and never knew this existed. So, you know, there's still people we haven't reached.

They were absolutely mesmerized and so impressed by everything that was going on. So good job to everyone that was involved in that. Upcoming events include our Memorial Day ceremony on May 25, then we have our Father's Day car show coming up at Cal Oaks Sports Park on Father's Day, June 20, and, of course, our thirty fifth annual birthday bash, which will be a spectacle course. Make sure that you reserve your Saturday nights this summer for our concerts in the park series. You can see all the bands up here.

It'll be a lot of fun almost every Saturday in July and August. Bring bring a blanket, bring a picnic, or come and enjoy the vendors that'll be on-site. Lots of fun. And, don't forget to stay in touch. We have our More Murrieta, monthly newsletter that you can sign up on for on our website. And then we also have our magazine out where you can read everything, that's happening in the city, and you can learn more about our programs, classes, and and everything from election to to parks. So please come connect with us, and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Thank you.

Thank you, mister May Pro Tem. That concludes my announcements.

Alright. Moving on to governing body commission committee board reports and announcements. Today, we will start with council member Warren.

Thank you, mayor Pro Tem. We start out with our governing body reports. I attended the r c RCTC commission meeting, which happened to be the next day after our last council meeting, all the way in Cathedral City. It was a very long drive. It was a very good, meeting, but nothing to report out. I also attended the executive board meeting of the RTA and the commission meeting last Thursday. Again, nothing to report out. My governing body announcements there was a lot going on the last couple of weeks. I had the honor of, along with mayor pro tem, to attend the Marietta PD swearing and and promotion ceremony, always an exciting day for our police department. I had my quarterly meeting with Scott Egg and Janian regarding economic development updates.

Attended the networking breakfast of the Marietta Wildemore Chamber, and I had a meeting along with council members DeForest for Marietta Valley Unified School District on their facilities, master plan, and bond feasibility study update. I had the honor, along with my colleagues, to attend the every fifteen minutes presentation hosted by Marietta Valley High School outstanding job by the department and both departments fire, AMR, the mortuary that came in and helped. If that doesn't grab your attention, students, nothing will. Drinking and driving or driving under influence, just a bad decision. So don't do it because the consequences can be deadly.

I also attended a very special Michelle's place, Hope of Light, representing the city and Canyon Lake from Michelle's place. I had the honor of doing a luminary in honor of my husband. And it was a beautiful evening. The sunset was gorgeous, and the luminaries just it was just the most amazing evening. And I was glad to represent the city at that. And again, at that barbecue, what a day. What a fun day. What a fun time. Family fun. Everything was fabulous. There wasn't one thing that I could say that I would change because it was outstanding. So thank you, firefighters and the department, for putting putting on another fabulous barbecue. And that concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member DeForest.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. It's nice to see the seats filled tonight. I love to see all the students here as well. So welcome, students. I'm really glad that whatever class is making you come to a city council meeting is And hopefully, it'll be as exciting, and you won't be sleeping there in the back.

So welcome, students. And I forgot to turn in some pictures and some verbiage to our wonderful city clerk, but I'm just going to ad lib. One of the things I'd just like to highlight that I don't think that Councilwoman Warren highlighted enough was our innovation center opening. So I think that you did everything else. Wonderful.

Just want to say hats off to our city for opening up our innovation center. And hopefully, that will be a lot of biotech startups in the near future. It is absolutely beautiful if you get a chance to go check it out. Also, it's really the first wet lab that's actually community owned, if you really want to look at it like that. So the only other wet lab is at UCR. And so this will be a game changer for biotechnology. Also, a big shout out, which was really nice to see. Martha Coleman was given a shout out that day. Yes, well, that was yesterday, wasn't it? Yesterday.

But also, our fire department did an amazing job getting everybody to the finish line. So I just want to thank city staff for doing such an amazing job, getting that done on time. And it is just remarkable to look at it as our old city hall. We've come a long way, but now it's just as beautiful. I can't wait till we have coffee at the city back there.

The room is great. So thank you to Patrick Ellis. I know he had many sleepless nights as well. So that's all I'm going to say for today. But if you want to get a hold of me, like a lot of you are getting hold of me for various different community issues or problems, you can reach me at my website here or my email address and or call or text me. That is my personal cell number. And if you wanna get ahold of me sooner, shoot me a text. So thank you all, and I appreciate. Mayor Plattem, back to you.

Thank you, Councilwoman DeForest and Councilmember Stone.

Thank you, Mayor Potem. I attended the Western Riverside Council of Governments W. R. COG. We had a six and a half hour closed session. It was lengthy and I think that Mayor Pro Tem Ron Holiday had reported out in the last council meeting. So thank you so much for that. And then I attended another Western Riverside Council of Governments, which is my monthly meeting. I represent the city on W. Arcogh.

And I just have to give a shout out to our chairwoman Brenda Denstadt as well. She's doing a great job. Every year we have a general assembly where all the cities in Western Riverside come together and we vote on our budget. And it's a great way of networking with other cities, government officials, and it happens every year. And in the political industry, it's it's really, really big deal.

And they love to recognize organizations and community members that go above the board of advocating for quality of life. And I nominated Marietta Rotary for their Community Service Award. And it was a very tough competition. And they won. There'll be close to 1,000 people that will be there to recognize their efforts.

And our keynote speaker is Tony Hawk. Kind of gives you an idea of really how big this event is. But I really want to thank Marietta Rotary for all that you do. There is a plethora of things, but I'm just going to name a few. If you know about our field of honor, every single year, they dedicate a week to our veterans public safety, and they partner with the Unified School District to bring middle school kids and to educate them about veterans and public safety and and what does it mean to be an American.

We celebrate our marine birthday. They have a candlelight ceremony in their homes that are read from those that have passed from their family members. One of my very favorite events that they do is it's a Valentine's dance for mentally disabled adults. And they've been doing that, I think, the last decade, if not more. And it's just amazing.

And again, they were spearheaded a cleanup for our city. These are just a few things that Marietta Rotary does for our community. And again, I just want to thank you as a former Harris fellow. Thank you so much for all that you do. You are a small group, but boy, you are strong and mighty.

And when you put your mind to it, you accomplish every everything that you've set your goals to do. So thank you. We always recognize public safety for quality of life, but it's organizations like Marriott or Rotary that also bring quality of life to our community. So congratulations. In addition, the Southwest Elective Collaborative, as you know, has been meeting for the last two years.

And our goal and our objective is to figure out a way to mitigate traffic congestion. In the last two years, we've done our due diligence. And I've spoken many times about synchronizing all the lights here in Southwest Riverside County. For example, if we can have the residents from Menifee travel through our cities to the mall in Temecula to help alleviate the traffic congestion on the freeway, but they also have to be able to get through the red lights. And the collaborative came up with the synchronization of of all of our lights to do a study, and W.

R. Cog will be the lead on that study. It will not cost the state of California anything. We will pay that through our joint TUMP funds. You may not know this, but adjacent to our freeways, Caltrans has control over those lights in our intersections.

And having them at the table with us has been very, very challenging. And I want to give kudos to Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez who brought forward AB2307, which would force Caltrans to be at the table to work with all six cities, the county and RTA, RCTC, again all six cities, and it passed through the Transportation Committee. It's on to the Appropriations Committee, which it will pass because it's not going to cost the state of California any money to do this study. It'll go to the assembly and then go to the Senate, and we predict that it will pass. And it'll be one small solution to dealing with our traffic congestion.

I am out of time, but if the city clerk will show all the meetings that I have attended, you can go to our website and view all the meetings that I have attended. There's a lot more for me to share with you, but unfortunately, I'm out of time. So thank you so much, mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, council member Stone. For myself, on the report side, I attended the Sanistop, subcommittee meeting, right after last council meeting. Yes. It's we have to start this early to get Santa stops fully organized to happen in the first couple weeks of December. Always things to fix to make it a little bit better, but it's it's one of the beloved programs, throughout the city. So we're getting a head start on that. And then for my announcements, I attended a lot of the same things that are already mentioned. A couple I I wanna highlight that I attended. On April 9, I attended the Southwest Justice Center Youth Court. I've been to that twice now.

It's just an amazing program to see teenage kids act as defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, juries, in judging their peers. And the and the defendants who've made some silly mistakes are held accountable but in a different sense. So one of the things that they have to do, regardless of what level of accountability that the jury finds them on, they have to serve on a jury for a future case. So they get to be on the other side of the table as well. And this program has really turned lives around.

It's been going on for quite a while. Matt Mezingo, who's a retired police officer at the Meredith Police Department, took that on, and and even in retirement, he's still running it. And so if I would encourage everyone. It's the I believe it's the second Thursday of each month out of the Southwest Jeff Center on All Road. It's a couple hours. It's very worthwhile to go out and see see what happens there. The judge donates their time. It's an actual sitting court judge that sits there. Just it's a great program. I also attended for our mayor, the April student of the month, another one of my favorite programs I can't get enough of.

And the grand reopening of the newly remodeled Myriad Innovation Center. I don't know what I was expecting. I do know what I was expecting. I wasn't expecting a lot of people to be there, and I was so thrilled to see how many people do you think, Patrick? I have no idea was the answer. What do you think? Two hundred? Two two hundred or more people came to that opening, and everybody loved the remodeling work that was done. It was just a phenomenal afternoon yesterday. So thank you for everyone involved, Martha, Patrick, and and a lot of staff for sure, including the fire department who made sure we all stayed safe.

And that's the end of my governing body announcements. On to public comments. Public comments, for each speaker are limited to three minutes. They are on non agenda items. And madam city clerk, do we have any public comments?

Thank you, mayor pro tem. Kirk Effinger.

You need you need a team? Welcome, Kirk. Hey. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, mayor pro tem, members of the city council, and city staff. I am Kirk Effinger, and I have the honor of serving as the president of the Rotary Club of Murrieta this year. And I am here to bestow on this council and staff a memory book from, our seventeenth annual field of honor, in recognition of our partnership with the city, and I would like to present those to you now. Cool. Let's go down and take a picture.

Come on, guys.

Thank you for that. That is exciting. Alright. Madam city clerk.

Connie McConnell.

Good evening, afternoon, whatever it is. First I'm going to speak for the Historic Society and the museum. We had a booth at the Murrieta Fireman's Barbecue, Cindy saw me there, and also along with that is a booth for the alumni of the Murrieta Elementary School, of which I am a member. But anyway, we all we had a very nice turnout, and people are interested in our history, and that and that's a good thing to know. And I also want to say that the Historic Society will be participating in Lake Elsinore this weekend on Saturday for their history days.

So then moving on, I have a couple of things to say about the upcoming market in May, the first one, the seventh. Number one, we will be having our student art walk again, which was not ours, but the Unified School District invites the children to participate. And last year, we had 200 entrants. I don't know how many they have this year. The schools take care of the whole thing. It's done at the alleyway. They set up the boards, and they display all of the art. And it can be drawings. It can be paintings. It can be sculptures.

It can be ceramics. And then they're all judged, then they give away the prizes. So that always draws a lot of families. So it's going to be a busy night on May 7. However, also on May 7, thank you to Kristen Crane, We are having our first free line dancing lessons.

Right. So

that's gonna be very exciting, and I want to tell you, Kristen, that we already they just they just she got me in touch with the person that we got this going for. So they shared it last night, and we already had over 290 shares since that time on Facebook and over 30,000 views. Wow. So it's going to be busy. It'll be a lot of fun. So So I'm inviting everybody to come down. Bring your boots. It's on the dirt, and you can do line dancing lessons. So that's about it.

Thank you.

Oh, wait. No. I do have something else. I'm sorry. I've got thirty nine seconds. I need to talk to Brian Ambrose about mulch for the kids at the cultivating inclusion garden. So don't remind me to do that. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Julie Paul.

Welcome, Julie. At the risk of overstaying my welcome, I would like to, share with you. Council member Stone, if the guest speaker speaks to the caliber of an event, I have an event for you. It's the SRCAR City Manager's Breakfast, which will be headlined by mister Clifton, one of five. I like to think of it as speed dating meets state of the city. So it's it's very exciting. We'll have our five

Love that.

Five regional city managers will make making presentations on what's hot and happening, and a new element this year is Lou Monville of the senior vice president with the Building Industry Association, and myself will be hosting a housing insights panel with our five city managers, and I know that is an issue that is something that you all wrestle with daily, so hopefully it will be an enlightening time to discuss. So the public is welcome to join us and you can get tickets on our website which is www.srcar.org and you can buy tickets. It's May 7 at 8AM at Wilson Creek, and it's always a lot of fun. So hope to see all our friends out there. Thank you.

Thank you.

Philip O'Reilly.

Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, mayor pro tem, council members, and city staff. I'd like to take a moment to speak about the big picture, how things like timing, planning cycles, and prioritization intersect, specifically as it relates to the Jefferson Avenue widening project in West Murrieta. As I spent time studying the city's budget structure and capital planning processes, I understand that Murrieta operates on a two year budget cycle with updates and budget reviews being planned and executed throughout that cycle.

I also understand that we are currently in a critical window where the project is both nearing completion on Wildemire's private development efforts to connect Palomar to Jefferson, yet we've only just begun to scratch the surface on our end of this border redefinition project. Currently, the capital improvements page for this project reads, design currently on hold for future developments in the city of Wildemire. Well, they've poured the curb already and grading is completed, yet I've heard no word of design being executed much less funded. As I understand it, May is a time for redefinition in these overarching plans with things like budget views and updates looming on the horizon. Because of this, we stand at the crossroads.

What gets properly resourced now becomes what actually gets built, maintained, and improved imminently. Further delay will surely impact this project negatively. And by our accounts as thirty year residents, this project is already twenty years delayed as is. I'd like to reaffirm that Jefferson Avenue is one of the more important corridors in our with multiple times throughout the recent meetings, officials have been labeling it as an arterial route, a highway, a gateway. In fact, it is still labeled in the general plan as a recreation of Highway 390 Five's corridor.

It serves not only as an upgraded transportation route, but as a key economic spine through our city connecting businesses, residents, and regional traffic flow. I'm sure it's redundant to say, but this is two miles from where we stand currently. It's that way. Even further, this project has potential to stand as a gateway monument for our city, something that multiple times has been stated by our council members as missing and necessary. This carries a level of volume and importance that, in my view, is a directly affected and deeply informed resident is not fully matched yet by current city hall efforts.

I hope to shine light on this not to shame or prod, but to champion this much needed change that has been long time coming. What I am advocating for tonight is simple and practical that the Jefferson Avenue widening project receives as soon as possible the level of attention, prioritization, and funding necessary to match its real world impact on the city. Any lack of priority not only undermines regional infrastructure, but it also is a direct threat to pedestrian traffic safety. I'll go one step further. If a Bridge On Hayes has received an emergency designation and attention, a road that is almost solely used for local residential traffic in a far less densely populated part of our city, why can't this project receive that same designation?

By any and all metrics, this project is far more crucial and has the potential for far more hazardous conditions if left untouched. So I ask you this, is it not emergent? I also want to emphasize that this is not just about traffic or convenience. This is about economic development, identity and history, public safety, monuments and city branding, and maintaining the standard of infrastructure expected in a rapidly growing city like Maria. I would respectfully ask that the city council and staff give this project the focus consideration it deserves as you move through future budget and CIP decision. Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your continued work on behalf of our community. I'm readily available if there's any opportunity to discuss this project further. Thank you and have a beautiful day.

Thank you. No. Just just you.

You know what? Just for that, I think I'm gonna attend that speed dating with city managers. Thank

you. I wanted to follow-up on one of the items from last meeting and add some additional information with the discussion of the proposed ad hoc subcommittee for the downtown specific plan. When I was a little boy, my dad had paper clipped to the sun visor of his 1964 Ford Econoline man. What today would be a meme said, sometimes the have and have nots can can be placed traced back to the did and did nots. One of the comments that was made during the discussion was in Old Town, why we don't have development was the building being constructed now on the Southeast Corner notwithstanding that we haven't had a new building built in Old Town since 2004.

Well, we could have had roughly a 160 timeshare units had my client Wyndham timeshare been able to move forward on development plan zero seventeen fifteen ninety three, but we're waiting for the city to clean out line f, which would greatly reduce a lot of the flooding from downtown, which is one of the constraints that that leads to the lack of development. I also wanted to talk about a couple of other things because we can't just look at that discussion in a vacuum is there's much broader picture as to why development is not occurring in downtown. Of course, connection fees, sewer and water connection fees to other special districts, water districts that the city has no control over is one of those. It's a severe cost. But previously, the city did have incentives for developers.

We had a revolving loan fund to developers for connection fees, and we even had adopted a parking cash in lieu fee for developers that didn't wanna provide cop parking on their property for their projects, but they would be able to pay cash in lieu for a proposed city parking lot. Also, would point out based on my research, in 2022, there was an economic there was a subcommittee, Myriad Economic Rehabilitation Subcommittee, and and it was focused on revitalization and infrastructure. According to my research, the members of the council in the time then were on that were were Lori and Christy White. There was also a water and sewer infrastructure subcommittee that mayor Ingram and then mayor pro tem Lisa DeForest served on. And I and I will note, and and this is really goes to the point of where these ad hocs and and utilizing city resources and and residents and things.

The MSR, the municipal services review, if I may finish, mayor pro tem, briefly. Briefly. Thank you. As a result of that that outcome was a municipal services review, which led to a wheeling agreement between Western Municipal Water District and, Rancho California Water District. And I will note that that originated with me in the development advisory group much to the opposition of then assistant city manager Ivan Holler and economic development director Bruce Coleman.

My point being is when the city comes out to professionals and experts in the field and utilize us along with city staff, we can work together to do these to do these things and find find solutions, and it doesn't necessarily have to be an ad hoc subcommittee. Thank you for the extra time.

Thank you.

That concludes public comments.

Thank you, madam city clerk. Next on the agenda is the consent calendar. Do we have comments on that ahead of time, or are we pulling that one? Mayor pro tem, if

I could have, you got a couple items I could highlight.

Gonna turn it over

to the pleasure of you and the council. Just a few things. Firstly, I wanna point out item number three, which is the restatement of the comprehensive pay schedule. This is something that we do routinely as we make certain adjustments to positions. In this case, we're really focused on improving as much as we can the level of service within our development related divisions.

And so we're doing a couple of things. One, we're bringing many of our engineering positions up to market. They've been under market and we've had problems recruiting for open positions there. And then we're also creating a handful of positions that will really be designed to help guide people through the development process. Most importantly, we're aiming to cover all of these costs by a handful of creative revenue strategies.

One of those would be to charge basically a fee for overseeing certain capital projects, giving us access to some of the restricted funds that are usually designated for capital projects, shifting emphasis of resources away from some of our external contracts and to our internal resources, and then also creating a voluntary expedited fee for people that should want such a thing as part of our development review process. So our team has been working very hard leaning into the service ethos and some of the SWOT analysis and lean changes that we've talked about in the past. But they've been really clear that we also need resources in order to be successful. Almost all of the new positions or other changes we've made in the organization we have paid for by shifting other costs. And the same is true here.

So just want to point out the great work of Scott, our department heads, and all of the team in planning, engineering, and building safety for helping us come up with these kinds of solutions. Next I want to just quickly plug item number five which is a real property agreement with cultivating inclusion for the produce for people community garden at Altar Murrieta Sports Park. We've needed some help in that area to manage our community garden for a number of years. Most recently a partnership with Cultivating Inclusion has delivered a lot of value. Firstly, it helps us maintain a community asset that we don't have the resources to maintain.

Secondly, it provides opportunities for youth and adults with special needs to come in and be part of not only the community but helping to grow produce and really kind of get their hands dirty and have some fun activities. And then thirdly, the produce is donated to local food banks. So it's just value across the board that I think is outstanding. I wanted to point that out. It's on your agenda tonight for item number five. And then if you don't mind, we had a comment about item number seven, which is our MOU with Western Water. And before you may decide to pull that and talk about it further, assistant city manager Kristen Crane could give a brief explanation, and then you could decide whether to do anything with that report or to hear it as part of the consent agenda.

Thank you, city manager Clifton. And first, we didn't really get a chance to celebrate and appreciate Western for their contribution. Our staff has been working with them for probably over a year to bring that all together, and we are so appreciative because it's making a significant contribution to our overall library fundraising goal, which is in the neighborhood of $400,000 or so. So we, by way of our working with Western, they're pooling together funding sources from a variety of different areas. It's like cobbling things together.

So I did confirm with Michelle as she was leaving, our staff person that we've been working with, that the numbers are correct in the agenda report, but it is a little bit confusing. And so just to clarify, dollars 100,000 is correct. That Western has helped facilitate $100,000 $50,000 of that is money that's coming through Western from Rancho and Elsinore Valley. They are retail agencies agencies under the Western umbrella, but the money, the check, is actually coming from Western. And then also 35,000 of that is money that Western is helping us access through Metropolitan Water Districts.

So that gets us to $85,000 And then Western is also going to be matching $15,000 toward the turf rebate. On top of Metropolitan, there's another $50,000 coming. So all total, we're in plus $130,000 related to water related money that's coming toward our library project, which is a very substantial amount toward our overall $400 ish that we've raised.

Hope So that report that says 85 is accurate?

It's correct.

Yes. But there's other money that's coming in.

There's other money that's coming in, and we're very appreciative of Western. And it's a little complicated, but it's correct.

Thank you for that clarification. Are there any requests from city council to pull any consent items for discussion?

Yes. Miss mayor Proton would like to pull item five and item seven, please.

K. Any others? Seeing none. Madam city clerk, are there any members of the public that wish to comment on?

Seeing none.

Thank you. So I call for a motion and a second for the rest of the consent calendar. I have a motion from council member Warren and a second by councilwoman DeForest. Please vote. That passes four zero. Alright. If we could take item number five first.

Thank you, mayor pro tem. The reason why I pulled item five was to piggyback on our city manager about cultivating inclusions. You know, it's really important that we government partners with the private sector, public private partnership. And this is a prime example of how a private public partnership is very, very successful. I nominated cultivating inclusions last year for the community service award from W.

R. Hogg, and they also won. But more importantly, as our city manager discussed, is it's a way for us to serve our our mentally disabled adults in learning a trade. And I want you to know that the many times that I've been at the garden to see these adults thrive is so important in in learning a trade, a craft. And I also wanna thank all the volunteers, and it is 100% volunteers that teach, plant, and pick.

I wanna thank Phil Polly from Eastern Municipal Water District that I called because they needed some upgrades for their garden, and director Phil Polly stepped up to the plate and has really helped cultivating inclusions along with Marietta Rotary. Our district governor Judy Zulfacar brought in Marietta Rotary to to do a grant for cultivating inclusions, and they're in the process of of that grant. So when you have your entire So and the resources that are available to help a project like this, it is absolutely remarkable. And I just wanted to give you a little bit of background about cultivating inclusions and and the quality of life that they give back to our community. Thank you, mister mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, councilmember Sonya. I echo those those comments. I mentioned two programs in my governing body announcements that I'm a a big fan of, and and this is a third one that I'm a huge fan of what they do for the city. City has no shortage of great programs, and this is just one of them. So thank you for highlighting that. Number seven, councilmember Stone.

Thank you. Again, I wanna thank, Western Municipal Water District, especially director Brenda Denstadt for her unwavering support in collaborating with all our other water agencies, for the Carol Carson Garden versus at the Marietta Library. Again, we did a fundraising campaign. We reached out to the private sector to help us expand our children's area of of the library. And it it was a community effort.

Again, a public private partnership in expanding quality of life. I am not I'm technically challenged. I think I've shared this many times. I don't even have an Amazon account, believe it or not. And it's very exciting for me to be able to go to our public library when our children and our seniors, our adults have other ways of downloading, finding information, reading books, but our library is the hub of our community And it's very exciting to see the public private partnership again come to fruition about quality life in Marietta.

And I really want to thank Western Municipal Water District, especially Brenda Denstadt for for her efforts in advocating for our library. So thank you so much, mayor Pro Tem.

Certainly. And since those two items are pulled, we're gonna have to vote on those separately. So we're gonna take item five first, looking for a motion and a second. Motion by council member DeForest, second by council member Warren. Please vote.

Passes four zero and then item seven a motion and a second please same mover and seconder thank you please vote you guys are quick all right so the counts the consent calendar is done on to public hearings public hearings to form community facilities district number twenty twenty six dash one gerson ranch facility miraDan to annex into community facilities district number twenty twenty five dash two, maintenance services, and community facilities district number twenty twenty five dash s safety services. Mister Garkomo.

Good evening. Major pro tem Holiday, council members, city staff, and members of the public. For this item at the request of the property owner and due to the complexity of the proposed CFD twenty twenty six-one, staff recommends the city council open the public hearing at this meeting for the formation of CFD Number 2020 Six-one and annexation to CFD twenty twenty five-two for maintenance services and annexation to CFD twenty twenty five dash as safety services and continue the public hearing to the 06/02/2026 city council meeting.

Okay. I missed a section. Was there any council members that need to recuse themselves from this item

thank you mayor pro tem I'm recusing myself from item 15 as I own property within a thousand foot of the project thank you

okay so you have to step away okay cool alright so staff recommendation to continue is there any council member questions I see none in the queue and open the public hearing City clerk, is there any public testimony?

Seeing none, mister mayor, mayor pro tem.

Okay. We're gonna leave the public hearing open. Is there any council deliberation? If not, then I'll call for a motion in the second to continue the public hearing to a date certain of 06/02/2026. And I've got a motion by council member Warren and a second by myself.

Please vote. That carries three with one abstention. Moving on to item number 16 is financing for Jeff's need to report apartments affordable housing project. Are there any council members need to recuse themselves from this item?

And may I pro tem for the record, the last item she recused herself, it was not an abstention.

Oh, sorry. Thank you. Welcome, gentlemen.

Good evening, mayor Pro Tem, council members. I'm Carl Steele, city planner. With me tonight here as well is Jared Remaya, deputy director. And we also have Travis Cooper with California Municipal Finance Authority in the audience. So tonight, we're here this evening on a public hearing on financing for the Jefferson eighty two apartments project. Here's the project site for reference. If you're not familiar with the site, it is between Ivy And Myriad Hot Springs Road right next to J and W lumber across from the new Max development. It's two acre parcel zone multifamily four. It's a housing site. It's a site that the city used to own.

It's been in our housing element for multiple housing element cycles. We've been trying to build affordable housing on it for two decades. So pretty big project for the city. Just to give you an idea of the site plan, it's a U shaped building, four stories, kind of tied on a two acre parcel. This is the approved site plan.

Currently, the building permit and grading permit are both in process at the development services counter and this gives you an idea of the elevations on the site to fit 82 apartments on two acres. So the project applicant submitted an application to finance the project with the the California Municipal Finance Authority. The CMFA is a joint powers authority formed with over 350 municipalities in California. We are a member. They assist local governments, nonprofit organizations, and businesses with the issuance both taxable and tax exempt bonds that are aimed at improving the standard of living in California.

CMFA has also assisted with other financing for recently constructed apartments here in the city. The project tonight is proposed to use the tax equity and fiscal act which is TEPRA which is a federal law which is part of the federal IRS code and a method of tax tax exempt financing. So the applicant has asked CMFA to provide $20,000,000 in bond financing for the project. The debt will be issued by CMFA and is the sole responsibility of the borrower. The city will have no financial or legal obligations or responsibilities with regard to the repayment of the debt.

All the financing documents carry disclaimers that the loan is not an obligation of the city. City will also bear no cost in issuance of the proposed debt. The borrower is responsible for repayment pursuant to the agreement. And typically, this bond finance financing is with a large national bank. On the other ones we did last year, it was Citibank or Bank of America or Wells Fargo.

That typically picks up the bonds. So pursuant to TEFRA, this requires that we have a public hearing and it be held by the governing body of the jurisdiction where the project is located which is us. So here we are and we are asked to approve the governing body approve the financing for CMFA pursuant to the JPA. So it's recommended the City Council conduct a public hearing under TEFRA pursuant to the IRS code and adopt the resolution approving authorizing directing the issuance of the exempt facility bonds by CMFA. Such adoption is solely for the purposes of satisfying the requirements of TEFRA, the IRS code, the California government code. This completes my presentation on this one.

Thank you. Are there any council member questions?

Yes.

Okay. Council member Stone was in and then out.

I don't know what happened.

That was my bad.

Thank you. Team, was this approved through our planning commission?

No. This project was approved administratively by staff a year ago in 2025.

And so this did not go to our planning commission. It has not come before us and yet you want us to approve their financing?

Correct.

It does not make sense to me, the protocol, the transparency. I want you to know that I'm not happy about this at all. I'm not happy that I have to vote for this. As you know that local control is being taken away from us every single day by state of California, and this is one area that we don't have a choice. We don't have a seat at the table with the state of California.

And if the residents who are unhappy about the high density affordable housing, you have to understand that the state has taken away the local control. We have no choice but to vote for this and I want you to be aware of the lack of transparency that the state of California has when it comes to local control. And you, the residents, are the ones that can make the difference in June and in November. Thank you, mister mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, congressman Swan. Councilwoman DeForest.

Thank you, mayor Pro Tem. Just a couple questions for transparency for, I think, for constituents and for everyone. Are we required as a city to approve this?

I would I would say yes. We're a member of the joint powers authority as more than half the cities and counties in the state are. And this is just a financing mechanism for them to get across the hump with all their financing. They already have state tax credits. We agreed to as being part of the joint powers authority to allow people to process this type of financing. This agency doesn't only finance housing projects. They finance hospitals, they finance schools, they finance universities. So I wouldn't want to ruin our relationship with the CMFA because the city might want them to finance something else like a hospital or a university or a school. Right? So, yes, we we should be approving the financing that's before us.

Mayor Pro Tem, could I just add real quick? We're not the question before the council isn't whether to approve the bonds or not. It's whether they qualify under the IRS code as tax exempt. And under the law, this project would qualify. So it's not that you're being asked to approve funding or not.

Thank you for that clarification.

You're welcome.

Thank you, city attorney, for that clarification, I think for the constituents listening to this as well. So the city itself is not obligated to this debt. I know you mentioned that. I just want to make you clarify that one more time.

I appreciate that, council member DeForest. That's correct. We as we talked about last year, we did three of these last year. The city is not responsible for any of the debt on this. It's solely for the borrower.

Thank you for that. And I would just like to say that it is nice to see that our design standards were at work on this project and that there is a definite improvement of the aesthetics of this property. So that makes me happy moving forward that our design standards are actually being utilized and that although we do seem to have a lot of these coming to our city, at least it's going to have a design standard that is within our scope and what we've chosen.

Yeah. Councilmember DeForest, would give a shout out to local developer Dan Lee who bought this property from the city and lined up the Merca investments who are the developer who are building the project and they did work with us well on the design and I feel like staff and the applicant did a great job on it.

So one other question and this is coming up maybe it's part of this, but it's not directly related. A lot of constituents are writing saying there's not enough parking. And so I know that this has been approved, and we can't hash any of those things out at this point. But could you just elaborate on some of the standards that are, moving forward? I don't mean to put you on the spot.

That's a lot of stuff. Council councilmember DeForest, that's another thing that our hands are kinda tied. So typically these these affordable projects, they utilize what's called the density bonus law. And the state has put specific parking standards in the density bonus law that are the law of the land for every jurisdiction, and we can't require any more parking than what the density bonus law requires our normal development code requires more parking but we can't require more so they're allowed to do what the density bonus law allows for them to do which is less than we would normally require

Alright. Thank you so very much. I know that we're seeing a lot of the density issue, the parking issue along Adams. I'm getting lots of complaints from the residents in that area as well as up and down our streets where the apartments are exploding out into our road system. So I appreciate you being transparent and elaborative on those things. And And I thank you for answering my questions. And I didn't mean to put you on the stupot when we're talking about financing.

It's okay. Thank you. Councilmember DeForest, Councilmember Warren.

Yes. Thank you. I concur with my colleagues. And I just want to reiterate one more time that we are not voting on this project. This project is going forward, state mandated, unfunded, but we are voting on the financing only, and we have no decision to make whether this goes in or doesn't go in. I just want that to be clear and transparent.

That's correct council member Warren and I I didn't appreciate the there were some press coverage last year when we did these items I didn't think was fair and so I wanted to say that. Yes. All we're doing is the financing. The the staff has already approved the project. It's mandated. We have to approve the project. The the grading and building permits are already in process, so the project is moving forward.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Could

I jump in with one thing?

Sure.

And if we don't approve the project, what is the fines per door on a project like this?

It's it's a lot. It's in this the 5 figures per door. It depends on which law is applied, but it's not a good idea to not approve it. That's correct.

Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, mayor Fotem.

Thank you. Yes. Just to put the icing on the cake, we're not approving the project. Project has this before us, which we have another one right after this, so that's gonna cover both things. But this is just to, as you said, a TEFRA hearing. And I appreciate the the city attorney's clarification. I was aware of that, but it's it's important to get that out to the public. We're not even approving the bonds. We're basically saying that this complies with the TEFRA act. That's all we're saying.

And the other mayor Proton, other thing we're kinda doing is allowing the public to have this venue to say something here in the city rather than have it in some other location outside the city. We're giving that sort of transparency.

That's a good point. How long have TEFRA bonds, TEFRA hearings been around?

I I know that the CMFA has been issuing them since 2004, I believe.

Yeah. 2004. Yeah. I know they've been around a long time, long before the state housing laws were put in place and all that stuff. And and back then, it was fairly common practice. It wasn't a controversial thing. Now that they're tied to projects that cities may or may not have agreed with has made them more controversial, but the TEFRA act in and of itself was never controversial. Is that correct?

It's a it's a Reagan era federal law that's been around for a long time. That's correct.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from council? Seeing none in the queue, I will will turn off my mic. I will open the public hearing. City clerk, is there any public testimony? Seeing none. K. And any council deliberation? K. I'm gonna close the public hearing, call for a motion and a second. I will move. I need a second. Okay. So the motion was made by myself and second by council member Warren.

I understand all of the nuances that go into that vote and, why we would not maybe not want to because of the periphery, but as what we're voting on is just that it complies with the TEFRA act and that's all we're really saying so please vote

motion carries unanimously four zero

thank you On to item number 17.

This may sound really familiar. So instead of doing them three hearings in a row last year, we're doing them both tonight. Right? I don't know if you like either one better. Maybe you can tell me after the hearing. Get this one loaded up.

K. Before we get into that, are there any council members that need to recuse themselves from this side? Seeing none. Slide show is not working.

I can just start talking. So we're here tonight on another public hearing item, financing for the Vista Heights Apartments project. Here's the project site for reference. This one is not too far away from the other one. This one is over near the Terraces project that's currently under construction on Old Sparkman, New Monroe at Walsh Center, and this this project site is between Vista Marietta and Walsh Center on about an eight acre site up there.

That area is for folks who don't know, the area is all zoned office up there, but we have an overlay called the transit oriented development overlay that allows for multifamily housing up there. This is also a housing site that's in our housing element. The proposed project was approved about a year ago. It's 214 affordable housing units. This is the layout of the site. It's three buildings as you can see here. Connections to both Walsh Center the working

eight.

Project applicants working submit an application to finance the project with California Municipal Finance Authority. As we talked about, their JPA, we are a member. They assist local governments and nonprofit organizations with issuance of both tax full and tax exempt bonds. They're aimed at improving the standard of living in California. As I said, they also financed other projects in the city, including other apartment projects.

Project tonight is proposed to use the tax equity and fiscal responsibility act, TEFRA, which is part of the federal IRS code. This applicant has asked for $42,000,000 in bond financing for this project. As we stated before, the debt is to be issued by the CMFA and will be the sole responsibility of the borrower, and the city will have no financial or legal obligations or responsibilities with regard to the repayment of the debt. All financing documents carry disclaimers. The loan is not an obligation to the city. The city will also bear no cost in issuance of the proposed debt. The borrower is responsible for repayment pursuant to the agreement. Typically, the bond financing is with a large national bank, like I said before, somebody like Citibank, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo. So pursuant to TEFRA, this requires public hearing to be held by the governing body of jurisdiction where the project is located. That's why we're doing it.

And And the governing body approved the proposed financing for CMFA pursuant to the JPA. So it's recommended the city council conduct a public hearing under TEFRA pursuant to the IRS code and adopt a resolution approving authorizing and directing the issuance of exempt facility bonds by the CMFA. Such adoption adoption is solely for the purposes of satisfying the requirements of TEFRA, the IRS code, the California government code. That completes my presentation.

You could have said ditto.

Gotta give them their time.

Thank you. Are there any council member questions relating to TEPRA? Seeing none, I will open the public hearing. City clerk, is there any public testimony?

Seeing none.

Okay. Any council deliberation? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing, call for a motion and a second. I have a motion by myself and a second by council member DeForest. Please vote.

Motion carries, four zero.

No comment. I'm sure you did. Moving on to item number 18, Introduction of an ordinance authorizing a development agreement between the City Of Merida and French Valley crossings. Are there any council members who would like to recuse themselves from this item? Seeing none, staff, may we have a report?

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and council. I want to just give a shout out. I see a lot of high school students in the audience. If they want one of the hardest working jobs, come back after college and take us a look. We have engineering, planning, fire, PD, CSD, finance. We got an amazing but you have to wanna work hard to work in government. Yes. But I see a lot of I see the best of the best from our town. I would love to see them return after college if they can. So that's just a selfish plug for me. And I did work as an intern at the California legislature, and I agree with everything you guys ever said about justifying your local control. That's a big deal. I'm very proud to serve the city council. Thank you. All right.

I'm not David. That's my boss, David Chantharone, who's on vacation. I am joined here tonight by Scott Agaginian, our deputy manager, and also Erin Rentamaki, who has worked on both of these projects that we'll present to you. So I'm just going to go through some slides. And we have our applicant in the audience as well.

So if you look at this image, the area in purple that's within the star, if you will, is one property that we're going to talk about which is about 10 acres in size. This is an older photo but you can see Winchester Road at the bottom. And what was a dirt road is Clinton Keith. That's now paved. But I'll get more concise here. The original project was approved but it expired. And we went through a review with the applicant and got that reapproved. They're ending their term with their extensions. You only get so much time to implement your project and they're coming to the end

of that. This

is just an image of the site plan, more or less the landscape plan. You're seeing a bevy of different retail uses. You'll notice Clincouth Road at the top and Winchester Road on the side of the image. What's a development agreement? This is something authorized by the state and our development code.

It's a contract between our city and a developer. It can be transferred, but first has to be brought before you and approved. What the applicant is only asking for basically is the extension of time. The development agreement would give them ten years before they would expire this fall. What we would get as a city is a bevy of retail uses, and that's documentation.

So even with the DA, it has to be consistent with environmental law, especially CEQUA, and we have found that to be consistent. We get expanded economic activity from our regional commercial zones. Those are the biggest and the best pieces of land that we wanna get, the most jobs and the most retail taxes. This is very much what Scott does. He tries to attract folks to our city so we can get the best of the best.

And we think that this plot of land will help us do that. We did take this last month to the Planning Commission, and they made a recommendation of approval to you. And so with that, our recommendations are that the city council receive the staff report, conduct a public hearing, find that the development agreement is consistent with state law for environmental review, and introduce and conduct the first reading of this ordinance number six thirty one dash two six. With that, Scott, Aaron, and I are available for any questions.

Alright. Are there any questions from council? Seeing none, I will open the public hearing. Madam city clerk, is there any public testimony?

Testimony?

Jack Jack Catheralli.

Good evening, council members. My name is Jack Kosteralli. I'm the developer for the project. I'm just here to answer any questions if you have any, or address any issues. Let's saying none. Bearing none. You. Thank you for being here. Any other public testimony?

That concludes public comments.

I will close the public hearing. Any council statements? Go ahead.

Thank you, mayor Pro Tem. We desperately need services in this area very much. There's a lot of growth, and there's very little services up that way. So the more services we can keep in that area, the less money is going to go to Temecula down the road. And so tax money stay here, and Myriad is a much better proposition in my book. So I think this will be a good, development. Thank you.

Alright. Seeing no one else in the queue, I'll call for a motion and a second. I got a motion from council member Stone and a second by council member Warren. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously. Four zero.

Thank you, gentlemen. Don't move because we're on to item 19. Are there any city council members who need to recuse themselves from this item seeing none staff may we have a report please

little deja vu forgive

doing things in twos tonight

Just going to get the PowerPoint loaded here. We'll commence.

Take your time. Scott's got to be nowhere soon.

Okay, a separate piece of property but adjacent to what we just talked about. This is the Murata Marketplace. Same applicant, same situation. But let's walk you through this. All right, for this one it's a larger 49 acre property, regional commercial zoning. As you can see it's along Winchester Road with Max Gillis to the

North

and Clinton Key to the South. This is something that did expire and we reapproved. Same issue is that they are facing an expiration in the upcoming future and they need to get some relief. A development agreement would be that critical path. This is a larger center. So when we talk about regional commercial, we're

talking about

large retail. We do expect to get an anchor that would be very sophisticated to then support the larger area. But this is just to show you that you'll have large, medium, and small operators on this property because it can accommodate all the parking, the driveway access points, and everything else that goes along with it. Again, for development agreements, they are authorized by state law, and it's in our development code. It does require your city council to approve it, though.

We have taken a very careful look at this project from an air quality, GHG, traffic, fire. Everything that you've pointed out, we have looked at it. We're of the opinion that it's still consistent with the original EIR. Again, not to belabor this, but it is important for a city to look at its economic output. When you look at your general plan, you only have so taxable area.

With the state, they're carving out a lot of area that we should use for taxation. I just want to underscore that regional commercial is that area. You're going to get the best of the taxes in those areas. It's critical for us to find the right partner and the right tools to make sure that we're successful, especially on the edge of our our community. We're not only next to the city of Temecula but the county of Riverside. So we have two other folks that might get that spillover effect. And we have a lot of money coming up and down, people that pull over for gas or whatever. That's income stream that could come to our city instead of others. So I appreciate the point made earlier. Planning Commission at the same hearing last month did provide a recommendation of approval to your counsel.

And again, we're just going to ask that for this evening you receive the staff report, conduct a public hearing, find that staff did carefully evaluate the environmental review. And again, this is introduction and conduction of the first reading of the ordinance six thirty two dash two six. Thank you for your time this evening. We're available for any questions you have.

Thank you. Are there any council member questions? We can ask questions of the applicant after open the public hearing. There any questions prior to that? Seeing none in the queue, I will open the public hearing. City clerk, is there any public testimony?

Seeing no public testimony.

Are there any questions from counsel for the applicant? Seeing no one in the queue, I will close the public hearing. Is there any counsel deliberation before I do that? No. Public hearing is closed. I call for a motion and a second. I have a motion from council member DeForest and a second from it went away.

Oh, it went away? I seconded it. It did.

It did? Yeah. It was there for a second and a second for council member Warren. Please vote. I thought it was you.

Motion carries unanimously with the ordinance entitled an uncodified ordinance of the City Council of City of Murrieta, California approving a development agreement with Murrieta Marketplace Holdings LP, a California limited partnership, Bon Saul Service Station LP, a California limited partnership, and Scott Murrieta Service Station LP, California Limited Partnership to extend the entitlements for the development of a commercial shopping center at the northwest corner of Winchester Road, Highway 79, and Clinton Keith Road development agreement.

Thank you. Did we need to read the ordinance from the previous one? Would you care to do that at this time?

Yes, mayor pro tem. If it did not get done, yes.

It did not.

Reading of ordinance number six thirty one dash 26 entitled an uncodified ordinance of the city council of the city of Murrieta, California approving a development agreement with French Valley Crossings LP and Felon Service Station LP to extend the entitlements for the development of a commercial highway shopping center at the Southwest corner of Winchester Road, Highway 79, and Clinton Keith Road development agreement.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Alright. Moving on to item number 20, adoption of revised Sound Square Park And Amphitheater policy and user fees. Last public hearing of the night. Are there any council members need to recuse themselves from this item. Seeing none, staff, may we have

a report? Good evening, mayor pro tem and members of the city council. Your favorite department's only here for one agenda item.

I don't

know what those other departments are doing. So

Well, we'll we'll see if we can make this about an hour long then. Right?

Not on my watch. Tonight's item is the result of several months of work by the Townsquare Amphitheater Subcommittee or as we've come to think of it, our let's make downtown even more fun team. As you know, Townsquare Park began construction in 2020 and wrapped up in just a year, just over a year later. It features a large stage, tiered seating for about 750 people, and plenty of space for large events on the lawn. In short, it's the largest outdoor amphitheater in Southwest Riverside County and a pretty good place to bring the community together for concerts and events, evidenced by approximately 10,000 people that came through the firefighters barbecue this past Saturday.

Before we dive in, I wanna take a moment to recognize a group that helped get us here this evening. Mayor Pro Tem and Ron Ron Holiday and council member Cindy Warren volunteered for the subcommittee and patiently worked through all the materials that staff put in front of them, asking thoughtful questions and helping shape the direction along the way. We also had support from multiple departments, including city attorney's office, finance, Myriad of PD, fire and rescue, the city clerk's office, and municipal services. From the city manager's office, Kristen Crane and Scott Agaginian helped keep us moving forward and gently reminded us when we weren't. Nadine Katab joined the city right as this process kicked off.

So we like to think of that this was her initiation in the bureaucratic processes. And finally, Laura Frosso, everyone's favorite special event supervisor, served as the project lead. She helped define the vision, kept us organized, and made sure all the details came together to get us here this evening. So, yes, this is definitely our a team. As for tonight's presentation, much of what you're gonna hear was already covered during the previous workshops.

There are a few updates that Nadine and Laura will walk through, but overall, the direction before you reflects the subcommittee's recommendations. With your guidance tonight, we'll be ready to move forward with more programming and bring even more energy and activity to Town Square Park and the Marietta Downtown. So with that, I will turn things over to Laura Frosso.

Good evening. Alright. So let's kick it off with the Town Square Park And Amphitheater purpose. The Town Square Park And Amphitheater serves as a vibrant community hub designed to bring residents together through shared experiences. This dynamic public space provides a welcoming environment that strengthens community vitality and enriches quality of life.

By hosting concerts, family friendly gatherings, and cultural events, the park fosters a strong sense of connection and contributes to a thriving, connected Marietta. So that's what we're looking for to come forward here at Townsquare Park At Amphitheater. We say that the events must be public and accessible. They can be ticketed but not available for private social events.

Alright. To very quickly recap the December 16 council workshop, we introduced the category of business negotiated events. We recommended continued support for our existing signature events. We introduced the presenting sponsor event category where we proposed that the Murrieta Rotary Field of Honor be moved to be a presenting sponsor. We introduced the Seed to Succeed program, an incubator model program designed for up and coming community focused events.

And because we want event organizers to feel confident and prepared from the start, we are also implementing a new online planning tools page with the ultimate goal being transparency and efficiency for event organizers. That way they know the costs upfront. And this will include the public safety matrices, brief overviews of various event requirements, and direction to this special event permit application. And then just to give a quick refresh of our current signature events, as of 2026, the Tour de Murrieta, which was held in March of this year, is in its twenty first year. Susan G.

Coleman, More Than Pink Walk, which is held in October, is entering its eighth year. The Marietta Rod Run, which is held in October, is entering its thirteenth year. And the Rotary Field of Honor, which is held in November, is entering its eighteenth year.

For user fees, so since we last presented at the workshop back in December, there have been very few changes or additions. I would like to point out at the very top of this table that we did not raise the special event application fee. However, it did increase based on the approved CPI adjustment at the last council meeting on April 7. That being said, $500 of the special event permit application will act as a credit and be applied to the final invoice at the conclusion of the events for Townsquare Park And Amphitheater. We're also proposing to lower the hourly rates to help activate this space more often.

We're combining the dressing room fee and cleaning fee to make it more affordable. We're giving an option of fewer hours for the power utilities. So half I'm sorry, half day full day versus just a full day. And we're including the high powered lights in every rental for safety. We're also reducing the fee for the monument area reservations to $50 for two hours.

And we are, having the new alcohol cost recovery fee, which in a couple slides we will dive a little deeper into. At the workshop, we initially were looking to implement a 12% alcohol revenue share. However, we have since pivoted, studied alternative ways to gain revenue for future improvements to Townsquare Park, and upon working with the city attorneys, this is where we landed. We're looking to build a fund to support future enhancements such as permanent fencing and strayed structures, primarily used for events with alcohol. We're estimating and and, of course, we don't know, so it's we're guessing.

But, 10 events per year with alcohol, at $2,500 per event that would equal $25,000 a year. It would take approximately twenty years to have the funds to cover the enhancements. And I realize this has a lot of words on it, but we're basically combining estimated additional impacts and future capital enhancements. So that total cost per event would be $5,262. You take that and divide it by approximately 6,000 attendees, and you get 86¢ per person rounding up to 90¢ per person. So we feel like this would ensure cost recovery and sustainability.

And then in closing, our next steps in implementation are to adopt the revised policy and to confirm whichever which of our standing events will remain as signature events and which will move to the presenting sponsor category. And then with that, this concludes today's staff report, and we'd now like to turn it back over to mayor Pro Tem Holliday and council member Warren, to help answer questions and lead the discussion.

Are there any questions from councilor? Would you like to say something first, council member Warren? Okay. Any questions from council? Oh, there's Lisa. I didn't see that.

There I am.

There you are.

Yes. Whoever would like to answer this question. But the presenting sponsor currently is Rotary. I saw that you would like to put them first on that category. Can you tell me what a presenting is different than from a signature? And what categorizes the variation there?

So we looked at this is more from the subcommittee perspective. We looked at a presenting sponsor as someone that provides an abundance of benefit to the community. And I would think you would agree that the the field of honor is one of those things that has been going on for eighteen years, and it's just and we have sixth graders that come through with the community comes through. And we have multiple events for a week long with the Al Volbrich Chalk Walk. Just so many great things happen.

We have the Marine Corps birthday party during that time. It's It's more than a single event as some of the others are. And so that's why the subcommittee felt that a presenting sponsor because we're trying to separate a signature event which has a specific in kind contribution of $10,000 from what the rotary does. And as a presenting sponsor, they would list us as the title sponsor, which a lot of times, if you do it for another organization, it's $25,000 So we're not crossing our lines between what we're doing for other events and and getting in that. We're recognizing that this is a special event, and we're going to the presenting sponsor level, which means the city of Murrieta gets that branding and recognizes its benefit.

Thank you for that.

Could I also elaborate add a little bit more to it? Absolutely. This is a week long event. This isn't just a weekend or a single day. And the we felt that the benefit and the value to this community was a benefit for all age groups, all that attend. And then it culminates with the end of the week or during the week with our veterans parade. So it had we felt a very significant impact on our community as a benefit. And that's why we separated it out.

Thank you for the clarification. And yes, I would definitely concur this event has definitely a diverse impact in our community. And I don't think that there is another event that I could think of that would have such a diversity and such an amazing impact for our community. So I appreciate you guys stepping forward and putting them as a presenting sponsor. And do we have any kind of items, or do we have prerequisites?

Or do we have so in order to move into the presenting sponsor category, do we have a list of prerequisites? Or have we narrowed it down that far that it impacts school district and week long and all of the amazing things that our field of honor does.

We sorry.

Do you want to

take it?

No. No. Go ahead.

No. We didn't really come up with a criteria list of if you meet this, you automatically become a presenting sponsor. We felt that that should be left to counsel discretion and staff with staff input, obviously.

Okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate

And that is on page three of the policy that would be adopted. There is the definition of presenting a sponsor.

I must have missed that.

You can find it in your documents. Council Member Stone.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Can you go back to the page where it lists all of our signature events?

Okay.

I'm not sure if my colleagues know this. I know that you know this, but Susan G. Coleman, more for the pink walk, will not be returning to Marietta. They are going to move the event. So it is the Inland Empire affiliate. And as much as they love Marietta, they believe that being in the middle of Inland Empire would make more sense. So my question to you is, what value of in kind at eight years, how much is that?

I believe it's $7,500

it's 7,500 If

I could mention just one thing with that. We did ask the representatives from Susan G. Komen to confirm in writing that they would not be returning. They weren't willing to do that because they still may wanna hold an event in Marietta at Town Square Park, but not necessarily the more than Pink Walk.

Would they still do it in October?

Potentially. They they so they didn't respond, to my request for a confirmation.

Okay.

So I feel like the door is still kind of open that they want to do something. We just don't know what quite yet. So that's why we didn't take them off the list completely.

So my question to you is if it's not more than a pink walk and it is another event, in my opinion it would be a first time event. Correct?

I think we would have to bring it back to counsel to get your guys' recommendation on that. Don't know. Great. I've never in my nineteen years experienced a signature event walk away or come back with something else. I don't know.

Okay, thank you for answering my questions. That concludes my questions.

Thank you, Councilmember Sonja. That's an interesting question we'll have to explore in the future, but I I kinda lean towards where council Marston is going. If they change it to something else, if even if the rotary field of honor came in and said, you know, we're gonna do, you know, wrestling the middle of Town Square Park. It's like, wait. Does that automatically become a presenting sponsor?

My goodness. How do

you learn a background from? Yeah.

It was better than this 10 other things that were

written into my head.

So It was the safest. Censored myself. Okay. So Let's get that back in. Wrong. Yeah. Okay. Council member DeForest, thank you.

Thank you. I just like to thank Laura and Nadine and Brian. Thank you for all your hard work on this and especially to you guys. I know you had a lot of meetings. And, to say the least, every time I I would come for something else, for a meeting with a constituent, I would see your car here. Yeah, your guys' cars. And yes, so I thank you for all those meetings on our behalf. And I appreciate you doing a lot of the work for us. And thank you to you all for your time and effort for this. I hope our amphitheater becomes busy and vibrant and really impacts our community. So thank you for all your hard work.

Yeah. Happy to do it. And we really just mess everything up, then they make it all good. So we certainly appreciate staff 100%, including assistant city manager Kristen Crane, who was definitely involved in this and Scott, who kind of like counsel threw bombs in the middle of and said, let's try this. Now Hey,

Park Tim, can I just say one thing? Sure. When you're looking at this list, Tour de Marietta just had their twenty first. Murrieta Rod Run thirteenth year Rotary Field of Honor eighteenth year it's pretty amazing that these organizations keep coming back working for them and it's working for us and it's working for our residents but I think more importantly it's not really just about our residents and we have so many people that come from out of our county out of our city city for Tour de Murrieta, even Murrieta Rodrun, I've met people that have actually said it is a tradition to bring dad and grandpa, the family, and then of course the field of honor, how that has expanded. Again, it goes back to quality of life here in Marietta.

And I concur with Councilmember DeForest's. You guys have amazing job, all of you, and it's very appreciative, and it really reflects, our community. So thank you.

All right. If there are no further council member questions, we'll open public hearing. Madam city clerk, there's any public testimony?

Seeing none.

Thank you. Any council deliberation? Council member Warren.

Just a quick thank you to my colleague and to all of you, to assistant city manager Kristen Crane, Scott. This was this was long. This was hard. We went through lots of versions. Our meetings lasted two, two and a half hours, but it was well worth it. Because without your rock star, work and everybody's input, this wouldn't be as far as it is now. So I look forward to great things. This is gonna be amazing. And I just want to say thank you so very much from both of us for all the hard work you put in. Because I know the work you did put in, and we really do appreciate it. So thank you.

Yes.

And I'd just like to say that not to make you make a motion or such, but I will stay out of the making of a motion because you guys worked so hard. This should be yours.

Thank you. I will, close the public hearing and call for a motion and second. Councilmember Warren, if you'd like to do the honors.

Thank you.

I will second it. Please vote. That passes unanimously. Four zero.

Thank you.

Well done. Alright. Item 21. How many more hours do we have, mister deputy city manager?

How many hours to completion?

Less than one. Less than one. I don't know. Alright. Continuation of emerging declaration, appropriation of funding, and award of construction contract for Hayes Avenue Bridge at Miller Canyon Creek. Staff, may we have a report, please?

Good evening, mayor pro tem. Council members, Jeff Hitch, engineering department here, to talk about the, emergency declaration for Hayes Avenue Bridge at Miller Canyon Creek. I probably should have changed that slide to actually say contract award, which is what this is about. I'm gonna make this a relatively brief discussion tonight. Not that it's not an important item, but I just gave you your counsel an update at the very last meeting.

So you're pretty familiar with this project so far. But just a brief overview with the background. Obviously, the Hayes Avenue Bridge, had a problem on 02/06/2025. We closed the bridge, due to that problem and, determined that the bridge needed to be replaced and went through a longer process than what we had hoped for, but we are now nearing the conclusion of that process. This is the vicinity map showing, the general location of the site on Hayes Avenue, just North of Ivy Street, South of B Street, crossing Miller Canyon Creek.

The bridge that we are planning on constructing at this location is a contact precast concrete arch span structure. Your council approved the purchase of precast bridge components, which are four arch span components. Components also include headwalls and wingwalls that will be craned into place after they set get set on top of a concrete foundation that will be poured cast in place concrete foundations. Once those are put in place backfill will be done over the top asphalt concrete roadway will be put down. Guardrails signing and striping.

Prior to starting that bridge construction we will be filing for the emergency permits which have to be done fourteen days prior to the start of that construction. We had gone through a bidding process through this. This was an emergency public works contracting. Excuse me. We went through the bidding process use utilizing public works contracting that's allowed for in state code.

And so we didn't use formal bidding requirements. We got quotes from two different contractors, the Mark Development Company were the two contractors. They may look familiar. They were the same two contractors we had gotten quotes from back in June. Myriad Development Company again was the lowest price and so we have selected them. We've worked with Myriad Development in the past. They did the emergency work, when we had the sinkhole over on Alta Marietta Drive back in 2019, which many of you may remember. Please ignore that last, slide. Those numbers are inaccurate, so I apologize for that. That this, got past me during the, review of this.

But I will give you the formal numbers. The final price proposal from Myriad Development Company was $607,750, plus a 25% contingency. Normally, we do a 15% contingency on our on our contracts. Given this is an emergency project, we've increased that to 25% just in case it's needed. We don't think it will be, but we'd like to include that anyway.

That contingency amount is $151,938 and that gives us a total of $759,688 for the proposal plus the contingency. This should be consistent with the numbers in your agenda report. And the schedule that we're anticipating here is we'd be applying for emergency permits probably here in the next week or two, potentially starting construction on May 4 or May 11 depending on the contractor's availability. The earliest that the bridge will be available to be delivered from contact would be May 26. Effectively, the installation of the bridge would take one day of the actual precast structures And then backfilling and doing the rest of the improvements after that would take a little bit of time after that.

Obviously, the demo and whatnot would be done in advance. So without the recommendation that I have for you tonight declare that the emergency conditions persist at the Hayes Avenue Bridge at Miller Canyon Creek, amend the capital improvement plan budget to appropriate an additional $200,000 of area drainage fees for Hayes Avenue Bridge at Miller Canyon Creek project, CIP 11,004, and approved the construction contract with Myriad Development Company in the amount of $607,750 plus a 25% contingency of $151,009.38 dollars for a total of $7.59 $6.88. And with that, I'm here for any questions if you have any.

Thank you for the report. Councilmember DeForest, you have a question?

I do. Thank you so much, Jeff. Could I get a text so I can, report out to my constituents that this is going to be started? And I will be the first one down there to take some pictures because I'm getting, you know, five emails a day Absolutely. On this. So let's get this done, and thank you for bringing this back. And I appreciate your diligence getting this done, and I realized all of the issues you went through to have an emergency ordinance with when we had some issues. So February 2025 and to June '26 is not really that fast to me. So is not. And not to our constituents either.

So I I appreciate you pushing this. And I think the only thing that came good of this is I now know it's called Miller Creek or Canyon, Miller Canyon Creek. I had no idea what that was right there. I just knew it was a blue line stream heading, to the riverbed. So thank you, so much for bringing this forward. Thank you, mayor Pro Tem.

Certainly. Yeah. I I echo those comments. You think of an emergency as something that has to be done quickly, and obviously a year and a half. You know, I know government has its challenges, and it's no reflection on staff. I'm I'm not diminishing your work at all. It's just the nature of getting things done. It's very frustrating for us. It's frustrating for residents. I'm sure it's frustrating for you as well. You for riding that horse all the way through to the end. So we certainly appreciate it. Alright. Are there any public comments on this item?

Seeing no public comments.

Alright. Any council member comments? Alright. Call for a motion and a second. A motion by council member DeForest and a second by council member Warren. Please vote.

Thank you very much.

Why is there a smiley face next to your

vote? Motion

carries unanimously. Four zero.

Thank you. Item 22, recommendations from the Sea Council Court Enforcement Policy Ad Hoc Committee. Two ad hoc committee reports in one night. Getting things off the table. Welcome, staff.

Yes. Thank you. Good evening, mayor pro tem Holiday and council members. I'm Kristen Crane, assistant city manager, and with me this evening is Nolan Verentes, our Code Enforcement Manager. We are here to present this evening the recommendations from the Code Enforcement Ad Hoc Subcommittee, which was established by the City Council on 04/02/2024.

Mayor Pro Tem Holliday and council member Stone were appointed to serve on that subcommittee. And during the course of the last two years, the subcommittee met numerous times along with staff from the city manager's office, code enforcement, planning, and occasionally city attorney and public works. The subcommittee completed a a deep review of the municipal code sections that relate to code enforcement. They had detailed discussions on some of our hot topics related to code enforcement and some different things that we've heard out in the community and really tried to digest those and pull them apart and understand some of the policy implications, and also even completed some field observation. We went out and looked at some different circumstances.

I know I went out a few times on different field trips just trying to really see firsthand some of the different topics. So tonight, as staff, we are presenting the subcommittee's recommendations to you as the city council, for your consideration and consensus on the next steps. Before I jump in to those specific recommendations, a little bit of background on our code enforcement team. We have nine employees on the team. In addition to Nolan, we have six code enforcement officers and two office assistants that oversee that entire program.

In 2025, they received eighteen seventy seven cases that were opened, and they closed sixteen ninety nine, which is about 90% of the cases that were opened with that team. Generally, their approach is reactive, meaning that they respond to complaints that come in from the community. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that as we go on, but I just wanted to kind of provide that as a as a opener of what we're here to talk about. So specific topics that we're gonna go through tonight, the city council the subcommittee has five recommendations that are related to the themes that are listed, and we're also going to discuss approach and the next steps. I'm gonna walk through all of those recommendations and then turn it over to mayor pro tem Holliday and council member Stone if there's anything you'd like to add because this represents the work that that you took on these last couple of years.

And, also, again, our focus was on policy topics related to co enforcement. It wasn't a forum to go through case by case different topics, but to really step back and look at what's working, what's not working related to, on a policy level, our code enforcement program and whether we could potentially make modifications or refinements that you might recommend. So first up, a theme that kept coming up in the course of the conversation was about a need for expanded public education, asking how aware is the community of what these requirements are before they embark on maybe building something on their property or buying an RV and not really being clear on where they're going to store it in advance. So that was a topic that the subcommittee brought up in order to raise more awareness. Like, we could create a check before you build materials and have a campaign to provide clarity around what the requirements are for storage of recreational vehicles and so forth, and just information on our website that makes it more clear about what some of those requirements are so people are informed.

And then also, we talked about different forms for how that information could get shared with the community, working with the realtors, working with local RV, businesses that sell RVs, having information sheets with dos and don'ts, using our Moore Murrieta, newsletter, and different things like that. What are some what are some of those avenues? So this is one of the topics that we're seeking feedback from the city council on, whether to incorporate greater attention to public education related to code enforcement into our public education efforts. The next topic is, as I mentioned, the subcommittee did a deep dive into the municipal code sections that are related to code enforcement line by line, page by page, to kind of see helping to understand, first off, what's in it and then also where there could be some things that need to be cleaned up. So there was a few things where some inconsistencies were identified or a few typos, not too many.

This list here references them. One situation where the zone's reference was not quite accurate, a typo, like I said, an area where we could consolidate. So again, if the council if there's consensus to proceed with those changes, staff will return with a future item to make those changes to the municipal code. The next topic relates to storage within the downtown specific plan area. And this is an area where it was discussed

under the concept of where the municipal code could be clarified. So some language could be added to clarify what the requirements are. I just want to show as an example

what was identified. So when the downtown specific plan plan was created, you know, this is setting forth standards around the aesthetics for the overall downtown area and what we want the character of the downtown area to look like. And so it came up that it really wasn't in the vision related to storage as part of that specific plan. And so just one specific example, this location is kind of showing from a couple of different vantage points. This has been a topic that's kind of gone on over time, but it's in an area where we don't really have clear requirements related to screening, for the storage, and it's right in the center of the downtown area.

And if this is something that we wanted we want to clarify better within the specific plan what the requirements are, what's allowed there to be in more in keeping with what the downtown specific plan vision is. So that was the subcommittee recommendation to provide clarity and elaborate within the municipal code related to storage containers in downtown. And again, if this is a topic that the council is there's consensus for support of that, we would bring this back at a future meeting. Okay. Alright.

So the next topic is street vending or sidewalk vending. This is also a topic that the city the subcommittee spent a lot of time learning about, what the requirements are for sidewalk vending. So there have been changes relatively recently in California state law, which really impacts the city's ability to put a lot of restrictions related to sidewalk vending. There are areas that we can restrict. For example, a vendor has to have a business license, and there's other licenses if they're selling food that they have to have from the county related to, like, food health permit requirements.

But, also, we can ensure that they're not blocking, the path of travel on the sidewalk for ADA or that they're not handing things back and forth to and from the vehicle or obstructing traffic. So we have materials that, our code enforcement team uses, our police department uses. And in the process of it, just talking it through, it seems like there is we have good rule the the rules in that we have in place are basically the extent of what we are allowed to do related to regulating this area, but we can do some work internally to get everyone on our team that touches this topic all clear on the different facets of it. So that was something that emerged in the course of researching this topic. And then recommendation number five talks about developing some design standards for screening of RVs.

So the code is silent on the materials that can be used for screening recreational vehicles that may be stored in a front yard or visible in a side yard. And so the subcommittee recommended that the city establish minimum design standards, minimal design standards, such as using materials for screening that would match the neighborhood aesthetics to preclude the use of low quality items like astroturf, tarps, etcetera. This isn't something that's been a really pronounced issue per se, but it is a vulnerability in the sense that we don't have, clarity around what that would look like. So this does present an opportunity to put something in place so we don't have a problem in the future. So again, this is an area that we're seeking some feedback from the council.

If the council as a whole is supportive of this, that we would bring that back for your future adoption. So then the next topic I wanna talk about is approach. So as I mentioned at the beginning, our current approach is we call it reactive. We are responding to complaints that our code enforcement team receives. There are other some categories, like if it's a public safety issue or, things along those lines that they observe that that they will go out and follow-up on.

If it's a if they get a complaint on a block about a particular topic, they will look in that immediate area to see if there's anybody else. Like, I'm gonna use the example of a basketball hoop. They get a complaint about that on a house, they're gonna look at in that immediate area, and anybody else, they would be communicating with them as well. But they're not actively driving all through the neighborhoods looking for the laundry list of potential code enforcement issues and following up. We talked about that and what that would look like if we were to have a more proactive approach.

But, again, historically, this has been the city council and the city's approach has been to have reactive. It would involve adding additional staff members. And as the staff report talks about, your it would probably cost about $400,000 a year to add the three additional staff people that we would need for the the different areas of our code enforcement, how they divide up the city to do their work. And so the recommendation of the subcommittee was to continue with the current reactive complaint based approach and not to move to a proactive approach. So that concludes the list of the recommendations of the subcommittee, and, we are here tonight to have the subcommittee have a chance to to talk about that.

And if there's consensus of the council, as I said, we would come forward then with the next steps to move forward with implementation. They would be things like incorporating code enforcement themes into public education, again, doing more staff coordination with the sidewalk vending requirements. That's an operational matter that we can we would do that. And then also, if there's interest in moving forward with any of those code changes, that is something we would, move forward with those, and that they would have to go to the Planning Commission before they would return to the city council. And so with that, I would like to turn it over to the subcommittee to Mayor Pro Tem Holliday and Councilmember Stone for anything you might like to add.

Council member Stone? I'm happy to start the conversation. Actually, I would wanna highlight a couple of things. Nolan, if you could share with the public and the and my colleagues what the top three court enforcement issues that you guys face on a regular basis?

Yeah, sure. Happy to. The first one is going to be our landscape related conditions that we encounter. That's going to be weeds, dead vegetation, properties that don't have landscape. They're just bare deer bare dirt, things like that. Is that number one? That's going to be number one. Yeah. That's the most common. Inoperative vehicles are going to probably be up there. RVs are going to be our number two. And then typically junk and junk trash and debris and inoperative vehicles come in roughly third.

Okay. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Yes, we spent a lot of time on different thoughts about being reactive versus proactive. I had suggested to the Ad hoc Committee is maybe we are proactive once or twice a year. We started looking at the cost for that. Another thing, if you could share with my colleagues is what is the length of time typically when you get a complaint to a resolution if a resident isn't super cooperative?

That's going to vary depending on the condition that we encounter. If they're not cooperative, could we go through multiple enforcement notices, which could take, you know, anywhere from six weeks to twelve weeks to get to a point where we start issuing citations. And again, it's gonna be dependent upon the conditions that we encounter. Some are easier to fix, trash cans, things like that, basketball hoops. Some take longer when somebody has to completely re landscape their whole property.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So the proactive versus reactive, it's basically how much of our limited resources did the subcommittee feel we should put towards that. And after many meetings and many conversations about that, the subcommittee recommended that we don't we encourage the proactiveness in the sense of if you go out on one violation and you see 10 other houses with the same violation, let's get them all under compliance, but not to drive down every city street and start for stuff. I imagine that if you went right now out right now and went just to one track you could probably keep your whole department busy for an entire year.

Yeah. Sometimes you don't get to the end of the street when you run into violations. So

So it's challenging. And and and the other balancing thing that we discussed in the ad hoc committee was what would that look like if we are proactive in in the letter of the code and we're enforcing it citywide? What would it look like here when those people are saying, I didn't even know that that was against a code? And so that's one of the reasons that we landed on our list to try first. Let's get some education out there before you build, before you park an ivory, before you do this.

Let's get some information out there and see if that makes a difference. This is not an an end, in our opinion, to code enforcement. This is a next step Mhmm. Is what we're looking at. Not that this is gonna fix everything and we're gonna take some steps. Our recommendation is we take steps and see what kind of response we get if no one comes back to us in six months to a year and said, how did that how did those steps work? And he says nothing changed. Obviously, then we need we need to go back and revisit it. But that's our reasoning behind our recommendations. Councilmember Stone?

Perfectly said, mayor Pro Tem Holiday. You know, one of the issues, and and I know that you have implemented our request, for code enforcement on the weekends. How how many officers do we have working on the weekends today?

We just have one officer working.

So we still just have one officer. Will we have room in the future for a second one on the weekend, or is there enough for the one officer to accommodate our citywide issues?

Yeah. We're not getting a tremendous amount of complaints on things that would come up on the weekends. They're able to typically handle those during the week. If we have something that we need to address, that one officer is usually able to to go out and handle it.

I know that the one officer has been very proactive, and and I appreciate you taking my calls of complaints of fruit stands on Whitewood in Los Alamos in a residential street. The flowers that are, you know, being sold during Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter on the side of the road. And one of the concerns that we had was, you know, a public safety issue with regards to them encroaching the cars. And we haven't seen anything in a really long time, and I wanted to say thank you so much for addressing that. That's really, really important.

I want to tell you that this was a painful two years for me. It was painful. And Nolan, I have a newfound respect for you and your job and what you have to deal with because you deal with angry people every single day. And as mayor pro tem holiday stated is people just don't have an idea or a clue that there are code enforcement policies. And the one thing that we did get out of this was the education component, which I think that is going to help especially with the new builds as people are facilitating their driveway with regards to RV storage on their property, over hangs, things like that.

It's gonna be really, really important that that education component is facilitated to help mitigate some of the code violations. I just wanna say thank you so much to our assistant city manager, Kristin Cranan, for you, Nolan, and for your entire team for all that you do. I know that this is not it's not the fun department for sure. But we do but we do appreciate all the efforts, that you and your team put into this. So thank you, mayor pro tem.

Thank you, council member Stone. Council member questions. Council member Warren.

Thank you, mayor pro tem. Could you elaborate on how you're going to educate the public, what process you're going to go through, and how we're going to get people to understand what they can and should not be doing?

I think that would be an ongoing, theme that we would incorporate into our other public education methods. So for example, we have our Murrieta magazine that comes out several times a year. We have our More Murrieta newsletter that goes out. There are topics that we can highlight about code enforcement, just kind of some of the did you like a did you know type of section on some of those elements that people may not be aware of. We also can beef up our website, but the group the committee also talked about more proactively trying to get information out to places where people may not have gone there to look for it, but they see it at the RV business that's selling RVs.

Oh, here's information on what you should know in advance about storage. And with the Realtors Association as well, information that could be distributed. We even talked about welcome information, welcome to Marietta. There's a lot of information that we could put out related to that, but it could address some topics related to code enforcement. So I think it would be something that would be on an ongoing basis. Like we have across our organization, there's lots of themes that we are always communicating about, and this would be another example.

Well, I would think people are so glued to their phones watching videos. We could show dos and don'ts. And that way definitely would get the point across. And I don't want to burst your bubble, but I'm going to. Sorry. We had a vendor out at Marietta Hot Springs and Alta Marietta on Saturday and Sunday walking into Marietta Hot Springs Road giving flowers out three lanes deep. And so that was very and I did call an NPD. But that you know, if we don't continue to enforce it, they're just gonna keep coming back, and that is dangerous. So dangerous. So sorry.

It just happened over the weekend. So But it has significantly decreased, of course, from time to which was Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just they were just randomly out there. So that so that's something I hope that we continue to really keep cabs on because that was dangerous when he went out into the street for roses.

That topic is a good example of where it's collaboration between PD and code enforcement because PD can also go out and communicate on it. So they have a training bulletin on that topic that they educate the officers and remind them about that as well.

And also, we are proactively let's say we go to a street, and I'm just going to use boats on the street or RV parking in the front of the yard or if you see the same general in the area we will then proactively educate and let them know what the rules are at that point correct within that neighborhood so we're going to continue to do that okay thank you thank you very much

thank you councilmember Warren councilmember de Forest

thank you mayor pro tem I just want to say thank you thank you no one thank you Kristen thank you to the painful ad hoc committee putting two years of your life into and more into code enforcement. So I know once you change one thing, then it snowballs into something else. And I can remember running for city council many years ago and hearing from previous council member, just this is the biggest hot button of your life. You want to stay away. So thank you for all your time working on this subject.

Thank you for public information. I think an educated community is a smart community. So also, I concur with Councilmember Warren, maybe some Facebook posts or something that would be kind of funny that really gets somebody's attention, right? Because they'll watch a reel that maybe was humorous about the city's code enforcement. I like the welcome to Murrieta just to say, hey, welcome to Murrieta.

There may be people from different states that don't have any building laws. They don't I know a previous council member built a a home in Tennessee and said it was the easiest build of his life. Right? So maybe we have new community members, so that would be nice to educate them as well. I love the fact you guys spent some time on code cleanup.

Thank you for that. I do believe we need to clarify the storage in our downtown area. That is what we're really trying to beautify and to make destination area and spending a lot of time and energy in our downtown. So I think that that would be perfect. I want to thank Chief Matt Henry as well as the entire PD for the street vending.

I know it's been cleaned up quite a bit. They've been moving from Target shopping centers to parks. I know that I've called several times that they've been in like the handicapped parking spot at Target. So I appreciate PD being educated and actually able to help keep our community clean. So thank you, chief, for all your the texts that I send you. I'm sorry. If you want me to text someone else, I will. But I appreciate you so much. Text him now. Yes. Okay. Moving on to fire. So so thank you for that. And the RV screening, I think that's very important. You guys did a great job.

Let's make it aesthetically at least look good. And I agree with the reactive approach. We do not have the funding for more staffing. We already have nine employees in our code enforcement department. And I think that that's where it needs to stay. So thank thank you so much for your time and effort, and I appreciate all the energy that you put into this. Nolan, you definitely do not have the best job ever. Maybe you should, in your next life Parks and Rec, go for the Department of Fun instead of the Department of Anger at times. Right? Yeah. So thanks for always having a smile when we docked with you. I know that that's probably not your daily activity. So you for that. Thank you, fellow colleagues.

Thank you, Councilmember DeForest. Are there any public comments, Madam City Clerk?

Seeing none.

Okay. Bringing back to the council for comments, although we had a lot of comments already. I will say, Nolan, while your department may not be the department of fun, the way you run it is impressive. So we certainly thank you for the job that you do. I think you're the right person for that spot and and wouldn't trade you for anyone else. If we put Scott in there, it would be chaos. Yeah. So you are the right man for that job. Would be fun. Well, for a minute.

Anyhow, are there any other comments from council? Seeing none. So we're not really voting on something. We're providing direction to staff. So I I heard consensus on all of the recommendations from the committees ad hoc committee. Is that correct? So They'll be bringing back. They're gonna bring back pieces of it at a time, I imagine. I don't know if it all be one package. The thing I would encourage, though, is when we start the advertising, even though you're going to pick different things for different venues, I would pick one thing and do that across all the different venues so we can measure if it actually has an impact, whether it's, you know, keeping up with your yard.

Whatever whatever item you guys pick, let's be consistent and put that in everything consistently for a period of time. And I don't know if six months or a year is a proper time. I'll let you guys decide that. And just keep hitting that, and then when you come back to us and say, how did it go? Say, well, we advertised on this consistently for this amount of time, and it didn't change our call load whatsoever. Or, yeah, it it dropped to the fourth or fifth thing on the list. So we definitely wanna try and and do the best we can to see if it's working. So I think you've got your consensus. Any other questions from staff? Is it clear? Perfect. No. It's just consensus.

Thank you.

Alright. Madam city clerk, reconsideration.

Thank you mayor pro tem any council member who voted on the prevailing side of the original motion may move a reconsideration to consider new information or correct inadvertent errors on a non public hearing item at the same or the next meeting Are there any requests from the city council for any reconsideration? Seeing none, mayor Pro Tem.

Okay. I'm actually gonna rearrange the agenda slightly. I'm gonna move public comments up before council member request to add withdraw items. And so this time will be for public comments, including if someone would like to comment on the council member request to add or withdraw items to a future agenda.

That would be Mr. Kassen Klein.

Welcome again. That's clear. I know.

Yesterday was 04:20, not today.

Could you have read that yesterday?

I'm

sorry? Could you have read that yesterday? Would it have been legible? Yeah.

I could have read it yesterday. So from Bonnie Raitt's Slipstream album, there's a line that says, in the song, the coming round is gone. Time gets more precious when there's less of it to waste, keeping with the musical theme. I rise before you today to suggest and ask one of you, to put this on a future agenda item. There's been, in the past several months, some subtle and some not so subtle discourse amongst council members when it comes to asking for subcommittee ad hoc subcommittees, special events, those things, and, you know, staff gets involved in it.

They get wrapped up in in the middle of it. And in my thirty five plus years of being engaged in local politics and consulting with candidates and council members, one of the things I've universally told them, staff will not tell you no. And because it from times when we're passionate about special projects or our interest in subcommittees, we lack self awareness or self discipline. And when we do that, we need protocols and guardrails to help staff and to ensure transparency, accountability, and fiscal responsibility. And part of that fiscal responsibility is the amount of staff time that is spent with council members on these projects.

And so the first page is here, but I've laid out what I believe to be reasonable a reasonable proposal that I've left for you, for Crystal and for Justin and for Tiffany, the city attorney, to look at. And, hopefully, if you don't ask for today's meeting, I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting. And, hopefully, one of you will will champion this. I'll just note, you know, this is not fun for me to stand up here every meeting and talk about institutional knowledge and talk about these things. You know, I don't get paid for this.

I'm not here representing a developer. I'm here really moving along the legacy of my parents, which many of you knew, and really to try and protect our quality of life. And that's really what what I think part of this does. So if you would consider this and and move this forward, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other other comments?

Seeing none, mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. Now we will move on to council member request to add or withdraw items to a future addendum. Do we have anyone that would like to add anything? Councilmember Stone.

Thank you, mayor pro tem. You were very creative in how you shut me down on item number 17. I was very impressed by that, by the way. But I would like to, for a future agenda item, to discuss our RENA numbers, where we're at, the statistics of the affordable housing, how many we have as far as the in a development. I know that not all of the apartments have affordable housing.

I want I want to know what street market rates, not necessarily the rates, but how many apartments we have with fair market costs versus affordability. Again I want to know where we're at with our RENA numbers. Are we on point? Are we behind? Are we ahead of the game?

And I'd like to get also a report on when the next RENA numbers are going to be presented to us because I think it's very important that we be transparent and honest with our residents with regards to the unfunded mandates that are imposed on the city. And so that's what I would like to have an update on. Thank you, mayor pro tem.

Do we have consensus for that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It just should be noted that the next Rina cycle will not be till after the next governor is elected, which may may change things or may not. But, yeah, we can definitely it can't hurt to look at that for sure. Any other?

Mister mayor, if I or mayor Procham, if I could just confirm on that last item, is there any particular sense of urgency to to rush that item back or to bring it back kind of in in the due course of time where we have space on future agendas?

So I know that we only have one meeting in May and we have a very full agenda in June and I know that we probably are gonna have to, you know, address our budget. So there is no rush.

Thank you. Okay. Next. Could we have the announcement of the closed session items, madam city clerk?

Thank you, mister mayor Pro Tem. The city council will meet on two items, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation. This council will conduct a closed session pursuant to government code section five four nine five six point nine d two because there is significant exposure to litigation in one case. The city council will also conduct closed session pursuant to government code section five four nine five seven point six with the city manager, assistant city manager, deputy city manager, city attorney, and the city's negotiators regarding labor negotiations with Police Officers Association, Police Management Association, Firefighters Association, and Fire Management Association.

Thank you. And at this point, we will recess to closed session.

You ready?

Yep.

Alright. We are reconvening from closed session. I'd to call the reconvened council meeting to order. And, madam, city attorney, if we could have a report.

Thank you, mayor Partem. The city council met in closed session. All four members present tonight participated in both closed sessions. The first was to confer with legal counsel regarding anticipated litigation in one case pursuant to government code section five four nine five six point nine d two. The counsel was updated, asked questions, and provided direction. No reportable action. The second item was to confer with labor negotiators pursuant to government code section five four nine five seven point six. Again, the council was updated, asked questions, and provided direction. No reportable action. Thank you.

Thank you, madam city attorney, and we are adjourned.