City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, I'd like to call the four o'clock regular meeting of City Council to order.

We're looking for Council Member DeForest. Just go ahead and start.

Council Member DeForest. Not to name anyone in particular. Yeah, John's in there. Mayor Lavelle is working in San Diego for Loma Linda, so he's not able to attend tonight. Before we go into city business, I want to announce that the city clerk team is running a bit slim today because they are out operating the voting drive-through operation where people can drop off their ballots. And they will be doing that until the polls close. So please be patient. We have somebody new running some of the slides today. Of course, we have Kimberly, who's an all-star, that's going to be here with us tonight. So Madam City Clerk, we have a roll call, please.

Council Member Warren. Here. Council Member DeForest.

Here.

Council Member Stone. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Holliday.

Here.

Mayor Lavelle, let the record reflect that all members are present with the exception of Mayor Lavelle with an excused absence.

All right, if you could stand, and I'm going to ask Council Member DeForest to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, if you would.

Certainly, Mayor. For the day. All right, everybody stand. Put your right hand over your heart, please. Repeat after me.

Please remain standing as I invite up Blake Lawrenson of the Rock Church to lead us in the invocation.

Thank you. If you wouldn't mind bowing your heads, closing your eyes with me. Lord, we just come before you. We thank you for the opportunity to submit to you. We thank you for the opportunity to give this meeting, this city, and ourselves to you. We thank you for how you've led this country, and we thank you that you continue to do so. So would you allow us to ask for you, to listen to your voice? Thank you that you are here. Thank you that we can trust you. We love you. We praise you. We worship you in your precious name. Amen.

Next on our agenda is a presentation, Southern California Edison Scholarship recipient, Christopher Lee, and I'd like to welcome Andrea to this podium.

You gave out his name. It was supposed to be a surprise. It's in the public record? Oh, okay. Well, I'll read my script anyways. Mayor Pro Tem Holladay, members of the city council, city manager Clifton, city staff. My name is Andrea Morris. I'm Southern California Edison's government relations manager to the city of Murrieta. And I'd like to share first a few words about the Edison Scholars Program. It's one of the most impactful ways that Edison reinvests in the communities that we serve before we bring up the scholar himself. Each year, Edison International awards $50,000 scholarships to 30 outstanding high school seniors across our service territory who are pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, fields that are critical to powering California's future. But this program is about much more than financial support. It opens doors to higher education, opportunities, and careers that might otherwise be out of reach. The Edison Scholars Program has supported hundreds of students, creating a growing network of leaders who solve real world challenges and create brighter futures for all of us. We've got a short clip to share with you all about the program. So let's see if technology is on our side. See if we can.

and decide what's next. Well, for 30 local students, that future just got a lot brighter. Each one was surprised with a $50,000 scholarship from Edison International.

Every year we give out $50,000 scholarships.

Look at Jason Liu's face. This is the moment he realized he's getting $50,000. The team from Edison International showed up on his campus at Temple City High School in San Gabriel.

This is the craziest thing that ever happened to me, sir.

And he wasn't the only one. The surprises happened on campuses all across Southern California, from James Wang in Diamond Bar to Valerie Chavez at Northview High in Covina.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

And Stevenson Ranch, where Brandon Chang got the news. Congratulations, Brandon.

I was super thrilled, but I think even more than that, it was just this huge wave of relief.

His family knows the feeling. His older sister is also an Edison scholar. These scholarships go to students pursuing STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math. In Long Beach, Caleb Neal earned high praise. At Westlake High in Thousand Oaks, Angela Liu, all joy in that moment. And from Santa Ana to Fullerton. to Hesperia, Compton and Lancaster, where Cesar de la Cruz could not stop smiling.

I was thinking, wow, this really happened. I just couldn't stop smiling and my face actually started to hurt.

His parents were in on the surprise.

I was like, wait, what's going on? Why is my mom and dad here?

They must be so excited and so proud of you. What's that moment like to share that with them?

Oh, it's one of the best. It's probably gonna be, it's living to my brain forever.

A memory shared by 30 students heading to college with $50,000. It's $1.5 million invested in the next generation.

Core memory for sure, right?

Yeah. It just kind of warms your heart, these kids. It's hard not to get emotional. It's so exciting. You just are rooting for them. They have their whole lives ahead of them. Great work. We love it.

We love a little sunshine in the morning. We know you do, too. We like to start our week with all the good news.

We don't need to hear their ad. So if you looked closely, you might have seen Council Member Stone and Mayor Lavelle in there. They did make it. They made the news. But let's focus on the Edison Scholar that we have before us. We are recognizing one scholar in particular who is Berkeley-bound, was recently named Vista Marietta's Student of the Year, and is joined by his parents. And... Marietta Valley Unified School District Superintendent is also with us tonight. But I will pass it back to the council and city clerk to take us forward next. We've got some goodies for the scholar.

If I could have Christopher come on up to the podium with you. I'm going to read the certificate of recognition I have, and then we'll come down and have the family come up and take some pictures. So City of Murrieta Certificate of Recognition awarded to Christopher Lee. The City Council on behalf of the City of Murrieta congratulates Christopher Lee on his academic achievements as a graduating senior of Vista Murrieta High School and as a recipient of the 2026 Edison Scholars Program Scholarship. As he prepares to attend the University of California, Berkeley, we commend Christopher for his accomplishments and wish him the best in all future endeavors. And this is signed by all five members of the Council. So let's give him a round of applause. And then if we could have the council and Andrea and the family come on up, we'll take some pictures.

And we can just squeeze in a little bit more.

Try using the deposit app on your phone, see if that works.

Mayor Pro Tem, may I say a few words? Absolutely. So, Christopher, you know, congratulations again. It was really an honor to witness your surprise. So we wish you the very, very best. And Andrea, on behalf of SoCal Edison, we want to thank you so much for the efforts of investing in our young adults for their future. We really appreciate all that you do for all the kids throughout Southern California. So thank you.

My other colleagues like to make a comment? You're more than welcome to.

Well, congratulations on the biggest scale possible. I wish you the most success as you head off to college. And remember, phone home. Mom and Dad want to know how you're doing, OK? Take care.

Leave your impact on Berkeley, and make sure you tell everyone you're from Murrieta, and that's not Georgia, OK? Yeah. Right? All right.

Yes, I like that suggestion. Bring a little Murrieta to Berkeley. And certainly Edison and Andrea, we certainly appreciate the program. Appreciate that. I think you mentioned to me the other day that's not the first Murrieta recipient. Last year, the same school, Vista Murrieta. Vista Murrieta had one. Yeah. Had an Edison scholar last year as well. Yeah. So. Three students. Three students in two years. Let's keep that trend going. Well done. Thank you. All right. On to the approval of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda?

Seeing none.

Then I will call for a motion and a second. I have a motion from Council Member DeForest and a second from Council Member Warren. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 4-0.

Thank you. And then we're going to move on to the City Manager Administrative Update.

Thank you very much, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. We have several updates for you this evening and we'd like to start by, we've got a little presentation from our Superintendent of Murrieta Unified School District, Dr. Ward-Andrus is gonna talk to us about a few of the things that are going on. As you know, it's a really important partnership and a thriving partnership that we have with the school district. We have numerous occasions to sit down either with staff or board members and council members, and it just seemed like a good idea that we might all in one place give you a brief summary of some of the exciting things going on in the school district. So thank you for being here.

Well, thank you so much. I think about five minutes, so I'll do the best we can. We shared these slides with our Rotarians just the other day, and so we've condensed them just a little bit. So you can actually go on to the next one and jump right into it. So, oh, that looks like there was one at the end. Will you change the slide deck for me? That's all right. We've had a lot of accomplishments during the course of the school year, but the one that you see in front of you right now is we've completed our facilities master plan. Thank you for the opportunity for us to meet with each one of you as we approach that process and our school board's decision to proceed with a resolution for a bond. And so we actually had over 81 community meetings in the process of development of all of those, all the different potential projects that would undertake in our school district. So we had a tremendous community engagement. And then once we had our facilities master plan draft, we had over 3,000 entries of community members, students, staff, giving their input on what should be the priority in terms of the projects. And so we began last August, and we went all the way through multiple meetings, all the way up in board workshops. I know, Ron, you came to one of them and gave your comment and input, and some of you came to other ones and shared your information, and Lori was very helpful in getting us contact with the Tax Association, and just to help us do that work. Part of it, too, is a bond feasibility study, not just the projects of what we might do, but also, like, what do the voters think? So we conducted a poll through a company called True North Polling, and it polled very high across the entire school district, which pretty much mirrors the city. And it between a sixty and a seventy five percent approval rating on this potential bond. The board did approve that that resolution that happened in maine and so we anticipate in the month of november and we'll have a bond measure on the ballot we don't know the number yet or the letter that will be coming. It is structured for a dollar amount that would raise about three hundred and fifty nine million dollars for the school district. with a potential another 150 in state matching funds. It's approximately $500 million, be about a fourth of the projects that were identified. But it's also structured so that the taxpayer for the general obligation bond would not increase. So this is actually structured so the tax does not increase at all for homeowners, which is great news, because I am a homeowner too. I live right near John. All right, next slide, if you wouldn't mind. Oh, okay. I thought it might have been the last one. So here we go. Upcoming events, we do summer meals all summer long. And so these are the different locations and times we provide meals and snacks. We love the one here at Murda Elementary School because it's right across the street from the library. So we have some activities that we do. Anyone coming to check out books, we say, go get a snack, go get some food because we're feeding kids over there as well. Next slide, please. We also have a regular summer school throughout the summer. You can see that we have different elementary programs, middle school programs. We even do something we call summer melt because we recognize that our high school seniors tend to kind of, they don't quite have a great plan. They need a little help so they can still come back and see us and we'll keep them going. Get them on track. Right now, today, is the election for a vacancy in trustee area three for us. That seat is open. You've seen lots of signs in a certain part of the neighborhood for that campaign that's happening. So we'll see how that shakes out in the next, well, once it's certified, we'll see what happens. But we also have trustee area one and two are also up for election. So there are two more board seats that may turn over, may not. We'll see who runs and who's elected. And then, of course, there'll be a general obligation bond. Those are just looking ahead for the next semester. All right, what's our next slide? I knew there was another one. Wow, that was it. Okay. There was some at one point in time about some accolades, about accomplishments, athletics, and so forth. Anyways, and there was at one point in time a picture of us handing up. There it is. That's the last slide. There we go. We love the partnership. We really appreciate the partnership with the city. The chance to meet with you both individually and in groups when we do have different activities or conversations is really helpful for us. We know that we're serving the same community. We're not off doing something uniquely different in another part of the town and even our district. So part of it is in the county, but we still kind of incorporate it all as if it were one. It's not our slogan, but I'd love to borrow it. We're connected by community. It's yours, but I love it because I'm also in the community and we do engage with you all the time. We have a couple meetings coming up with an activity that Laurie Stone wants to pursue in the fall. And we know we have one with engineering and police even, I think, next week or the week after. So we appreciate the partnership. Love to do the great work with you. Again, a lot of accolades for the district. Test scores are on the rise. All that good news is still happening for us. So thank you for the time.

Thank you very much. And you know I'm a big advocate for that relationship. I've been saying it for four years. I'm extremely thankful that both the city and School District staff has stepped up to the plate and made that relationship what it is today. So thank you.

We keep looking for opportunities wherever they're at. So we look forward to more. Thank you very much.

And moving on, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, and speaking of partnership, one of those partnerships that we've had more recently in the last couple of years has been our summer aquatics program. So I'd like to ask Victor Pitino, our recreation supervisor for the Youth Center, to come up and tell us a little bit about what is in store for this summer's aquatic season.

So good afternoon, Mayor Pro Tem Holliday and members of the City Council. I'm here to provide a brief update on our 2026 aquatic season. So this summer continues our partnership with the Marietta Valley School District. All our summer aquatics programs will be operating out of Vista Marietta High School. And I do want to give a big thanks to Deputy Superintendent Darren Daniels and his team, as well as Vista Marietta staff. They've definitely made the transition from, you know, not knowing where we're going to have aquatics to, hey, we have a home now. So I really do want to give them a big thanks because they made our aquatics program possible. I do want to say our vendor for lifeguards and instructor services will continue to be Swan Aquatics. And what we'll be doing is we'll be having part-time recreation leaders man the customer service portion of aquatics. And we're going to have a couple leads out there. We're going to have Senior Recreation Coordinator Ashley Velardes as one of our main leads out there. Recreation Coordinator Joe Baker as one of the supporting staff. And I will be overseeing overall operations out of this stuff. Can I get the next slide, please? So programming will be running from June 6th to September 27th, Saturday through Tuesdays. Hours of operation will be 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. We're going to be offering swimming lessons, public swim, and lap swim opportunities for all residents of all ages. After August 9th, we will move more into a more modified schedule, which would be only weekends until September 27th. We're going to continue our marketing and our outreach efforts will be similar to last year's as we found that approach was very successful. So our strategies will continue social media campaigns featuring informational posts, engaging videos, and even some lighthearted memes to help increase community engagement and awareness. We also utilize A-frame signs and banners at Vista Marietta High School with the help of staff. They allowed us to hang those out there. The advertisement helps advertise it locally in that general area. In addition, we are going to continue working on general, we're going to continue on a general water safety video for the summer season. We also believe that that serves as a promotional tool, but also brings awareness to water safety.

Can I get the next slide, please?

The next slide, sorry. And this slide shows you a little bit of metrics from our past seasons. The goal is to continue to grow and increase our numbers. So overall, if you see here on our metrics, from 2024 to 2025, we've increased our numbers across the board by 73%. And that's just, bless you, that's just by... social media campaigns, engagement, trying to be more aware in the community. And I wanna take a second to say all this reflects my amazing staff that I have at CSD. So without them, I couldn't be able to provide these amazing aquatic programs for our residents. So yeah, next slide. That concludes my presentation. And I'm here to answer any questions you may have.

Are there any questions? Seeing none, thank you very much.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. And just one more item this evening. Mayor Pro Tem and Council, normally our public information officer, Hilda Sam, would give you a little update on things going on in Murrieta. She's on a much deserved vacation, so I'm going to tell you about some of those things that are going on. And starting, I hope everybody understands that today is primary election day here in Murrieta and elsewhere across the state. So by all means, if you filled out a ballot and you have not dropped it off yet, you have some time. But please do that right away. So up on the screen, you will see three locations. Some of them have been open longer. None of them will be open after today. So by 8 PM, you need to drop that ballot off either here at City Hall, Fire Station number 4, or the Murrieta Innovation Center. I also just want to emphasize that our clerk's office, along with the support of numerous team members at the city, opened up a ballot drop-off drive-through on the Ring Road here at the Town Square Park. And it's been hugely successful. Many of us have volunteered a little bit of time to help support that. It's a perfect thing for city staff to participate in because nothing says civics and government more than voting. And it's been really wonderful to see people drive through and give appreciation and thanks that we made it so accessible. The Ring Road was a perfect location to spread out and allow vehicles to stack. At times today, I looked out my office window and did see six, seven, eight cars deep waiting for their turn to drop off their ballots. So it was really amazing that the clerks came up with that idea to implement a drive-through. And again, thanks to all of the team members here at the city that helped. operate that and make it successful. Apologize to anybody who's coming to City Hall to do regular business. We were also a little busy in the parking lot and at the lobby because a lot of us like to walk in with that ballot rather than putting it in the mailbox. But again, 8 p.m. today, last chance. Please turn those ballots in. Also, we have a couple fun things and exciting things coming up in the community. Firstly, we have three of our last community safety forms. So as council knows, we've done one of these in each one of the city council districts. So upcoming is district three, June 4th at 6 p.m. at Murrieta City Hall. District four, June 11th at 6 p.m. at the Murrieta Youth Center. and District 5, June 17th at 6 p.m. at Buchanan Elementary School. That's been a general opportunity to engage the public, to present a little information about the state of law enforcement and our police department today, community crime statistics and things like that, and also seek feedback from our community members about priorities that they see. So it's been a really good interaction, and hopefully we get good participation at these remaining three community safety forums. A little more on the fun side of things, we've got the annual Father's Day Car Show, the 55th annual Father's Day Car Show, Saturday, June 20th from 2 to 8 at Cal Oaks Sports Park. And then just a week later, the 35th annual Birthday Bash, also on a Saturday, June 27th, 2 to 9, also at California Oaks Sports Park. Concerts in the park, been a very popular activity the last couple of seasons, and I'd love to see it continue to grow. You see a really nice lineup of artists who would come in and entertain us, starting here in July 11th, going all the way through August. So please come out and see a show. Saturdays from 7 to 9 on the dates listed there. And as always, we aim to stay connected. So please, if you need more information, follow us at muriataca.gov forward slash connect. You can access our monthly newsletter, get a digital copy of the Muriata Magazine, or anything else you need from the city's website, including contact information so you can reach us personally. So that's all I have for you this evening. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Moving on to Governing Body Commission Committee Board Reports and Announcements. We're going to start with Council Member Warren.

Thank you very much, Mayor Pro Tem. It's been a busy couple of weeks, to say the least. I had the honor and what?

Four months.

Four months, yeah. I had the honor and privilege of representing RTA as the first vice chair and went on a 33-hour trip to Washington, D.C., When I say a whirlwind trip, I mean it sincerely. There's really nothing to report out other than the fact that we did meet with some congressmen and some representatives, the representatives from our senator's office, and we discussed bus versus rail funding, regulatory relief, and National Cemetery accessibility. There is a new bus shelter being put in front of the Riverside National Cemetery for people to go to the cemetery. And it'll have an area for disabled to be able to get in off the bus and more accessible to the cemetery. And we're really excited about that. So that's up and forthcoming. While I was also there and I concluded my business as a representative of RTA, I had the opportunity to meet with Parker Edwards, Director of Governmental Affairs, Federal Highway Administration on the United States Department of Transportation. on the purpose from my visit with him. I met with him back in January when our city manager and I went back, and I went there to review our current documents needed for Keller Road interchange, making sure that our earmark funding is secure for the project, and it was a very favorable meeting, and I think it did help a lot to keep that in front of them, so I was very proud of that. And in addition, once I got back from there, it was two days later, took off for ICSC in Las Vegas, and the whole team did an outstanding job. It was truly a memorable event, and we met with some really great opportunities for this city. and I can't wait to have follow-up meetings with all of them that I was involved with. Also, on the way back from there, I attended the Cal City's Riverside Joint Division meeting at Ontario Convention Centre. Back to RTA, we had a special meeting on the 22nd. Got right back in the swing of things with the Southwest Elected Leaders Collaborative, and I'll let Council Stone-Laurie give you an update on that. a Southwest TNOW meeting, RTA Executive Board meeting, and RTA Board meeting that same day. It was a crazy, it's been a crazy few days. And then RCTC last week, last Friday, we launched the I-15 Smart Freeway Pilot Program. It's a smart meter sensor system, a two-year pilot program placed on the Temecula Parkway, Rancho California Road, and Winchester Road freeway on ramps. You might wait a little bit to get on the freeway, but the procedural is if you wait a little bit to get on, you should have a better flow when you get there. So hopefully people will get home and to their families a little quicker with a little less congestion. Moving right along to the next, I was a lot of places, doing a lot of fun things, and representing the city. One of the ones I did want to talk about was Warren Springs Middle School. I went to their play Much Ado About Nothing, and Carol Hernandez, their director, was outstanding. The kids were fabulous. And such talent we have in this community. It was very, very fun to go to that. Marietta, student of the year breakfast. And also a wonderful job by our mayor on our Memorial Day observation. Coffee with the city. City council meeting for Temecula. Temecula State of the City. And a final goodbye to Kim Garaget for her retirement from Michelle's Place. If you have any questions, please check the website. Or you can always reach me at cwarren at mariettaca.gov. And Mayor Potem, that concludes my reports. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Warren. And we'll move on to Council Member DeForest.

Thank you so much. I don't have a formal report today, but I would like just to touch upon a few things. I'd like to thank the board of directors of Bear Creek for having me do a town hall for them. It was very informative and we had about 65 people there. I want to thank our police and fire chiefs for also answering a lot of questions that they had about fire safety as well as various different things that are occurring. Hopefully they'll all come to my town hall, which I want to give a shout out for that. There'll be a town hall here on Thursday, which is June 4th, is it? Yes, June 4th. At 6 p.m. here at Town Hall, I'd like to invite everybody to that. How often do you get a chance to actually sit down one on one and actually talk to our police chief and our captains as well. So a great event for everybody just to get out and really know what's going on with public safety and our city. I met with several community members about so many projects going on in the west side. It seems to be a very hot area, not much property left in Marietta and a lot of people want to build houses out there. And there's a lot of issues with fire out there. And our roads aren't quite as nice as they should be, so I appreciate keeping the standards up so we can protect those homes. Also, I had several phone calls with a community member about the vineyard project and what is going on with that. She had some concerns, and I was able to direct her to staff. um i i know that i've brought this up almost every time but the hayes bridge i've met with many people about that that keeps coming into my inbox and i'd like that to go away so i'm hoping that that is moving forward and i i did hear we had a little Contract issue, but now we are moving hopefully yay. I got the thumbs up. Thank you Smooth sailing maybe knock on wood For that so so many great things have happened in the last month in the city so many activities one thing where I was a bit out of I wasn't able to go to ICSC because my son graduated from Purdue and I got to spend a week back in Indiana with him and let me tell you I love Murrieta and Not that Indiana isn't great, but it was already humid, and there were bugs the size of small mice running around. So that was really exciting. So just another plug, just town hall this Thursday night. Come, anybody, come right after work. We really want you there. We want you to understand what's happening in our community, especially with our public safety.

Thank you so much for your time, and you can always reach me.

My cell phone is always listed, and also you can reach me by email. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member DeForest. Council Member Stone.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Holliday. David Shantarotsu and I attended the Transportation Uniform Mitigation Fee Zoom meeting with regards to TEMF. And I'd like to report out that Marietta will be receiving and has part already received with regards to TEMPF funding $22,550,000. There are more than a dozen projects that TEMPF will be facilitating. And that's always a good thing for our region, especially when it comes to infrastructure. I also attended ICSC. We were slammed with 60 meetings in a day and a half. And I will tell you that Marietta is still a city that is sought after. And that's very, very exciting with regards to bringing unique businesses back to Marietta. and also providing jobs. And I attended a few meetings with regards to the triangle, and we are hoping very soon that the Dominiconis will be announcing when their ribbon cutting will happen, and I'm hoping and praying by the end of the year. I would like to thank our city manager, Justin Clifton, and our PIO, Hilder. One of the issues that we've been wanting to address with our residents is additional communication with regards to high density development. And we did a video, I'm not sure how many people viewed the video, but it was just another great layer of communicating with our residents about the law. And if you would go back to the to the slide that says, I hate the traffic in Marietta. I decided to, after the video, I know this was probably very controversial, but listen, being an elected official, we have to face issues that are unpleasant. And this is one that is unpleasant, and this is one that I've been addressing, is the traffic congestion in the city of Marietta. I received over 130 comments on this Facebook post. Besides, I cannot even tell you how many text messages and how many emails I received with regards to this post. And I want you to know, yes, our residents are frustrated, but the collaboration and the education was amazing. I really expected the residents to be so angry at us, blaming us, which they still do, they blame council, but that another layer of education to let them know exactly the mandates that are imposed on the cities. That's very important, however we can communicate to our residents about the unfunded mandates impose on the cities is very important. So I want to thank the residents for reaching out and having these tough and honest and transparent conversations. So thank you to the many that reached out. I also attended the Memorial Day ceremony, which The speaker was absolutely amazing, very heart-wrenching story. It's just a reminder about those that serve our country and paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. And today, we have that freedom. Today is the day that we have the freedom to vote. And I hope, again, as our city manager had stated, that you can drop off your ballots until 8 p.m. And your voice. This is how you use your voice. This is how we implement change is by voting. So please review all of my meetings that I attended. There were a lot this month. And you can reach me at lstone at mariettaca.gov anytime. And thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Holliday.

Thank you, Council Member Stone. And for myself, yes, since we didn't have our meeting towards the end of May like we normally do, we've got at least a month worth of activity that we're trying to report out. So I'm not going to read every single thing. I do have two boards that I attended yesterday. One is the RCA Regional Conservation Authority. We passed our budget. With one minor amendment that I wanted to pay off a loan early and I pointed out that they're making more interest than they're paying And so don't pay it off until the interest rates go down below that So they agreed with my assessment and passed that budget with that amendment and then councilmember stones normally sits on Western Regional Council of Governments, WRCOG, and unfortunately had a migraine yesterday, so I sat in for her. And the main thing they did was elect new leaders for the coming year, which Jackie, is it Cassia? Cassia, yeah. Was appointed as the new chairperson for the next year. For the governing body announcements, I went to ICSC and the city manager reference, which our city manager did a great job at. It's always nice to see the comparison of the different city managers in the region, and you always stand out amongst the rest of them as one of the best. So we appreciate you being there and talking up the city to all those that aren't Murrieta. I did bring, I actually brought pictures this time. So on the screen there, you see the market nights. This was, Merritt Valley Unified School District had an art competition. And if you look at some of these, you would think that these were, you know, adult professional artists. These are all high school students that did, and I just took a sampling of some of them. I mean, there was, countless number of art pictures there, and I was so impressed with the creativity, with the talent. Actually I walked up, I was just tapping to go to market nights, and I walked up and Connie says, oh good, you're here, you have to talk. And so I got up and said a few words, again talked about the partnership between the city and the school district, and then took these pictures that I wanted to share with everyone tonight. Our kids are amazing, super talented and amazing. Um, I've already had my community safety form. So if you if you miss one in in the district you live in, there's still three more. So you can attend any one of the other three and still get the information. But we do have them per district. So, um, look out for the one in your district. It hasn't already passed. Um, we all attended. Most of us attended the mill that. 10th anniversary, which was amazing as well. Oh, I attended the, in my district, the grand opening of Ono Hawaiian Barbecue. If you haven't had the barbecue there, I found it to not only be great food, but reasonably priced. I was kind of surprised. And the line, so it must have a following, because the line for their opening day was around the building. And They had a nice little ceremony, gave them a proclamation from the city, and they were certainly appreciative of there. And the one thing I absolutely want to mention is the project manager was there and I asked, so how did the city treat you? And he said we were one of the best cities to deal with that he's encountered. So it was nice to actually get a good comment for a change. Congratulations to our development department. And you can, and I was at the Memorial Day, San Ronnie, and something that I'm also fostering since half of my district is part of Menifee Union School District. I've started meeting with them quarterly about the interaction between those residents and the city and the school district so we can foster that same great relationship that we have with Murrieta. So that is all I have. Everything else can be, you can see it online and My email and cell phone are on the screen if you need to reach me. And with that, we will move on to public comments. These are comments on non-agenda items. You have three minutes to speak unless you've cleared with the city clerk more time. And this is something we can't respond to, we can't discuss. It's just for you to give input into the council and maybe it'll see it on a future agenda. Madam City Clerk, do we have any public comment speakers?

Connie McConnell.

Welcome, Connie. Thank you. I'm back again. And I just want to say before I do this, a quick thank you for Voting yes on our extension for the market nights. We're really excited about that and speaking of market nights. That's why I'm here I'm going to read you a Portions of not the whole thing but portions of a letter from one of our vendors who a couple of times ago Said she was leaving and handed me this letter. So I just wanted to Express this to the community to all of the wonderful event coordinators, me, vendors, I'm sorry, I had to throw that in, and people at Murrieta Market Nights. For over four years, I have participated in Murrieta Market Nights events as a vendor in the Art at the Alleyway section. I watched this community grow as my art vendor booth evolved by branching into creating more types of artwork than I have done before. And by the way, I did get permission to share some of her comments. I want to write this letter to thank you all for the wonderful opportunities and experiences I have had at every Marietta Market Nights event I have been a part of. Thank you to everyone for making me feel welcome and letting me be myself, even when I was not always feeling like my full self. I am on the autism spectrum and am also living with anxiety, and throughout over 30 years of living in Southern California, I consider the Marietta Market Nights community especially art at the alleyway to be one of the places where I feel like I belong. I gained a lot from over four years of participating in Myriad of Market Nights events. I developed social, marketing, and networking skills I would not imagine I would have had over a decade ago. But after learning about art marketing, practicing it, and how art has made it easier for me to interact with others, to hear at least one or a few people say, I make a great sales rep, does mean quite a lot. I got to carry these skills to other art vendor events, and I also got to bring my social skills I gained to airports when I started traveling by myself, since I do love to fly and have become comfortable interacting with others in those types of communities as well. I have had such wonderful memories throughout all Merida Market Nights events, I have been to from meeting and interacting with many great people to making memorable sales to fun, inspiring and or heartwarming moments I saw, heard of and or experienced at my art vendor booth and surroundings. Thank you very much for the opportunities at Murrieta Market Nights that have helped me grow as a visual artist and person in general. You have been such a wonderful community. I will miss you all and I wish you all the best. I hope this community will still be around and thriving if I come back to visit someday. Anyway, I just, this touched my heart because Casey and I are very passionate about what we do and what we give to the community. And this gal, her parents, I have to comment on them real quickly. They brought her to every event. She's in her 30s, dropped her off, and came back and picked her up afterwards. They were so dedicated. And this person, we just watched her grow and blossom through that time. So thank you.

Thank you for sharing.

Phillip O'Reilly.

Brought with me a little something if we can get the screen going. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening Mayor Pro Tem, Council, City Staff and community members. Tonight I'd like to go back to basics and discuss my Marietta Gateway Monument petition. With almost 200 signatures already, this journey is just getting started. Looks like the lights are turning on here. I'll wait for it to go and get about it starting. Beautiful. Petition overview. With current private development in Wildomar recreating the shared border with Marietta, Jefferson Avenue and Palomar Street will finally be connected after 20 years of Jefferson sitting as a dead-end road. This new entryway will serve as a, quote, recreation of Highway 395, as stated in General Plan Element CIR-A2. As well, this improvement will serve as a freeway frontage route for the 15 freeway. In doing so, Marietta has committed to widening the current two-lane pinch on Jefferson created by these local ranches that currently sit as hidden leftovers of the previous ranch era. As a local who has lived on these remaining ranches for 30 years, we are looking to petition the city to not only widen the road, but beautify it and create an entryway monument to honor the city. This is an opportunity to honour previous eras, such as Juan Murrieta's sheep farm, the Pechanga Band of Indians, the Southern California Railroad and the Murrieta Green Elevator, the Ranchero Arrow and the Highway 395, as well as the modern and future suburban gem of the valley we've all invested in and call home. I'm going to flip it over here. A little bit about me. As a local born son of two immigrants, Irish and Mexican, whose father was the original fabricator welder of the old town arches in Temecula, I've spent the last 30 years watching Maria to grow from 10 to 110,000 residents. The valley has changed and exploded into a SoCal suburban hidden gem. And as someone who is deeply fond of local heritage and history, I see that it's time we define that gem of the valley with monuments, artwork, and community pride to align with the broad scale city branding, like our neighboring cities, Temecula and Lake Elsinore. To many, this area is a family city, a community city, and is a wellness-focused community, but representation and branding to match that has unfortunately been lacking and forgotten. I hope to champion this change and help create a community monument much like my father, who passed from cancer in 2015. On one end of Jefferson Avenue sits his work with the Temecula Old Town Arches. I hope to define the other end of Jefferson Avenue with this Marietta Gateway monument. I hope those watching scan the QR code below and sign this petition. My contact info is listed here as well, and I'd be glad to discuss any further questions with any community members. I also hope our council members can get behind this. I've heard a lot of talk of beautification and local standards at these meetings, as well as city branding in these meetings, and together we can create a monument that defines our valley for generations to come.

Thank you for your time. Thank you.

That concludes public comments.

Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Now moving on to the consent calendar, are there any requests from City Council to pull any consent items for discussion or recuse from voting?

Yes, I would like to recuse myself from item number 12 on the consent calendar, or sorry. Is it 15? No, that's the public hearing. I'm recusing myself from item number six.

Okay.

Doing owning property within a thousand feet of the project.

Okay. Is that it?

Is that? Yes. Okay.

It says two things on it.

Yeah, it's two things. I've got double here, but yes, thank you.

Mayor?

Okay, item six for the consent calendar and.

Yes, Mayor Pro Tem. I am recusing myself from item six due to owning property within a thousand feet of the project.

Do we have enough votes then on item six? We have two people recusing themselves from the same item. We're gonna have to have... Give us a second while we sort this out.

It's a little different.

Maybe it's item 18.

All right. I will recuse my number six and add myself to number 12. So I'm fine with number six and I will recuse myself from item number 12.

Okay, so council member DeForest is item 12 and council member Stone is item six. All right. And we are not recusing because we don't own property anywhere in those areas. Do we have any speakers on consent calendar items?

Kasson Klein.

Welcome. Thank you.

So item number 12, I'm sorry, item number 11, talking about the consulting for the CIPs, specifically traffic calming, traffic management program traffic signal citywide signal modifications traffic signal position priority of traffic signals now. Lori should be commended for spearheading the traffic in the signal ization but let's not only talk about signal ization let's talk about capacity it's something I've talked about for over a decade long before some of you were sitting up there. And I'll start with Clinton-Keith. So Clinton-Keith is built out to its ultimate six lanes, but we've only got it striped for two. And so if you have lane one and lane two, but then you have the ultimate right-of-way. And what ends up happening without that being striped is you have one car here. I hope Scott's watching. And then you have this car here that straddles what would be the third lane, and these cars don't know which way to go. They can't get around them here, they can't get around them there. And so Clinton Keith, primarily going eastbound between Spinning Wheel and the 215 freeway, With the exception of east of Cal Oaks, where there's a dedicated, from the dedicated right turn, there's an acceleration lane and then it drops. Now, I'm not a traffic engineer. I'm many things, but I'm not a traffic engineer. We won't say some of the things that I am. But... And again, I think before some of you were here, one of the things I suggested on Jefferson Avenue, another 110-foot right of way, six lanes, but we've only got it two lanes each way, with the exception of a couple of segments. And several years ago, I came before council and I said, look, p.m. peak hour, we've got a problem between Guava and Hot Springs Road, northbound, because the people turning right onto Hot Springs when the lane is not delineated, the dedicated right, they're taking up both lanes and it's backing traffic up. So... I don't know specifics of these CIPs and these contracts, but it's not only traffic signalization, it's capacity. It doesn't matter how well we work with the signals and how well that timing is if we don't have the capacity. And on at least these two roads, we have the capacity, so why aren't we using it? And as I said, I'm not a traffic engineer, and you don't have to be. Anecdotally, you can drive by And just practically you can see, and again, the example I gave on Jefferson, northbound, for years I was told I was wrong. And the facts are, if we look at them, I can give you several other examples where I've come before council and, you know, unfortunately one of them, you know, CarMax probably should have... should have been conditioned to put in the dual left-hand turn lanes. They weren't, and we ended up paying for it. So if we could look into those contracts, and if it's not on these contracts, maybe the next ones, that might help resolve some of the traffic. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I'll put these back up on the shelf. Back in the closet from your childhood. Any other public comments?

That concludes public comments.

Thank you. All right, so closing public comment on consent calendar items, and then I'll call for a motion and a second. Motion by Council Member DeForest, second by Council Member Warren. Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously, noting DeForest's recusal on item number 12 and Stone's recusal on item number six.

Thank you, Madam City Clerk. All right. On to public hearings. Item number 14, Residential Objective Design Standards Update. Welcome, team. I imagine you have dreams about this, Mr. Chantarangsu. Or are they nightmares? And Mr. Watts.

So good afternoon. Mayor Pro Tem and council members. So the item that we're, I'm just giving an overview and then, you know, Dennis, Mr. Watts will give the presentation. We also have on my far left, Alan Loomis, who's with Placeworks, who's a consultant that helped us complete this project. So you may recall back in 2024, We brought to you multifamily residential objective design standards. And so this essentially allows us to provide information to multifamily developers, the way that we want projects to look, the components that they need to include. And so it's what we call an objective design standard. There's no subjectivity in it. In the old days, we used to kind of negotiate with developers over what the city wanted. So those days are gone. And, you know, we've been talking about local control. This is one of the few areas that the state actually gives cities to be able to have a say in at least how the residential development looks for the community. So we've done some public outreach, gotten feedback from those folks. And so in Just before I hand this over to Dennis, I wanted to say this is kind of an unexpected project that we took on. WRCOG had some extra money for us to be able to take this on. And so we basically updated the objective design standards based on the use of the document for the past year on the multifamily side. And then we're also introducing residential, single family residential objective design standards as well. So with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Watts.

Yes, thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem Holladay and council members. So staff is pleased to present to you the update to the residential objective design standards. And as Mr. Chandrantu was mentioning, so we do have a lot of little background on the objective standards is there's been over the past several years, several state legislation being passed to help facilitate the production of housing. And so with that one example is the Housing Accountability Act, and it limits local government's ability to disapprove or condition or reduce the density of housing development. And as long as it's consistent with the local objective development standards, state also requires a ministerial process. for certain qualified projects and requires local agencies to apply objective standards and eliminate standards that contain discretion. So also Assembly Bill 2011, which was effective July 1, 2023, It's also named the Affordable Housing and High Roads Jobs Act Assembly Bill. That requires local governments to approve certain qualified affordable housing projects in cities' commercial office and innovation zones, and that's by a ministerial by-right process without discretionary review or a public hearing, and then also the city can't require a rezone out of that. So with that being said, On September 5, 2023, the City Council adopted the multifamily mixed-use residential objective design standards, and that's a step to be in compliance with state law and also to help retain local control. So with that... This update is proposing to include new areas within the city. They're primarily the single-family zones, so that's gonna be your rural residential, estate residential one, two, and three, and then your single-family one and two zones. So now, essentially, your objective design standards would apply citywide, and that's regardless of zone. The objective design standard document would be renamed residential objective design standards so right now it's considered called out as multi family and mixed use so now I just get rid of the multi family and mixed use and just call it residential. And now I'd like to we're going to talk in the next few slides about the single family the duplex and the duplex objective design standards with that I'll go ahead and hand it over to Ellen Loomis.

Thank you, Dennis. Ms. Mayor, members of Pro Tem, members of the Council, Placeworks and I was involved in the original production of this document some years ago, so it's very pleased to be able to come back and rework it and work with the community again for this current update. One of the key questions that staff had asked us to look at and kind of include in the update was provisions for single-family or duplex neighborhoods. What has been happening in Murrieta, and Murrieta is not unique in the region in this regard, is that many of the sites that were zoned for higher density housing that the original objective design standards document anticipated essentially multi-story apartment buildings, instead what's being proposed is neighborhoods with the site plan configuration like you see on the screen that are made up of single family homes or duplex units on very kind of small lot kind of configurations clustered around different kind of alleyways or driveways, et cetera. Fairly densely packed developments. In many cases, these are one large lot and these developments oftentimes are airspace condominiums. They're not even fee simple developments. So there's a number of different kind of tools of that nature by which these developments are brought onto the market for sale. But one of the things they have in common is these kinds of site plan configurations. So what we have provided in this updated document is some standards related to how to develop these different kinds of streets, alleyways, passages for pedestrians, et cetera, to provide developers and staff some guidance as to how to think about these kinds of site plan arrangements. And so the each one of these color boxes has some detailed standards that go behind it to encourage a kind of coherent organization of these neighborhoods using these kinds of cycling configurations. We are also asked by staff to develop a set of standards and guidance for accessory dwelling units or ad use. which the document does include under Section 3.5, and so it covers these various different topics. One of the things we're primarily focused on is just probably to provide these kind of cartoon images, if you will, of kind of indicating typical kinds of accessory dwelling unit situations that are being seen in the city. I will note that A few hours ago, we received a fairly extensive letter from a housing advocacy group questioning the nature of how we approach this. And I think when we get to our recommendation, I'll defer to city staff as to what we collectively think is the best approach to addressing that letter. I just said the short version of it is I think we're going to recommend you adopt this document, but exclude the section on ADUs and revisit that when we have more time to consider their letter. When we originally adopted the objective design standards a few years ago, we included architectural styles. Three of these were drawn from the existing downtown specific plan, and three more were added in to include styles that the community thought were appropriate in other parts of the city. This was the result of a number of the public outreach that we did in the original document to define these styles. carrying those styles over in this update. However, we are dramatically simplifying the way in which these styles are implemented. There was a fairly lengthy and kind of tiered set of checklists that were included in the original version. In our current practice, we've come to the conclusion that we can make that much simpler by focusing in on the required components are related to things that all buildings must have, namely roofs, walls, doors, windows, and some sort of material on the outside. And then there's a list of other features that are sort of optional add-ons, and those number of add-ons that you have to provide as an architect scale up as the building or the development gets bigger, so this allows us to tailor these standards to a single family style development, but also to the sort of large scale developments. Some of what you're seeing on Marietta hot springs road, for example, so we think is a much simpler way of addressing architectural style, but the styles themselves are the same that were defined. three years ago, but the way we're applying them is simpler for both applicants and for city staff and scalable for the wide range of different kinds of development types we've been asked to address. As a consequence, there is a table in the document that sort of outlines where styles are applicable in different zones of the city. When we first drafted this, we said not every style is appropriate everywhere in the city. There was a kind of careful calibration that was done with Planning Commission and the City Council three years ago to define what styles are appropriate in what part of the city. So we've had to update this as the document now extends into your single family and estate residential zones. However, one of the comments we received when we came here to Planning Commission related to the estate residential, your RR and ER zones, that these are often where individual property owners, homeowners, they wanna build their mansion, their castle to whatever aesthetic they deem appropriate. So we've ended up, providing a carve out for that particular circumstance. So in those zones, a single building on a single lot is exempt from the architectural style standards. However, if somebody were to come in and want to do two or three units on one of those lots, which could happen if the state passes some new laws and they carve out a loophole that allows developers to come into those estate zones and do two or three houses on those sites, then the architectural style standards would apply. This is kind of a stop gap or kind of a backstop for that ultimate possibility that the state may come around and, again, try and preempt local control. But we did want to have a carve out for people who want to essentially build their mansion. So that's been provided as a result of input at Planning Commission. There's various little kind of tweaks associated with this table then about the architectural styles.

And I'd like to jump in on this one. Just on the table, it is focusing on the multifamily sections. And just something for you to be aware of is we did add the modern to the multifamily three and multifamily four zones. Essentially, the multifamily three zone, there are no properties currently zoned MF3. And then for the multifamily four, there's three properties that have that zoning. Two of them currently have an application in. And then there's one that is still vacant and nothing's come in quite at this point. But we felt that with those higher densities that the modern would be appropriate.

Turn back to you.

So aside from those, there's a couple other amendments that we were proposing, and these were essentially based on requests by the development community. So currently, the objective design standards requires a building separation of 10 feet between two single-story structures, a 15-foot setback between two-story structures, and then a 20-foot setback between three-story structures. And it's regardless of the number of units in that structure. So the original recommendation that went to Planning Commission was to change that to just a flat five foot for a five foot setback between structures. Again, regardless of the number of units, regardless of the number of stories out of that. And then second one that we were proposing is to reduce the setback to the finger, a finger parking lot landscape area, and that's from nine feet to five feet. So those are two of the bigger ones that were being proposed, and this is just from feedback from the development community that was stating that they were having trouble meeting the densities, and primarily because of the first one that was mentioned is the distance separation between structures, where they're all on the same lot, as Ellen had previously mentioned. So with that, at the Planning Commission, staff provided an amended recommendation to remove the compliance checklist from the Objective Design Standard document, and that's essentially Chapter 5. At the hearing, there were two speakers. One raised concerns of why staff is amending the code to facilitate multifamily housing, and essentially the second comment was a concern about the limited architectural styles within your single family zones. Since we allow four of them right now, the speaker had mentioned that there's, as Ellen had mentioned, some people have a custom home, they want to build that dream home and do something different, and there's various different styles, many that are not listed here. So essentially, the Planning Commission recommended to exempt out in the rural residential and the state residential zone. And those are your larger lot properties within the city. So with that, Planning Commission, as their recommendation was to change the setback distance separation from five feet to 10 feet. They also recommended to exempt out the architectural styles for properties that are within the rural residential and the state residential one property. And then they also went with staff's recommendation to remove chapter five from the objective design standards. And essentially the checklist, it's still gonna be applied, but what we wanted to do is be able to make changes to the checklist, and it won't change the standards, but just how it's being formatted. That way it could be better utilized between staff and the developer. And right now, if we make those changes, we would have to come by to Planning Commission and City Council for those changes, since it's included in this document. And then I did want to go into a little more detail about the distance separation as it was a discussion item with the Planning Commission. So I guess focusing on the top image, you could see there's four structures essentially there. There's two single-unit, two-story structures. And then on the right-hand side, there's two two-story duplex structures. So under the current code, Since there are two stories, you would have a 15-foot setback requirement between the structures. Staff recommended five, and then ultimately the Planning Commission is recommending 10. And so that top image is more of an elevation view. You can see a plan view down below. So, for example, I guess on the top of the plan view, you have an orange kind of box, and it's numbered 21. And then you have right next to it a blue one that's numbered 20. That's essentially, it's a duplex unit, so it could be a two-story, it could be a one-story, three-story, and right next to it, you have a single unit, which could be the same. It could be a single-story, two-story, or three-story. So again, that's an image there where if it's a two-story unit, then you would have a 15-foot setback. So ultimately, I think the message here is the Planning Commission has recommended a 10-foot setback. And essentially, in summary, why are we proposing these modifications it's to comply with state law it's account for potential residential projects anywhere within the city, even if it's not zone residential. it's also in an effort to amend to based on feedback from the development community. It's also to address some items that were brought up internally from staff on some conflicts and areas where it would be difficult to adhere to or to follow. And then ultimately, it's to improve the process timing, its certainty, and helps provide a minimum design standard. And some of these changes, like the distance separation and so on, it's one of those items that – may not guarantee, but it does help facilitate that potential for a for sale housing product. And with that staff recommends the city council file a notice of exemption finding the project is exempt from sequel. And then to introduce the ordinance includes the final revised objective design standards and the code amendment related to chapter 1608 and 1616. And based on the letter that the city received, we would be also recommending to remove chapter or section 3.5 from the update here. This concludes staff's presentation and we're available for any questions.

Thank you. Before we move on to council member questions, since this is a public hearing, are there any members of the city council who need to recuse themselves from this item? Seeing none, move on to council member questions, starting with council member Stone.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Can you go back to page 13, please? Okay, so the distance of separation is, recommended 10 to 20 feet, or from 10 to 20 feet to 10 feet. And then there was another slide that showed five feet and 10 feet, and I didn't write down that. So the distance of separation between the buildings is recommended.

10 feet.

It is 10 feet. Okay, great. And the setback is also 10 feet.

Correct.

Okay. And if I remember correctly, is the development industry opposed to the 10 feet separation? Do they want five feet because of the amount of density more that they can build?

We haven't had the feedback since the Planning Commission about the 10 feet, but when it was originally posed to the development community of, hey, are there changes, and as we were reviewing projects, it was one of the things of, hey, this is too much of a setback. And again, it's regardless of the number of units, so it could be a single unit structure, and we're seeing a lot of these where it could be a single unit structure that has a garage on the first floor, kind of a main living area on the second floor and then your bedrooms on the third floor, well, that's going to end up having a 20-foot setback between that and another three-story structure. So we really haven't heard from them, but what they did say is they would like five. So that's what we proposed originally.

So on 5-4. And I know Council Member Warren, I think it's about five feet. And you're talking about this much. Seriously. Sorry. You're talking about this much in between these buildings. And I'm really glad that our Planning Commission is recommending 10 feet. I definitely support that. And this is not necessarily for home ownership. This is also for rental buildings as well, correct? That is correct. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Council Member Stone.

She said this was only five feet. I'm confused. Council Member DeForest.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. A couple questions. First, I'd like to just say thank you to you all, Dennis, Alan, and David. David, I am very excited that we moved on to single family after working so diligently on multifamily. So thank you so much for that. My question goes to... the page eight where you have the ADU design standards, and I realize and I would agree we probably need to pull it off after just reviewing that letter to bring it back, removing section 3.5, to bring that back to another time. But In our design standards when we talk about ADUs, there was what I originally thought was needed to have some consistency with the original building. So do we have some consistency still with that and could you maybe elaborate on that?

Yes, so the development code right now has a requirement that says that an ADU is required to match the design of the main primary residence.

All right, and that is still currently moving forward with this new standard.

That's outside of this, and that's always been a requirement and still will be correct.

Okay, thank you. I just wanted to clarify that to everybody. And... So... single-family home like moving on to number slide 10 so a single-family home would be have would have less features if there was only two single-family homes and say a development that say had 50 so you would increase the number of features on a larger development is that true

Yes. Requirements. That's correct.

More requirements. So more architectural features on a larger development.

Right. The baseline standards that deal with the roofs, walls, doors, windows, those apply to development of any scale, single family to the large multifamily developments. But as the buildings or the scale of the development in terms of number of units increases, then more of the optional, more add-ons or decorative features are required. So we provide a list of about 15 decorative features that applicant can choose from and for example if it's a single-family or detached or duplex unit they have to have two additional design features but if the building has more than 11 units then it's required to have for you for additional features so it's sort of scaling that up as the buildings or the development gets bigger to add more of those decorative features okay that's that's the way it's

And do you have a list of those architectural features?

I didn't see that in my... No, absolutely. Each of the style features, there's four pages for each of the styles. One is just the kind of overall introduction that explains the characteristics of the style. Then the second page is the mandatory elements. And then the next two pages are all the optional add-ons.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, so those are all defined.

I guess I didn't go far enough in the packet.

Yeah.

Okay. All right, thank you for that.

This on the screen is an example. This is for the Spanish revival. This would be half the second page of the add-ons, decorative add-ons that an applicant would have to choose from. And how many they choose depends on the scale of the building.

Okay. And I think that's fantastic because I do think the architectural aesthetics of a building really makes the community look better. I wouldn't be opposed to adding a few more of those, right? Maybe adding five if the development is large or maybe increasing that number. I'm not sure if Planning Commission talked about that or not. I'll let my fellow colleagues... maybe comment on that as well and I do appreciate the carve-out for rural residential and single-family I think that's very important because somebody wants to build something that looks like a castle maybe as their castle but is there a baseline for design standards on those so we have a baseline just the fact they need roof and walls and windows that's it and doors yes thank you

No, they still have to comply with the city's development code if there's some, based on any objective standards, but no ultimate baseline, no.

Okay. And the other one is with the last question, and I appreciate this, number 15, and that moves on to what Council Member Stone already talked about, is why in the world would we decrease our space? when we're talking about trying to make our city more beautiful with a little bit more space. So shouldn't we keep it at 20 foot between the buildings and really stay with that? I appreciated Planning Commission's comments on that, but I do not agree. I agree that we need more space between the buildings. I think for... safety as well as to get fire trucks around, and I know that fire will look at that completely separately, but I know that statically, it looks better than a whole bunch of buildings crammed in a smaller space. So could you elaborate on that a little bit?

Yeah, Mayor Pro Temp, could I just maybe add some color onto the conversation that we had at the Planning Commission level? What we're hearing from developers that are doing projects in the high fire hazard severity zones, we know that it's very difficult, if not impossible for them to build large apartment buildings, which for our purposes might be, you might consider that great. So what they're flipping to is more of a for sale product, but the 10 foot building separation requirement is preventing them from meeting the minimum density requirements that we have. For example, in the multifamily two zone, there's a 10 unit per acre floor that they have to meet. So if they're adding additional space between buildings, it means that they're having difficulty meeting that 10 unit per acre minimum. And so it's not consistent with what the market is asking for in those particular areas, which is townhome or condominium style, um, projects where you only have maybe one or two buildings clustered together as opposed to, um, one of the projects I think, uh, was proposing, you know, six, a six unit block and they just, they couldn't get the fire insurance for it to work. The other thing that we're seeing is when, um, The developers laying out their projects they're applying the objective design standards they're purposefully integrating the lowest level of affordable housing, which is 5% so that they get concessions and waivers from these development standards and so we're getting. you know, a unit product mix that may not necessarily be desirable. And so they're getting those setbacks anyway. So the idea that we had behind pitching this to the Planning Commission was if you can apply a smaller setback to units that are only in the configuration of ones or twos, but still apply the greater setback to the larger buildings, that actually reflects what is happening in the market, and it still gives us a level of protection from having over-building for the larger apartment block buildings or multi-family buildings. So that was the idea behind having a reduced setback, was to react to the market and avoid having these concessions and waivers granted from our design standards. So it's a very nuanced point, but it's what we're seeing happening in projects in those areas.

If it's okay, can I summarize, and David, tell me if I'm way off, but one of the things we're really saying is to make it a little easier to meet the market with a single family and a more detached product, you may simply need smaller lots. And one of the ways we address kind of lot and configuration, what can fit on the property, is the distance between buildings. And so what you might end up with, if... We love the larger lots. We also know that when land gets more scarce and the cost of housing goes up, those houses become not entry-level houses. And so we've communicated after hearing from council that our council would love to see more single-family, less multi-family, and more for-sale product and less rent product. But to do that, especially to meet an entry-level price, the feedback we're getting is we're probably going to need smaller lots and we're going to need things like smaller setbacks to accomplish that. So one of the concerns is that without some more forgiving standards for a single-family product, we might be incentivizing that only a multi-family product will be viable.

But I propose the question, if we were to adopt this, this is not just for home ownership, this is for rentals as well. That could be fair. That's right. And so that's what's concerning.

So the way that I think that we proposed the planning commission consider is kind of a sliding scale approach. for the setbacks. So if you've only got a duplex, for example, that you're laying out, then you would have the ability to use that reduced setback. But if you're applying or building, laying out a building type with more than two units, then the larger setback is going to apply. So it gives us the ability to react to what the developers want to build while preserving the opportunity to plan a smaller for sale single family project in a townhome or condominium configuration.

If I might add, it is difficult to predict how rules and regulations will impact markets. It's also difficult. Developers are trying to position themselves to be profitable, of course. And so it's hard to predict exactly what will happen. But the signal that seems pretty clear is that when you start to overlay some of these challenges, minimum densities, sometimes land set-asides, cultural elements, et cetera, et cetera, it starts to dictate the product type. And sometimes the versatility in these standards, especially if they're done creatively like this, so that you might only get less separation if you have less mass of building, I think our thought is if it's one or the other, what we've heard from council is we'd love to see more detached product. So we're trying to, I think, incentivize that. It's really difficult to tell what the outcome will be, but what we're pretty confident is everybody that comes in for a discretionary act, like a general plan amendment, a zone change, and we say, we're fairly confident the community will respond better to a single family detached for sale product. They say with these rules, we simply can't build it. And we've heard that somewhat over and over again. And more importantly, we've kind of seen it. We've seen a lot of interest in multifamily and a lot of interest in larger massing of buildings because you get more units per space. So if we want them separated, you might have less distance between. Without less distance between, you might have more connected buildings.

So just to kind of elaborate on that, so we have one of Cindy between multifamily houses. If she's laying down. If she's laying down. And so Santa really can jump really quickly from roof to roof. So that's efficiency. But if it's a two-story building, or a multi-story building, then our distance between the building gets larger? Can you, yes? Am I understanding this?

So that was the recommended path. Yes. And the Planning Commission waved off. And understand, I think they had some of the same concerns that the Council is expressing here tonight. And so we wanted to bring this back and draw your attention to it because if we go back with a 10 foot separation between buildings, we think there's more of a likelihood that we'll see less of the for sale product and more of the apartment building projects or projects that just aren't feasible. Justin mentioned it's hard to predict what's gonna happen, but we think we have a better chance of having the for sale product if we have a reduced setback. And like I mentioned, developers are using affordable housing as a way to get concessions and waivers anyway. And so you may wind up with that even if you don't adopt these science standards. So it's a tough choice, but we wanted to bring it to your attention.

Well, I know there's some communities, old school house, what is the Heritage Lake? I think those are five foot in between homes or smaller, very, very tight homes in between. Yeah, so I mean, and those are single family for sale, which really is something that we haven't had built in Marietta for a very, very long time. So I would like to see my kids be able to buy something affordable. Maybe it's closer together. But at the same note, though, I'd like my design standards, when we come into the multifamily, to actually have the large spaces between. So exactly what you proposed.

So kind of a sliding scale.

Exactly. The taller it goes, the wider it goes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. Thank you. I think that is... That's all my questions. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Tim, can I ask Council Member DeForest just a quick question? Sure. So you had talked about the single family home with regards to the exterior. Did you want to increase that or are you fine with what they suggested? I think that was page, is it page 13?

Yeah, the 10 architectural styles.

Yes, but the more density, the more of the features. Right. And when you ask a question about the single family home, are you okay with the design standards for a single family home, or would you like to see more?

I think that I would encourage people to build single family homes, and if they're going to build a home like that, I would think their design standards would probably be a little bit better than what could be built. So I'm okay with that. I feel comfortable with that. I know we could always revisit that if we start getting some really different-looking single-family homes. But I think that that would be okay. I'm not opposed to increasing the standards when we get a little bit larger density. And I know you said there was four. Isn't that what you had said, Alan? There was four standards? Now is there, was there any?

11 units or more would have to do an additional four decorative features in addition to the mandatory.

Was there any discussion by Planning Commission to increase that number?

No, not at Planning Commission. I would say in response to your question, when I was thinking about it, I would say maybe, you know, a new threshold could be maybe 50 units, then you have to have six additional elements.

Okay, I'm for that. I know when you drive around different places, Irvine and some other places, the design standards there are quite I don't think the builders are doing it because they want to. I think some of the, even the multifamily homes there are absolutely gorgeous with some really neat architectural style. And so I think that's really important, especially moving forward. It'd be nice to have some product like that in our community. So I'm all for making six standards if it's 50 or more. And I also agree with staff with leaving it at five foot and then making it that sliding scale. So, thank you.

Okay, thank you. My turn. Let's go back to slide 15, the popular one. So on the plan view there, 21 and 20, this is more of a condo or townhome?

It could be either. I mean, it could be a rental.

Because there's no setback between those two buildings.

Yeah, it could be like a townhome or a duplex. Essentially, that's probably what it is, is a duplex.

And then you're showing 10 feet to the next building. But condos and townhomes, you can have multiple that share the same wall. Correct.

It's just between the separated structures.

And if it's a small lot detached for sale product... You're going to have a property line somewhere.

That is correct.

And so in the upper portion of that slide, if those two two story or two story structures had a lot line, you're really talking about a two and a half foot setback from the property line.

Yes, well, this standard is more designed to address multiple structures on a single lot. So when you say you have a small lot development, you'll have one house on a small lot that will have its own setbacks, which is probably going to be it's more identified in your development code. So it could be a single family to zone. maybe it's a 5,000 square foot lot and they would have a five foot setback from property line. But we're talking more of a multifamily development where there's multiple units on one lot in this case.

So this only applies to the multifamily?

Multifamily or it could be a single family too, but it's a more of a airspace condominium where it's still considered one lot. So again, those setbacks would apply there and kind of in context to what we were talking about earlier. If you apply the standards that are in today, if you have two three-story structures side by side, you would have to have a 20-foot setback in between them. That's probably equivalent to what your single-family zoning setbacks are. You have a single-family zone with a residence, that's a 10-foot setback between your property, and then you have your other residence on the other lot, that's another 10-foot setback. So you're almost applying kind of single-family setbacks. on a multifamily development, and that's, I think, the challenge that the developers... That's what they're running into. Right.

And I wanted to clarify that for my colleagues, that if it was a small lot detached, it's five foot from the property line, which puts a 10-foot setback between the buildings at a minimum. Correct.

Yeah.

So even if we went with the five foot here, it's not saying that small lot detached for sale products that have a property line are going to be two and a half feet from the property line, they're gonna be five foot the property line, they're gonna be 10 feet from each other. And it's still staff's recommendation, despite what the planning commission recommended that we go to the five foot for the multifamily.

No, it was for multifamily.

Multifamily.

Yeah.

They didn't address, they didn't even address the single-family small lot detached, and that goes with the standard that we already have, which is five-foot setback.

Yeah, to clarify, Council Member DeForest, so the reduced setback supports for-sale housing, but in a multifamily format, so condos, townhomes.

Condos, townhomes, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, the single-family standards aren't being changed. Probably, yeah.

So on a three story condo, what is the proposed setback under this?

So that gets back to the number of units and the sliding scale concept that we've been talking about. If it's two units or less, then there's the ability, there would be the ability to use that five foot setback or separation between buildings.

How many units or less?

Two or less.

Two or less.

That's what we're working off of. I mean, obviously you could change that, but it's just based on the feedback that we're getting from the development side.

If it's a condo project or a townhome, they can have multiple units in one structure. Correct.

Yeah, absolutely.

Zero setback between them.

Right. The issue, though, is when you've got more than two units, the fire insurance.

That's why they're not building them.

Right.

Which that could change in a year or two. True. Which is why we need to get more of these projects approved and built, in my opinion. Okay. I don't have any other further questions on the setback. Council Member Warren.

Almost all of my questions have been asked and answered, so I appreciate that, Council. And I'm done laying down, so I'm going to sit up and look at everybody now. Thank you all for using me as your example. Could you just go back to slide 13 and explain the parking lot finger planter? That was just a little confusing to me. And so could you explain that to me, please?

Yes. So there's a requirement for a landscape finger planter in a parking lot. So it's not a set number of spaces. It's more of a percentage within a parking area. So right now the requirement is that you have a nine foot finger planter area and that's nine feet wide. You're going to have curbing outside of that. So it's about 10 feet at the end of the day. And what we're doing is changing that to five feet. And that's really, it's consistent with, what our development code requires in most other developments for commercial centers, office development, and so on.

Okay. And my other question is, and I may be way off base, but I don't see anything in here for parking. And is there a standard for parking? I know we have our standards and our codes, but I'm wondering on these, is there anything for parking on these? Because if we don't provide enough parking when these are built, they end up on the streets. And so that's been a problem here in town.

The parking standards are based on the development code. Okay. The design standards don't change that. They don't, okay. Yeah, so it's all based on what we have today in the development code.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure I understood that. All my other questions were asked and answered, so thank you very much.

You're welcome. Thank you, Councillor Moorman. I'm going to open the public hearing. Madam City Clerk, are there any public testimony?

Cassin Klein.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

I want to... I want to compliment and commend Carl because it was my comment at planning commission about the rural residential and Carl thought on his feet and made the recommendation. So, you know, great job on that and bringing that forward to you. Cause that to me was a real big thing. That was the main reason why I put the comment card in. But after hearing the discussion, I also wanted to, although I think you've resolved it, but speaking to the density issue, right and being able to get to units and why the minimum density affects things so you all you talk about earlier tonight, you all did a video on a project over on Jefferson and you're not springs road which I represented that project is faced because of the market post entitlement they came to me and they said hey we would like to build townhomes but they couldn't get to 30 dwelling units to the acre. So there's an example that maybe might help you if you can envision it, something on the ground, whereas we don't want the apartments, right? But they have to get 30 DUs to the acre to be consistent with the code and the general plan. So again, it sounds like you guys got to what staff is recommending, which look, I'm in agreement with you guys as a resident, I don't wanna see any more apartments. Professionally, I'm not turning away those clients. But what staff is telling you is absolutely true. I know this from people that I've spoken to. No current clients. But if we want to get to this type of product, we've got to do this. And something else to keep in mind, the more gingerbread we add to whatever, whether it's a single family or whatever, the higher the cost. Right? And we're almost at build out. And we're not talking about custom homes. They're still tract homes. So we need to be mindful of that, finding that balance of what's remaining affordable and what's not. But again, I'll repeat myself. The main reason why I wanted to come up and speak to you was Carl did an outstanding job. Staff did an outstanding job. But particularly, I want to identify Carl at thinking on the fly, my comment at Planning Commission. Thank you. Thank you.

That concludes public testimony. All right.

And back to council deliberation or comments. Council Member Stone.

Mayor Pro Tem, I still have a couple more questions. Actually, just one.

Feel free.

So based on what Casson just said, it's 30 units per acre.

Right. So different multifamily zones will have different density requirements. So the... MF2 zone, I think I mentioned, had 10 to 15 dwelling unit per acre density range. And so normally developers pushing to get to the ceiling, they're telling us they're having trouble getting to the minimum.

So with the setback and the separation, 10 and 10, If we were to approve that tonight, do you believe that the developers could meet their quota?

I think it depends on the location. So in the very high fire hazard severity zones, which is where we're seeing the next, anticipating the next wave of development, they're going to have a really difficult time doing that. And so at least one project I had mentioned they're proposing concessions and waivers through the affordable housing route to get around our development standards. So that's the way that's going to happen.

It's going to happen regardless.

I'm so frustrated.

We feel your pain.

Yeah, but you don't live in the Marietta. I do. You don't get the emails.

Yeah, I think in the non-fire zone areas, it could be a different story.

So are we allowed to, by law, Madam City Attorney, can we separate out in high fire zones that this is our design standard versus other areas?

I think we could justify that. Okay.

What do you think? All right. That concludes my one question. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Certainly. Council Member Warren.

I also had a question. I'd like to hear your response to that. What Council Member Stone just suggested.

I mean, I thought of that as well. And if the city during things we can justify it, then we should try.

OK, I agree with that. I do. I want to ask you about the 80 years. And I forgot to ask this earlier. When once you. check this out with this letter that we all received. Would you be thinking about doing a specific design standard just for ADUs, or were you gonna reincorporate it back into this?

We'd probably reincorporate it back into this.

Reincorporate it back into this, okay. And then if this passed, and I'm sure it will, but if it does, When would this be enforceable? Is there like a waiting period for this? I mean, who would have to comply with this?

So you'd have to do the second reading, which would be in two weeks. And then they become effective on the 31st day.

Perfect.

So anybody that does not, to get in the weeds a little bit, developers can freeze their development rights. if they file what's called an SB 330 pre-app. So anybody that has filed a pre-app but has not gotten a permit yet, they would not be subject to the new design standards. But since we already have an existing set of regulations, they would still be subject to those.

Perfect. I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I like the other suggestion.

Council Member DeForest.

Just for some clarity, so it would be, it would stay at the 10 minimum, except in high-fire zones, and then it would utilize the, it could utilize the five.

So five for two units?

Yes.

Up to two units, and then if it's more than two units, then it goes back up to the 10.

Okay, and that would, But now we're at 10 foot in between on the non-fire zone down here instead of 20 foot, right?

That's the current standard. They would use the current standard of the separation at the 10 feet.

At the 10 feet. But didn't you show that the standard can be from 10 to 20 foot on slide number 13?

That was based on how many floors or stories the structure was.

And now we're going to get rid of that?

We would be getting rid of that. It'd be more based on your units. So it would be based on if it was two or less units, then you would be at five. And if you're over two units, you would be at 10.

But what if you're over 20 units? Can we have a 20?

The thing I think that we need to consider is that this is promoting small lot for sale units, condos and townhomes. If we stick with the wider setback, I don't care where the fire zone is, you're more than likely gonna get apartments on those projects, regardless of where the fire zone is. In the high fire severity zone, even at five feet, it's probably challenging for them to get the dentist seat because they have to have wider setbacks for fire, which we're working on in my district, doing Some development swaps where if the code says fire code says we have to have a hundred feet between Clearing between projects that each parcel can do 50 until you can do 50 on your one and get an agreement from them an adjacent parcel that you'll keep their 50 foot clear until it develops so we're not eating up a hundred of the first one of the first one and And then the second person comes in and gets that particular property line free and clear to build right up next to it, so to speak. So we're working on things to make it equitable. But again, I think the purpose of this is to promote the for sale product.

And maybe just to state the obvious, but those maps renew every five years. It's likely that that very high fire severity zone will also expand.

Will be the whole city.

I was just going to say.

It's already the whole state, I think.

The higher fire zones are fluid. They're moving. So, yeah. And it will be the whole state of California soon.

I just want to keep my colleagues aware of what the goal is with that change.

Yeah, for sale. Right. And I completely agree. I want for sale and want to do things to make for sale happen because we don't have much for sale. Yeah.

Is there any other comments from City Council? And I will close the public hearing. And I will call for a motion and a second. And I have a motion from Council Member DeForest. I want to clarify what that motion is. Is that staff's recommendation?

That'll be the distance separation of 10 foot. And the rest of the standards will remain the same.

Versus the five foot.

And the five foot for the high fire.

Just for high fire.

For high fire.

Realizing that's going to eliminate probably some for sale units and make them apartments.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you. What'd you say? So for staffs.

If you only do it in a high fire severity zone, it's probably going to eliminate a lot of projects from the rest of the city that will then go to more likely apartments because it can't meet the density.

Jesus. Excuse me.

It is curse-worthy. I can amend my motion to... Well, you could do staff's recommendation, you could do planning commission recommendation, or you could do some version of what you want to create on your...

Sorry, Mayor Pro Tem, we need 3.5 to be removed as well.

I thought that was part of the staff's recommendation. Do I need to say that?

No, that's because of the letter we received today. Okay, so.

So my motion is to remove the ADU. Section 3.5. Section 3.5. And to approve staff's recommendation of the five foot sliding scale.

And I will second that. Is there further discussion?

And this is for for sale only, correct?

Can we stipulate that? I didn't think so.

So that doesn't mean that the developers are going to come in and sell these units. That's what we have to understand.

But the thing is, if a developer is going to build a rental product, they're not going to do these small lot detached. They're going to do apartments.

Let's pray.

It doesn't eliminate that possibility, but it certainly pushes it well in that direction.

Okay. I have just one other question.

Sure.

Can we change your mind down the road and bring this back? We could. Anytime. Okay. Okay.

Yes. So I'll restate my motion. Okay. So I would like to go with staff's recommendation for the distance between and maintaining to remove the ADU 3.5 and to file the notice that exemption finding is exempt from CEQA, and introduce the new ordinance that includes a final revision of the residential objective design standards.

That sounds good. Any other discussion? Please vote.

We need a second. Oh, we got a second.

Point of clarification, Madam Councilmember, if I may. You had also suggested increasing the additional architectural elements going up from six. Yes, thank you so much, yes. On units 50 or above.

On units 50 or above and increasing the architectural units.

Are you getting all this over there? Yeah. Regarding the units, if there's 50 or above, it's gonna increase to six?

To six. Correct. Architectural design standards. Yeah, thank you for that. Thank you, Alan.

We got in the weeds on so many things.

Yeah, well, we were in the weeds today, so thank you. Thank you for all of that. I know we're all very frustrated and hopefully that this will encourage for sale.

And then just to confirm, Mayor Pro Tem Holliday, you agree with the units as well? Yes. For your second? Yes.

Okay, thank you. Okay. Is it too late for me to make one comment? No, no. David, I would love for you to report back if for any reason we see these properties being developed for apartments. If you wouldn't mind reporting back to us, would you say every six months, a year? And if we find that our decision today is benefiting high-density development with regards to rentals, I think that it's important that this council be aware of that.

Yeah, we'd be happy to do that for you.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Okay, please vote.

Motion carries unanimously 4-0 with the introduction of ordinance number 635-26, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Murrieta, California, amending title 16 of the Murrieta Municipal Code to revise the city's development code planning case number MCA 2026-00013, chapters 16.08 and 16.16, and to amend the multifamily residential and mixed-use residential objective design standards as amended.

Thank you. Easy for you to say. All right, moving on to item number 15, the continued public hearing to form community facilities district number 2026-1, Gearson Ranch of the City of Mirania, and annex into community facilities district number 2025-2, maintenance services, and community facilities district number 2025-S, safety services. We will now move on to the public hearing. Are there any council members who would like to recuse themselves from this item? I'm sure there's one.

Checking the numbers.

Checking my numbers, because I have many numbers here. Yes, I'm recusing myself from item number six due to owing property within 1,000 foot of the project.

OK, and then we'll excuse you to the Veterans Room and call you back when that item is done. All right, so. I'm going to open the public hearing. And do we have a report on this, or? I do. Okay, excellent.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem Holladay, council members, and members of the public. Tonight we will be presenting, or I'll be presenting a report on the formation of a community facilities district for Gearson Ranch housing development. and the annexation to the city's existing CFDs for maintenance services as well as for public safety services. I'd like to begin with a brief overview of the community facilities district that are scheduled for public hearing tonight. First, we have the CFD 1026-1. It's a facilities CFD established for the Gearson Ranch Housing Development. Next, we have maintenance services, CFD 2025-2. This one includes an annexation to the original district, and this is annexing Gearson Ranch into this CFD. And lastly, we're also at the request of the property owner, developer Gearson Ranch will be annexed into CFD 2025-S, which is for safety services. The property we are looking at the development today is called Gerson Ranch. It is located between Washington Avenue and Adams Avenue, southeast of Ivy Street. The total gross acres for the property is approximately 16.75 acres with the planned development of approximately 12.5 acres. The developer is planning to build 107 single family units. Of those 107, 29 of those are under 1,150 feet. 39 units will be between 1,950 feet to 2,150 feet. And lastly, 39 units over 2,150 square feet as well. Staff, along with our CFD information consultant, bond counsel, and our city attorney, we have been working during the last few months to form CFD 2026-1 in accordance with the Metal Rules Act. This established a funding mechanism for this CFD and it's established a special tax range from $3,156 to $4,179 with a overall tax rate of 1.83%. The 107 unit product mix is consistent of, and the special tax range of those will be $3,156 for those properties that are 1,150 square feet. $4,067 for those properties between 1,150 square feet to 2,150 square feet. And then lastly for those properties with over 2,150 square feet would be $4,179. The maximum bonded indebtedness for the CFD 2026-1 is $8.0 million. Bumper seats will be utilized to finance for the construction and acquisition of public facilities within this district. The bumper seats will be utilized as well to pay for Mitigation fees primarily for the city the water district as well the school district the mitigation fees are approximately four point six million dollars combined in order to Accomplish this the CFD would have to enter into a joint community service agreement with Western Municipal Water District and the Marietta Valley Unified School District Moving on to the CFD 2025-2. This is a citywide annexable district which allow for future residential developments to annex to mitigate their impact related to the maintenance of services associated with those projects. The special tax on each of those parcels will finance the public maintenance services such as landscape maintenance, street lights, street sweeping and pavement management, park and trail maintenance, drainage and stormwater maintenance, and graffiti abatement. For this annexation, which will be number three into CFD 2025-2, the special tax for maintenance services will be approximately $376 per unit. The annual escalator, based on the information of the original CFD, it is a CPI or 2%, whichever is greater. By the time the development is built out, the cost recovery associated with providing the maintenance in those areas will be approximately $40,000. Moving on to the annexation for the 2025-S, this is a citywide annexable district as well, which allow for future residential developments to annex into the CFD to mitigate their impact primarily on safety services caused by those projects. The levy of special taxes and parcels of the residential property will finance those public safety services. This includes police protection services, fire protection and suppression services, as well as paramedic services. This will be the first annexation into CFD 2025-S, which we have been working to annex them in accordance with the Melrose Act. The special tax for safety services will be $580 per unit with an annual escalator of 4%. By the time this development is built out, the cost recovery for providing those services will be approximately $62,000. So to recap the prior and future actions, as petitioned by the property owner, the City Council approved the resolution of intention to form the CFDs and the annexation into the CFDs at the City Council meeting back on April 17, 2026. Tonight, we are conducting a public hearing, holding an election, certifying the election results, and introducing the first reading of an ordinance. If the ordinance is approved, the second reading will take place at the June 16 City Council meeting. With that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Javier. Councilmember questions? Councilmember Stone.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Can you go back to the slide where it was $517, please? Right there. Okay, so the special tax for safety services It's $580 per unit with a annual escalator of 4%. Correct. Is this, so it says special tax for safety services. When you go back to the other slide, there was a fee of 370 something dollars? Yes, 376. 376, is that on top of that? That 500?

This is a separate special tax. Yes, it is on top. It's a separate special tax. This is primarily to maintain the properties for this housing development. This will probably be on Adams Avenue areas for services. And I believe it's Washington on the other side.

So we're looking at close to $1,000 in fees and taxes for this project. For Melrose and for public safety.

That's correct.

That's just for maintenance. And the two fees you mentioned are maintenance and public safety. There's still a Melrose on top of that.

So the fees, the taxes before their mortgage payment is an additional $1,000.00.

Just for the two. There's a third one.

Okay. And there's a third one. Yes.

And why is there a range on that? Because it's a percentage?

Okay.

For the 2026-1.

Let me ask or see if the permission consultants join me.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem. Shane Spicer, Spicer Consulting. The reason for the range of the tax is that these are different size homes with different estimated home prices, and we're establishing a less than 2% effective tax rate at the 1.83. Well, you have to by state law.

Yes. So the largest home is going to get $4,179 a year, not a month, a year, plus the other two fees added on top of that.

based on my calculation, I'm showing an additional $1,000 a month. A year. So it's a year? Yes. Okay, just, I'm having a heart attack over here. Just thank you for the clarification.

And remember, when they, those that are buying into this area, it only affects them. It doesn't affect anybody else in the community. I just wanted to make sure.

I'm very clear that it only affects the people that are, I understand, but still. So, in total, Mayor Pro Tem said that there's a third one. In total, I want to know what it's going to cost these residents per month. I want to know what it's going to cost per month for these residents based on Miller-Roos, based on public safety, based on maintenance. What is it going to cost them per month before they pay their mortgage, their electric bill, their gas? Well, We don't know how much longer we're going to have gas, but how about electric?

Approximately $428 a month. That's what I got. Was that based on the largest unit?

That's the largest one.

Thank you.

$427.92. And this bond is for 30 years? The larger Melrose is for the 30-year bond.

which would be the $4,000.

And public safety is in perpetuity. And maintenance is in perpetuity.

Okay. Okay.

Do we know, I don't know if you know this, do you know, Mr. Spicer, what the costs of these homes are going to be?

I can tell you what we were estimating that they would be. Selling for roughly, on average, $716,000.

For the large one?

On average. The $730,000 for the large one.

Okay. Thank you. That concludes my questions. Thank you.

Any other questions? I don't see any other questions. I have no other questions. Has the city clerk received written protest to any of the matters addressed in this public hearing from any registered voters, landowners of more than 50% of the acreage located within the CFD?

I have received zero written protest.

Thank you. I will close the public hearing and call for a motion and a second unless there's further comment. I have a motion by myself and a second by Councilmember Warren. Is there any discussion? Please vote. Or not.

Motion carries 3-0.

Out of curiosity, because there's only three of us for that, would that have to have been a unanimous vote? Yes. Okay. Just checking. All right. The resolutions that we have just adopted call an election within the CFD, which is to be held at this time by the city clerk.

16 votes were cast to approve propositions A, B, and C for this CFD.

Having received confirmation from the city clerk of the results of the election, I would entertain a motion to approve resolution number 26-4941, certifying the election resolutions within the CFD. So we're just, now we're just a motion, a second, that we're certifying the election by the property owners. So I'm calling for that motion. I have a motion from Council Member Warren and a second by myself. Please vote. I was waiting to let you have a chance. Been waiting here a long time.

Motion carries, 3-0.

All right. The resolution certifying the results of the election for the CFD has passed. I would now ask for the city clerk to conduct a first reading of the ordinance related to the CFD, which would authorize the levy of special tax in accordance with the special tax formula approved by the landowners within the CFD at the election.

All righty. Ordinance number 636-26, entitled An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Murrieta, California, acting in its capacity as a legislative body of community facilities, District number 2026-1, Gearson Ranch, of the City of Murrieta, authorizing the levy of special taxes.

All right, and now I call for a motion and a second for the introduction of the ordinance number 636-26. I have a motion by myself, a second by Council Member Warren. Please vote. Keep your voting fingers handy, we have a lot.

Motion carries, 3-0.

Thank you. All right, now I'm going to open the public hearing for annexation number three to community facilities district number 2025-2, maintenance services. And I'm a city clerk, is there any public testimony?

No public testimony at this time.

Is there any council member questions or deliberation? Seeing none, has the city clerk received written protest to any of the matters addressed in this public hearing from any registered voters or landowners of more than 50% of the acreage located within the property to be annexed to the CFD?

I have received zero written protest.

I am going to close the public hearing and call for a motion and a second for the adoption of resolution number 26-4942. Motion by Council Member Warren, second by myself. Please vote.

Motion carries, 3-0.

Resolution that we have just adopted calls an election within the property to be annexed into the CFD, which is to be held at this time by the city clerk.

16 votes were cast to approve propositions A and B.

Having received confirmation from the city clerk of the results of the election, I will entertain a motion to approve resolution number 26-4943, certifying the results of the election within the property to be annexed to the CFD. Motion by Council Member Warner, second by myself. Please vote.

Motion carries 3-0.

I'm going to open the public hearing for Annexation number one to community facilities district number 2025-S, safety services. Madam City Clerk, is there any public testimony?

We have not received any public testimony.

Is there any council member questions or deliberation? Seeing none, has the City Clerk received written protest to any of the matters addressed in the public hearing from any registered voters or landowners of more than 50% of the acreage located within the property to be annexed to the CFD?

I have received zero written protest.

I'll close the public hearing. Call for a motion and a second for the adoption of resolution number 26-4944. Motion by myself, second by Council Member Warren. Please vote.

Motion carries 3-0.

Resolution that we have just adopted calls an election within the property to be annexed into the CFD, which is to be held at this time by the city clerk.

16 votes were cast to approve propositions A and B.

Having received confirmation from the city clerk of the results of the election, I would entertain a motion to approve resolution number 26-4945, certifying the results of the election within the property be annexed to the CFD. I have a motion by Councilmember Warren and a second by myself. Please vote.

Motion carries 3-0.

I feel like one of those attorneys with all the disclaimers after an ad. All right, now we can go. Somebody can bring in Council Member DeForest back. I hope you had as much fun as we did. I think I probably had a little more fun. Thank you for doing that. Certainly. Item number 16, fiscal year 2025-26, third quarter financial status report and proposed budget adjustments. Welcome, gentlemen.

Good evening. Mayor Pro Temp, city council members, city staff, and members of the public. Javier Carcamo, finance director. Along with me is Tanner Benson, our financial analyst. And we're pleased to present to you the 2025-26 third quarter budget update. This is our first year of the annual budget cycle. As we share with you, Best Management's practice is to provide you with a quarterly update, making necessary changes to the budget based on the economy, as well as adapting to city business needs. This report will provide the third quarter update which covers all the way from July 1st, 2025 through March 31st, 2026. The purpose of tonight's presentation is to provide an update of the general fund measure T fund revenues and expenses. Can I share with you where we stand financially through the three-fourth of the midpoint of the fiscal year and highlights significant budget adjustments that we're making at the citywide level. In general, we're making some very minimum adjustment to the budget. We feel that most of our significant revenue sources are coming aligned with our projections. The areas that we're focusing, we're primarily focusing the next few months is on revenues associated with charges for services. Tyner will probably go over some of the details as much as we can with each of those items. As part of this presentation, I will also provide you with an overview of the unassigned fund balance for the measure T and general fund. We'll take a look at the changes to the schedule authorized positions and then we'll provide you with an update and recommendation actions at the end. With that, I'll turn it over to Tanner.

Thank you, Amir. The first section I will be discussing is the city's general fund revenues. Before we get started, though, we wanted to highlight that for presentation purposes, staff moved the required GASB 31 accounting entry from the other miscellaneous revenue line to its own line item. This adjustment, the GASB 31 accounting entry is a required accounting entry that aims to bring our investments from our book value to our market value. This adjustment is made at the end of the fiscal year and is reversed at the beginning of the following fiscal year. Due to the reversal, the other miscellaneous revenues appeared greatly understated throughout the majority of the fiscal year. So for presentation purposes going forward, we'll be separating out the GASB 31 to give a better showing for our other miscellaneous revenues. Our current amended budget as of the end of quarter three is $79,159,440. Staff is proposing to amend the budget by reducing it by just over $702,000, with a net increase adjusting of $497,000, adjusting property tax revenues, adjusting our property tax revenues, both the BLF and our standard property tax revenues, and a reduction of $1.2 million to our other miscellaneous revenues. Staff conducted a multi-year property tax analysis to assure our budgeted property tax revenues align with our year-over-year trends, and the $1.2 million reduction in other miscellaneous revenues is to transfer the budget from general fund interest income to the Measure T interest income account. During the third quarter, finance was requested to report on our Measure T interest earnings separately from the general fund. This brings our proposed amended budget to $78.5 million through the end of the third quarter, we have received $43 million in the general fund, which makes up about 55% of our total proposed amended budget. We do want to point out that sales tax, franchise tax, and transient occupancy tax are all received on delayed receipts, and the various property taxes are received based on county receipt and disbursements. The city's other miscellaneous revenue, business license tax and license and permit fee revenues are all in line with expectations and staff will continue to monitor charges for services as revenues are lower than anticipated for the third quarter. For the general fund expenditures, the amended budget at the end of the third quarter was $82 million. Staff is proposing adjustments to increase the amended general fund expenditure budget by approximately $241,000. This includes reallocating personnel costs to municipal services, the new municipal services department, in operations and maintenance, or O&M going forward. Staff is proposing various bank admin fee adjustments, vehicle fuel budget adjustments for the police department, and adding budget for high-profile police department case costs. Additionally, we are proposing an increase of $11,520 in allocations to our vehicle replacement fund. These proposed adjustments would bring our amended budget to $82,399,329. The city's current expenditures through the end of the third quarter, including CIP expenditures, are approximately $58 million, which accounts for about 71% of the total amended budget. Our personnel costs, allocations, and transfers out are all in line with our expectations. Our O&M costs, capital outlay, and one-time expenditures have atypical timing, so they will range until the end of the fiscal year. And our CIP expenditures are not budgeted in the operating budget, but instead in a separate sub-ledger. The next section to discuss is our Measure T revenues and expenditures. Starting at the top with our Measure T revenues. As of the end of the third quarter, the total amended budget for revenues was $28.8 million for Measure T. Staff is proposing to increase the Measure T revenue by $1.2 million in other miscellaneous revenues, which was discussed in the general fund revenue section of this presentation, moving budgeted revenues for interest income from general fund to Measure T. The proposed amended budget for Measure T revenues is going to be $30 million. As of the end of quarter three, total revenues received from both sales tax and other miscellaneous revenues are $17.6 million, or 61% of the amended budget. For Measure T expenditures, the amended budget at the end of the third quarter was $32.5 million. We are proposing a small increase to expenditures in Measure T of $22,788. The increase to operations and maintenance is to add back budget to cover bank admin fees, and staff is proposing adding $21,588 to allocations for the vehicle replacement fund, similar to the general fund allocation increase. The new proposed amended budget for Measure T expenditures will still be $32.5 million, but slightly higher. As of March 31, Measure T has expended $25.6 million, which does include our CIP expenses, making up about 79% of the total amended budget. Just like with general fund, personnel costs, allocations, and transfers out are all in line with expectations. O&M, capital outlay, and one-time expenditures all have atypical timing in their uses, and CIP expenditures are budgeted on its own subledger. Next, I will be going over the proposed adjustments at the city-wide level. I will be omitting all of the adjustments to the general fund and Measure T that were discussed in the prior slides, only focusing on proposed adjustments to the other funds. But the detail for all of our proposed adjustments are to the left-hand side of this slide. Our total citywide proposed changes to revenues are an increase of $672,270. The non-general fund and Measure T proposed changes include decreasing the charges for services for fire event services while also increasing the charges for services in our vehicle replacement fund. The charges for services for the vehicle replacement fund act as the opposite side of the allocations mentioned for both general fund and measure T. Additionally, staff is proposing to increase the city's other miscellaneous revenue budget by $259,000 to account for the police department's federal treasury asset forfeiture funds with revenues that were earned in prior periods but have been received in the current fiscal year. Our total proposed changes to expenditures are an increase of $348,971. I did leave the personnel costs on this table, even though it shows a net impact of $0 in the proposed change to show that the reallocation of the MSD personnel budget does have a net zero impact on a citywide level. In operations and maintenance, we have an increase to the vehicle fuel budget for the fire department and the police department, which was mentioned earlier, and additional bank admin fees across funds that are non-general fund or Measure T. Capital outlay also sees a proposed increase of $21,016 for playground equipment to repair the vintage reserve park playground. I will now pass the presentation back over to Javier to go over fund balances and the schedule of authorized positions.

Thank you, Tanner. So this table summarizes the unassigned fund balances that are available for general fund and measure T, which can be used for current and or future fiscal years. The unassigned fund balances increase or decrease based on an operating surplus or deficit Contributions to or use of reserve or changes in other fund balance categories. The best time for us to report the NSI fund balance is after the audit and financial statements are completed because at that point in time they have been fully reconciled. Based on the recommended budget adjustment for revenue and expenditures, the estimated ending unassigned fund balances for the general fund is approximately $30.7 million, and the measure T fund is approximately $18.6 million. The unassigned fund balances for the fire district fund, community services district fund, and the library fund will be true up as part of the fourth quarter year-end repayment. Staff regularly brings the Schedule of Authorized Positions to the City Council when staffing adjustments are necessary to enhance operational efficiencies. As of the last update, which was back on April 21st, 2026, there has not been any changes to the Schedule of Authorized Positions. We just wanna provide you an update that the current full-time equivalent position is at 472 positions. With that brings our last slide of the tonight's presentation. Future actions we have ahead of us is the first quarter year end report will be scheduled around December of 2026. Shortly, their audit and financial statements are completed. Earlier, later this year, Earlier than that, but shortly after year end, around August of 26, we're going to bring the 2026-27 budget update. So that will be for the next fiscal year. So that will be our first budget update report to you, which will probably bring some of the items that we have identified throughout the year that we have to make adjustments to the current year. And we're likely that we're going to propose the same adjustment in fiscal year 2017. And then lastly, the first quarter for fiscal year 2026-27 will be scheduled around November 26. Staff also will be preparing for the next bi-annual budget cycle. This is starting around December 26th. That's when we have our kickoff meeting for the next two-year cycle. Around May 27th, we'll be scheduling a workshop. And then lastly, an anticipated adoption of the proposed budget will be around June 27th. So tonight's recommendation is to accept the report, adjust the fiscal year 2025-26 operating budget as defined in the fiscal year 2025-26 third quarter proposed budget adjustments. With that concludes our presentation. We're happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much, Javier and Tanner. Very thorough report as usual. Shockingly, I do have some questions. If you could go back to slide three. So I wanted to talk about GASB 31 for a second, unrealized gain and loss. Correct me if I'm wrong, but majority of our investments are in fixed income bonds of some sort or another, correct? Correct. And those bonds have both a market value and a book value and a maturity value. CASB 31 requires us to account for them on the market value, which fluctuates greatly. But at maturity, these have a face value that they pay off, which is not reflected in this. So someone that may not understand investments and say, oh, we lost $2.5 million on our investment. That's not the case because we typically hold those to maturity. And in maturity, we get the face value, which is closer to what we paid for them, plus all the interest we got across the time we earned them. Is that correct? That is correct.

Okay.

I just wanted to clarify that for the public that may not understand investments as much as I do or you do. At the bottom of that, you have under the first column of the amended budget, you have use of unassigned fund balance of $9,289,000. Under the proposed amended budget, it's $10,232,778, which no proposed adjustment in between. Why is there a difference?

So there's two components. If I go to the next slide, you'll see here with, same as the bottom, we have a contribution to reserve as well as a capital outlet commitment. All of that combined totals about $90.9 million. Contribution to reserves are those reserves that we're setting aside, utilizing our current revenue sources. in order for us to balance the total expenditure sources, we have to balance this with a total revenue sources. Going back to the general fund, then we can see that the use of unassigned fund balance is 10.2, primarily because most of that is going into the reserves.

So we're increasing the amount going to reserves by a million dollars?

We're increasing reserves, so we have a use of about 2.2, and here we have about 7.3, so the net to reserves is about $5.1 million.

But the original use of unassigned was 9.2, and now the proposed budget is 10.2. Is that extra million going to reserves?

No. These two slides are typically viewed on our end as one big table. It's too large for us to be able to do a single table on our slides, so we break it out. Essentially the difference between the amended budget's use of unassigned fund balance and the proposed amended budget's use of unassigned fund balance is an increase in expenditures and a decrease in budgeted revenues. So the decrease in budgeted revenues causes us to need to make more expended, causes us to need to use more unassigned fund balance. So the decrease of 701 and the increase of 241 equal about a 940 something thousand dollar increase of use of unassigned fund balance.

And that's the same on slide five as well? Correct. Okay. And on slide seven, The budgeted transfers out column in the middle there, $4.488 million and just shy of $14 million from general fund and Measure T, those are transfers out to where?

So primarily for Measure T, that $13.9 million, those are transfers primarily to the fire district, community services district, and the library district.

Okay, and the general fund?

The general fund, most of that is associated with transfer into some Landscape lighting districts and zones that are in a deficit and requires a general fund contribution to make them whole. There is another transfer that we're making also to the National Pollution... NPDES. NPDES. Discharge. Fund, which we need to make a contribution to fully fund the operations as required by those functions.

We have several landscape and lighting districts that are in deficits, correct?

We, yes, we probably have about five or six of those.

But since we're doing the maintenance services CFD that we voted on tonight, we will have no more landscaping lighting districts in deficit in the future.

Yes, we will continue to have... No, I mean, subtracting the old ones.

We don't have any new ones going into deficit.

Correct. We're no longer... Forming LDS or landscape lighting districts. We have moved away from those type of formations into CFDs, which the plan is that those will be fully funded and those those includes a nest later on an annual basis.

Okay. That is all my questions. Council Member de Forest.

Thank you, Ron, for asking some of my questions as well. You're welcome. So currently, just kind of looking at an overall view, our budget expenditures are greater than our income, right? So we're expending more than we're bringing in. Is that true? We're pulling from our unassigned fund. Okay. And the other thing is, since Ron, you asked that good question, I'm gonna move to page number six. And when you were going over operations and maintenance on page number six, there's a line item for approximately 294,000. Is that specifically an increase in fuel costs?

Not all of it is an increase in fuel costs. There were the high-end police department cases, bank admin fees that went into it. And there was a large need for fuel costs for both PD and fire. Okay.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you for that.

There are various components associated with the 294,000. Okay, not just all fuels. The most significant are those that we mentioned, fuels, high case level PD cases, investigations. And then considering hundreds of line items, those are the most significant that we're.

Okay, thank you just for the great overview and transparency. So I appreciate your time and thank you for the report. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Council Member DeForest. Council Member Warren.

Thank you. Ask, answer. You know, they just do it all the time. It's great. But I do have a couple questions, at least one. The sales tax that you were reporting on, that has been receipts that we received through March 31st? I mean, have we received all our sales tax for the first quarter of 2026? Yes.

So this report through March, at that point in time, we have received seven months of sales tax collection. Okay. So we still have approximately five months remaining to collect.

To collect. Okay. And then after seeing the numbers come in on sales tax, say February, March, are you seeing flat, a little bit of a rise, or a deficit?

So based on the numbers we have received so far, I believe our anticipated increase in sales tax will be approximately 1% from the prior year actuals. Okay. So it is a very slight increase that we have seen actually over the three or four years. With sales tax, it's not a 3% or 4% increase. We're seeing somewhere between 1% and 2%. Okay.

Thank you. That concludes my questions. Thank you, Mayor Bertan.

If I can add to another, Tyner just reminded me, the question about the transfers also out of the general fund, this year includes the allocation into the vehicle replacement funds as well. So that is one of the significant transfers out of the general fund this year.

Yes, that's something I advocated for when I first got elected because it just makes good financial sense to be budgeting for those replaceable items that you know we're going to wear out, just like roads, vehicles, all that good stuff. Perfect. Thank you. No more council member questions. I will move to the city clerk to see if there's any public comment.

Seeing none.

Okay, we'll close the public comment and bring it back to council members for comments or a motion. I have a motion of Councilmember DeForest and a second by Councilmember Moore. Is there any further discussion? Please vote.

Motion carries unanimously, 4-0.

Thank you. Moving on to item 17, discussion regarding potential modifications to City Council term limits.

Yes, good evening.

Assistant City Manager Crane.

Yes, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Holladay, and good evening, city council members. I'm going to do an introduction of this item and then turn it over to you for discussion. So item 17 is introducing the topic of potentially modifying city council term limits and seeking direction from the city council regarding potential initiation of a ballot measure for the November 2026 general municipal election, because any changes to city council term limits do require a vote of the Murrieta population. voter approval. So this is a topic that's been brought up periodically by city council members and was most recently raised by Council Member Stone. And considering the timing for preparation for the November 2026 election, we thought it would be appropriate to bring it to you to have you have a chance to discuss it. And then if it is something you want to pursue, then give us direction in order to take the necessary next steps. The upcoming November 3rd general municipal election provides an opportunity for the city council to consider placing initiatives on the ballot that have to do with financial measures, other operations, policy, fiscal issues, and so forth. And if that's the direction of the city council, we would actually need to provide to the Riverside County Registrar of Voters the necessary ballot language by August 7th. So that's coming up. It's just a little It's about two months' time. So this, again, is the time that we would want to discuss that. The topic that's been floated for consideration is the idea of expanding the existing term limits from two consecutive terms to the possibility of three consecutive terms. So currently, you can have two consecutive terms and then a term off and then an additional term. but this would enable there to be three consecutive term limits. And in terms of other considerations, just looking at other cities in Southwest Riverside County, it really varies. Different cities are doing different things in this space. The agenda report goes into some different considerations on both perspectives in terms of those that might be proponents of adding term limits or those that might have concerns about that. And so again, Change would require voter approval, and we wanted to bring it to you in order for you to have a chance to discuss it. The estimated cost for putting a measure like this on the ballot in November is $143,000. That is an estimate. It will vary depending upon the length of language, postage, and so forth, but that's a ballpark figure for you to have. And with that, I'll turn it to you.

Thank you. Before I turn it over to Council Member Stone, I just want to clarify something you said. You said that we have term limits of two terms, and then you take a term off, you can serve one other term. It's my understanding you could serve, the phrase I've coined is, We don't have term limits, we have term breaks. Because you can serve.

That's actually accurate.

Two terms, two terms, take a term off, two terms, take a term off, and you could do that forever till you die. So we don't have term limits, we have term breaks. Yes. Okay.

Sorry, thank you for clarifying.

And the other thing that you said was that the proposal was for three consecutive terms. I'm gonna let Council Member Stone clarify what her proposal is, but They don't have to be consecutive, correct, in the proposal?

Well, right now you're limited to doing two consecutive.

I'm talking about what the proposal is. I'll let Council Member Stone present her proposal.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. It would be 12 years lifetime.

Yeah, that's what I thought your proposal was. So you could serve one term, take two terms off, serve another term, take three terms off, and serve a third term, but then you'd be done for life. Correct. Okay, thank you. Yes, yes.

Thank you for the opportunity to share with you my thoughts on why I believe that this would be beneficial for our city. More time to implement long-term policies, major projects in areas of infrastructure. As an example, Keller Road. Let's talk about Keller Road. When Council Member DeForest and I were elected in 2020... killer road was still in the environmental process and right before she was the mayor I had proposed that we go to Washington DC and also Sacramento to lobby for killer road to be out of the environmental process and also lobbying for grant funding and Council Member DeForest and I did go to Washington, and it was a very successful trip. Connecting with the transportation agency there was very, very beneficial, and I believe when she was the mayor, she still developed and talked with the transportation agency in Washington, D.C. In addition, we've been to Sacramento, I know that Councilmember Warren and I have been to Sacramento, along with, actually, Councilmember DeForest, because I remember being in a meeting with regards to, again, having Keller Road come out of the environmental process. The relationship that we have with Senator Kelly Ciarta was very, very instrumental. And I truly believe if we had not been very, very active, we would not be moving the pendulum forward in having Keller Road come out of the environmental process. And then with regards to other long-term policies, Council Member DeForest has been leading the effort for higher education. I'm praying and hoping that she will fulfill her commitments and her advocacy and lobbying for grant money before she's termed out in 2028. And once she's termed out, you know, who's going to carry that forward? With regards to economic development, that's also very important. I've been dealing with the Dominogonis, with the Triangle that's been a multi-year project, and I'm hoping and praying again by the time We're termed out that that project will have broken ground and And we will have a brand new shopping center in Marietta, but economic development You know I work diligently with Scott Agha Janian He calls me his his council member. That's you know with economic development and These relationships that we have built at ICSC to be able to pick up the phone and call some of these potential developers and business owners that want to come to Marietta and being able to get them through the finish line is due to our tenacity. environmental policies. I know that Council Member Ron Holiday has been working diligently with the Vermal Pool at Los Alamos Sports Park. That project has been in the pipeline since we were, Council Member DeForest and I were elected. And it would be very, very sad with him working with RCA, Senator Kelly C. Arto, and all the community leaders in order to mitigate the vermal pull so we could have a soccer field at Los Alamos. So this is about long-term policies. Longer, allowable tenure can give leaders enough time to see initiatives through from the start to the finish. Greater experience and expertise. Elected officials often become more knowledgeable about government operation, budgets, laws, negotiations, and let's just talk about acronyms. When we were elected, I'll never forget what Council Member DeForest and I were like, how in God's name are we gonna remember and understand all the acronyms? And it really takes about four years for council to understand the operation of city government, understand the acronyms, understand all the committees and commissions that we sit on. Allowing elected to serve longer can preserve institutional knowledge and reduce the learning curve associated with a frequent turnover. Stronger relationships and influence. Longer serving officials may build stronger working relationships, such as WRCOG. I'm going to give you an example of WRCOG. When I was elected in 2020, I was assigned to WRCOG. A few years later, Council Member DeForest wanted to sit on WRCOG, which was fine. It was fantastic. But what I did learn by me missing that year put me at a disadvantage of being in a leadership role with WRCOG. For example, they wanted to nominate me for second vice chair this year, which Council Member Holliday attended yesterday, and I was denied. because I will be termed out in 2028. Council Member Warren, she's been on RCTC since she was appointed and then elected. That is very valuable, what she has been able to learn and be in a leadership role, and in two years, she's going to be the chair of RCTC, RTA, sorry. She has that knowledge, that tenacity, and the connections that she has made through RTA has really helped us here in Marietta. But if she had taken a year or two off, she probably wouldn't be in the leadership role that she is, and she wouldn't be advocating with Caltrans to have a seat at the table. Dealing with community leaders and other government agencies, our relationship with our state representatives and congressional relationships. Again, Council Member Warren, her relationship with Caltrans has been very instrumental in the success of the Southwest Leaders Collaborative, where we're dealing with traffic and congestion, not only on our roads, but our freeways. And her relationship has value. It's valuable for the success of what she's able to bring back to the city of Marietta. Council Member DeForest, when she was mayor, Congressman Darrell Issa came to visit all the cities and she developed a relationship which is so important for the city of Marietta. And because of her efforts, In her tenacity in working with Daryl Issa and his team, with our staff in Townsend, she was able to bring back a mobile command center for our police department that was a value, I believe, about $1.2 million. Those relationships are very important. As our community is growing, we need more men and women on the ground, and she took an opportunity because of these relationships. Mayor Pro Tem Holliday, he works closely with Senator Kelly C. Arto. He's working on initiatives. He's working on quality of life. These relationships have value. Mayor Lavelle, he has a relationship with Bill Assales from the Attorney General Office and myself. I have a great relationship with many elected officials across Riverside County. All I have to do is pick up the phone. But most importantly is Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, who's carrying AB 2307 on behalf of the collaborative that was initiated by the city of Marietta. We're gonna be talking about e-bikes in a few minutes. Today, I was able to talk to Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, as Chief of Staff, whose cell phone is, her number is in my cell phone. I was able to call her to ask questions with regard to e-bikes. And we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But that was very instrumental, and some very positive outcomes came from that phone call. Relationships are a direct impact, a positive impact on our community. Frequent leadership's change can cause shifts in priorities and disruption in ongoing priorities, policies, and programs. Extending the limit to 12 years can allow more focus on governing rather than constant transition and planning. Our relationship with our staff is moving projects forward that we can, which can be detrimental for the success moving forward. Again, Without that longevity, in two years, someone can be elected and we're right in the middle of a program, a policy, or something very, very important that disrupts the quality and effectiveness of what we're working on. With all that said, I realize 143,000 is not a great number. When I proposed this a while ago, we did not know the cost factor, but now we do. I believe the 143,000 is a great return on our investment. And I gave you reasons why investing in long-term 12 years is very beneficial. I'd like to also talk about an example. When I and Mayor Jonathan Ingram originally brought forward mental behavior health, It was very, very important to him and I, and at that time, council did not vote to approve the program, which was fine. But that was an item I was willing to die on the sword for. When council member, or Mayor John Lavelle was elected, who works from Loma Linda Hospital, that brought a different perspective, and we had City Council meeting to deal with mental behavior health there were community members that Criticized our efforts to deal with mental behavior health, which is the number one crisis in America and Even council felt at that time that it was not a good use of funds but they ended up voting for it and I The two people, and one of them is here tonight, that had criticized us by implementing that policy, they actually apologized because they didn't realize the benefit of us dealing with mental behavior health. And it has been such a huge benefit to our community to have care solace. And I want to thank Council for investing back in our community. And I do believe that the $143,000 is a good use of funds because I do believe that the return on investment is extremely beneficial for the success of Marietta. But with that, I'd like to just tell my colleagues that this is not a sword that I'm willing to die on. It is not. It does not matter to me personally. This is really about the city of Marietta. This does not affect me at all. But I think I gave you examples of why it is really important for us to move from eight years to 12 years. This is really benefiting our city and moving the city forward. So whatever you all decide, our budget is $180 million. And I know that, again, hearing Javier and what is going on financially, but when you're talking about $143,000 against $180 million budget, I'm sure our city manager could find the $143,000, but again, This is about the return on investment, which I believe is viable for us as a city. And so again, please understand that if you vote no on this, it does not affect me personally. So thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Holliday.

Thank you, Council Member Stone. Do we have any questions at this point for Council? Yes, questions, not comments, questions. Council, no. You went away. Okay. Just questions. Just questions. Any questions? Okay. Let's go to public comments first.

No public comments at this time.

No public comments. All right. Now, are there council member comments? Yes. Council member Warren.

I want to, council member Stone, you did an excellent job of laying this out. Really did. That was well done. I'm just grappling with $143,000. In today's budget and what we're looking at, as much as I think it's a good idea to really do this, I'm just struggling with $143,000, to be real honest with you. So that's where I'm at right now. I thought it was going to be around maybe around 60,000, you know, somewhere like that. And then this norm came out, I went, ugh. So that's my problem. So there's my comment.

Yeah, when the amount came out, I about choked. But again, you know, I really thought about this hard. and thoroughly. I've had conversations with our city manager whether I should pull this because of the cost. But once I started to write out everything, I realized this is an investment. And again, yes, $143,000 is a lot of money, but this is an investment for our future and with the knowledge and understanding The experience that we've gained 12 years is really perfect for us to start and finish. But again, like I said, if the council decides that they don't want to spend the money today, I get it. But you got to think about the future. It's not just about today. And again, I think that our city manager can find the $143,000. But I do agree with you. And again, at the beginning, I I struggled, but as I thought about it, it is really a good investment for us.

And also, you're very correct. I mean, I had the pleasure and the privilege of being on the RTA Commission and on the RCTC Commission both. And the knowledge I have gained and the benefits that has been brought back to this city has been immeasurable. just going to Washington, D.C., having that meeting for Keller Road was invaluable. And I really do believe that being able to see things through is a value to this community. I'm just stuck on the 143.

Right, but just remember, let's see, we're in 2026. So in 2030, you'll be termed out. Yes. And our new RHNA numbers are going to be coming out. There are going to be other issues And sadly and unfortunately, three of you, there'll be three brand new council members that are going to be very green. And that's very sad for our city. Thank you. Thank you.

That concludes my comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Warren. Council Member DeForest.

Thank you. And thanks to Council Member Stone for bringing this forward. I completely understand. exactly why it was brought forward. And I think it was brought forward because she values the relationships. And I think that that is kind of priceless to have those relationships. And very, very fortunate to have relationships with them congressmen, as well as our senators, and to actually be able to utilize and leverage those relationships for our city, right? Because that's why we're here. We want to make the city of Murrieta the best we can. And I believe that that's incredibly positive I do kind of chuckle though when we talk about projects like the triangle and projects like Keller Road And I appreciate that when we got elected that those projects were there But I think that previous to other councils with their term limits at eight years was also probably talking about the same projects and And those projects, I think that, you know, even given us another 10 years, I hope and pray that maybe those will be done, but I'm not really sure that is really very viable. Although I'd love to see the triangle come to fruition and Keller Road, my goodness, I really don't want to say Keller Road anymore. It might give me the chills when I get off on it, especially when it's finished, right? So... I think that some great points were made, and I know that this was voted on in 2010 by the community. I'm not sure exactly what was going on at that time. I did a little bit of reading, but I didn't do a deep dive, and it seemed like it was pretty superficial. This is my second elected position, and my first elected position was a school board, which was termed out at eight years as well. So, I'm pretty okay with the eight years, but I understand that it'd be nice going forward to have four more years with relationships and actually being able to be a voice for the city. And I think it's very odd. We have three council members that go all at once. And it's kind of ironic that council member Stone and I are the longest sitting council. And I still, you know, we're still in our infancy, right? I mean, I don't feel like I've been here that long, although time is flying. You know, I can see both sides. And I could definitely see that it could be definitely a benefit moving forward. But being such a conservative and spending, and originally when this was talked about, it was like 50 grand, right? We could find 50 grand, but now it's triple the price. And that's not a firm cost either. That could be up. That could go on the upwards, and I know it could. And right now, looking at our budget, personally, I can't see spending that money on anything like this, because I don't think that it benefits the community as a whole. So as well it would benefit it, and I can kind of reason with my brain a little bit and say maybe it could benefit it by having longevity and being us to be more influential, I kind of go back to saying, how can I spend $143,000 when I'm looking at taking money out of our unreserved fund balance. So that's kind of where I am. I appreciate Council Member Stone bringing this forward. I understand. I love the relationship factors, and I think that's incredibly positive. I just don't know if our timing is incredibly good, especially after we just talked about the budget. So, I mean, yes. So thank you for bringing it forward, and I think it's a good conversation, and I don't think that it should go away completely. Maybe just right now, considering the state of the city. So, thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member DeForest. As I said in the beginning, we don't have term limits in Mira Day. We have term breaks. So, On one side, this would actually be more restrictive because no person could ever serve more than three, four-year terms. Currently, you serve eight years, take four years off, and serve another eight years. That's obviously four terms. And someone as young as John Lavelle could obviously do that again. And, of course, assuming you're getting re-elected. And the three terms also assume that you're getting re-elected. And to give you a little background, since I was around back in 2010 when this was happening, it was the council and the citizens all the way back to late 90s and early 2000s had a contentious relationship. A lot of development going on within the city. A lot of people didn't like housing developments that were being approved. They didn't quite understand private property owner rights and that those people had a right to build housing developments. They wanted a lot of vacant land and other things back in. So there was a lot of no growth movement. In fact, in 2015, I think it was 2001 that they had an immediate recall election right after that election. Kelly and Jack and Doug McAllister had to run a campaign after just winning their campaign because it went into a recall election. The attitude of the citizens has changed since then, at least in my experience. It's not as contentious as it used to be. But that was the reason for the term limits. And I think it was an unfortunate disservice to the residents at the time that they weren't given choices, just either term limits or no term limits. And these are the term limits that were presented. I know that Temecula has the three-term lifetime. And I think Menifee also has the three-term lifetime.

And Wildomar and Lake Elsinore have no term limits.

Yeah, I've talked to Kevin Bash, who's in Norco. He's been on RCA for like 13 years. Are the term limits, if... big if, we approve this, went to the voters, they approved it, would that start at that point then would be three terms going forward? Yes. Or could you write it such that it was retroactive?

Can I do that? So that you're saying retroactive so that people who have already served two terms could come back and serve another one?

Correct.

Yeah, you could write it that way.

And then they're termed out.

And then they're termed out.

You could write it that way.

You could write it that way.

Okay. Okay. Okay, I like that.

And also, can I just tell you, besides what had happened during that time, it was a community resident.

I'm fully aware. Okay, so you know. I'm fully aware. Now, so I see benefits. I mean, look, if you have a great person in the seat, technically you should have no term limits. You know, Teddy Roosevelt comes to mind that served three terms, which created, it's like, we got to get rid of that guy. And so that created the presidential term limits. And it's like, but everybody loved him at the time. And the only way he was forced out is because they put in term limits. But you get somebody bad in the seat, which has happened in Murata before, and then They keep getting reelected. Fortunately, that hasn't happened too often in Murrieta, that a bad person gets reelected. But they still have to get reelected every term. It's not like you get somebody atrocious in here because they sounded good and turned out to be a nightmare that they can't be voted out. So there's pluses and minuses to term limits. I get that. The $143,000 is very challenging for me. knowing where our budget is. We're currently in labor negotiations with multiple unions. It's hard, not that there's not a good return on investment for this expenditure, and not that 143,000 is insurmountable, certainly compared to the multi-million dollar projects that we have to prioritize our money for. It's just, again, communicating to the residents what's the priority. Personally, I think, as you all know, I'm working on a constitutional amendment to try and give the city a little more say in housing decisions here at the local level. And along with that, we may have to become a charter city to do that. Well, when you become a charter city, you have to create your charter, which includes term limits. And if you're going to have an elected mayor like Menifee does, I mean, all those decisions go into your charter. So had we been in a better financial position today, I might have been more inclined to say, yes, let's spend the money. But if at some point in the future we might be entertaining doing a charter city anyhow, I would say that's probably the time to look at this and spend the money if we're gonna get more than just one line item of benefit out of it, if that makes any sense. Anyhow, that's my two cents. Are there any other comments?

It sounds like that we're not ready right now. And again, I'm struggling as well. Even though I see the benefit of it, you know, I'm struggling myself. I'd like to see us table it for later. Sure.

I really would. I would like to see us table it and look at our financial situation down the road and see if this makes sense later on. But I just don't feel right now.

Potentially we're going back for something else that would be included into it. Yeah.

But I do think we should.

I would like to see us table this discussion. I agree. Because like I said, this is not a sword I'm willing to die on. I'm struggling as well. even though that I do see the benefit, I'm struggling along with you, Council Member Warren. So I agree. Let's table it.

So do we need a motion for that?

I think we can do consensus, can't we?

No. You want a motion? Let it die?

Let it die or motion to table?

I mean, if you want to table it to a specific.

Thank you for hearing me out.

I really really appreciate it and thank you for your comments Okay, so without a motion we will move on to reconsideration madam city clerk

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 next meeting. At this time, are there any requests from the City Council for reconsideration?

Seeing none. Next is council member request to add or withdraw items to future agendas. So we, two of us, unbeknownst to each other, requested an e-bike safety be added to a future gender. Do you have a report on that? Mr. City Manager?

Yeah, we would add and took the liberty, especially at the request of the two, and frankly, this is a topic that's come up from all council members from time to time. I think really even at the staff level, we're ready to bring it back. We would like some confirmation that that's something council wants, but then we're also looking for any additional direction. We're already revising and revisiting, mostly from an enforcement operations perspective, what policies we have in place, how effective are they at curbing some of the bad behavior that we see with e-bikes, leveraging partnerships, especially ones with the school district. And so we're already kind of down that road, but We'd like you to first validate that, yes, in fact, you'd like us to bring this back. And then second, if there are any topic areas you'd like to make sure are addressed when we do bring it back, we're not asking to really kind of elaborate fully on those or discuss the merits of those, but just give high-level direction to staff about what kinds of things you'd like to be included in the analysis and policy considerations so that when we bring it back, it's well-suited for a robust conversation.

Okay. Let's start with Council Member Stone.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Holliday. I think we can all agree that it's out of control. And I know that our public safety is challenged with the e-bikes, the groups of students that are on our streets, that are riding illegally, and I do wanna just share two quick stories with you that I personally witnessed. There was a group of e-bikes, and I don't know if they were legal or not, because I can't tell the difference. They were talking amongst each other as they were driving, they were doing wheelies, and they were not paying attention. And one of them ran into a vehicle. That driver was shaken, beyond this gentleman was literally so upset. And as I witnessed it, it was not his fault, but can you imagine if that child was seriously injured or died? And that driver would have to live with that. In addition, I've seen e-bikes, where the youth are, they're on their cell phone as well. And in my deep dive to learn about e-bikes, there's a plethora of illegal and legal bikes. But the ones that are legal are considered bicycles, not motorized bicycles, but bicycles. And the laws, the policies are very lenient. In talking with Kate Sanchez's chief of staff this morning, There's about a dozen bills at the state level right now that's being introduced that's gonna strengthen the laws for e-bikes. And I hope and pray that it does happen. In addition, she sent me a policy that the city of Rancho Santa Margarita has implemented. It's been very successful in partnering with their unified school district. Justin, the chief, have both of those policies to review. It's only a matter of time before our community is affected by this. Orange County just had a death, and the DA is charging the mother with second degree murder for an elderly man that was hit and died. It is out of control, and the only thing that I would like to suggest to our city manager, our chief of police, and Our city attorney is implementing a policy within the law because I do believe it's going to change once the state implements something. But in the meantime, we we need to strengthen and and also do an additional outreach, just like we're doing with the high density development program. I think many layers of communication to the parents, to the students that are on social media, it's going to be very important that we continue to advocate for safety. Because if, God forbid, something were to happen to a child, guess who they're going to come to first? It's going to be us. So that would be my recommendation to our city attorney, our city manager, and our chief is to review those two policies, come back with a recommendation to strengthen, work with our unified school district, and do an educational outreach through our magazine, on social media, doing another outreach like Hilder did for high-density development on our website. And I look forward for them to come back and present something that has some meat to it. So thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Council Member Stone. Council Member Warren.

I'd also like to see us increase signage. throughout the city, not just citing the code, but making it so people can understand it. Can you or can you not ride bikes on a sidewalk? Can you or can not ride in parks? Where are you allowed to, what is the difference? Do we have an ordinance for regular bikes versus e-bikes? And I think we need a licensing type of program with the school district with repercussions if you are, Caught in doing what against the law then there are repercussions and maybe that is you don't bring your bike get to ride your bike to school I don't know, but we need to strengthen these up. So so good signage so people understand what the law is education and a strong licensing mechanism For kids going to school. I would like to see that happen with an education Component with that. Thank you.

Thank You councilmember warm councilman force. Would you like to go first? I

Sure, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem, I think that I would like to see a very strict policy of the motorized bikes. Of course, we already know that the Cirons, those are against law anyway. But with a strict policy, I would also like to see if we can copy somebody's and not reinvent the wheel, but copy somebody's already in place with the possibility of impounding the bikes and with strict and high fees for impounding. So in order to get your bike out, it's 500 bucks. We need to hit these crazy biker gangs where, you know, so you're going to have to pay to get your bike back out. So these kids are going to have to do a summer job or something else because if we'll be sitting at dinner on our downtown, they are popping wheelies. They are riding crazy all the way down our Washington Street, our old town. They're all over the place. Also, our helmet law. And really enforcing with tickets now. I know that our police officers are supposed to be doing more than just Chasing these kids around and I I know that they are protecting and serving our community Maybe we need to do something where we're not putting the burden on our officers but we're putting the burden back on the community itself in order to ride one that they must have a big orange sticker on it and And that they are certified through the school district if it gets anywhere near a school district So some our school any anyway, I think that's some strict policies should be in place.

So thank you mayor prop Tim Thank You councilmember DeForest I'm gonna share a couple stories. I Saw one I was over by Target by the new Home Depot and I was going through to get over onto Linnell Lane. And in front of Target, there is multiple stops. And so I'm, there's nobody in front of me, but I'm stopping at the stop signs like you're supposed to do. And this kid comes on an e-bike. It wasn't necessarily on his regular e-bike. And he goes from behind me over to the opposite lane of traffic. There was a car turning to come the other way. He swerves back in in front of me, runs two stop signs, and shoots out on the Lanell Lane into the lanes of traffic and never looked left and made a right-hand turn. And I got out on the street, and he just had no helmet, had no care in the world. And then just yesterday, coming home from... from rca or wr cog there i was going down whitewood made a left onto clinton keith there was a kid with a helmet on and it's it probably has to be a sir on that he was on riding in the bike lane made a right-hand turn onto clinton keith and as i turned after him i paced him at just over 45 miles an hour And then I went up to Menifee Road to make a right to go to my house, and the kid didn't want to slow down because I'm making a right-hand turn in my lane. Now, he's in the bike lane, mind you. And I've merged into the bike lane to make my right-hand turn, but I'm still blocking the number three through lane, too. This kid goes out not just to the number three lane, goes into the number two lane with cars doing 60 miles an hour because he didn't want to slow down for a car turning right. And I assume that was a siren. I personally think any vehicle that travels more than maybe 10 miles an hour should have license and license registration, whatever else. And when you say sirens are illegal, I don't know what that means. Does that mean they're not allowed to be owned? Of course not.

No, that's the only reason why, because I remember the police chief talking about that. That a Siron is one with the pedals, and that can go 60 miles an hour. No pedals. No pedals. And then the other one's motorcycle.

It's really a motorcycle, but it's unlicensed. There's no registration on it. It's not registered with the DMV. I don't know. It's just... It's just crazy. When we bring it back, we'll clarify all of that. Let me wrap up. So the things I'm looking for is what are our tools? What are our options in a new code? What are our options for unique enforcement? What are our options for licensing and education? I'm glad that Council Member Stone got that stuff from the school districts and the other cities that are doing something that's hopefully helping. And those are the things I'd be looking for. Council Member Warren. had one more I forgot to multiple riders on a bike I really have three I've seen front middle and back and so multiple riders we need to address that issue as well thank you hopefully some of these state laws will come down to make it a lot easier for us but in the meantime we need to it's kind of like what was the thing that we just passed an ordinance on create them It's kind of like that till the state gets on board and they're slow moving. We're not super fast like Keller Road and Triangle.

Yeah, but we implemented a policy until they exactly. But I will share with you that there again, these e-bikes are considered bicycles.

It's crazy to me. They go way too fast. All right. So does staff have enough direction? Okay. Now, public comments on non-agendized item for the second time. Do we have anybody to speak on non-agendized items?

Before we go into public comments, I would like to ask the City Council if there are any additional requests to add or withdraw items to future agendas.

Do you have something? Council Member DeForest.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I would like to request a future agenda item for discussing during upcoming budget workshop, which I believe is in June on the 27th, around there, regarding long-term strategic economic planning and revenue generation opportunities for the city of Marietta. Specifically, I would like staff and council to evaluate which types of commercial development and business sectors would provide the greatest long-term economic benefit and tax revenue potential for the city. The discussion could include analysis of sales tax, transit occupancy tax, business growth potential, job creation, and fiscal sustainability. In addition, I'd like at the workshop to include a comparative review of key development opportunities, including the Jefferson Corridor, the Keyhole area, and other potential economic zones within the city to determine where future infrastructure investment incentives or strategic planning efforts may produce the strongest economic return for the city of Marietta's residents and long-term financial health, especially if we're going to continue on having our self-service city.

I have a quick question of the first thing you said. Did you say you wanted that to come back at the next council meeting?

No, during our budget workshop, just to maybe bring that forward and address things. Which is when? The end of June.

June 23rd.

June 23rd.

Okay, during that workshop.

I support that.

I support that.

Okay, thank you so much, Council.

I would like to remind my colleagues that you saw how much discussion we were able to have on the e-bike safety. By getting it to the city manager before the meeting, we can have a lot more discussion than if it's just brought up during this session. So I would encourage my colleagues to reach out to the city manager and say, hey, I'd like to put this on. I don't know what the... Now the city clerk has just walked in from taking 5 million ballots. I don't know what the time frame is ahead of a council meeting to have it added to that line item.

Because it doesn't require a lengthy agenda report. Usually if it's early the week before a council meeting or the week before that, it's helpful. Like Tuesday the week before? Yes.

Okay. Just a reminder. It just makes it a little more efficient for us to be able to discuss things. So you have consensus on that? Thank you, Madam Deputy City Clerk.

I'm sorry, could you please repeat that?

What the agenda item is? Yeah, we're good. Yes, we have consensus on bringing that information back to the workshop at the end of June. Okay, now on to public comments.

Seeing no public comments at this time.

Okay. And now, Madam City Attorney, or is it City Clerk that does the announcement of closed session items? City Clerk, thank you.

The City Council will meet on two items in closed session. CS1, Conference with Legal Counsel Anticipated Litigation. The City Council will conduct a closed session pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.94 because the City is considering whether to initiate litigation in one case. CS2, Conference with Labor Negotiators. The City Council will conduct a closed session pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.94. with the city manager, assistant city manager, deputy city manager, city attorney, and the city's negotiators regarding labor negotiations with the Murrieta Police Officers Association, Murrieta Police Management Association, Murrieta Firefighters Association, and Murrieta Fire Management Association.

Thank you, and we will now recess to close session. Microphone, there we go. Let's reconvene back from closed session. Can I, do we need a roll call? No, everybody was here and in closed session. So, Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. The City Council only had to meet in closed session on one item. The first item, CS1, was not needed tonight. The second item, CS2, confer with labor negotiators. The City Council met and was updated and provided direction to staff. Mayor John Lavelle was absent for the closed session, and that's the report. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam City Attorney. And before we adjourn, Council Member Stone.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Sadly, we've had another death in the City of Marietta, Paul Little. In memory of Paul Little, it was 2011 when Graham Judge and his family visited Paul Little and his family in Marietta, California for a week's vacation. During that visit, Graham had mentioned to Paul that he'd love to open up an Irish pub here in Marietta and that he was going to do it in the following year. Over a couple of beers before Graham and his family departed back to Spain, Paul said he'd be happy to help with the setting up the process of a pub, so the partnership was born. The Shamrock opened its doors in December of 2012 and was an instant success. How could it fail? Two former club 18 through 30 lads running an Irish pub. Before their first six months of opening, was done, the lads had come up with the idea of doing an Irish music festival at the Marietta's Town Square Park. And in September of 2013, Get Shamrocked was born. Get Shamrocked happened every year until 2020 when COVID hit. Through thick and thin ups and downs, Paul and Graham kept the Shamrock Irish Pub rocking year after year, and it's still going strong today. Paul has left his mark with a big style on the community of Marietta and the surrounding areas with people constantly asking about him from his hilarious bingo calling to his famous trivia nights and some live guitar performances on stage from time to time. He will always be remembered by all. His pain is gone, but his memory will live on and on and on. Rest in eternal peace, my friend. You'll never walk alone.

Thank you, Council Member Stone. And on that, we are now adjourned.